There’s no doubt whatsoever that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are fantastic phones. The fact that there’s a two to three month delay in getting one and over 10 million sales or pre-sales tells us that. But away from the consumer market, how do Apple’s new handsets compare to the competition for business users?
We regularly use the Nokia Lumia 930 in the office. We also regularly use the Samsung Galaxy S5 for demonstrations. Businesses care more about performance and security than looks, so we’ll concentrate on that rather than design and aesthetics.
So how does the new iPhone 6 stand up to these?
Hardware
The Apples have an A8 processor, 1Gb of RAM and 16, 64, or 128GB of storage. The iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch, 1,344 x 750-pixel display, while the iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5-inch, 1,920 x 1,080-pixel display. Both are capable of 405ppi.
The Nokia Lumia 930 has a Snapdragon 800 CPU, 2Gb of RAM and a 5-inch 1080p AMOLED screen capable of 441ppi. The Samsung Galaxy S5 has a 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor, 3Gb of RAM and a 5.1 inch 1080p Super AMOLED capable of 432ppi.
While the iPhone 6 has a theoretical advantage by being 64 bit rather than 32 bit, there aren’t many apps that take advantage of this right now. The screen is inferior to all of our other handsets and storage is limited by not having any expansion slots.
Battery life is still a challenge too. While none of our flagship phones are particularly good on battery life, Apple still struggles to last a day on full charge.
Software
iOS 8 is a fantastic piece of software. It’s slick, fast, easy to use and fluid. Now it can multitask after a fashion, it’s also better for business than previous iterations. That’s if you run an Apple infrastructure. The requirement for iTunes to load software and other Macs to collaborate with is a severe limiting factor.
Both the Nokia Lumia 930 and Samsung Galaxy S5 play nicely with Windows and can collaborate without the need for configuration or specific software. That’s another black mark against an iPhone for business.
Security
The iOS ecosystem is relatively secure. The fingerprint scanner to unlock the phone is a significant advantage for business users. The inclusion of NFC and Apple Pay could also have real benefits. Apps are more secure, more reliable and not subject to fakes or malware like Windows or Android either.
However, the iPhone is a consumer device. It gives owners far too much access to the cloud and to the phone. Hands-off uses iCloud and while it allows collaboration between machines, which is good for business, it also allows free sharing of documents in a less than secure environment. That’s not good for business.
Ask any security consultant if they would be happy to use iCloud for storing confidential business data and see what colour they turn. Or just ask Jennifer Lawrence to see how secure iCloud really is, despite Apple’s insistence to the contrary!
There’s no doubt that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are good consumer phones and worthy successors to the iPhone 5. However, when it comes to business use, the iPhone still falls far short of the Nokia Lumia 930 and Samsung Galaxy S5.
