At its special event last night, Apple announced a 5.5-inch iPhone 6 dubbed the iPhone 6 Plus. As expected, the device features a much larger display to make the iPhone lineup more diverse, and better compete with Android smartphones.

Larger display

The larger 5.5-inch display sports a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and has 185 percent more pixels than the earlier iPhone. The new generation of displays are being branded as Retina HD displays and come with “Ion strengthened” glass. Apple adds that the new screens provide a broader angle of view.

The iPhone 6 Plus measures 7.1mm in thickness compared to the iPhone 5s’ 7.6mm thickness.

The larger screen of course also comes with slightly different UI elements. To illustrate the advantages of the larger display, Apple showed a side-by-side comparison of the Messages app, and you can see that the larger display shows faces in addition to messages.

To ensure that it’s still easy to use the iPhone 6 Plus with one hand, Apple’s adding a new “Reachability mode” that slides down the entire screen, so you can easily reach the buttons at the top. This mode can be activated by double touching the home button.

Another change Apple’s made to the iPhone 6 in view of one-handed use is the relocation of the power button: It’s now on the side rather than the top, making it easier to reach.

A8 chip

The iPhone 6 comes with a 64-bit A8 chip with a 20nm process. The chip boasts of an improvement of 25% in CPU and 50% in GPU performance. The A8 chip also comes with the newer generation M8 motion coprocessor that can tell when you’re cycling, running and can also calculate elevation. The elevation is measures by a new barometer sensor that can calculate the pressure difference between two points.

Camera

The iPhone 6 Plus comes with a new iSight camera. It has the same 8 megapixel count as earlier iPhone generations, but comes with a next-generation sensor that can do faster autofocus, and face-detection. The iPhone 6 Plus comes with Optical Image stabilisation that can shoot better images and videos even when there’s a lot of movement.

The cameras can now shoot slo-mo videos at 240 fps, promising even better slow motion videos. The font-facing camera is even better now, with an all-new sensor that can capture 81% more light.

LTE

The iPhone 6 Plus supports up to 20LTE bands, which Apple claims is the most any phone supports. It also supports VoLTE, or voice over LTE that can carry your voice over LTE networks.

NFC

As rumored, the iPhone 6 comes with an NFC chip, that powers Apple’s new mobile payments solution called the Apple Pay.

Battery Life

The iPhone 6 Plus can play 80 hours of audio, 14 hours of video, and can last 12 hours on Wi-Fi/LTE/3G browsing. It has a 3G talk time of 24 hours and a standby time of 16 days. The larger display helped Apple pack in a larger battery capacity, which gives it a longer life than other iPhones:

Pricing & Availability

The iPhone 6 Plus will cost $299, $399 and $499 respectively for the 16GB, 64GB and 128GB models with a contract. The devices ship September 19th, and preorders start this Friday, September 12.