iPhone 6S review: Is this upgrade for you?

Last year, Apple released the iPhone 6, its most popular iPhone of all time. A year later, we're greeted with the iPhone 6S, which offers better build quality, a better camera, a faster processor and some truly innovative new features -- 3D Touch and Live Photos. I'll just go ahead and say it: Based on my week and a half with the iPhone 6S, this is easily my favorite iPhone ever. Of course, the newest iPhone is always the best iPhone. Or at least, it should be. [seealso slug="the-iphone-6s-299"] Still, I can't help but think there's something special about the iPhone 6S. And that's not just because my review unit was pink (though that certainly helped). Historically, I've always liked the "S" model of iPhone devices best. They don't get the same visual overhaul as the single digits, but the innovations are arguably better since Apple doesn't have to put as much energy into pure design. The iPhone 3GS was a demonstrably better phone in every respect to the iPhone 3G, even though it looked virtually identical. The iPhone 5S had a much better camera and processor than the iPhone 5 as well as Touch ID. The iPhone 6 was already a remarkably powerful phone -- still holding its own against even the more recent Android superphones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, but the improvements in processor, camera and onboard RAM, plus the addition of 3D Touch, make it feel like a much bigger upgrade than you might expect from its appearance.

Look and feel

You'd be forgiven for thinking the iPhone 6S is physically identical to the iPhone 6. Now it's available in pink -- or as Apple insists on calling it, rose gold -- but the basic design in the same. However, the actual size of the phone is about a grain of sand larger than the iPhone 6. This shouldn't prevent your iPhone 6S from fitting into cases made for the iPhone 6, though Apple did use the refresh as an opportunity to release a new set of colors in both leather and silicon. After the dramatics of last year's Bendgate, Apple made the decision to change the aluminum alloy in the casing. It's 7000 Series aluminum, and if early tests on what appear to be a production case are to be believed, this stuff is strong. The addition of zinc-fortified aluminum does mean the iPhone 6S is a hair heavier than the iPhone 6. The difference is just a few grams -- something like three marshmallows. You won't notice unless you're holding both side by side, and the iPhone 6 remains one of the lightest and thinnest phones around. Although Apple tells us that the aluminum anodization process has remained the same, I couldn't help but notice the sides of the iPhone 6S feel grippier and less slippery than the iPhone 6 -- which is great news for those of us who like to let our phones go naked. (I mean, half the fun of buying the gold or rose-gold iPhone is showing it off). The glass on the top of the screen is new, too. It's from Corning and is supposedly some of the strongest glass the company has ever made. I didn't test it -- but considering iPhone users will now be pressing harder on their screens because of 3D Touch, having even stronger glass is a design decision that makes sense.

Specs and performance

Historically, Apple doesn't like to overly tout the specs of its phones, focusing more on what they can do rather than clock speeds. Still, by any objective measure, the iPhone 6S is a beast. The dual-core A9 chip is the third-generation 64-bit processor from Apple. According to Geekbench, it's clocked at 1.83 GHz per core. This is up from 1.4 GHz on the iPhone 6. Apple says the A9 is 70% faster on CPU performance than the A8, and Geekbench recognizes those claims as accurate. The single-core Geekbench score of 2,530 trounced single-core scores from other device makers.

Apple doubled the amount of RAM in the iPhone 6S to 2GB, up from 1GB in the iPhone 6. The difference makes loading games, web pages and faster and smoother. Apple integrated its M9 Motion coprocessor into the A9 chip, which means that Siri can now be always listening for the activation phrase, "Hey Siri," which the iPhone 6S could only listen for when plugged into power. This is an idea that Motorola did first with the Moto X -- but as we'll discuss below, a good idea for Apple to copy. The GPU on the A9 got a big upgrade too. I wasn't able to see any demonstrable differences in graphical playback, but Apple says the GPU is 90% faster than the A8. I will say the newer GPU is necessary to process the 4K videos captured by the new camera. The iPhone 6S is a snappy performer, easily breezing from one task to another. Apple says the iPhone 6S has faster LTE and Wi-Fi than its predecessors and its supports even more LTE bands. I didn't notice any performance improvements over Wi-Fi or LTE, but it's nice to know a single phone will work in virtually every market. This means if you want to change carriers or go on vacation, your iPhone 6S won't get lowered to non-usable data speeds.

3D Touch is a masterpiece

One of the flagship features of the iPhone 6S is 3D Touch. Underneath the Retina HD display is a new capacitive pressure sensor and a taptic engine that's part of the A9 chip. The idea is the screen knows how hard or soft you press, and reacts accordingly. This might sound a bit like the idea behind the BlackBerry Storm -- one of the worst smartphones of all time -- but fortunately, 3D Touch is a different animal. Unlike the Storm, the screen isn't actually a button, and doesn't move. Instead, the sensor knows how hard or soft you press and responds with haptic feedback that simulates the feel of a button press. Essentially, 3D Touch is the Force Touch feature on the trackpad of the MacBook and MacBook Pro and on the Apple Watch, just with a slightly less creepy name. And really, the rebranding more accurately describes what the feature is all about. Apple essentially invented multi-touch (at least on phones) back in 2007 with the introduction of the first iPhone. It's hard to understate just how important that user-experience paradigm has become. Gestures such as tap, hold and pinch-to-zoom have changed the way we use our devices. With 3D Touch, Apple hopes to change the paradigm again, and it succeeds.

The learning curve for 3D Touch is very low. The key is to realize you need to focus on pressing hard, not pressing long. Long, normal presses will still work the same as they did before 3D Touch. Once your brain realizes that pressure is the new variable and not the duration of a touch, it becomes easy to use. You can adjust the strength of 3D Touch in the accessibility settings, setting it firmer or softer. The standard setting worked well for me, but if you're having problems activating the feature, try lowering it to "light sensitivity" to make it easier to activate. There are a few components to 3D Touch. The first is the idea of Quick Actions. Quick Actions are easy ways to access common settings in an app by simply pressing lightly on the app icon. These actions -- which are defined by developers -- let you access a certain function from inside the app automatically. For example, Quick Actions on the camera icon let you quickly launch in video mode, take a selfie or record in slo-mo. On the clock, you can set an alarm or a timer. On the App Store, you can search the store or redeem a gift card. This sort of functionality really makes the iPhone feel more like a power user's tool, and it seriously speeds up productivity. Right now, most of Apple's built-in apps support Quick Actions and third parties such as Pinterest and Dropbox are already available with support. I'm a huge fan of apps such as Launch Center Pro and Workflow and now that kind of automation technology can be built into apps themselves. It's very cool. I can't wait to see what developers do with Quick Actions in the future, because it really can be a time saver. But that's not all 3D Touch can do. Inside apps that support 3D Touch, there exist the new actions of Peek and Pop. A light press on a link, a photo or a message in a list will open up a preview of what you've selected using what Apple calls Peek. Press a bit harder and you'll "Pop" directly to the web page, photo or message. I send roughly 100 iMessages a day with my friend Aly and these often consist of links to photos, GIFs or web URLs. Being able to preview the link without leaving the Messages app is a dream. If you swipe up in Peek before pressing all the way to Pop, you're given options of what to do with the content. This can include forwarding a photo, adding a URL to a reading list or, for email, options for delete or archive. Scared that "popping" all over the place will leave you lost? With the new "Back to X" feature in iOS 9, going back to where you were is a breeze. Peek and Pop are incredibly useful in the default Apple apps, especially Photos, where you can preview images and videos in a bigger view with just a light press. For me, 3D Touch is something that once you use, you won't be able to stop. Going back to my iPhone 6 after spending time with 3D Touch on the iPhone 6S, I feel lost. I constantly want to Peek at links in Messages or preview photos. In my initial hands-on with the iPhone 6S, I praised 3D Touch as being almost worth the price of admission. This remains true. In fact, if 3D Touch was the only change between the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6S, I would still be tempted to upgrade. As it turns out, the iPhone 6S is about more than just 3D Touch, but I'll be honest: This is definitely my favorite feature on the phone.

Camera and Live Photos

The camera on the iPhone 6S gets a big upgrade form the iPhone 6. It now shoots 12-megapixel photos -- up from 8MP -- and Apple says the new sensor is even better at noise reduction and performing in bright light. In my tests, the photos look great. But let's be serious, camera quality has always been an area where iPhones excel. The new sensor captures images more real to life than many other smartphone cameras, and the extra pixels are really useful, especially when you want to crop for a bit of a zoom effect. Swiping through photos of my iPhone 6 and my iPhone 6S side-by-side, I could tell my iPhone 6S photos looked better. The colors are what they are in real life. Detail on faces and foliage was more crisp. In addition to the better sensor, the iPhone 6S has a new photo mode called Live Photos. Live Photos, quite simply, are awesome. Live Photos create a virtual cinemagraph of your image. The mode takes an extra 1.5 seconds of audio and photo frames before and after your shot. The result: When viewed on an iOS 9 device, an Apple Watch running watchOS 2 or a Mac running El Capitan, you can see those photos move. Pressing and holding on the photo will play it back. We're still figuring out how to best take Live Photos; there's definitely a science to it. There's a Live Photo icon at the top of the shot that shows the second or so before and after the shot, and playing around with the feature, I could definitely come up with better ways to frame shots. Still, part of the fun is the serendipity that you don't know what it will do. I was at the XOXO conference in Portland two weekends ago and took some great Live Photos of the animated XOXO screen before sessions. I do wish it were possible to share Live Photos on the web. It's great that it works on iOS 9, watchOS 2 and El Capitan, but so much of our photo viewing experience takes place in the web browser. A way to turn Live Photos into GIFs (or at the very least, GIF-afied MP4 video files), would help make the feature go viral and sticky. Because when you see a good Live Photo, you want to share it with everyone. I've found the most compelling Live Photos to be either those where there's very subtle movement (think traffic or a waterfall) or quick movements from a person. Right now, Live Photos will capture the movement of moving the camera up and down -- which can ruin shots -- but Apple says an update is coming that will improve this shortcoming. Live Photos' big downside is that the files will take up extra space. To get the extra functionality, photos are about twice as large. You can turn it off -- but if you're sharing with someone on iOS 9 or the Mac, you won't want to. That extra size makes me even more disappointed that Apple decided to keep the 16GB option available for the iPhone 6S. It just seems silly. It's also great that Live Photos work on the front-facing FaceTime camera too. Which means you can get really fun animated selfies. Speaking of the FaceTime camera, it now has a 5-megapixel sensor and, finally, selfies look good. There's even a new flash technology Apple is using, called Retina flash, which basically uses brightness of the screen to act as a flash. It's a smart feature and the results are good.

4K video

So Apple decided to join the 4K video party; the iPhone 6S's rear camera can capture footage in the ultra-high-def format. In addition to recording at 30fps and 60fps in 1080p and at 120fps in 1080p and at 240fps at 720p, you can record at 30fps in 4K. To take 4K video -- which takes up a whopping 375MB per minute -- you've got to go into the Settings app and toggle the mode. This is good -- because it makes it hard to activate by accident -- but I wouldn't mind a Quick Action option too. Unlike some 4K camera phones, Apple doesn't turn off any features when you record 4K video. This means that the built-in Hyperlapse-like stuff still works, as is the ability to change focus. The iPhone 6S doesn't have the optical image stabilization of its big brother, but it still captures great-looking video. 4K video is recorded at about a 50Mbps bitrate, which is higher than some of the other 4K options I've seen on other phones. And even though you can't play back the 4K video natively on the phone, you can zoom in to see the detail you're missing. Using iMovie on the iPhone 6S, you can edit two streams of 4K video. It's very clear that the improved GPU on the A9 is needed for 4K. In my tests, 4K video looked great -- though I'm still not convinced a regular person needs it now for many reasons. For starters, at 30fps, the 4K video tends to look overly soap-opera-like with movements not feeling like real life. That's not a criticism at the iPhone 6S but at most non-pro 4K video in general. The second reason I don't think 4K is necessarily a game-changer is because actually playing back the content is a major pain. If you have a 4K monitor or an iMac with Retina 5K display, you can watch it natively -- but not many people have that. And if you have a 4K TV, getting the video to your TV is an even bigger pain. You can upload to YouTube, sure, but that will inevitably cut down on some of the video quality. And the Apple TV (even the new one) doesn't support 4K. Maybe in a few years when we can AirPlay 4K video natively it will make sense, but for now, I have a feeling 4K is here because the burgeoning world of iPhone filmmakers asked for it. Over the last year, I've spoken with several filmmakers who have made amazing films on an iPhone. This is the audience for 4K. Not regular users. The good news is that non-4K video still looks great; in fact, it looks even better with the new sensor.

Always-on Siri and Touch ID

Because the M9 Motion corprocessor is now built-into the A9 chipset, Siri can work even when the phone isn't plugged in. Simply say, "Hey Siri," and she'll wake up, ready to take your request. The one exception is if Siri is in a purse or pocket. When you set up your iPhone 6S, Siri even learns your own voice. Well, she doesn't learn your voice, she learns your voice pitch. I found this out when Mashable Product Analyst Raymond Wong was able to get Siri to respond to his voice, simply by imitating me by speaking in a higher pitch. A security feature, this is not -- and it's not designed to be -- but it is definitely great for preventing false Siri alarms. My Amazon Echo frequently activates based on TV commercials and my own iPhone 6 will often activate if someone nearby says "Hey Siri," so this is still a nice improvement. Speaking of improvements, Touch ID is now twice as fast as it used to be. Dubbed Touch ID 2.0, it's both faster and more responsive when learning your fingerprints. The faster Touch ID is noticeable -- especially considering how often one unlocks a phone in a given day. The fingerprint sensors from Samsung have gotten very fast -- and very accurate -- over the last two years, so it's nice to see Apple improve its game.

Battery Life

The battery on the iPhone 6S is actually a tiny bit smaller than the iPhone 6. Although I don't like that Apple made the battery smaller, in my tests, I found that I got more battery life out of the iPhone 6S than I got from the iPhone 6. Whether this was because of the changes made to iOS 9, the fewer apps installed on the phone or what, I'm not sure, but I consistently got through a full day on a single charge. Apple rates Internet use at 10 hours on LTE and 11 hours on WiFi and up to 11 hours of video playback. Depending on what's happening in the background and what kinds of apps you're running, this could definitely differ. I didn't do extensive battery tests other than to see how it performed in the real world. That involved taking tons of photos, using 3D Touch and downloading lots of apps. I got through a full workday without the need to charge. When the phone reaches the 20% zone, iOS 9 includes an option to go to Low Power mode to further extend life. Still, if you're looking for an iPhone with truly stellar battery life, you need to go full phablet and get the iPhone 6S Plus.

iOS 9

I already wrote extensively about iOS 9, but it's worth noting the OS really seems custom-built for the iPhone 6S. If you're coming from an older iPhone and haven't upgraded to iOS 9 yet, you'll love it on the iPhone 6S. The increased RAM means you can have more web pages open at once and 3D Touch makes viewing Live Photos or previewing other images a treat.

Final thoughts

With 3D Touch, the new camera and Live Photos, the iPhone 6S is a compelling upgrade. The phone still feels like an iPhone 6 in the hand, but the user experience is enhanced and improved. And although I'm almost ready to recommend that iPhone 6 users should consider upgrading for 3D Touch alone, it's probably not worth breaking your contract over. But for those that are on an upgrade cycle, out of contract or willing to pay in monthly installment from Apple or their carrier, the iPhone 6S is a great choice -- especially if you're on an older iPhone model. Even for Android users, I think the 3D Touch feature is something that makes the iPhone 6S worth considering. It's one of those pro-user feeling features that really changes the game. It feels trite to call the iPhone 6S the best iPhone yet -- because, come on, it should be. But at the end of the day, I don't want to go back to my iPhone 6. I want to take Live Photos. I want to use 3D Touch and I want to take advantage of the great new camera. I also like that Apple has put more juice under the hood with a faster processor and more RAM. And of course, it comes in pink. Who doesn't want a pink iPhone? At the end of the day, the iPhone 6S is a really compelling upgrade. If the body style wasn't still the same, this could be called the iPhone 7, because it really is that great. [procon title="iPhone 6S" pros="3D Touch is a game-changer; Better camera; Live Photos are fun; It comes in pink" cons="The 16GB option still exists; 4K video feels unnecessary; Battery life is basically the same" bottomline="The iPhone 6S is the best smartphone on the market, and 3D Touch is a truly forward-looking feature." mashablechoice=true year=2015] [wp_scm_comment]