iPhone 6 vs. Galaxy Note 4 – Camera And Battery Comparison

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With the Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus having been out for some time, users are now getting to grips with some of the finer points of this high profile smartphone release. Two of the major issues which can be particularly important for consumers are battery life and camera quality. The former has been a bit of a bugbear in previous iPhone iterations, with Apple’s otherwise extremely well received smartphone often been criticised for poor battery life.

Meanwhile, cameras are often particularly important for domestic users of smartphones as taking pictures is generally considered to be one of the most useful attributes of a phone. One only needs to view the crowd of the average sporting event to see how many people are carrying smartphones and taking photographs.

By now many iPhone users have had the opportunity to assess both the quality of the camera and battery in the iPhone 6, and there will be many interested potential smartphone purchasers observing the results. The Galaxy Note 4 from Samsung is due to be released globally in October, and this phablet is the most obvious rival to the iPhone. Many consumers could choose to opt for the Samsung device ahead of the iPhone on the basis of its battery life and camera capabilities.

iPhone 6 vs Galaxy Note 4: Battery Life

So how does the iPhone 6 stack up in these departments against the Galaxy Note 4? Well, anecdotal evidence related to the iPhone 6 battery has not exactly been glowing. Users of the smaller version of the iPhone 6 have generally reported that it fares little better than the previous iPhone 5s device. The iPhone 6 Plus has been fitted with a meatier battery, and its lifecycle may be slightly improved over the smaller device, but users of the more smartphone-sized iPhone 6 have had to accept that its battery life is not significantly improved over previous versions.

And in testing conditions, the iPhone 6 has performed moderately. Phone Arena tested the iPhone 6 against numerous other smartphones, and found that most of the big selling names in fact outperformed it, with the Sonys Xperia Z3 the best of the bunch. However, it was notable that the previous Galaxy Note device, the Galaxy Note 3, was slightly outperformed by both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.

This is interesting as the Galaxy Note 4 does not feature a significantly larger battery than its predecessor. However, as power saving improvements have already been announced and more will doubtless have been made as well, it could be that the Galaxy Note 4 ends up outperforming the iPhone 6. But based on the test carried out by Phone Arena, we can reasonably assume that this will be a minor gap rather than significant one.

iPhone 6 vs. Galaxy Note 4 - Camera And Battery Comparison

iPhone 6 vs Galaxy Note 4: Camera

The early iPhone 6 adopters have been extremely enthusiastic about the device’s Optical Image Stabilization capabilities. This will be extremely pleasing for Apple given that it clearly made this element of the iPhone 6 camera an important part of it armory.

Reviewers have also been extremely kind to the camera fitted in the Apple handset. Test shots which have been centred on the improvements in the iPhone 6 flash performance have generally impressed, and some have asserted that the True Tone flash which was introduced with the 5s has been significantly improved.

The camera also locks onto subjects more quickly than previous models of the smartphone, due to Apple’s “Focus Pixels” functionality. This enables the iPhone 6 to use phase detection autofocus, and has generally being a well received feature. Video capture has also been praised, with the iPhone 6 capable of capturing slow motion at 240 frames per second; double the provision of the iPhone 5S.

What can be said about the Galaxy Note 4 camera is that it is double the megapixel quotient of its iPhone 6 rival. This should translate into some real world improvements over the iPhone, but in practice things are considerably less simple. In tests, iPhone 6 Plus has in fact consistently and considerably outperformed the Galaxy Note 3, so it would be wrong to assume that the Galaxy Note 4 has the stronger camera; in fact the complete opposite might be the case.

Given the quality of the iPhone 6’s camera performance under testing conditions, it is reasonable to assert that Samsung will have to pull something pretty impressive out of the bag to improve on it with the Galaxy Note 4.

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