The iPhone 6 Plus is Apple's biggest smartphone by far, but it has quite a few rivals on the Android side of the fence. Let's compare the features and specs of the iPhone 6 Plus with one of the top phablets of 2014, the LG G3.
Size
Considering that screen sizes are both the same, this is quite the discrepancy in overall size. The iPhone 6 Plus is 8 percent longer and 4 percent wider than the G3.
The iPhone 6 Plus is smaller in one respect: it's 20 percent thinner than LG's flagship.
Weight
It may be chunkier, but the G3 is 13 percent lighter than the iPhone.
Build
No contest here, as we're comparing the iPhone's premium aluminum unibody design with a faux metal plastic.
Colors
With the iPhone 6 Plus, we're looking at the same three color options that Apple offered with the iPhone 5s.
The G3 is sold in five color options, but black and white are the primary flagship colors – and the ones you're most likely to see in your local store.
Display (size)
No difference here, as both phones have 5.5-in displays with 16:9 aspect ratios.
Display (resolution)
The iPhone 6 Plus has the sharpest display we've seen in any iPhone, but the G3 still wins this round. Its Quad HD display may be bordering on overkill, but my eyes do still appreciate those insanely dense pixels.
Display (type)
We're dealing with IPS panels in both phones.
Stylus
Unlike Samsung's Galaxy Note series, neither of these phablets offers a stylus.
There are third-party capacitive styluses you can use with either device, but they're pretty crude (simulating finger touches) compared to the digitizer-based stylus input in Samsung's Note.
Fingerprint sensor
The iPhone 6 Plus has Apple's excellent (touch-based) Touch ID fingerprint sensor.
Battery
Apple hasn't officially listed the battery capacity of the iPhone 6 Plus, but iFixit's teardown revealed a 2,915 mAh battery. Apple is also advertising longer uptimes than we saw in the iPhone 5s.
Battery life was solid enough in the G3, but apparently pushing those 3.6+ million pixels requires some juice, as its battery life fell short of amazing.
One-handed mode
Both Apple and LG added some software that helps to use these huge screens with one hand.
With the iPhone, a double-tap of the home button slides the entire screen down to the bottom – where you can easily reach top-level targets with one hand.
With the G3, you can toggle a setting that makes its keyboards slide over to one side of the screen or the other.
Split-screen multitasking
Apple has yet to add a multi-window multitasking mode to the iPhone, but the G3 tackles this with its Dual Window setting. The only downside is that it only works with a handful of select apps.
Camera (megapixels)
The G3's cameras have higher resolution, but that's only part of the story. You can hit up our G3 review for our full camera impressions. Stay tuned for our iPhone 6 Plus review.
Camera (aperture)
The iPhone has a slightly wider aperture, with its ƒ/2.2 rear camera.
Laser focus
The G3's camera has laser-based autofocusing. On the user end, you simply tap the point on the display where the subject is, and it will quickly snap a pic with it in focus.
OIS
Both phones' cameras also have Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) onboard.
Physical buttons
The G3's back-facing buttons take a little getting used to. But the positive side is that the device has a clean look, with completely buttonless edges.
Storage
The iPhone gives you three (more spacious) storage options.
MicroSD slot
The G3 does, however, have a microSD card onboard to help augment that internal storage.
Processor
We'll need to put our iPhone 6 Plus review unit through the paces before having much to say about its A8 processor. But Apple's history suggests that it will far outperform what you'd gather from its cores and clock speed.
RAM
The new iPhone sticks with 1 GB of RAM, while the G3 has either 2 GB or 3 GB (depending on which storage configuration you choose).
Software
The iPhone 6 Plus runs the new iOS 8, which brings goodies like health- and home-based extensions, third-party Touch ID access and third-party keyboards.
The G3 runs Android 4.4 KitKat at its core, with LG's custom UI on top.
Release
The iPhone 6 Plus is already on its way out the chute. The G3 launched in Korea back in May, but just hit the US in July.
Starting price (full retail)
Considering how well the G3 has fared in this comparison, it's a nice bonus that it will also save you US$150 if you buy at full retail.
Starting price (on-contract)
Americans are more likely to see these prices, subsidized with a two-year agreement. Here the G3 can save you $100.
For more, you can hit up our full reviews of the LG G3 and iPhone 6 Plus.
