Jimmy Kimmel’s iPhone 6s gag makes Apple owners look foolish

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iPhone 6s versus iPhone 1
I mean, they look the same to me.
Photo: Apple

We’re all pretty excited about the upcoming release of the iPhone 6s, Apple’s latest and shiniest hardware. And it seems that some people are so excited about the new phone that it makes them forget a bunch of things — like what an original iPhone looks like.

Kimmel sent an interviewer out on the street, where he presented passersby with the original, 2007 iPhone, told them it was a demo version of the 6s, and asked them how the “new” phone looks to them. You can see the cringeworthy results in the video below.

The interviewees can’t get enough of the “new” gizmo, gushing about how small and sleek it is and declaring that “Apple has done it again.”

Obviously the Kimmel show edited this segment to only showcase the most hapless people they could find. I’d love to see the outtakes in which some savvy person points out that the thing is still running iOS 3. Or maybe someone tried to activate Siri, which didn’t appear until the iPhone 4s in 2011.

One person asks what the new features are on the iPhone 6s, and the mic holder says, “It’s got like a higher-resolution and a much better quality camera.” The bit about the camera is true, but while the original iPhone had a meager 480 × 320 resolution, the iPhone 6s will have the same 1334 x 750 screen as the current iPhone 6, which is about six and a half times as many pixels as the iPhone 1. And the iPhone 6s will feature a much-touted 12-megapixel camera, compared to the original’s modest 2.

Probably the lowest moment of the whole video comes when a woman pulls out her iPhone 6 Plus to compare the two models.

“Well, I think this is daintier,” she says, referring to the older phone. “It seems like the same weight, even though it’s distributed differently.”

In fact, iPhone 6s models will be 9 to 11 percent heavier than the current versions, possibly due to those improved cameras and a larger Taptic Engine force feedback system. We’ll have to wait until the inevitable teardown videos start dropping in a few weeks to know for sure.

Regardless, this bit shows how effective the power of suggestion can be. Or maybe it just proves that you don’t have to know what you’re talking about to get in front of a camera.

Update — 9/12, 4:48 a.m.: This post originally said that Siri first became available on the iPhone 4 instead of the 4s. We have corrected the error.

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