iphone 6s review

Apple's tagline for the iPhone 6S is 'the only thing that's changed is everything', highlighting that the brand knows this is a phone that looks an awful lot like last year's model.
It makes sense that Apple would try its hardest to show that, despite the handset looking identical to last year's model, there have been loads of changes under the hood that make this an attractive phone in its own right.

• Buy Apple iPhone 6S Factory Sealed Unlocked Phone, 64GB (Gold) at Amazon for $367.00

The chassis is stronger, the camera sharper – with a new Harry Potter-esque way of capturing your snaps – and there's even a completely new way of interacting with the screen. On paper, it's an impressive upgrade.
See the iPhone 6S in action in our video review:
But when it looks identical to the iPhone 6, people will be desperate to know if the iPhone 6S is enough of an upgrade to justify the price. While the upgrades seem great, is it worth going all the way up to the iPhone 6S, or would the 6 do?
In terms of raw price, we're in a weird situation now. Samsung and the rest of the Android crew have been slowly ratcheting up the price of their high-end phones to the point where they're actually eclipsing the iPhone 6S at launch.
However, Apple's once again been the victim of its off-kilter launch cycle, meaning it's putting its phone into a market where the Galaxy S6 is now significantly cheaper – and so the iPhone 6S has a higher price to live up to. That said, this new phone is just that: a new phone. That means some potential buyers will be enamoured with the notion of getting the latest tech on the market rather than a six-month-old handset.
In the UK, that means between £50 and £100 upfront to get the phone for £36-£38 per month (if you want a decent slug of data and minutes) with the phone starting at £539 for the 16GB model, £619 for the 64GB model and £699 for 128GB.
It's starting at $649 if you're looking to pick it up off contract in the US, with the new $32.45 monthly cost if you're thinking of getting locked into Apple's yearly upgrade plan.

In reality though, the question of who this phone is aimed at isn't that hard to answer: for most people stuck on the iPhone 5S it's clearly the upgrade they're considering, and beyond that there's the disgruntled Android owner who's tired of looking at the slicker app experience Apple offers and seeing their own handset looking sketchy in comparison.
(Of course, there are a few people that tried Windows Phones as experiments, but they'd probably be happy with just about any other phone if they're still using a Nokia Lumia 930).

The difference between the iPhone 6 (left) and iPhone 6S (right) is nearly impossible to see

The issue Apple is trying to solve with the iPhone 6S (and the 6S Plus) is how it can convince users, especially in a market saturated with really rather brilliant smartphones, that the 'S' variant of the impressive iPhone 6 is a worthy phone to upgrade to in its own right.
When something is so visually similar, the onus is on the brand to show that the upgrades are really worth the extra cash.
Even if Apple keeps users within its own ecosystem there's every chance they'll look at the iPhone 6, which is now much cheaper – so it needs to make sure things like a stronger chassis, animated photos and a new pressable screen are worth the extra outlay when both phones will still work perfectly well in a couple of years' time.

Design

You've probably already heard, but the iPhone 6S is almost identical to last year's 6 in every way when it comes to the chassis. There are some very subtle differences, such as a slightly thicker frame and a little more heft, but it's so slight that I kept getting the two mixed up when doing side by side comparisons.
All cases fit both phones just fine too so, apart from a small S logo on the back of the phone, nobody is going to notice you've got the latest iPhone.
But there will be lots of you upgrading from the iPhone 5S, and in that case you'll need to be ready for a really big design change. The metallic chassis feels really nice in the hand, with a ceramic-like feeling on the outside (although if it's anything like the 6 then this can scuff over time if you keep it in a pocket with keys, so you'll need to think about the kind of case you'll want to keep it safe).

One of the things that Apple is touting is the fact the iPhone 6S is made of 7000 series aluminum, which is the strongest thing it's ever used in iPhone construction. The obvious connection people will make is with 'Bendgate' last year, when some users claimed their new phone had developed a slight curve in their pocket without much pressure.
The common belief was that these phones began to twist when placed in a rear pocket and sat upon. While it was proven that other metal phones actually were worse when it came to bending Apple didn't come out of the controversy well.
So it's no surprise that, while the company won't admit the real reason, the new iPhone is strong and never going to bend with such pressure. However, I feel like that we shouldn't feel happy our phones no longer bend – this seems like one of the minimum expectations I'd have of a smartphone, not a compelling reason to buy it.
The front of the phone is now covered in a new level of strength, with a glass that's far less prone to shattering when dropped on the floor – now that's something I can get behind. We've not drop tested it - we'll leave that to some other, braver reviewer - if the screen is stronger the responsiveness hasn't dropped.

In the hand, the iPhone 6S still feels like a dream. Even with the extra 14g over the iPhone it feels lightweight, easy to manipulate and really warrants the price. Samsung's new Galaxy S6 Edge invokes the same kind of feeling, and with it you don't mind spending the extra money over a more budget phone.
In terms of design, if you've seen the iPhone 6 then you've seen the 6S. The volume buttons, the power key, the silencer switch and the speaker are all in the same place as last year, with the grille at the bottom very easy to cover when you're watching videos or playing games in landscape.
If you're using the 5S, this is leagues ahead. The construction is good, the materials solid and there's no wiggle in the buttons at all. While you probably never bent your 5S, the idea that the iPhone 6S is stronger will probably please you, however unnecessary the claim is.
Apple's not done anything great with the design of the iPhone 6S, but the iPhone 6 was such a well-created phone that using the same chassis isn't going to harm its chances of success.
However, combined with the higher price and the continued presence of last year's model, I wish we were at least seeing some retooling of the phone to make it seem more attractive.

Screen

The screen on the iPhone 6S seems to be identical to last year's: we're talking a 4.7-inch affair with 750p resolution, which keeps it firmly in the 'Retina' range that the firm debuted all the way back with the iPhone 4.
It's hard to rate the display, as while it fails on resolution (quite spectacularly actually - phones a seventh the cost of the iPhone 6S offer 1080p screens, Samsung's cheaper phone has four times the resolution of the 6S and Sony has, inexplicably, just launched a 4K phone) it doesn't drop too badly on performance.

The iPhone 6S display is clear, bright, laminated to the glass and insanely colorful. The first time I saw it on the iPhone 6 I thought it was a fake picture stuck on top of a dummy unit, such was the clarity on offer.
So to use the same thing on the iPhone 6S makes sense - after all, the lower pixel count means it can be thinner and the battery can last longer, thanks to having fewer pixels to drive.
But there are some things missing: for instance, the contrast ratio (the difference between the brightest and darkest parts of the screen) is still poor, with the black areas looking a little grey. Samsung's Galaxy range predominantly uses OLED technology, which offers 'true' blacks and high brightness and packs a much better visual punch, and would have suited the iPhone down to the ground.
The sharpness in side by side tests is clearly lower too - the 326 pixels per inch is very low even compared the 401ppi of the iPhone 6S Plus - and most other models are over 500ppi to bring really, really clear displays.
Given OLED technology is used in the Apple Watch - and admittedly it looks brilliant - it's a shame the same thing couldn't have been done with the iPhone 6S.
It's important not to get too hung up on screen resolution in a phone - after all, if it's not serving a purpose (hey, Sony?) then it's just wasting battery. But the industry has moved on, and the higher pixel densities on offer are starting to really bring something to the table, with apps and general use looking pin sharp.
Here's hoping the iPhone 7 makes a massive jump forward to join the rest of the pack.

3D Touch

Apple's been hard at work integrating the Force Touch technology from its Watch and new MacBook Pro into the iPhone 6S, but has decided that it needed to give it a new name: 3D Touch.

In terms of all the changes offered by the new iPhone, this is definitely the one you should pay most attention to. Not just because it's the most multi-faceted, but also because it's the only change that I feel confident in stating will alter the way we use our iPhones forever.



The premise sounds simple: the screen now has a third dimension, allowing you to poke 'into' the display rather than just swiping all over it. Apple's likened it to the integration of multi-touch, which ushered in pinch to zoom for navigating through the web and photos... and that definitely changed the way we use smartphones.

    Buy Apple iPhone 6S Factory Sealed Unlocked Phone, 64GB (Gold) at Amazon for $367.00

While the amount of things you can do with it now is slightly limited, there's no doubt that the ability to poke the screen is going to become a natural gesture over the next few years, especially as app developers get hold of the option.

It's only native Apple apps that have made use of the option for now, and while most of them have some form of 3D Touch-ability, I found myself using it most in messages and Safari.

Let's say you get a message with a link in - asking you to check out a website or asking if you want tickets to 'this' gig. You can just push the link and a little window pops up, previewing the web page and giving you the info you want.

If that satisfies you, then you can just let go of the screen and return to the message. If you need to know a little more then pushing the screen harder will open up the page in Safari so you can explore further.

These actions are nauseatingly called 'Peek' and 'Pop' - but just think of them as a preview and then a harder press actually opens the app and you'll get what I mean.

The same thing for nearly every link in the phone, and the action became second nature within a few days. In fact, it became embedded to such an extent that I nearly broke the screen on a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge trying to open a link, and got annoyed when I had to actually click a hyperlink in Gmail's web client.

3D Touch is probably the most functional in Mail, where you can preview messages then swipe up, down, left and right to do things like call up menus, archive the message or mark it as unread.

In Apple's presentation this was the headline action of the service, but I didn't find it that useful... like many things I didn't feel like the previous method (opening the email, seeing if I cared, deciding I didn't and then possibly marking it as unread) was a problem.

If anything 3D Touch made me more lazy with my mails... and if you've seen my inbox that's not a good thing.

The big issue I had with 3D Touch was that the previews were static - I couldn't scroll up to see a little more when often I wanted to just get a little more info before deciding if I wanted to open the app. This sounds like a really picky way of describing the action, but given it's meant to be all about convenience I really missed it.

iPhone 6S review
Swiping upwards on the preview will unveil a new menu

I also found, especially when previewing things like photos, that my finger was right in the middle of the screen and covered a lot of the display - thus making the preview irrelevant.

iPhone 6s Review

But that takes away from the excellent idea that Apple's come up with here. Sure, it's nothing more than a super-charged long press, and if anything it's highlighted that Apple should have added in such an action ages ago, given it's been in Android for aeons.

This is definitely the next level though. I've already played a racing game where acceleration and braking were now able to be subtle thanks to the pressure applied, and while it was rudimentary there was definitely a feeling of a more premium 'controller'.

But I've not used the technology much in the last month, if I'm honest. The only thing I've regularly used it for is previewing web links and viewing Live Photos - and the latter because that's the only way to see them, where a long press on non-iPhone 6S models works the same way.

I still think it will be revolutionary, but only when apps start using it. Instagram lets me preview pics this way, but who cares? Just tap and open them. I rarely use the shortcuts on the homescreen, but then again I keep forgetting I can, which is an issue of training users Apple has to overcome.

Check out how 3D Touch works in our video introduction:

Mighty pad

There's greater control over your cursor when typing too, with the inclusion of iOS 9 on the iPhone 6S Plus allowing you to use 3D Touch for precision placement. Hold down on the keyboard and the characters will fade away, leaving you with a track pad to expertly line up the blinking vertical line.

It brings a new level precision to editing text, something which has been a little hit and miss on previous iPhone and iOS incarnations.

iPhone 6S review
Pressure on the keyboard opens up an easy way to move the cursor

Live Photos

While I'll cover this in greater depth in the camera section, it's worth talking about the new function in the new iPhone 6S. While the camera has been upgraded to 12MP, it will now grab a chunk of video before and after the snap (1.5 seconds to be exact) and turn that into a little video.

With audio captured the idea is that the moment is added into the photo, and with a prod from 3D Touch you'll be able to see the story behind the photo. This isn't a new idea, as HTC, Nokia and Samsung have all tried to do it in the past (with limited success).

iPhone 6S review

Pressing the screen activates Live Photos

Nokia and HTC were probably the biggest proponents of the platform, the former using it to do great things like remove people from the photo or providing more editing effects - and HTC even spliced the video into a photos highlights reel to make memories of events like a night out.

Both of these ideas worked well, were genuinely useful and had a strong result - and yet couldn't entice users in (although HTC's now-standalone Zoe app is still being used by many). Apple's method is much simpler, almost hidden behind the photo, where the only proof that there's a dynamic picture in your snap is a little flick of movement as you swipe through the gallery.

However, it doesn't seem like something that will be a big draw - simply because the only thing people want to do is take a photo with a camera and have it come out looking crisp, in focus and full of color. They don't want gimmicks around it, they just want the phone to help them be brilliant photographers.

In fairness to Apple, the Live Photo happens quietly in the background (with only a little 'Live' box at the top of the camera viewfinder telling you what's happening) and doesn't compromise shooting speed or photo quality, and in terms of space it's less than two photographs.

If Apple had changed the 16GB model to 32GB, then perhaps this wouldn't even be questioned, but many people run out of space on their smaller iPhone capacity and doubling the amount of photos taken is going to make things even worse.
A9 chipset

As usual, Apple has upgraded the engine in the middle of the iPhone, bringing the 6S into 2015 with it fastest chipset yet. The A9 has myriad upgrades, with things like the M9 coprocessor enabling the phone to record even more motion without impacting on the battery life.

As usual it's been hard to test this out before the official launch of the iPhone 6S, simply because there aren't apps unveiled that can make use of it. The games shown off at the official iPhone debut, like the Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade game, showed that the new iPhone is capable of some truly breathtaking apps and is able to combine them with 3D Touch to enable new methods of gameplay.

iPhone 6S review

But in general day to day use, there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference. Browsing through apps is a snappy as ever (albeit with a very slight delay if you've got animations enabled) and I can't fault the speeds over Wi-Fi or cellular connection.

That's just in day to day use - if you stress test this a little more, you'll see that the iPhone 6S will shave off a few seconds each day through constantly opening and closing apps (see the video in the iOS 9 section to get what I mean).

What was notably absent from the unveiling event was the claims of longer battery life, which you'd have assumed the improved CPU would have offered. However, it seems Apple has decided to use that improved power to deliver 3D Touch and more powerful graphics, rather than extending the battery life of the iPhone 6S.

Give iOS 9 was also supposed to be a bit better on the battery, this is surprising, but I couldn't see any evidence of improved battery management.