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Stephen Fry turns tech reporter to review iPhone 6: 'The best and most beautiful mobile telecom technology ever yet produced'

Where Bono and co failed to impress by inflicting their new album on hapless users, the national treasure all but saves the campaign

Jenn Selby
Wednesday 17 September 2014 12:46 BST
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Stephen Fry, life-long Apple lover, reviews the iPhone 6
Stephen Fry, life-long Apple lover, reviews the iPhone 6

U2’s iPhone 6 backing might not have gone entirely according to plan, if this sort of criticism is anything to go by.

But where Bono and co may have failed to impress by inflicting their new album Songs Of Innocence on millions of iPhone users without their permission, Stephen Fry could just be the man to save the campaign.

The British national treasure – and long-time Apple fan – has turned technology reporter to review the latest mobile, glowingly concluding the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus to be “the best and most beautiful mobile telecom technology ever yet produced”.

“I welcome, love, revere and adore Android, Windows and any other mobile operating system,” he writes for The Guardian. “The richer the market, the better for all. I’ve never thought anyone pretentious for owning a BlackBerry or an LG G Flex, but when it comes to Apple, it’s open season. ‘Baaah you’re all sheep,’ or ‘Huh, far more Samsungs are sold anyway!’ Can’t have it both ways, darlings …

Elsewhere, he heralds the “matchless design and innovation team led by Jony Ive”, who he notes was headhunted by Australian designer Marc Newson, “over whom at the launch I spilled some horrible green wheatgrass and spirulina drink that would otherwise have gone all over P Diddy”.

The team, he says, “has produced two devices of absolutely exquisite dimensions, heft and feel”.

“I have played with both for a week and cannot decide which I would keep.”

“Under the bonnet, they each offer a ravishing Retina HD display,” he continues. “The Plus has more pixels and the (real) advantage of optical camera shake correction rather than digital. There’s also full HD video allowing a devastatingly cool 720p slowmo that will make Matrix directors of us all. At 5.5in, the 6 Plus is, to my large hands, absolutely ideal, but then for most users I would recommend the 6. I now type faster on each, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.”

“It only needs for me to leave with the confident prediction that these phones will prove through sales, as I believe them to be, the best and most beautiful mobile telecom technology ever yet produced,” he summarises at the end of his piece. “So sue me if if I’m proved wrong. Oh, and, of course, watch this space…”

Fry was one of many of famous faces who attended the California unveiling of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch last week.

“I know a lot of people are very cynical in this world and always think that anybody who’s in the public eye who says something good about a product is getting it free,” he told The Independent at the event. “But I’ve spent more money than I care to mention on Apple products[...] and I have the boxes to prove it. I’m more than happy to support a company which I think does astonishing work.”

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