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iPhone Day: Apple reveals iPhone 6, 6 Plus, Apple Pay

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Apple has what CEO Tim Cook describes as "a very key day" at the Flint Centre-- one where the company launches the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus together with Pay, the company's take on mobile payments.

iPhone 6As rumours suggested the iPhone 6 comes in two sizes, namely 4.7- and 5.5-inch. Both feature next-generation displays the company calls Retina Display HD, with the regular iPhone 6 display handles 1334x750 resolution and the 6 Plus featuring 1920x1080 resolution.

To take advantage of the larger display size the iPhone 6 Plus features a new landscape view, one providing extra functionality from a bigger keyboard. A desktop-class scaler allows apps to take advantage of the different sizes, while Apple's Phil Schiller promises legacy apps will "just work."

Both smartphones are also the thinest from Apple yet, at 6.9mm and 7.1mm. Built in anodised aluminium and glass, they pack a 64-bit A8 CPU Apple says is 25% faster than the previous A7 chip while being 50% more energy efficient, a new M8 motion co-processor able to measure elevation and estimate distance, 150Mbps LTE and 802.11ac wifi connectivity and an 8MP f/2.2 iSight camera with an all-new sensor featuring so-called "focus pixels."

However the iPhotographers might find the 6 Plus to be the better choice, as the bigger iPhone adds optical image stabilisation (OIS).

Battery life is also improved-- Apple claims the 6 has 14 hours of 3G talk time and 11 hours of video, which the Plus ups to 24 and 14 hours.

Apple PayAnother rumor confirmed at the event-- Apple is set to take on mobile payments. Following an amusing video on credit card failure, Tim Cook announced Apple Pay. Described by the CEO as an "entirely new payment process," built inside the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Pay ties Touch ID, NFC and a Secure Element chip to handle payments via credit cards stored on iTunes accounts.

According to the company Pay uses one-time payment numbers and dynamic security codes to replace the static code on the back of credit cards.

Cook also insists "security is at the core of Pay, but so is privacy. We're not in the business of collecting your data."

Predictably Pay first kicks off in the US with Amex, Mastercard and Visa support, with no idea when it will ever hit Europe. On the other hand both iPhone 6 and 6 Plus ship from 19 September in gold, silver and "space gray" with either 16, 64 or 128GB of storage and a selection of of companion silicon cases.

Go Apple