The iPhone 6S dropped over the weekend, to minimal fanfare, outside of smug Facebook posts by those who organised a pre-order, or the lucky earlybirds who were able to snaffle the few that hit physical stores. You may have noticed swelled queues outside the nation’s telecommunications providers of choice, with harried Apple Store associates parroting the company line of “sorry, we think it will be a few weeks, mid-October” to swathes of the disappointed.
One of the smug few was our digital lead Erik, so here’s our initial review of the 6S.
The phone feels much the same, with the external build being pretty much unrevised from the slick 6. Perhaps a bit of a better grip, and the impressively named 7000 Series aluminium is the strongest alloy ever used in an iPhone, and is apparently used in the space station - or something.
Colour-wise, the rose gold is more pink in person, a fact that may be surprising to the hordes of people who have quickly signed up for this colour. As many of these buyers are male, this colourway has been explained away as “bros gold”.
First take of the iPhone is all the features make for a better experience - its just easier to do more stuff. Touch ID is now super fast, and Siri has been improved to listen to actual conversational language, rather than the staccato specific commands that we all suffered through previously.
3d touch has only been integrated in a few apps so far, but is a nice UX, with Instagram being one of the first non-Apple apps to incorporate this capability.
Speaking of instagram, a big sell for the 6S is Live Photos, which means you can create your very own Harry Potter effect with images. Essentially, when you take a photo, it takes another photo just before, and just after you click. The camera itself is solid, 12 megapixel and shoots 4K video. Your selfies are going next level with the front-facing camera upgraded to 5 megapixels.
Overall, the iPhone 6S might look the same as the 6, but under the hood, it's a beast. Performance-wise, the new A9 chip makes it lightning fast, and combined with 2GB of RAM it's a multi-tasking powerhouse. Battery is unfortunately about the same however.
Having said that, the 6S is the best Apple smartphone thus far, and is a significant improvement on last year’s model. And with first weekend sales 13 million (or 3000 every minute), it seems the Apple thirst continues unabated.
