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Revealed: iPhone 6S will look nearly identical outside, but expect numerous changes inside [Gallery]

9to5Mac_6S8

For fall 2015, Apple is preparing an “S” iPhone upgrade that superficially preserves the exterior designs of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but includes a collection of major internal changes. In May, we reported that this new “iPhone 6S” line would debut this fall with a Force Touch, pressure-sensitive display as one of its marquee features. Now, a proven source familiar with Apple’s supply chain has provided us with the most extensive look yet at Apple’s next iPhone, sharing the first photos of the iPhone 6S’s external metal casing, plus an in-depth look at the new iPhone’s internals. Today, we’re focusing on the exterior of the next iPhone, which appears to refute a number of potential changes that some have speculated were destined for this model.

9to5Mac_6S27

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1) Identical design to the current iPhone 6 + same thickness/width:

As expected, these photos show that the next-generation iPhone will have a rear design identical to that of the current iPhone, similar to the transition from the iPhone 5 to iPhone 5S. Our images show no noticeable external changes coming from the iPhone 6 — even the Space Gray color has remained light, contrasting with the darker Space Gray Apple Watch — but it is possible that Apple’s final hardware could include additional tweaks.

Good luck spotting any major external differences in size or the position of holes. Our source says that any potential difference in thickness or width on the 4.7-inch iPhone 6-sized device is too minimal to notice, but this does not (yet) rule out rumored changes to the larger, 5.5-inch iPhone 6S Plus body.

2) Different internal mounting structure:

9to5Mac_6S19

Despite the identical exterior, many small changes are evident inside the iPhone 6S frame, particularly in the mounting points for the phone’s new logic board and components. The mounting points line up with details we’ve received regarding the logic board, confirming the shell’s authenticity for a new device.

3) No dual-lens camera system:

9to5Mac_6S26

Rumors that the iPhone 6S would receive a dual-lens camera system appear to be dashed given the rear shell’s seemingly identical holes for camera, microphone, and LED flash. This doesn’t rule out the possibility that the camera lens won’t protrude on the new model, but two distinct lenses appear to be very unlikely.

4) Antenna lines still present:

Apple recently applied for a patent on a technique to hide the antenna lines on the back of an iPhone with an “anodized metal appearance.” Unless something changes from the casing here, those lines will persist through the iPhone 6S lineup. But there may be some good news regarding NFC antenna performance, a point we’ll discuss further soon.

5) Same connectors, speakers, microphones:

9to5Mac_6S25

The bottom design of the iPhone 6S is exactly the same as with the prior model, down to the number of speaker holes and the position of the headphone, microphone, and Lightning holes. This will be good news for case and accessory makers, who won’t have to worry about redesigning their iPhone 6 products for the iPhone 6S.

In the coming days, we’ll be publishing in-depth looks at new internal components and chips coming in the next iPhone, which will reveal new features and enhancements. So, stay tuned for those articles. Meanwhile, below is our full image gallery of the next iPhone’s external shell.

Full image gallery of the next iPhone’s exterior:

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Comments

  1. AppleLion - 9 years ago

    Well… The iPhone 4S had the same Design as the 4, Same with the 5 & 5S… So why should they change the Design of the 6S? Haha!

  2. Andrew Messenger - 9 years ago

    if force touch is the only change i might skip this version.

    • proudinfidelusmc - 9 years ago

      There are talks about an improved camera, but I’m skipping it too most likely.

    • Obviously there will be processor & camera upgrades just like every other iPhone generation.

    • skip from what version?

    • Tim Jr. - 9 years ago

      I wouldn’t surprise me if the dual lens comes to the 6S Plus… They seem to push the most advanced stuff to the Plus. Camera is usually the main focus for the ‘S’ series and I don’t think this will change with this next S generation..

    • hungarianhc - 9 years ago

      2gb of ram, bro… 2gb…

      • Yves Roulin (@ALN___) - 9 years ago

        Actually 2GB it´s nothing this days, but with iOS it´s just fine, they know how to manage it.

      • jcook3434 - 9 years ago

        Oh wow, one of the biggest phones on the market with the least amount of ram. I can’t wait..lol

    • Chase Hanson - 9 years ago

      I have an iPhone 5 right now and my contract expired about a week ago. I’ll be getting a 6s when the time comes and I’m pumped XD

      • garethbill - 9 years ago

        Thanks for letting us all know that

      • James Wilson - 9 years ago

        What color will you get?

    • foodie202 - 9 years ago

      I’d anticipate they probably will make advancements in the processor, and in cellular antennae. I have seen a very noticeable difference (aka improvement) between the 6 and the 5S – my wife has the 5S, and there are many times when I have a better signal in the same spot, or at least have clearer call quality (due to VoLTE on the 6).

  3. Pedro Marques - 9 years ago

    I’ve gotten used to Force Touch on Apple Watch so much that I sometimes instinctively force touch my iPhone. Though, if that’s the only major difference, it’s a good one but not worth the upgrade for me.

    The iPhone 6 Plus is the first iPhone that I covered up (with a vinyl sticker) as I’m not particularly fond of its appearance. I’m hoping for an iPhone 7 Plus with the home button replaced by a force touch gesture, Touch ID embedded in the display and with smaller bezels that make the phone overall smaller while preserving the same screen size.

    • Ari J. Sanchez - 9 years ago

      I have an Apple watch I don’t see how Force touch is so revolutionary at least on the apple watch but I do like Force Click on my Macbook. Only thing I can see it replacing is the way we hold to delete or move apps on screen. Apps themselves will probably make better use of it but nothing that couldn’t be done with just software alone in my opinion.

      Your ideas for the 7 are exactly what I’m hoping for. Would be nice if Touch ID could be implemented into the screen it self, force touch anywhere on the screen so it can read your thumb print and enter your phone’s home screen.

  4. Mark Thomson (@TameGeek) - 9 years ago

    I wonder if the Dual Lens system may be saved for the 6S Plus?

    • Tim Jr. - 9 years ago

      Wouldn’t surprise me at all. Love my 6 Plus.. but will upgrade regardless to the 6S Plus because it will support all of T-Mobiles new low-band spectrum (Band 12) that the current version doesn’t.

      So features are icing on the cake for me.

      • jcook3434 - 9 years ago

        Wonderful, you’re not a very hard man to please with your lowest and smallest memory on the market for a phone as big as the iPhone 6 plus. Congratulations, after paying a 1000 dollars for your iPhone 6 plus, you finally get a bump up to 2 gb of ram. Oh wow, I’m salivating. I’m so embarrassed. Guess I’ll take my puny Samsung galaxy note 5, with 3 gb of ram, UHD, wireless charging, with multitasking and go hide in a hole. Nobody is competition for a iPhone with futuristic specs like full HD screen, 2 gb of ram and force touch….lol

      • dcperin - 9 years ago

        @jcook3434; You’re forgetting the most important part of your entire comment.. Your phone actually needs that much RAM to run properly. Hell, a Note 4 with 3gb of RAM couldn’t even run properly without lagging.. Yet an iPhone 6 with 1gb can…….. 😂

  5. jrv6 - 9 years ago

    Any structural changes?
    People are still (deliberately) bending these phones at the local Apple Store.
    It would be good to put this to rest (reducing the potenti for vandalism is not an admission that the original design was flawed).

    • Scott (@ScooterComputer) - 9 years ago

      Doesn’t look like it for this, the 6. The volume and power button bar attachment points are the same, creating the same pivot points for rotational structural failure as the 6. To be seen about the 6s+.

      • Scott (@ScooterComputer) - 9 years ago

        Although they still could extend the volume button bar into the next screw post down, so that’s still a possibility.

  6. bunim1 - 9 years ago

    Two gigabytes of ram is a major if that holds true. My 6Plus crashes all the time and I bet 2 gB would help

    • Tim Jr. - 9 years ago

      Mine rarely crashes, but I close all my apps often when done.. I notice a lot of crashing from those that don’t.. Most will tell me closing apps shouldn’t matter.. well, it does. Especially if low on storage.. where do you think it swaps those open apps too when it swaps it out of memory? lol

      • PinkAppleEatr - 9 years ago

        I neurotically close all of my apps as soon as I’m done with them. My iPhone is slow to respond when waking the screen to unlock it. I’ve had to enabled Touch ID to unlock my phone because the screen takes too long to respond (Or doesn’t respond until I put it to sleep and wake it again) to unlock with a passcode. And it randomly reboots itself.

        I have 83GB of available storage. I’ve reset my phone entirely and I’m still encountering the same issues.

        I write it off as my turn to be the few with problems this go’round, so I’ll most likely be upgrading when the 6S comes out. I’ll save money on my phone bill and I’ll hopefully rid myself of these annoying problems.

      • Randy March - 9 years ago

        If you want a faster iPhone… *don’t* close your apps! :-) The operation system is very smart and will purge apps immediately if it needs to. Apps don’t even get a notification beforehand—if iOS has chosen a memory hog that hasn’t been used recently or frequently, it will terminate it immediately (within milliseconds) and release all of its reserved memory.

        While “closing” an app may release its memory (this is not guaranteed for future iOS versions, though), this is not always needed. If you open an app that you’ve closed but for which there was sufficient RAM to support it, the app will have to initiate all launch processes (including ones you don’t see) making the device slower overall.

        As for local storage (flash), there’s no such thing as swapping on iOS, there never was, and there never will be. Swapping on a mobile device requires writing gigabytes (to terabytes) of data that can be recreated per day to memory whose cells can be mutated about a thousand times. Apple (and other OS vendors) made the right choice when it comes to RAM policy: sudden (and transparent) death.

        Note that iOS will never tell you it has killed an app—you can use a process viewer or Instruments for this. The switching interface is just a sequence of screenshots. This is intentional and contributes to the user experience.

        Just trust the OS and make sure you have the latest updates of everything. Any crashes and slow-dows are mostly due to other factors—considering re-installing or even restoring. Obviously, older devices will always be slow.

        That “latest updates” part will become even more important soon. iOS 9 provides a developer-level technology to make apps’ memory footprints much smaller. :-)

    • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

      I have had no problems with crashes on the 6 plus. I did update from iPad Air to air 2, because of the crashes with the ram.

  7. Terry (@TerryNL) - 9 years ago

    “Good luck spotting any major external differences in size or the position of holes. Our source says that any potential difference in thickness or width on the 4.7-inch iPhone 6-sized device is too minimal to notice, but this does not (yet) rule out rumored changes to the larger, 5.5-inch iPhone 6S Plus body.”

    This is disappointing. The previous rumors said the thickness increase would be about 0.2 mm, which indeed is barely noticable but noticable nonetheless. Given the chance of physical interaction with the 6S casing, one would hope the source to pick up a caliper to actually check this.

    Now we have the casing, yet we are still unable to confirm whether the rumors are true. Disappointing!

  8. Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

    Yep those frankin-whale lines are just as ugly as the first model. At least so many people find it too slippery to hold they cover it with a case.

    • Dafty Punk - 9 years ago

      It’s easily the most slippery phone Apple has ever made. Shame as it’s very pretty to look at, but I needed a case just to grip the damn thing.

      • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

        I think the front is nice for sure. But those lines really bother me. More so than the camera bump. I guess it’s mostly just the lines on the space grey model because it’s a matte grey color. It tires to blend in but it’s obviously a different material with different properties. At least with the gold model it’s white plastic and isn’t ashamed of it.

    • orthorim - 9 years ago

      The lines are so ugly, I initially wondered how they made Jony Ive sign off on it. Surely he’s just as horrified by those lines as we are.

      The secret is functionality though: This phone has perfect reception. Nobody has ever complained about reception on the 6/6+. Better reception also helps battery life so this is a double plus.

      The iPhone 6 / 6+ is the first iPhone where Apple made some serious concessions on looks in order to get better functionality. I think it’s the right direction. Remember the times of “you’re holding it wrong” or those Apple laptops that had no WiFi range? I do. They did the right thing.

  9. jrv6 - 9 years ago

    I have the 5s now… I like this design better (esthetics & size), an upgraded version with force touch would be perfect… The small form factor makes “one thumb” gestures very natural.. Sadly, I expect that the 5 will become extinct.

  10. ashtraywasp - 9 years ago

    Count to ten, kids!

    1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7..

  11. Michael Quinn - 9 years ago

    iPhone branding and FCC info missing on the back. Is it now done via software or would these backs not be printed yet?

  12. Ryan Morano - 9 years ago

    Maybe its just the way the picture was taken, but the casing does look thicker. If you take a look at the Apple logo, the outline of the insert looks like its deeper than in the current generation.

  13. Sacha - 9 years ago

    This will be a very interesting upgrade.

  14. iosxbepax - 9 years ago

    iPhone 3G’s’ – Speed
    iPhone 4’s’ – Siri
    iPhone 5’s’ – Security
    iPhone 6’s’ – ?? What will it stand for ??

  15. ipawan2014 - 9 years ago

    I feel like,,they are going to differentiate iPhone 6 plus ssss,,,with multitasking as iPad,,,i think it should be capable enough with upgraded ram plus the screen size factor,,,

    • charilaosmulder - 9 years ago

      It may be big for a phone, but 5.5″ is still way too tiny for two apps at once. It can barely accomodate split view landscape apps

      • PinkAppleEatr - 9 years ago

        It can be done on the LG Flex, why not the 6S Plus?

  16. GadgetBen - 9 years ago

    It’s a shame that Apple haven’t taken on board the stainless steel and sapphire glass combination from the Apple Watch and made this manufacturing process work for the iPhone. I’m tired of scuffs, dents and cracked screens.

  17. Mathias R. S. Sørensen - 9 years ago

    To be honest I done think that rumour is good enough to hold the truth. Maybe it was just a practical made for designing.

  18. Robraeil (@DaniPango) - 9 years ago

    I wouldnt skip this. i have 5s and have waited fr the new version for about 6 months

  19. Matthew Judy - 9 years ago

    I think I’ll be skipping this generation, unless they surprise us with a 4-inch “6S Mini”. If that were the case, I wouldn’t be able to give them my money fast enough.

    • rettun1 - 9 years ago

      I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while. But maybe a big ghee screen isn’t such a bad thing…. I’m going for it, especially if the rumor of the higher ssd capacity is true

    • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

      YESSSS. But if they did that I’d assume it’d be the iPhone 6 specks and not try to match the 6s – which I’m totally fine with.

      If not, I’m hoping iOS 9 breaths enough life back into my 4s to last for whatever the next redesign will be.

  20. Scott (@ScooterComputer) - 9 years ago

    The linear oscillator vibrator motor is going to be longer. In the current 6 it spans between the left (as you look into the chassis) side and that little double-screw standoff at the bottom (shared with the speaker assembly). On the newer chassis, there’s only one screw hole; safe bet the vibrator and the speaker assembly will share the single standoff. Wonder if the vibrator plays a role in ForceTouch feedback, necessitating a bigger motor?

  21. When is the last time Apple came out with a real phone upgrade; other than size there really isn’t much difference than the 5S

  22. rettun1 - 9 years ago

    “a proven source familiar with Apple’s supply chain has provided us with the most extensive look yet at Apple’s next iPhone, sharing the first photos of the iPhone 6S’s external metal casing, *plus an in-depth look at the new iPhone’s internals*. *Today, we’re focusing on the exterior of the next iPhone*”
    Oh you tease. Give us all the info you got!

  23. Pawanpreet Singh - 9 years ago

    It seems like Apple Logo at the back of phone will lit like Macbook. As there is Cutting for Logo same as in Macbook.

    • Klaus Dietrich Lange - 9 years ago

      Yes, and it´s weird that nobody else seems to notice.
      The article even says: “Our images show no noticeable external changes coming from the iPhone 6”. Hello Mark, can you clarify?

  24. fluxx - 9 years ago

    Hey, its the “S” model which stands for “same” ;-)

  25. minieggseater - 9 years ago

    I know it’s a software thing but I would really like the next iPhone to support Bluetooth rSAP so that you can connect it to cars that have built in 3G/4G and either require a SIM or a rSAP compatible phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles#SIM_Access_Profile_.28SAP.2C_SIM.2C_rSAP.29 Having to buy a SIM for the car is not currently cost effective

  26. the difference is minimal…

  27. DePaul Eppright - 9 years ago

    Any new iphone is exciting for me

  28. kjl3000 - 9 years ago

    Meh. Staying with my iPhone 5 black, still the best iPhone ever in my opinion (besides 5s)! The size is just right, no round edges which means more grip, nice color and the camera is more than ok. Oh and it’s hard to bend…

    • orthorim - 9 years ago

      Sadly, I destroyed my 5 in a washing machine. I loved the color. Black! Really nice matte black.

      That said battery life on the 5 was abysmal – the 6 is soooo much better. I no longer carry an extra battery pack; the 6 easily lasts 24 hours which is all I need.

  29. Shawn D Coleman - 9 years ago

    why is there a whole where the “apple would go”, does this mean it would light up?

  30. Dick Dowling - 9 years ago

    Are the going to put the lock button back on the top of the phone where it belongs – currently in one hand operation you are always changing the
    volume control when trying to operate the lock button.

  31. Sean Birch - 9 years ago

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Apple logo on the back of the concept looks like there may be an LED, as the logo is completely see-through… so may I be right in thinking Apple could be adding something similar to the Macbook’s LED Apple logo on the bacl?

  32. I’m due for an upgrade – should I get the 6 or wait for the 6S? Sounds like there won’t be much difference but wanted to get any current 6 users opinion.

  33. Sean Birch - 9 years ago

    Not much difference really. If this is legit then I’m gonna just stay with my iPhone 5 that I’ve had for 3 years until next year when the 7 comes out :/

  34. C.Morales (@WoLF2001) - 9 years ago

    skipping this version, have the 6 plus. happy 4th!

  35. Azhar Ahmed - 9 years ago

    biggest upgrade would be .iOS 9

  36. Jennie Yoonicorn - 9 years ago

    Time for those “S” band-wagoners to join the 6’s!

  37. iPhone 6 - 9 years ago

    If these photos are real, iPhone 6S will have the same design as the iPhone 6. I can’t believe that Apple can do that!!

  38. Kelly Camargo - 9 years ago

    I HATE WHEN APPLE ALWAYS MAKES NEW IPHONES! CAN THEY JUST GIVE IT TIME ITS ONE SAME MODEL AFTER A BETTER MODEL! AT FIRST IT WAS THE TOUCH ID, THEN THE SIZE, NO THE CAMERA! GOSH! I JUST GOT AN IPHONE 6 LAST WEEK! ANDNOW 1 YEAR FROM NOW THE IPHONE 6 WILL BE NOTHING! IT WILL JUST BE ONE OF THE IPHONE 5CS! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED TO THE IPOD 4TH GENERATION! THEY JUST KILL OFF ALL THE OTHER IPHONES TO MAKE NEW ONES AS ALWAYS……! NOW MY IPHONE 6 WILL NOT BE UPDATED AND COOL ANYMORE JUST BECAUSE OF THIS PHONE! I HATE THIS!

  39. Ronald Sondergaard - 9 years ago

    i have the note 4, great phone,,,,been very interested in the new iphone 6s plus, since i hate the note 5…..the camera will be the thing that makes me upgrade