Here’s a list of iPhone 6 Plus features announced by Apple today that directly impacts or improves productivity for business users.
- Bigger screens mean more readable content. The iPhone 6 Plus has 1920×1080 resolution to fit more lines of information. Apple offered a great side-by-side visual that shows how much more content is visible on iPhone 6 Plus compared to iPhone 6. [Image source: iphonehacks.com]
- More battery life means fewer intra-day trips to the outlet. Traveling sales people are free to use their GPS without fear of their battery dying by mid day. The iPhone 6 Plus offers 12 hours of LTE browsing (2 more hours than iPhone 6) and 16 hours of standby (6 more hours than iPhone 6). Here’s a chart comparing battery capacity from the keynote. [Source: iphonehacks.com]
- Wider keyboard layout with more keys means the iPhone 6 Plus will be a business user’s device of choice for an easier typing experience. (This does beg the question – does the iPhone 6 Plus cannibalize iPad mini sales?) The extra keys offered comprise of an important tap-saving group: cut and paste, highlight, undo, bold, and common punctuation; period, comma, question mark, and exclamation mark. These keys will save business users from tapping and dragging pins for copy/paste, and from long-pressing the Shift key to access punctuation and rich markup. [Image source: WCCFtech.com]
- The iPhone 6 Plus’s dual-pane view for email, scheduling, and messaging is godsend. Email will undoubtedly be the biggest beneficiary as you will never have to swipe Back to see the email list.
- Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE hold promise for mobile warriors who journey to areas with shaky cell connectivity. Hop in a cafe or restaurant that offers Wi-Fi and you are free to make calls. Of course, TBD is whether carriers need to update their towers to support this. (If anyone has more info about this, please chime in under the Comments section for everyone to benefit.) The consumer crowd really benefits by not requiring peak-hour cellular minutes to place/receive calls. I sense mobile carriers already dusting off their business plans to make daytime minutes unlimited.
- NFC and Apple Pay will make carrying personal and business desirable and a breeze. Business people will no longer have to use their personal card and then remember to credit their business account. The NFC ecosystem looks like an infrastructure-intense endeavor and one that will take time for the world to adopt. However, Apple has added (significantly) more water to the NFC seeds already harvesting. We know how this story ends for the famed plastic rectangle we love so dearly.
- Repeatedly mentioned during the keynote was the phrase “optimizations for one-hand use”. It appears Apple was bent on promoting the fact that they optimized their 5.5-inch offering for one-hand use. I must see this to believe it; but it sounds great! More details about this will arrive as people get their devices on September 19.
The real story behind today’s keynote is that Apple is heeding the call for larger screens by an audience (viz. business users) that is willing to pay for features that make their workday easier. While Apple is a consumer-driven organization, larger screens directly benefit business professionals in a way that is tangible to productivity.