Review: Apple iPhone 6S

Text and photos by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla 

The iPhone story for 2015 is remarkable in that it is an ‘S’ year, which usually means incremental changes with no obvious physical difference from last year’s model, but Apple’s given the iPhone 6S a complete structural and functional makeover.

The iPhone story is one of constant and steady improvement with various leapfrog innovations along the way. Let's count some of them. Multi-touch, mobile apps, app store, voice assistants, finger-print sensors, video calling, mobile payments are just some of the features that were propelled into the mainstream. Let's see what the iPhone 6S has to offer.

iPhone comes in yearly cycles and the past few have been interesting. Two years ago, they introduced iPhone 5S and also iPhone 5C (the first time they forked the line). Last year they went big with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus (the most successful iPhones launched and with the 6 Plus, devices that effectively stopped Samsung’s long and successful run as the dominant product in the large smartphone category).

The iPhone story for 2015 is remarkable in that it is an ‘S’ year, which usually means incremental changes with no obvious physical difference from last year’s model, but Apple’s given the iPhone a complete structural and functional makeover.

Yes, yes, they look identical to last year’s devices. But once you pick up the new iPhone 6S you can feel the slight thickness and density. This is because of reinforced 7000 series aluminum and stronger ‘cover glass’. Not only does iPhone 6S plus feel more resilient to bending the satin finish on the rear aluminum gives the sensation that it can better survive scratches.

The focus on strengthening the iPhone continues with reports that it is harder for gorillas to bend the device, and it can likely survive a drop in a puddle or a toilet, thanks to some internal sealing. These aren’t even the features that Apple likes to talk about, but they’re there.

 

2015 is a significant year for iPhones not just because of the performance gains and feature upgrades, iOS 9 brings a lot of spit and polish to what continues to evolve as the most cohesive mobile operating system out there.

While iOS 8 ensured that Macs and iPhones could connect to each other seamlessly, share files with Handover and Continuity features, iOS 9 is more proactive and quickly cuts the number of steps needed to get things done. 

What’s new for 2015 

iPhone 6S feels markedly faster and more responsive than iPhone 6 in every single way. I previously avoided the Touch ID sensor feature because, frankly, I felt it was too slow and getting a read on my prints was hit or miss on earlier iPhones. 

Touch ID on the iPhone 6S flies. Simply put your finger on the sensor and you have access to apps and features. Multitasking and slipping through screens and apps is also a lot faster which makes the new iPhone feel more fluid and friction-free.

iPhone 6S runs the latest Apple A9 silicon, which claims desktop-level performance and a 70 per cent faster CPU and 90 per cent faster GPU than last year’s version.

While it is hard to really approximate the accuracy of these claims, the iPhone 6S just feels faster than any other smartphone in the market today for most basic tasks.

 

This speed increase is also because of the iPhone 6S’s enhanced connectivity features. These new iPhones have the most LTE bands in a single smartphone and the Wi-Fi, featuring 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi‑Fi with MIMO, is similarly lightning fast with newer routers. Since we’re now scarfing down more data than ever before, it’s great that the iPhone 6S has the big pipes to access all that data. 

Pitting iPhone 6 against a competing models showed the iPhone accessing and rendering complex web pages up to two seconds faster on the same Wi-Fi network. Opening Google Maps and getting a read on my location was similarly faster on the iPhone 6S by almost three seconds. 

Apple’s reportedly put 2GB of RAM in the iPhone 6S, which also helps manage multiple apps better. Doubling the RAM on an architecture that’s created to maximize it, makes a huge difference. 

When using the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6, I’d have to often check and close the dozens of open apps in the background to get up to speed, two weeks with iPhone 6S and I’ve completely forgotten they were there because the iPhone just. never. slows. down.

3D Touch

Part of the miniscule increase in thickness of the iPhone 6S are the components that enable 3D Touch. An extension of the Force Touch functionality that was introduced in the Apple Watch and the newer MacBook and MacBook Pro, 3D Touch is the one key feature that could redefine the way we use iPhones moving forward. 

Using force detection, 3D Touch opens up myriad options when interacting with content on the iPhone 6S. it essentially adds another level of interaction that yields a multitude of possibilities.

Click on your Mail app the normal way and it opens up the application. With 3D Touch press and hold the Mail app icon and it reacts like a right-click would on a PC. First level is a ‘Peek’ which opens up Quick Actions (All Inboxes, VIP, Search and New Message).

These are the four most used subroutines in the Mail App and you can access them without having to open the app. Second level is to press harder on one of these options. I press New Message and suddenly ‘Pop’ into a new message window, just like that.

This Peeking and Popping isn’t only visual, there are measured vibrations under the display that give your fingers (and your brain) stimuli which speeds your decisions along, it’s a clever mix of technology, engineering, and psychology which just works. 

3D Touch isn’t just limited to apps on the screen. When in the Messages application, you can quickly Peek into long message stream contents and Pop into specific bubbles to reply, copy or paste information.

Scanning through the dozens of photos on the Photos app can take a lot of time, specially if you open specific photos to review their detail and then go back to the filmstrip menu.

News flash! You don’t have to do that anymore. See a photo you want to investigate, press it to ‘Peek’ and it expands, if you want to go further then press deeper and it ‘Pops’ open, if you want to move on, ease off on your pressure and you’re back at the filmstrip.

The best thing about the 3D Touch feature is that it works fast and intuitively for the half-dozen apps that support it right now. If there’s one feature that makes the iPhone 6S a smarter device than various competing smartphones out there, this is it. It certainly is the type of feature that users will learn to depend on.

3D Touch is a huge step forward. As smartphone app libraries have grown and become more complex and sometimes confusing to control, this feature adds a certain degree of eloquence and precision to the language of smartphone interaction. 

More importantly, it succeeds in cutting through many of the older navigation requirements forced on us by smartphone apps and operating systems. Because of this feature, Apple and iOS now have a leg up over the competition. 

3D Touch is a feature that’s uniquely Apple’s and one that requires a high magnitude of collaboration to pull off well. No other company can do this right now or for the foreseeable future.

 12 Megapixel iSight Camera 

It’s taken Apple some time to increase the megapixels on their popular iPhone iSight camera. There’s a good reason for this. More pixels don’t necessarily mean better pictures, and for years now, the 8-megapixel sensor on the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 hit the sweet spot in terms of performance and image accuracy. This venerable camera also managed great HD video and even brought slo-motion video, time-lapse and panorama photos to the mainstream.

Unless you’re blowing up your pictures into big prints, 8 megapixels is plenty. Heck, the Micro-Four Thirds cameras that have replaced DSLRs in popularity, have been stuck at 16 megapixels for a number of years now, and consumers aren’t complaining.The above is a picture taken on the iPhone 6S 

The above image is a cropped section of the image above it. Shows the amount of detail captured and retained by the new 12 megapixel camera

Yes, it was time for Apple to boost the iPhone’s camera and the new 12-megapixel sensor is geared for better low-light shooting as well as faster performance. IPhone 6S  still doesn’t have the optical image stabilization (OIS) you get in with the larger iPhone 6 Plus, but it does a pretty decent job cutting down on shaky video and pictures. 

The iPhone’s aperture is still at f/2.2, which for 80 per cent of use cases is perfect unless you’re in dire need of serious Macro photography or want to compose portraits with a lot of depth of field and bokeh. The iPhone 6S still has it where it counts the most and that is speed, you can fire a succession of shots with machine gun-like bursts and go back and pick the best picture of the lot. There’s no RAW image support for iPhone 6S. 

IPhone 6S also shoots 4K video, apparently it does a better job than high-end DSLRs, which is great if you do have a 4K TV to watch the content on. I found the iPhone 6S camera to be comparable to the 8 megapixel iPhone 6 camera and even better in certain conditions. 

The gains from the newer, larger sensor are clearly evident over the iPhone 6 and a notable upgrade over anything older than an iPhone 5S.

That said, the upgrades here are incremental and not dramatic, nor do they have to be. iPhone’s secured it spot as one of the very best cameras in the market and this is set to continue with what the iPhone 6S can deliver on a consistent basis.

5 Megapixel FaceTime Camera

Photo of the author without Retina Flash
Picture of the author using the Retina Flash featureThe front-facing camera on the iPhone 6S is vastly improved which is great news for people who rely on FaceTime video calls or who take a lot of selfies.

Not only do you get a crisper, more detailed picture each time, you can also make use of the new Retina Flash, which uses the entire display as a smart flash that’s can increase brightness on the screen by three times.

This feature works as advertised and manages to make the most out of awkward or poorly lit photo conditions.

 For me, this is an even bigger feature than the four additional megapixels on the rear camera.

So now, you can take the best selfies or video selfies, as well as have the most realistic FaceTime calls ever. The Retina Flash isn’t a gimmick, it really finds the best way to compensate for most lighting conditions and is a clever way of using the Retina Display instead of cramming another flash in the front fascia of the iPhone 6S.

Live Photos

If you think you’ve seen Live Photos before, a feature that captures rapid shots before and after you press the shutter, then it is because you probably have. 

Similar technologies have been implemented by Nokia for their Lumia Cinemagraph app, HTC’s Zoe photo feature, and even Google Photos manages to string together multiple shots to form animations.

Live Photos is easier and more seamless than any of these and, when used at the right time, can turn a still photo into a memorable short video (although, we need to point out that it isn’t video but a new format of multiple photos shot together).

Live Photos was great to use during my son’s 3^rd birthday party as I was able to capture real moments (with sound, too) of him with his friends, blowing out his birthday cake’s candles, and opening presents.

It isn’t, however, a feature you want to have on all the time. There’s a tendency to capture the floor before you orient the camera or the inside of your bag or pocket after you’ve taken the snapshot. Live Photos also takes up more storage space. Naturally, the photos are composed of multiple shots instead of just one. This matters if you have limited space on your device.

Live Photos is a setting you can turn on and off before you start shooting. If you take a picture with the intent of grabbing a Live Photo then it can work out great. But for most snapshots or photos best enjoyed as stills, turning on Live Photo makes little sense. You can currently share Live Photos with other iPhone 6 users and applications like Instagram have yet to implement them so it is early days. Right now, Live Photos makes for a great feature to demo and its wow factor Is quite huge. 

iOS 9 

iOS 9 will be getting its own review as I put it through some tests on various iPhones and iPads. iOS 9 improves the iPhone’s user experience in various ways, the biggest being that it makes the iPhone 6S smarter, more aware and more proactive.

The biggest improvement is how multitasking is carried out. If you force-swipe from the left side of your iPhone’s display, you get a multi-tasking screen with the ability to access any open apps or swipe them up to close them. This is reminiscent of how things worked on the PalmOS and even BB10 and supremely better than the way things used to be.

Consider that Apple designs its own chips to work with only their OS and it is easy to see how iOS 9 simply flies on the iPhone 6S. Everything from simple scrolling of pages to moving through apps is markedly faster and more instantaneous and that’s because hardware and software are preternaturally synched on the microkernel level. 

Verdict

The iPhone 6S is, without question, the best phone that Cupertino has ever shipped. 

It is a true successor the the original iPhone as a transformative and deeply personal mobile device. It is also one of the best smartphones you can buy today on any platform and one with a range of features (3D Touch, 12 MP camera, faster processor, 4K video) that should keep users happy and non-iPhone users intrigued.

IPhone 6S may be the perfect iPhone, but is it the perfect smartphone? There are still a few tiny areas for improvement. 

iPhone still ships with a single speaker and one that’s been located in the same place for a while now.

Louder, stereo speakers would be welcome, specially now that Apple’s appropriated Beats Audio and is also pushing its Apple Music service quite heavily.

Headphones are good, but there are times when you want to play stuff right from your device and other some phones do this louder and clearer. 

A high-speed charging-like feature, which is a Qualcomm feature on certain mid-range and flagship Android smartphones, would be a welcome addition to iPhone, specially the iPhone 6S, which has a smaller size and battery than the 6S Plus. Once you've gotten used to reviving a nearly dead smartphone to half its battery capacity in under 30 minutes, it becomes a feature you really look for.

Ditto for wireless inductive charging, something Apple already uses on the Apple Watch (out of necessity, perhaps), but which would be a cool and modern feature if the iPhone 6S had it.

These are minor niggles from someone who constantly uses the latest phone technology available. Most users may be totally fine without these perks, and the iPhone 6S is an accomplished enough device that it doesn’t have to add each and every newfangled feature out there, but there’s definitely something to aim for when iPhone 7 rolls around

 

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users may not feel upgrade anxiety, specially since iOS 9 gives them many amazing features; but Android switchers and anyone coming from an iPhone 5 or earlier will be rewarded by arguably the best smartphone hardware, software and ecosystem combination available today only on iPhone 6S.

Rating:  4.5 out of 5