The iPhone announcement has always been one of the biggest events of the year for the smartphone industry. The phone which started it all, now in its 9th-iteration, is not only arriving at a time of record profitability but also extreme competition. Can it do anything new to distinguish itself?
“The only thing that’s changed is everything.”
The new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus come in the same display sizes as before, with a 4.7” display at a 750 x 1334 resolution, and a 5.5” display with Full HD (1920×1080) resolution, respectively. But there’s more.
Force Touch, or as is marketed by Apple, 3D Touch is finally here. It is more sensitive, faster and offers varying amounts of inputs depending on your pressure. Such as if you press the screen harder than usual then in the base OS the system will open up a contextual menu or peek inside an app menu.
Different pressing patterns can be defined and used with-in the apps with endless possibilities. There’s also a new Taptic Engine which provides real-time feedback to your presses.
Check below video for a demo on how 3D touch will work:
The Design has changed too thanks to a new aluminum alloy unibody. They’re both heavier and thicker, most-probably thanks to the Bendgate farce, with the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus both weighing 143g and 192g respectively.
They’re also thicker by 0.2mm over their last iterations. Finally, the display now has the Ion-X covering of the Apple Watch.
The already-powerful A8 processor has given way to a new A9 one, which is said to much faster than before.
According to hard figures, the 64-bit processor is 70 percent faster in CPU tasks, with 90 percent faster graphics.
Storage options are the same as before, though, at 16, 64 or 128 GB.
This means as much as you hate Apple for it, the 16 GB variant is here to stay. The M9 motion co-processor has been retained, though it has been improved. Unfortunately, we don’t know what the rumours of 2 GB RAM amount to.
The 8 megapixel sensor has finally been replaced for a new 12 megapixel iSight camera which supports 4K video recording now. It now carries 50% more pixels, as well as focus pixels by the same count. As is usual, the larger 6S Plus also comes with OIS. There’s a new mode called Live Photos which records one second before and after a photo to create a short video.
The front-facing camera has been bumped to 5 megapixels, with a unique take on front flash. Dubbed the ‘Retina Flash’, the display now gets 3X brighter with customized lighting to help you take clear selfies.
The new iPhones support faster speeds over both Wi-Fi and LTE. The number of LTE bands now stands at an impressive 23. Wi-Fi is twice as faster as before while the TouchID fingerprint scanner is said to be just as faster itself.
Apple kick-started the gold revolution a few years back and now it is time for pink. Officially called ‘Rose Gold’ the phone will likely be brought by all kinds of audiences like the gold one.
The pricing is mostly the same as before. The 16 GB iPhone 6S starts at $649 for the standard 16 GB model, add $100 each time you make the storage upgrade. The iPhone 6S Plus instead starts at $749, continue the same step-up ritual here, too.
This year, Apple has decided to concentrate a bit more on the depth of the iPhone experience. While the end product must be experienced before any judgement, the first impressions certainly look positive.
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