The iPhone 6 Plus has been a revelation and I am a huge fan. For me, it has become the only device I carry around every day. No longer do I feel the need for an iPad mini to supplement the phone. It is truly a one-stop shop. There is just one major aspect of the design that niggles—the placing of the lock (or on/off) button on the right of the handset, directly opposite the volume controls. Many times I have inadvertently locked the phone just by picking it up or when attempting to alter the volume. The top-placed button on the iPhone 5 was much more sensible in my view.
I am glad to see, therefore, that I am not alone. Writing for TekRevue, Jim Tanous highlights this feature as a major design flaw of the 6 Plus. However, as he says, it really wouldn’t have been a good idea to leave that button on the top of the phone:
Both new iPhones are larger than their predecessors, too big to keep the lock button (a.k.a. on/off or sleep/wake button) in its traditional location on the top edge of the device. Leaving it there would make it nearly impossible for most users to reach it while holding the phone with one hand, especially those using the iPhone 6 Plus. Therefore, Apple decided to move the lock button to the right side of the phone.
But he believes that the decision to place it exactly where it is, opposite the volume controls, is the worst possible option.
While he is at it, Jim also complains about the inability selectively to disable home-screen rotation. Many users prefer to keep the home screen in portrait mode—for instance, to stop auto rotate when lying in bed—while allowing landscape in applications. But with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus the rotation lock is a system-wide setting. I confess I hadn’t gathered my thoughts on this. Now I’ve read Jim’s comments I realise this has been bugging me all along and it will bug even more now I realise the cause.
As Jim points out, “these are first-world problems”. He goes on to say that Apple created a great phone, but they didn’t create a perfect phone.