Wesley's Tool-Box

Rear camera on iPhones doesn't seem to have any gaps for dust to get in, but for some reason it gets in on rare occasions. You could take the phone to an authorized service center for either cleaning or refurbishment, or if that's not a viable option like my case, you could do the cleaning yourself.

To do that, you need to first open up the phone and separate the display assembly from the rest of the phone. The cables connecting the two are held by five screws and a cover plate, so once you take them out, the four cables can be popped off with a spudger.


To access the rear (back) camera, you need to remove two screws that hold the cover plate for the camera on the top right area of the phone. The screw on the left is obscured by a black pad, so you need to lift it slightly with something like a flathead screwdriver while you unscrew. The cover plate may not completely become loose, but it does not need to be.

Apple introduced low-light photo mode on iPhone 5, enabling the device to boost the ISO to 3200 in order to take brighter photos in the dark. The quality was obviously grainy, but at least you would be taking a recognizable photo. Default camera app would slow the shutter speed down only to 1/15s, while 3rd party apps that could go into "night mode" could do 1/4s to 1s depending on the model, brightening the photo even further.

With the introduction of the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) in iPhone 6 Plus, even the default camera app could slow down to 1/4s shutter speed because the OIS was expected to compensate. As I confirmed in my review, this definitely helped enhancing the low-light photo quality. But I came to notice a strange behaviour after trying to take a lot of photos in dark places.

In a really dark place, iPhone 6 Plus camera maxes out at ISO 2000 and 1/2 seconds, as you can see here. You can either set this manually if the camera app supports iOS 8 API, or automatically if the app supports the night mode. The ProCamera 8 app that I used has both modes. After noting the brightness of the objects in the preview screen, I took a snapshot.


But the photo came out quite darker than the preview. To see why, I checked the EXIF data. It showed that the camera limited itself to ISO 500 and 1/4s shutter speed instead of the ISO 2000 and 1/2s setting that I set. To see if the high ISO mode wasn't working, I manually set the ISO to 2000 in a brighter room, resulting in a much faster shutter speed. The camera had no problem obeying the ISO setting in this case. Then I tried the ISO 500 and 1/8s setting to take a photo in the dark. The result was that the actual settings decided by the camera was ISO 250 and 1/4s.

It seems that, when the camera feels that it's in a low-light environment, it automatically decreases the shutter speed to 1/4 seconds and use as low ISO as possible, and only up to 500. The manual settings are overridden. Most camera apps in the App Store that support manual settings or night mode seem to be affected by this. I've seen the same problem in VSCO Cam, Manually - Manual Focus Camera, and ProShot, so it's definitely not a bug in the individual app.

I've checked for this problem with the other iPhone 6 Plus units and they exhibited the same behaviour, while the iPhone 5S did not have this problem. I'm suspecting that the OIS function that allowed the 1/4s shutter speed in the default mode may be the culprit. I've filed a bug report to Apple. The issue has been observed in iOS 8.0, 8.0.2, 8.1, and 8.1.1 beta.

P.S. If you do need to take low-light photos on the iPhone 6 Plus right now, there is one series of apps that seem to be either unaffected by or circumventing this problem that you can use - NightCap (both regular and Pro versions).

For nearly a month, I've been using my iPhone 6 Plus every day. As one of the first users of such device in Korea, I decided to take an in-depth look at its improvements and functions whenever I can, to show what the Korean users are going to get soon. Now all the hard work is done, and I present to you the summary of all the reviews I wrote about it.

iPhone 6 series will finally launch in Korea officially on October 31, 2014, according to Apple's official announcement, and carriers are preparing to accept pre-orders about a week before that. I hope these reviews will help you decide if iPhone 6 Plus is right for you.

Preview	Summary
	0. One of the first iPhone 6 Plus in Korea (2014-09-19)
	Wesley gets his iPhone 6 Plus on the first launch day in Japan and brings it to Korea.
	1. iPhone 6 Plus - Unboxing & First Look (2014-09-22)
	The box containing the iPhone 6 Plus is opened up, and the phone is taken an all-around look. The bump caused by the camera lens is also examined.
	2. Protecting my iPhone 6 Plus (2014-09-23)
	Front and back side protection films are applied to the iPhone 6 Plus. Then, it is put inside a belt case intended for Galaxy Note series. Apple's own leather case is also tried out.
	3. Sizing up the shape & size of iPhone 6 Plus (2014-09-23)
	The size, thickness, and shape of the iPhone 6 Plus gets compared to other devices. It is first compared to other iPhones and iPads, then to a comparatively-sized Android smartphone.
	4. iPhone 6 Plus - LTE Compatibility & Speed (2014-09-24)
	Unlocked iPhone 6 Plus bought overseas is found to have LTE working on Korea's SKT & KT networks automatically. Also, real life LTE speed comparison is made between the 6 Plus and the 5S.
	5. iPhone 6 Plus - VoLTE Compatibility (2014-09-25)
	Initially, all calls were made in 3G mode despite changing the settings to allow VoLTE. To have the VoLTE actually working, a visit to an SKT branch office and a device registration process was needed.
	6. Testing iPhone 6 Plus battery w/o bending (2014-09-29)
	Real-life battery discharging and charging tests are performed simultaneously on iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 5S to see the difference. Belt cases made sure the phones didn't bend.
	7. iPhone 6 Plus - General Performance (2014-10-01)
	Performance comparison across multiple apps are made between iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 5S. This included 3DMark, Geekbench, and various JavaScript tests.
	8. iPhone 6 Plus - Camera's Quality (2014-10-01)
	Compared to iPhone 5S, the camera on the iPhone 6 Plus has improved dynamic range and enhanced night time photography performance. Image stabilization works well, too.
	9. iPhone 6 Plus - Camera's Speed (2014-10-04)
	The focusing performance of the iPhone 6 Plus is noticeably more advanced than iPhone 5S. Burst mode shooting and slow-motion video recording also saw improvements.
	10. iPhone 6 Plus - M8 Motion Co-processor (2014-10-08)
	The M8 motion co-processor and its new barometer are tested out by walking up the stairs and seeing how many floors are registered. Other uses are also taken a look at.
	11. How far does iPhone 6+ & SKT's VoLTE go? (2014-10-13)
	How the SK Telecom's network treats the attempts to make a VoLTE call from iPhone 6 Plus varies by how the person at the other end is connecting. All the possibilities are tested.
	12. Thoughts on a month of iPhone 6 Plus use (2014-10-14)
	Using the iPhone 6 Plus one-handed is not as convenient as Apple would hope. However, the big screen that caused this also offers many benefits that maybe considered as worthy trade-offs.

Earlier, I've looked at how iPhone 6 Plus improved upon the image quality of the iPhone 5S. But it's not just the end result that's gotten better, but the process to get there, as well. Apple takes the whole photographing experience very seriously. One of the major improvements come in the form of the so-called "Focus Pixels", a marketing term for phase detection autofocus.

Traditionally, casual cameras employed contrast detection, which tries to pick out where the highest contrast difference between the pixels happens. Meanwhile, film cameras & DSLRs used the phase detection, which has the light from the subject split into two and tries to find where they become in-phase. The latter works well with continuous autofocusing, as well as in darker environments where contrast is less distinct.


In practice, the Focus Pixels provides the much-needed speed and accuracy improvements to the iPhone's autofocus. As you can see in the picture and the video above, iPhone 6 Plus locks onto the foreground subject's focus very fast and continuously. In contrast (no pun intended), iPhone 5S often does not respond to the movements of the foreground object.

When the iPhone 5S does detect the changes, the camera needs to move the focus back and forth, taking more time to find the right focus. In my experience with all the iPhones up to 5S, this occasionally results in focusing onto a wrong subject, even when I specifically selected the subject on the touch screen. This annoyance is no more on the iPhone 6 Plus.

What this means is that I'm now far less likely to have an out-of-focus snapshot even in a hurry. And I don't have to tell the iPhone to focus on something as often. A true "point and shoot", if you will.

It's already well known that iPhone's camera's quality usually ranks among the best in smartphones. iPhone 5S was no exception, so I wanted to see how iPhone 6 Plus could improve upon that. Naturally, I did a side-by-side photo shoot with the two phones for a few days and this is the result. All the photos here are cropped from the original resolution.

In the daytime shootings, the two performs more or less similarly at a casual glance. As you can see above, the details of the photos are very good and nearly identical to each other. I think it's a testament to how good the iPhone 5S already was.


That is not to say that iPhone 6 Plus hadn't had any improvements to introduce. As you can see in this photo, the details of the leaves receiving the sunshine are preserved better with the iPhone 6 Plus. Result from iPhone 5S looks more washed out despite having a slightly faster shutter speed. This shows that the dynamic range of the sensor has been enhanced. This is a good news if you don't want the somewhat unnatural look the HDR mode produces.