iPhone 6 Price Good News for Heavy Users but iPhone 6 Plus Price Disappoints

Apple announced two new iPhone models at an event in California on Tuesday, alongside its much-anticipated wearable, named Apple Watch, and a new digital payment mechanism called Apple Pay.

While not very much about the phones themselves came as a surprise due tomultiple leaks in the months leading up to the event, specific details such as pricing have only now been confirmed. The iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch screen with a resolution of 750x1334 pixels while the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus has a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels. The phones are 6.8mm and 7.1mm thick respectively, both thinner than the iPhone 5s. Both use Apple's new 64-bit A8 processor and M8 motion coprocessor.

The new 4.7-inch iPhone 6 replaces the iPhone 5s as Apple's mainstream offering at the $199 price point (on contract for two years), but that isn't the top slot anymore. The 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus will cost $299 on contract. The prices are for 16GB models, and rise by $100 for each step up in capacity. The 32GB model has been dropped, and a new 128GB model has come in at the high end. It will now cost only $100 more to upgrade from 16GB to 64GB.

The iPhone 5s will drop to $99 on contract for a 16GB model, which means the iPhone 5c will be free with the same two-year commitment. Apple has not yet announced the prices of unlocked phones, but they are likely to be $749, $649, $549 and $449 for the lowest-capacity versions of the iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c respectively.

The price of the new iPhone 6 in India is likely to be consistent with or even slightly lower than that of the 5s when it launched last year, thanks to improved stability in the US dollar-Indian Rupee exchange rate. The iPhone 6 Plus forms a new higher price tier so it is likely to cost as much as the 32GB iPhone 5s did. At current exchange rates and without factoring in taxes and import duties, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus would cost approximately Rs. 39,350 and Rs. 45,415 respectively for the 16GB models (using a rate of $1=Rs. 60.62). Actual retail prices will be at least Rs. 10,000 higher than those figures.

The prices listed on Apple's UK Store page for off-contract iPhones are more indicative of what the Indian prices will eventually be: the iPhone 6 is listed at GBP 539 (approximately Rs. 52,710) for 16GB while the iPhone 6 Plus is listed at GBP 619 (approximately Rs. 60,530) for the same capacity.

The iPhone 4S thus retires after three years in service. This was Apple's last phone with a 3.5-inch screen and no LTE support. The device might continue to be available in certain countries such as India and China, but will have to compete with much newer and more powerful Android smartphones.

The iPhone 5c was widely panned for being too expensive when it launched, but price cuts to the 16GB version in India have made it a little more attractive. Apple broke its usual upgrade pattern and launched an 8GB version in selected markets in the middle of the year, reducing the entry-level price point of its LTE-capable lineup.