it’s been a couple of months now, feedback on iphone 6 use in the backcountry? 6 vs 6 plus?

cool beans! just when my mind was made up for the S5, back to the drawing board :)

out of curiosity are on Verizon, ATT, other?

several of the other things I've read is that Verizon has things setup a little better for battery life vs ATT, not sure why that is, but have read that several times- I'm stuck w/ ATT as we are on a family/friends plan

Solid Article Doug. I read that earlier this year, even a couple more things buried in the settings that can be changed as well to further improve battery life.

del

"the screen eats the most juice on any smartphone"

Not true at all. Not on the iPhone, anyway.

By far the greatest power drain is from searching for cell towers when there is no coverage or poor coverage. If a tower is not picked up, the phone gradually ramps up power.

I don't think driving the screen takes much power at all, at least not for typical backcountry use. If I'm not using the cell functions or the GPS chip at all (i.e. continuous flight mode) – just using the phone for photography, and browsing maps, pdfs, Audobon guides – I never use more than 10% juice a day.

I wouldn't turn your head away from the S5. Use both in store as well. I'd image you would get the normal Iphone 6 and that will have less battery life mainly due to a smaller battery.

I use Verizon, but there should be no difference with At&T. I'd guess SIM Lock is applicable to both carriages, I think that was the biggest change for me, as when I went to use the GPS is wasn't sucking the battery trying to gain a cell signal.

Let me know if you have any more questions, I'm going to upload a video in the coming days, if you want to see photo and video quality.

"I use Verizon, but there should be no difference with At&T. I'd guess SIM Lock is applicable to both"

Be careful with this assumption. I don't have any experience myself with AT&T, but from other reports it may not be configured the same.

yeah, not sure if it's accurate or applicable, but at least one article I read thought they were different in their configs- I can't recall the exact details, but eluded that w/ the newer iphones (5 on) there were differences in battery use- Verizon being better

Right, the AT&T iPhone 5 apparently had a battery life problem. Does anyone have experience with AT&T iPhone 6 used in backpacking mode (SIM locked)?

Rocco wrote I use Verizon, but there should be no difference with At&T. I'd guess SIM Lock is applicable to both carriages.

Not true at all for the iPhone 5. I did very extensive testing, and the ATT iPhone 5 has a bug that causes egregious battery drain when using SIM lock feature. That bug does not exist in iPhone 4 or in Verizon iPhone 5. I spent a LOT of time testing battery life on ATT iPhone 4 and 5. I have not tested any version of the 6 (ATT vs Verizon, Six vs Six+)

See the section called "Battery Drain and Different Models of iPhones" in the article on using the iPhone while backpacking:
http://adventurealan.com/iphone4gps.htm

If anybody out there has Six and is compulsive enough to run very controlled tests I'd be happy to incorporate the information in the article. Even if you're not compulsive enough to run controlled tests, it would be very useful if anybody posting to this thread included information about which carrier and whether they are using the SIM lock feature.

Thanks, Amy