IPHONE 6S : BUILD FOR SUCESS

Bigger, Apple assured us last year, is better. In September 2014 the company made its first ever foray into the phablet-sized end of the smartphone sector with the release of the iPhone 6 and the even bigger iPhone 6 Plus, which swiftly sold millions of units and generated record-breaking financial results.

Replicating such an achievement is no mean feat, and was touched upon by Apple chief executive Tim Cook and he paced around the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium’s stage in San Francisco in early September when he asked: “How do you follow a success like this?”

The solution presented by Cook and team comes in the shape of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the latest handsets in Apple’s fallow ‘s’ generation, meaning updates come more in the way of software improvements than a radical overhaul of its appearance. But has Apple done enough to keep the iPhone on top ahead of its release on September 25?

Click here for the iPhone 6s Plus review: plus-sized beauty

Design

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if Apple does one thing better than anyone else, it’s design a good-looking phone. Over the past few years, designer Jony Ive and his team have honed the iPhone into a sleek aluminium and glass beast that perhaps only the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge comes close to in the aesthetic stakes.

So that’s why if the iPhone 6s looks familiar, it’s because it looks almost identical to last year’s 6, from the unibody design, volume buttons, on/off switch positioning, still-protruding camera lens and headphone jack on the left of its underside. Its display is the same size at 4.7-inches diagonally, but there are a series of subtle differences, namely in the use of new materials.
The 6s is constructed from a new 7000 Series aluminium; an alloy Apple is eager to remind us is used in the aerospace industry. This is the material currently used in the Apple Watch Sport models, which the company claims is 60 per cent stronger than standard alloys. Apple is understandably keen to avoid a repeat of last year’s #Bendgate accusations and a more durable, resistant body can only be a good thing.
This translates to a number of subtle changes to its dimensions, from 138.1mm x 67mm x 6.9mm to 138.3mm x 67.1mm x 7.1mm, and an increase in weight from 129g to 143g. Physically, this doesn’t mean much - held comfortably in the palm of the hand, the 6s still feels slim and lightweight, but it does mean Apple is prevented from trotting out its ‘thinnest/lightest iPhone ever’ schtick.
The more pedantic among you may still be irritated by the fact the Apple logo still acts as a fingerprint magnet due to its highly polished surface, but it’s still preferable to having to wipe down the entire back as you have to do with other shinier rival models.

Rose gold

One of the main talking points around the new handsets is the introduction of the new rose gold colour, slotting in neatly next to the gold, space grey (tested here) and silver shades established by last year’s lineup.
Apple first started experimenting with rose gold with the introduction of the 18-carat rose gold Apple Watch Edition, the cheapest version of which retails for £8,000. Following in the footsteps of such a luxurious benchmark, the decision to extend the colour to the iPhone has been interpreted as a flagrant appeal to the burgeoning demand for the handsets within China - a market Apple considers so lucrative, Tim Cook made the rare move of speaking out to reassure investors amid fears over Apple’s performance within China’s volatile markets last month.

Apple’s rose gold is a funny kind of shade - its tendency to reflect or absorb light depending on the lighting conditions when photographed means it can appear anything from an icy mauve to a muddy golden brown in pictures. In reality it’s a warm, pinky copper colour, and is guaranteed to sell shedloads.

Display

Like the aluminium, the 6s’ display glass has also benefited from reinforcement, and is now the most durable in the smartphone industry, Apple claims, thanks to a dual ion-exchange in the manufacturing process. Again, this will make it more prone to survive the odd drop and scuff.
As for the display itself, it’s the same 1334 x 750 resolution laid down by the 6, with the same 326 pixels-per-inch. Text is sharp, colour reproduction is accurate and contrast ratio is excellent, but if you’ve been using the 6 for the past year, there’s disappointingly nothing to really offer you by way of improvement.

Camera

With the 6s Apple has decided to upgrade the rear-facing camera for the first time since the iPhone 4s’ release in 2011, when it leapt from 5MP to 8MP. There it has stayed for four long years, until now. To call the new 12MP iSight rear-facing camera (capable of shooting 4K video for the first time) a welcome advancement is an understatement - it is a necessity.
Apple have always opted out of trying to out-pixel the competition, with many rival devices offering more than double the megapixel power (Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge +’s 16MP, Sony’s Xperia Z5’s 23MP, HTC’s One M9’s 20.7MP) claiming that adding pixels tends to degrade image quality. Debate rages over quite how accurate this kind of statement is, but there’s no denying that Apple desperately needed to up its camera game to remain a true contender.
The good news is that it’s much better than its predecessor. Thanks to the iSight sensor’s 50 per cent more pixels, its autofocus is now faster and more accurate, according to senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller, resulting in less accidental blur and noise. The front-facing camera has also been boosted from 1.2MP to 5MP for those all-important selfies.

Live Photos

New feature Live Photos creates brief animations by taking a second-and-a-half’s worth of low resolution images before and after the core 12MP photograph, resulting in a moving image and a short burst of sound.
This was perhaps best showcased in the 6s’ pre-set stylised Siamese fighting fish wallpaper in the keynote presentation, in which the fish’s fins ripple back and forth across the display. Other pre-loaded wallpapers include plumes of purple and blue, white and orange or blue and green smoke, if fish aren’t your thing.