iPhone 6S & 6S Plus announced: new features, specs & more

It’s time for new iPhones. Apple unveiled the latest models at its press event tonight, the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. As we’ve come to expect from Apple’s S releases, the new phones offer upgraded internals and new features, while keeping a similar design and dimensions as their predecessors. This time around, the headline upgrades are 3D Touch, the A9 chipset and upgraded cameras. Let’s take a closer look!

3D Touch

The single biggest new feature of the new iPhones is 3D Touch, an evolution of the Force Touch concept that appeared on the Apple Watch. Basically, pressing harder on the screen will act differently that a normal press in the same place – like a kind of right click for touch.

Apple are making it easier to understand with two new gestures: peek and pop. Peek lets you press app icons and other buttons to jump directly into specific features (e.g. straight to selfie mode by hard pressing the camera app icon). Pop lets you pull up overlays of photos or videos, letting you look at them without actually leaving the page you’re currently on. Once you release your press, you’ll be just where you were before.

A faster A9 chipset

A new S model iPhone often means a new chipset, and that trend has stayed true with the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. The new phones use a new Apple A9 CPU/GPU combo, which is reportedly 70% faster at CPU tasks and 90% faster at GPU tasks; Apple are claiming “desktop-class performance” and “console-quality graphics” as usual, but we’ll have to see some independent tests to see whether that claim is finally justified.

The chipset also includes double-speed LTE connectivity, dual-band WiFi ac with MIMO and an M9 motion coprocessor. One thing that won’t be improved? Storage, which once again begins at 16GB and goes to 128GB.

Upgraded cameras, front and rear

The rear-facing camera on the iPhone has been upgraded from 8 to 12 megapixels. This is the first megapixel count upgrade since the iPhone 4S in 2011. The camera can also focus more accurately and shoot 4K video for the first time, a happy side effect of the higher resolution sensor.

Apple have also taken a trick from HTC, by capturing video before and after each photo that is taken. Live Photos, as Apple calls it, will increase storage demands but also provides some nice context to your photos; the feature is enabled by default but can be disabled easily enough.

The front-facing camera has also been upgraded to a 5-megapixel unit, a big step up from the 1-megapixel sensor that was there before. The front-facing camera also has a rudimentary flash, accomplished by the screen lighting to three times its normal brightness for a split-second. The colour that the camera flashes will be chosen to match the ambient lighting of the area.

Colour, materials and Touch ID

Apple have also made some subtle changes to the construction of their iPhones. The 6S and 6S Plus are made from new 7000-series aluminium, the same Apple-created alloy used for the entry-level Apple Watch Sport. The glass on the front has been upgraded to Ion-X glass, which also first made an appearance on the Apple Watch. These changes might be in response to #bendgate, a short-lived movement that protested the easily bent iPhone 6 Plus.

The new iPhone models are also available in a new colour, rose gold. This will sit alongside the three previous colour options, which are space grey, silver and gold.

Apple have also opted to include second-generation Touch ID, allowing users to log into their iPhones and authorise payments faster and with greater accuracy.

Conclusion

Thanks for checking out our iPhone 6S and 6S Plus coverage! We’ll have much more news from the Apple event soon, and we’ve already begun adding iPhone 6S cases and 6S Plus cases to our virtual shelves. Thanks again and have a great week.