Apple is doing it BIG with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

Dominique Lacey and Shelbi Ware
Staff Writers

Apple presented bigger and better smart phone technology on Sept. 9 during an Apple Live Special Event video on their website.

Expanding and creating high tech and innovative products since 1976, the recent updates to their product line are the thinnest and largest iPhones to date.

The iPhones will come in three different colors; gold, silver, and space gray.  The iPhone 6 screen measures 4.7 inches and is 6.9 mm thin with the iPhone 6 Plus measuring in with a 5.5 inch screen and a thickness of 7.1 mm.  The new iPhones will be equipped with better resolution, a powerful A8 chip with an M8 motion coprocessor, better battery life, an even more powerful camera, faster LTE download speeds, and when connected to Wi-Fi, the speed will be up to three times faster!

Both iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus can be purchased with up to 128 GB of flash memory.  Prices for the iPhone 6 ranges between $199 and $399 depending on the gigabytes.  Prices for the 6 Plus range between $299 and $499, depending on the gigabytes.

“I am so excited about the iPhone updates. I am personally a huge fan of the new advances being made. I currently have an iPhone 5s and I am ready for a bigger screen and better picture,” said Tanesha Johnson, a freshman elementary education major from Coffeeville, Miss.

Toni Barnes, a freshman computer engineering major from Jackson, Miss. is not interested in the iPhone 6 because of the size difference.

“Apple should have kept it the way it was because most people will get the iPhone for the size. You might as well get a Samsung phone,” said Barnes.

Other JSU students are disappointed that there will not be any available at the University’s Tiger Tech store. Nic Escobedo, the store manager at Tiger Tech said that campus stores cannot receive iPhones.

“Apple has a contractual agreement with their campus stores around the nation.  It deals with the customer flow of traffic of technical support issue of any and all iPhone models.  They don’t allow us to sell it at the store,” said Escobedo.

If the new iPhone is not what you want, maybe you are in the market for the smart watch, an operating system update or an electronic wallet that may soon make plastic credit cards a relic of the past. Smart watches will be $349 but will not be available until 2015.

The watch comes in three different editions; The Watch, the Watch Sport, and The Watch Edition. The watches come in stainless steel, space black, sapphire crystal, anodized aluminum, and 18 karat gold.

Some students are not too enthusiastic about the new addition.

“Having a watch that performs the same duties as the iPhone is pointless and unnecessary,” said Faith Ambrose, a freshman political Science and elementary education major from Jacksonville, Ill.

Ashlea Daniels, a senior political science major from Bolton, Miss., believes that Apple’s smart watch was already the idea of a competing company.

“I think the idea of a smart watch came from Samsung phone company.  Overall, I do think the idea of a smart watch is clever because it’s smaller and it can be attached to you wherever you go,” said Daniels.

Not only is Apple coming out with new phones, they are coming out with new updates that better enhance the experience on the phones. The new iOS8 update allows you to share content with your family in a new way, rediscover favorite photos, new photo editing tools, “tap to add” voice content to messages, a new keyboard that suggests contextually appropriate words, recognizes whether you’re typing an email or message, and allows you to seamlessly continue a project on another apple device. The software update makes things easy for you while allowing you to discover what the phone has to offer.

Pre-orders for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus started on Sept. 12 and will be available in stores starting at 8 a.m. Sept. 19.