Apple is packing the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus with more features than ever — and introducing a new input method called 3D Touch that uses pressure sensitivity to unlock an entirely new paradigm of touch controls.
A bunch of incredible new features, including a new display with a Taptic Engine, led Tim Cook to call the new devices the best smartphones ever made as he showed them off to the world.
“No product is more about innovation than the iPhone,” said Cook as he unveiled the iPhone 6s line today at a special event in San Francisco. “We have changed everything about these new iPhones.”
Facing slumping iPad sales and a shaky Chinese market, Apple is depending on this iPhone upgrade more than any other to bring record sales. We’ll have to wait until we get the iPhone in our hands on September 25, but on paper the the new models do indeed look like the best damn smartphones ever created.
3D Touch is the next generation of Multi-Touch and uses a new dual-ion-exchange glass to support the tech. Users can lightly press on objects and content in apps to peek extra information within an app, rather than jumping around from screen to screen. It also lets you take action in apps without even opening them. For example: You can hard-press on the camera app to automatically jump to the selfie camera.
Pretty outside, powerful inside
On the outside, the iPhone 6s comes in four colors: a new rose gold to go with the traditional gold, silver and space gray. On the inside, its guts are more powerful than ever.
Apple is adding an A9 processor to the iPhone 6s, which is 70 percent faster than the A8 processor in the current model. Apple also built the M9 motion co-processor directly onto the chip. Now that it’s embedded, the co-processor will always be on. iPhone 6s also comes with a second-gen Touch ID sensor, making fingerprint scans take 2x faster.
Perhaps the biggest upgrade on the iPhone 6s, though, is the new 12-megapixel iSight camera. It packs 50 percent more pixels than before to add additional detail to photos. To keep image quality high, Apple’s engineers used “deep-trench isolation” technology to separate photo diodes and maintain precise color.
The new camera can also record amazing 4K video with incredible detail thanks to the 8 million pixels captured per frame. There’s an new FaceTime camera with a 5MP sensor that also adds a flash by making the iPhone 6s’ display 3 times brighter to create a true tone flash.
Apple is introducing a new technology called Live Photos as well. Photos captured will now move when you hard press on the iPhone 6s display. Sound is also captured to give them a more live feeling. You don’t even have to do anything different to take a Live Photo, just take a regular photo and the iPhone does all the work on the backend by capturing a second and half on each side of the capture moment. Live Photos can be set as backgrounds on your Apple Watch too.
Wireless capabilities were increased on the iPhone 6s with two times faster LTE speeds and two times faster WiFi. Apple also made a Move to Android app to make switching to iPhone easier. There are also some new charging docks that match the color of your iPhone, and new leather and silicon covers.
Apple is starting a new iPhone Upgrade Program too that costs $32 per month and gets you new iPhone every single year. Pre-orders starts on September 12th. Pricing starts at $199 for the 16GB iPhone 6s while the iPhone 6s Plus starts at $299. The installment plan prices begin at $27 per month for the iPhone 6s and $31 for the iPhone 6s Plus.
