iOS Devices

Is Apple considering another round of major changes to iOS’s Home screen? If watchOS and tvOS are any indication, the answer could be “yes.” Earlier this year, Apple launched the Apple Watch with a purely text-free Home screen, requiring users to identify 20-some initial apps (and manually-added third-party apps) by icon designs alone. This month, it will release the fourth-generation Apple TV with a refreshed UI, again almost entirely eliminating below-app text in favor of redesigned icons with 3D depth.

While it would be easy to write off Apple’s changes to text labels as one-off decisions for “really small screen” and “really big screen” devices, they collectively raise an interesting question: if developers properly redesigned their iOS icons, would text labels — a staple of graphical user interfaces for decades — really be necessary any more? I’ll take a look at some of the pros and cons below…

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While both IHS and iFixit were able to explain the increased water resistance of the iPhone 6s/Plus over last year’s models, finding adhesive seals similar to that found in the Apple Watch, a new test by IFixYouri shows just how much water still gets in.

After submerging an iPhone 6s for just two minutes, the company opened it up to see how much water managed to penetrate. The short answer is: quite a lot. While the casing is far better sealed, water is still able to get through the Lightning port, microphones, headphone jack, speakers, mute switch and volume buttons … 
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Following last week’s release of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Apple’s support community pages are lighting up with new reports of problems with the new iPhones for some customers. The issues range from overheating Touch ID buttons to random power-offs, significant audio distortion, and 3D Touch glitches.

Below, we look at some of the most interesting iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus problems users are reporting, as well as possible solutions…

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iFixit’s teardown <a href="http://ifixit.org/blog/7408/iphone-waterproof/" target="_blank">reveals</a> a liquid resistant seal

iFixit wasted no time in carrying out its teardowns of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and now IHS has weighed in with its usual estimate of the component and assembly costs. It reckons the total cost of materials and manufacturing of the 16GB 6s Plus to be $236.

Direct Material Costs (Component Costs)			$231.50
Conversion Costs (Assembly / Insertion/ Test Costs)			$4.50
Total Cost (Direct Materials & Manufacturing)			$236.00

Tim Cook would doubtless take issue with this estimate, as he has with others.

There are cost breakdowns around our products that are much different than the reality. I’ve never seen one that is anywhere close to being accurate.

IHS said that 3D Touch and the associated haptic engine were the most obvious new components over the previous year’s model, with an estimated $10 of additional costs, but also noted three improvements geared to making the device more robust … 
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With the launch of Apple’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, users now have the option to shoot up 12-megapixel photos and 4K video at 30 fps. This is four times the video resolution found on the iPhone 6, but how does it perform? We’ve put together a new video test to find out exactly what it looks like…

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Update: We’re hearing the date for the new HomeKit bridge is October 6th … In addition, Philips has officially confirmed that the old box will not be getting HomeKit compatibility in any form. However, it will continue to receive other software updates. You can buy the new HomeKit bridge from here.

Philips is finally ready to join the HomeKit ecosystem with a new box that will act as a bridge between the Apple HomeKit standard and its range of smart internet-connected lightbulbs. As shown in the images above, provided by sources, the new box looks very much like an Apple TV — a rounded rectangle ‘puck’ with indicator lights showing connectivity status.

The new HomeKit box will be available in October and connect existing Philips Hue accessories to the Apple platform. The bridge box will be sold standalone as an official ‘Works with Apple HomeKit’ compatible accessory as well as in new combo sets, also depicted above. These sets include new bulbs with a few improvements over the current models …

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Apple has updated its Privacy website with details about how the company uses your data to serve the newest iOS 9 and iPhone 6s features, like Apple Pay, Apple News and Hey Siri. Consistent with Apple’s messaging, they reiterate how everything they make is designed to store as little personal information as possible with anonymity wherever possible. Contrary to other reports, the Tim Cook cover letter fronting the Apple Privacy page is not new and has been posted on the website for some time.

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With Apple having announced all-time record iPhone sales, you might have expected analysts and investors to be impressed, and to see the AAPL share price rise as a result. Instead, the stock is actually down a little – so what gives?

The answer, like the one to so many questions today, is: China. This is the first iPhone launch where mainland China, and not just Hong Kong, has been included from day one. This means the opening weekend sales of 13M versus 10M last year aren’t like-for-like.

Apple hasn’t revealed what percentage of iPhone sales were made in China, but we can do some back-of-an-envelope sums to get a rough idea … 
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Michael B. Johnson, who heads the Pixar team that develops the tools used to create its animated movies, tweeted that his team had been given the chance to test the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – and described palm-rejection as perfect.

Lovely of our friends from Apple to stop by to let us take iPad Pro & Pencil for a test drive […]

It has perfect palm rejection as far as we were able to see … 

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According to Chipworks, there are actually two different sized A9 processors floating around in the iPhone 6s and 6s plus released last week. That’s not really a surprise because Apple likes to have redundancy, especially when one of the manufacturers is Samsung. We’d heard that both Samsung and TSMC would be producing A9 processors destined for the iPhone 6s.

However, there appears to be a difference in size of the two A9s which might play a role in how the iPhone performs…

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I honestly did not want to order both an iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus this year. After many years of comprehensively reviewing iPhones — an exhausting process — I was looking forward to spending this year’s iPhone release kicking back and enjoying one of the two new models like a regular customer.

The only problem: I couldn’t decide which model I wanted.

I’ve used an iPhone 6 Plus for the past year, loving the typing experience (for the first time on any iPhone) but hating its size in my pockets (also for the first time on any iPhone). My hope was to switch to an iPhone 6s, and I expected to do so if the 6s proved to be nearly as good as the 6s Plus. But after a weekend playing with both new iPhones, alternating full days of usage between them, I think I’ve come to a different conclusion…

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There has been a lot of opinions floating around about the new iPhone 6s camera, its upgraded 12 megapixel sensor, 4K video capability, and the other software side improvements with iOS 9. Our own photographer Ben Lovejoy put the device to the test in his ongoing diary series. But this latest photo gallery from the people behind the Camera+ app gives us a look at how the camera has improved not just over last generation, but also over all other previous generations of iPhones in a side by side comparison.
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I should open by saying I’m a tough sell where cameraphones are concerned. My primary camera is a Nikon D3 full-frame 35mm DSLR with a set of lenses that takes the total cost well into ‘let’s never do the sums’ territory, so the bar is set rather high.

But camera technology advances, and I judge by results rather than reputations, so I did recently switch to using a Sony a6000 compact camera for most shots – including travelling. This is a lot smaller and lighter, and also attracts less attention. It has an APS-C sensor, which isn’t quite in D3 territory, but is a lot larger than an iPhone sensor and has proven itself remarkably capable.

I’d love to have that kind of performance in an iPhone, but it’s not there yet in two respects: shallow depth of field, and low-light performance, both of which I’ll address below. So the question for now is: is the 12MP camera in the iPhone 6s a worthwhile improvement on the 8MP version in the iPhone 6 … ? 
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The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have new cameras on the front and rear as well as featuring the new Live Photos mode, a combination of photo and short 3 second video, which is enabled by default. The quality of both cameras has been considerably improved, beyond the raw increase to 12-megapixel back camera and 5 megapixel front camera.

However, there have been some reports of customers getting grainy, bad photos on the new iPhone 6s in low-light scenarios, despite Apple touting the new cameras’ improved low-light performance. Whilst its true that you will always get better-looking shots in well-lit environments, it turns out that having Live Photos enabled significantly impacts the photo quality in dark shots. Why?

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Following two weeks of preorders and the public launch on Friday, Apple today announced it has sold over 13 million iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in the first three days of availability.

The company had previously stated it was on pace to beat last year’s 10 million unit sales record and has cleanly done so, topping its previous record by 3 million units. Apple iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will be available in an additional 40 countries beginning October 9th. It is worth noting, however, that China was not part of the initial rollout for iPhone 6, distorting the comparison somewhat.

Tim Cook, Apple CEO, says iPhone 6s sales are ‘phenomenal’ …

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Shortly after Tim Cook met with the Chinese President, Apple’s CEO has met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as expected. The Times of India reports that the two of them discussed the possibility of bringing Apple Pay to the country, and Prime Minister Modi invited Apple to set up a manufacturing base in the country.

Cook was said to have “responded positively” to the idea, though nothing more specific was announced. We’ve known for some time that Foxconn has plans to build multiple factories in India, but neither company has confirmed that these would be manufacturing products for Apple. Foxconn carries out contract manufacturing for a number of high-profile brands.

Apple does, however, have one strong incentive to manufacture iPhones in India … 
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If you haven’t heard, Apple’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are finally here, but should you upgrade? Well today we’re comparing the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus…

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While the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus only just became available this past week, rumors surrounding next year’s flagship from Apple are already starting to surface. A pair of postings on Chinese social networking site Weibo first spotted by Macotakara claim that the iPhone 7, or whatever it may be called, will feature several design changes that are a significant departure from the past few years of iPhone releases…

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