Last year Apple split its iPhone range to have two flagship models, with the iPhone 6 acting as the main sales driver while the iPhone 6 Plus served as the spec king and of course came with a larger screen. A year later and Apple just unveiled the iPhone 6s Plus and the device is pretty much what we expect; an incremental update over last year’s model.
That means the iPhone 6s Plus looks the same as the 6 Plus, which is not bad thing as it remains a stellar looking smartphone and considering Apple ushered in a bold new design last year, it still feels fresh. New innards do ensure that the iPhone 6s Plus is a little fatter than its predecessor though, 192g over 172g. You can grab the device in silver, grey, and gold, while rose gold is a pink like color making its debut this year and actually looks fabulous.
iOS 9 lands on this device and the iPhone 6s, and while it too looks virtually the same as iOS 8, there are plenty of new features to sink your teeth into. Rounding out the design is the now familiar Touch ID fingerprint sensor which takes its form as the Home button.
The iPhone 6s Plus retains the Full HD 1080p Retina IPS Display from last year and it still stretches 5.5-inches across the device for a pixel density of 401ppi. That is still below the curve in comparison to Android devices, but the iPhone has always managed to have a stellar screen despite its apparent hardware limitations.
The big news with the screen is the inclusion of the new 3D Touch technology that follows from the Force Touch screen the company introduced on the Apple Watch. Essentially this means the screen can sense pressure and offer an array of new features, something we will be elaborating on in a dedicated 3D Touch report coming tomorrow.
Apple rarely talks about specs outright, and the iPhone on paper always looks positively mid-range next to Android flagships, but yet the device always bests those rivals in terms of butter smooth performance. The A9X processor here is new and with iOS 9 is going to make the iPhone 6s Plus one of the best performing smartphones on the market.
Apple says the A9 is 70% faster at CPU tasks and 90% faster at GPU tasks compared to the A8 last here, a frankly staggering leap in performance over twelve months. That means battery life and efficiency is improved, allowing Siri to always be on in standby mode, although the battery life remains at Apple’s standard.
For some reason Cupertino is sticking blindly to 16GB as the base storage amount, when these days it really should be 32GB. Nevertheless there will also be a 64GB model and a 128GB model, while of course none of them feature storage expansion.
iPhone cameras have always flipped the bird at Android flagships and shown that megapixels mean little. While Android manufacturers back high MP resolutions Apple has been using a humble 8MP lens in recent years but has still managed to deliver on of the best smartphone camera experiences on the market. The bump to 12 megapixels on the iPhone 6s Plus promises to be even better and comes with some new goodies, such as 4K video recording. We will be delving into the camera in-depth in a future dedicated report.