Tech Guide has gone hand-ons with the new iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus and, while they look almost identical as last year’s models, they still offer an all-new experience thanks to the new 3D Touch screen.
Design-wise the look hasn’t changed but the new iPhones are .2 of a millimetre thicker so the iPhone 6S goes from 6.9mm to 7.1mm and the iPhone 6S Plus goes from 7.1mm to 7.3mm.
The reason behind this was to fit the new 3D Touch display and the Taptic engine that gives you a little buzz under your finger when you press harder on the screen.
With the faster A9 processor, the new iPhones are a touch faster – something you will notice coming from an older iPhone but not so noticeable if you’re coming from the iPhone 6.
But the star new feature is the 3D Touch display. It has taken Multi-Touch technology and added another dimension.
So now we are able to press a little harder on the screen and feel a light vibration to indicate we had gone deeper than just a touch.
Now rather than opening an app you can “peek” with a slightly harder press to reveal other options.
Press on the phone icon and you’ll see the last three calls you made as a handy shortcut instead of having to open the app again.
Same thing goes for messages and while inside the message you can peek at links and calendar dates.
In Maps you can press a little harder on the icon and see options open up on the screen that include Directions Home, Mark My Locations and Send My Location.
And if you want open the app – you press a little deeper still and it will “pop” open.
So get ready for “peek” and “pop” to become new terms if you’re using the new iPhone 6S or iPhone 6S Plus.
Some third party apps including Facebook, Dropbox and Instagram will also have peek and pop options on the new iPhones which are running the new iOS 9 software.
With Facebook you can press the app icon to update your status and check in while Instagram allows users to peek into a person recent images simply by pressing their user name within the app.
The Live Photos feature can also be accessed in the camera roll. Simply press on the photo and you can see the series of images that were captured for 1.5 seconds before and after you pressed the shutter so it looks like a mini movie.
The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus will be available in new rose gold colour. It actually looks more like a coppery colour but it does match the new Apple Watch rose gold colour.
The anodised aluminium Apple Watch will also be available in gold as well as rose gold to match the colours of the corresponding iPhones.
On the pricing side the new iPhones are not cheap but you can blame the much weaker Australian dollar for the elevated prices.
The iPhone 6 is priced is at $1,079 (16GB) and $1,229 (64GB) and $1,379 (128GB).
The iPhone 6S Plus is priced at $1,229 (16GB), $1,379 (64GB) and $1,529 (128GB).
* Stephen Fenech travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Apple
1 Comment
Still cheaper in AU than UK by a sliver or two. We are doing well