Following months of rumors, Apple today officially unveiled the 4.7″-screened iPhone 6s and 5.5″-screened iPhone 6s Plus, the “S”-series sequels to last year’s hugely successful iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus — billed by Apple as the most popular iPhones ever. Preserving their predecessors’ physical sizes and glass-and-metal industrial designs, the new models have been updated with a collection of enhancements, including:
- 3D Touch, force-sensing technology that adds new gestures “peek” and “pop,” which bring up modal windows and things hidden under panes.
- A9 processor promising 70% increase on A8 speed and 90% faster graphics (“console class”), enabling games to offer all sorts of special effects and frame rates better than A8.
- M9 motion coprocessor, always on, along with always-on Siri.
- Second-generation Touch ID, twice as fast as before.
- All new 12MP iSight camera. 50% more pixels than before, more accurate autofocus. They decided they would not add pixels over the 6/6 Plus camera until they wouldn’t compromise image quality. 4K video support has been added, as well.
- New 5MP FaceTime HD camera, including “Retina Flash” (screen) with True Tone ability. Screen can light up three times brighter than usual for this.
- Support for Live Photos, pictures you can save and watch animate (with sound) as you press with 3D Touch. They’re mini videos automatically created as you take pictures. But they’re not videos, a series of frame-to-frame compressed videos that work on all devices.
- Wi-Fi and LTE Advanced with “up to” 23 LTE bands, 2X faster LTE, and 2X faster Wi-Fi (866Mbps).
New leather, silicone, and dock colors have been announced as well. Photos and many more details are below. We’re still updating, refresh for more…
Today is notably the last day to lock in Gazelle’s guaranteed cash trade-in prices for older iPhones ahead of the iPhone 6s launch, as well as NextWorth’s special 9to5Mac reader bonus adding 10% to any iPhone trade-in (use promo code 9TO5MAC). Amazon is still offering aggressive trade-in values, assuming you want Amazon store credit rather than cash.
Other new iPhone 6s, 6s Plus features include:
- A new rose gold aluminum finish, an Apple custom 7000-series aluminum, added to the other three prior colors (silver, space gray, gold).
- Brand new glass, billed by Apple as using a “dual ion-exchange process.”
- 3D Touch works everywhere from the Home screen to within apps, and provides tactile feedback for touch interactions. You can open an email message with a “peek” to show a window rather than going all the way in, or press more to see the entire message in full screen. Or open the front camera directly from the Home screen rather than defaulting to the rear camera.
- New Taptic Engine that’s apparently faster than the Apple Watch one, capable of running for mini-taps running 10ms and full taps at 15ms.
Some photos from the event:
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What Apple did with the camera is simply ridiculous. Those live photos is such an awesome feature, it is so awesome.
The iPhone 6S seems like the biggest ever ‘S’ upgrade ever. I am getting the 6S only if it has 2GB of ram. That is the only thing that annoyed me about the iPhone 6.
I wonder if Apple will add the live photos feature to the iPhone 6. I don’t think they will but let’s hope…
I’m pretty sure they won’t. Sorry.
I didn’t like that they didn’t talk at all about hardware specifically about ram and the screen resolutions on each iphone. Although i have to say that the new camera look awesome.
Still 16GB, Apple should be ashamed. I was hoping they at least add the 32GB option for an extra $50 like the iPod touch. For a lot of people 16GB isn’t enough but they don’t need 64GB either. At least they upped the paid cloud storage to 50GB but keeping the free service at 5GB is ridiculous
Never mind 16GB – folks that read this site will get 64 or 128 – that’s like $4 more a month.
I am completely baffled and amazed now how A9 could be 70 percent faster on CPU and up to 90 percent faster GPU performance than A8 – that’s like boodu to me.
Still 1GB of RAM I assume? :/
It will be shameful it they kept the 1Gb of RAM. And the battery has been reduced to make some room for the new taptic Engine. So great news…
RAM is implementation detail that we will need to wait for tear down to find out – I am sure it has 2GB – all responsible WSJ, Mark, KGI, etc
leaks say so.
Can someone tell me, if the always-on Siri is 6S-exclusive? Or is it also available on the 6 with iOS9?
Has anyone else noticed the addition of a second microphone on the bottom near the speaker? The previous iPhones had a single pinhole mic at the bottom between the headphone port and Lighting port, but the diagram in the “External Buttons and Connectors” section of the Tech Specs page for the 6s/Plus shows a second mic on the opposite side of the Lightning connector. I wonder what its purpose is, and why it wasn’t important enough for Apple to mention in the keynote…
No mention of battery life!
Same as previous iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Just look at the Apple website and stop whining.