iPhone 6 pre-orders open in NZ

Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees have today opened pre-orders for Apple's two new handsets, the iPhone 6 (which supersizes the iPhone 5s/5c's 4-inch display to 4.7-inches) and the iPhone 6 Plus (which pushes the screen to 5.5-inches).

The new iPhones will go onsale next Friday through the three phone companies, selected Apple authorised resellers and Apple's online store.

Apple's other previewed product, the Watch, won't go on sale until sometime next year.

Apple store pricing (with free delivery):

iPhone 6

• 16GB: $999
• 64GB: $1149
• 128GB: $1299

iPhone 6 Plus

• 16GB: $1149
• 64GB: $1299
• 128GB: $1449

Apple is also keeping its current models on the market as "budget" models (relatively speaking) with cut-down onboard storage options.

iPhone 5s

• 16GB: $849
• 32GB: $929

iPhone 5c

• 8GB: $619

Phone company pre-order sites

• Spark
• Vodafone
• 2degrees

If you've got a question about plans or fishhooks, let us know in Comments below and NBR will pass on your query to the relevant telco.

Review of reivews

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus land with NZ reviewers next Friday.

Yanks have already had a hands on play. Here are some highlight from earlier reviews:

The Verge: iPhone 6 PLUS (8.7/10)

Huge phones get to have huge batteries, and the iPhone 6 Plus is a huge phone with a huge battery: I consistently got about two days of battery life from the 6 Plus in regular daily use.

The iPhone 6 Plus isn’t beautiful the way the iPhone 4 was beautiful. It’s not sleek and dangerous-looking, like the black iPhone 5. It’s not flashy like the gold iPhone 5S. My review unit is silver and white, and with its rounded edges and aluminum back it reminds me of nothing so much as the first-gen iPhone, scaled up.

The screen itself is bigger than an entire iPhone 5S, and it dwarfs even the new, larger iPhone 6. I found myself carrying it around almost like you’d carry a Moleskine notebook.

The extra height increases the surfboard-like nature of the 6 Plus — it’s a well-balanced package, but it’s so long it can feel top-heavy if you don’t grab it in the middle.

Using a smartphone with a huge screen, like the iPhone 6 Plus, forces you to constantly consider the size of your hands. This phone looks huge, even in my admittedly large hands, you might think to yourself. Or: Dammit, I can’t reach that button without using my other hand.

The Verge: iPhone 6 (9/10)

There is explosive demand for bigger smartphones. A 4-inch smartphone feels small now; somewhere around 5 inches is the new normal. Yet too many large-screen phones are cumbersome, awkward, and often just plain bad. And Apple has a long history of taking good ideas with obviously huge markets and being the first manufacturer to really nail the execution.

Add those three things together, and this phone on my desk isn’t at all surprising.

The whole time I’ve had the iPhone 6, I’ve been playing a game. I hand the phone to someone, and guess what phone they use based on their immediate reaction. iPhone users are always shocked by the sheer size of the 6; they all think it must be the 6 Plus. 

The 6 is big, much bigger than the 5S or the other iPhones that came before it. It’s even bigger than some other 4.7-inch phones; because Apple refuses to change the top and bottom bezels so as not to disturb the big home button, the phone is much taller than it needs to be. But it’s still usable in one hand and comfortable enough.

The screen, of course, is the whole reason the iPhone 6 exists. It’s 4.7 inches diagonal: 1334 pixels tall by 750 wide. It’s not the pixel density curve-breaker that the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is, but it’s an extremely good display. It has great color reproduction and phenomenal viewing angles, it’s viewable even in bright light thanks to a new polarizer, and my eyes can’t make out individual pixels anywhere. The glass on the front slopes ever so softly into the curved metallic edge, giving the iPhone 6 a sort of infinity pool effect: the screen just never seems to end.

The iPhone 6’s battery is one of the primary beneficiaries of both [the] relentless tweaking — and the addition of some new hardware real estate. The phone can easily last me a day and a half.

Wall Street Journal: iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus

It hits me riding the train. Mixed among the iPhone herd are Android owners happily reading a novel or burning through work on screens upward of 6 inches. I only see five emails on my four-inch iPhone screen. Those guys get eight.

I used to laugh it off—who wants to hold a gangly phablet up to their ear? Gradually, though, many of us began using our phones more for apps than calls. Samsung anticipated these habits and made large Android phones that were better companions for always-connected people. The iPhone felt stuck in a bygone era called 2012.

Now Apple has dual cures for Android envy: a bigger iPhone, and a super mega jumbo iPhone.

While the iPhone 6's battery life proved mediocre with its screen at full brightness, it's still the best smartphone you can buy.

The iPhone 6's biggest drawback is its battery. It isn't a deal-breaker—I was able to make it through the day on a single charge. But when I stress-tested the handsets by cranking up screen brightness to 100% and streaming video, the iPhone 6 battery died just before my iPhone 5S's did.

The iPhone 6 Plus, with its larger battery, lasted about 15% longer than its sibling.

The iPhone 6 is the new king of phone photos, thanks to some modest camera improvements, particularly for dark situations and squirmy subjects like pets.

The secret to its success isn't packing in more resolution—iPhone 6 shots are still just 8 megapixels. Rather, Apple has improved the quality of its lens and sensor, adding an autofocus technology you find in high-end cameras that lets you lock in your shot quickly before Fluffy scampers off.

The iPhone 6 Plus camera goes further, with optical image stabilization, which helped me take sharper nighttime shots. But overall, both phones produced more detailed, less noisy photos than their predecessor and the Samsung Galaxy S5.

MacWorld: .iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus 

Hold an iPhone 6 in your hand for the first time, and you can tell it’s a very different device from the iPhones of the past four years.

Gone is the more industrial feel of the iPhone 4 and 5, with their straight sides and chamfered edges. The new phones have rounded edges, more akin to the iPod touch, iPad, and even the very first iPhone.

While I wouldn’t call it an “oversized monstrosity,” [the iPhone 6 Plus is] definitely huge. As with the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus’s thinness and curved edges do offset the extra size somewhat. However, you will never mistake the iPhone 6 Plus for the iPhone 6. It’s three-quarters of an inch (or roughly 14 percent) wider. In my average-size male hands, I found I could hold the iPhone 6 Plus, and manage to get my thumb to reach across the screen, at the very bottom, if I concentrated. But beyond looking at the huge screen and doing some simple gestures, this seems to be a device that’s made for two-handed operation.

That’s not necessarily bad—I often use my iPhone two-handed, though sometimes I casually flip through it with one hand, and that wouldn’t happen were I to sport the iPhone 6 Plus. For people with large hands, it’ll be less of an issue. I also discovered, to my surprise, that the front pockets of my Levi’s jeans were able to hold the iPhone 6 Plus without any problem. Your pockets may vary, but I was able to tote a 6 Plus in the same pocket that I usually carry my iPhone 5. While the feel was different, it wasn’t ridiculous.

Apple has dubbed the screen on both iPhone 6 models “Retina HD,” a strange and somewhat redundant label. In reality, the iPhone 6’s 4.7-inch display has the same screen density (326 pixels per inch) as the iPhone 5 line. The pixels aren’t packed any tighter on the iPhone 6—there are just more of them, because the screen is 110 pixels wider and 198 pixels taller.

It’s a full 1080p display: the equivalent of a high-definition TV in your (biggest) pocket
The iPhone 6 Plus is a different story. Its 5.5-inch screen (measured diagonally) has a resolution of 401 pixels per inch, the most ever on an iOS device. That means it’s a full 1080p display—the equivalent of a high-definition TV in your (biggest) pocket.