SAN FRANCISCO, USA- Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: APPL) The world’s most powerful company in the consumer electronics industry has finally taken the stage to unveil its two new smartphones; the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.
Both devices have been much-discussed throughout the summer with rumors flooding the web up until few hours prior to today’s event.
Some of them were right, others were not, though it is time to check the facts.
Design
As the point of the cycle suggests, 6S, there is not something groundbreaking to mention here besides that a new enforced aluminum frame is wrapped around the new iPhones. It is called Series 7000 and is supposed to be sturdier than the one on the iPhone 6, thus preventing the infamous #bendgate and alike.
Other than that, both devices are identical to their predecessors. That does not mean that their looks aren’t still brilliant though.
Besides silver, space gray and gold color editions from last year, the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus smartphones will come in the new fancy rose gold edition that was highly anticipated.
Specs
Design wise we might have not spotted any major updates though as far as technical specifications go, Apple did some solid job here.
New processors!
The new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus come with Apple’s brand new dual-core clocked at 2GHz A9 processor and embedded M9 motion coprocessor.The A9 definitely standouts in the mobile processors field, since it promises to deliver 70% faster CPU performance and 90% faster graphics compared to last year’s A8 chip.
Moreover, the new technology behind the processor offers less energy consumption, which certainly is a sweet deal for your phone’s battery life.
Storage
Like the 2014 iPhones, both the 6S and 6S Plus will come in 16GB, 64GB and 128GB. We hope that Apple will get rid of the base 16 gigs option next year, and finally replace it with the more adequate 32 one.
Display
Like in design, display wise both new devices maintain the technology found in the 2014 phones as well.
The iPhone 6S comes with a 750 x 1334 pixels 4.7-inch display (326 ppi, LED-backlit, IPS LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors) while the 6S Plus rocks the same 1080 x 1920 pixels 5.5-inch panel (401 ppi, LED-backlit IPS LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors).
Cameras
After four years of waiting, the Cupertino giant has finally decided to touch up the megapixels of the primary camera, instead of just playing around with the size of the sensor.
More precisely, the iPhone 4S was the last handset of the series to receive such an upgrade, as it was the first to feature an 8MP back camera, 3MP bigger than the 5-megapixel iPhone 4.
Phill Schiller’s mention about the particular tactic:
“We were not going to add pixels until we were sure we would do so without trading off the legendary quality of the iSight camera,”
12 Megapixels + 4K!
Yes, you have read it right, placed on the back of the new iPhones is a 4608 x 2592 12MP iSight shooter that has 4K video capabilities, thus coming at the Android giants from Samsung and HTC even harder.
5 Megapixel selfie camera
The camera on the front was offered some notable attention too, as it jumped from 1.2 to 5MP accompanied by tweaks such as HDR, full HD video and the so-called Retina Flash, which under low-light makes the device’s display flash for a split second, thus adding more brightness to the photo.
Extra Features
Despite remaining identical to the previous generation, the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus will offer improved TouchID and 3D Touch – often referred to as Force Touch.
New TouchID
TouchID, originally seen on the iPhone 6, fundamentally is Apple’s very own fingerprint scanner, which you can utilize as a passcode to unlock your phone, make payments via Apple Pay and such, by simply laying a specific finger you have chosen on the home button for less than a second.
Like most first generations of new technologies, users reported multiple scanning-errors whilst using TouchID- hence Apple promises that the new iPhones boast an improved module of TouchID with reduced reading errors and faster response time as well.
3D Touch
The new iPhone 6S smartphones sport the unprecedented in the iPhone line-up, 3D Touch feature – as known as Force Touch on Apple Watch Sport and the MacBooks.
The 3D Touch feature essentially allows users to make “peek and pop” gestures on the screen to access shortcuts or preview content, including text messages, bank information, calendar appointments and more.
This has been attached throughout the entire user interface and default apps to give extra contextual connected to pressure detection offered by Apple’s Taptic Engine.
Software
The ninth gen iPhones will come with Apple’s brand new iOS 9 that features a Cortana-smart Siri, improved Maps, Apple Pay, Apple Music streaming service and the news aggregator application unveiled during WWDC 2015, the News app.
Price and availability
The iPhone 6S will be available under a two-year contract for $199/$299/$399 for 16GB/64GB/128GB respectively, while the iPhone 6s Plus will set you back $299/$399/$499 for 16GB/64GB/128GB respectively on a two-year contract as well.
The devices can be purchased unlocked for a price tag that usually varies from US$700 up to US$1100, depending on the storage edition you opt for.
As far as availability goes, pre-orders for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus commence on Saturday, September 12 at 12:01 AM Pacific, right ahead of the September 25 launch in the United States, Canada, Australia, China, Germany, France, Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom.
The new iPhones will eventually hit the shelves of another 130 countries by the end of the year as well.
