Wesley's Tool-Box

I've been doing a comparison test of battery life between iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 5S for a few days. While that was happening, a bit of brouhaha over how iPhone 6 and 6 Plus supposedly bends in your pocket had been circulating the internet. It turned out that the whole thing was overblown as I suspected, and I already pointed out that it was okay to put it in the front pockets in general even before this so-called "bendgate / bendghazi" rolled in.

In any case, my belt cases work quite well. I try to use both phones identically when doing battery life comparison, so I have to have them carried around as close to me as possible. So I had my iPhone 5S strapped to my left side, while the 6 Plus took up my right side as you can see here. No worries about bending, and easy to get it out quickly, too. In normal times, I simply have one less iPhone on my waist.


As for the charging comparison side of things, Apple decided to save a bit of money on the charger. Although iPhone 6 Plus has nearly twice the battery charge as the previous models, it still ships with the same 5W charger. This is similar to how iPad mini ships with a 5W one instead of a 10W or 12W one like the "normal" iPads.

It's disappointing that Apple opted to do this, but maybe it isn't all that bad. The only way to find out is through testing. In order to see how much of an impact a lower-powered charger would cause, I prepared both 5W and 10W Apple-branded chargers for the tests.

Cellular communications have traditionally used separate voice and data channels. But with the advent of smartphones, bulk of the communications now happen on the data channel. It's no coincidence that only the data channel remained by the 4th generation (4G) technology. To carry voice, though, a fallback to 3G or older technology's voice channel was initially needed. But VoLTE (Voice over LTE) came onto the scene to do away with this by letting the data channel handle voice as well.

As with many technologies, Korea was a forerunner in adopting VoLTE. World's first commercial VoLTE service was launched more than two years ago by two of the three major Korean carriers, SK Telecom and LG U+. The remaining one, KT, joined mere two months later. Worldwide adoption didn't really take off until earlier this year, however. About a dozen carriers around the globe now have it. Noting this trend, Apple has decided to enable the capability in the iPhone 6 series.

So naturally, I wanted to see VoLTE on my iPhone 6 Plus in action. It can be enabled in the Settings app by going to Cellular and selecting "Voice and Data" option for LTE. The previous 5/5C/5S models simply have toggle switch for LTE instead, even with iOS 8.0 update. After that, I made voice calls to a lot of different lines, including a VoLTE-enabled phone on the same carrier. But every time, the connection indicator turned from LTE to 3G, showing that VoLTE wasn't working.


I checked to see how the network recognized my iPhone 6 Plus. It was being listed as an OMD Default Handset, the same name that my iPhone 5S was given when it was brought in from the US. In other words, a generic device that it doesn't recognize. Perhaps the network couldn't tell whether the device had a VoLTE capability, so it simply ignored its attempts. It was time to visit my carrier's branch office to get to the bottom of this.