Apple faithful rally for upgraded iPhone

By Rodney Woodson, Associate Editor

Before pulling up to the corner of the Fourth Street Apple Store in Berkeley at around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday evening, I crossed my fingers, hoping for a short line.

Standing around spot number 50 in line, I realized my hopes of leaving the store and arriving home with the phone of my choice in a timely manner faded. Although smaller than the 6 Plus, the 4.7-inch iPhone 6’s 1,334 x 750 pixel display presents a perfect size for those who love iPhones and want a bigger screen, but would still like to be able to use the device efficiently with one hand.

One person who did not have to worry much about which phone to buy was San Francisco nurse Donna Collins.

“I got here at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday,” she said at around 11:15 p.m. on Thursday, standing in front of the Apple Store with its black curtains blocking the little Apple “Oompa-Loompas” as they scurried around to prepare the store for the upcoming event.

This was not Collins’ first time spending the night in a line with other tech enthusiasts awaiting the latest “i” device. She has been involved in the process since the original iPhone was released in 2007.
“(iPhones) are easy to operate,” Collins said. “I run a small (jewelry making/selling) business from it.”

The new A8 processor features a 64-bit architecture, which helps expedite downloads to a point never seen in any other hand-held Apple product.

The most noticeable features of the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are the screens. In 2012 Apple released the iPhone 5 and, for the first time, revealed a screen bigger than the 3.5-inch displays iPhones 1-4s have.

While spectacular in every way, the iPhone 6 Plus tells me that Apple basically decided to plunge into the “phablet” game for the sole purpose of attracting screen-size freaks.

The 6 Plus garners a couple more features than the 6, mainly manufacturer apps that behave like iPad apps, in addition to a mechanical photo lens stabilizer — which is actually pretty cool.

While these additions are nice, they do not do much in creating a big difference between it and its smaller counterpart.

In comparison to the 5s, not much is different thus far, when both are running iOS 8. Simply put, this phone is a bigger, better and revamped edition of its older version.

While the new hardware houses the future of the Apple phone series, the majority of new features come by way of iOS 8, which is available for iPhones 4s-6 Plus.

Though all of these devices operate with the new system, some features are not available on all of them.