iPhone 6s Plus Review

Three months after Apple announced the S upgrades, I finally decided to  make the jump. I got the iPhone 6s Plus. With physical appearances, there’s nothing much that’s new to it. Just the letter ‘S’ printed on its back. But don’t be fooled by its looks. It is definitely a meaningful upgrade. It’s got all sorts of new tricks up its sleeve which will become the new standard. Apple has always followed a pattern with its S upgrades: One big feature, Camera and the internals.

The biggest new feature for this S upgrade is 3D Touch. Apple debuted this technology for the first time on Apple Watch where it is called force touch. They’ve used the same technique here for the larger display. This is the first new way of interacting with phones after Apple made multi-touch mainstream with the first iPhone. This is also as revolutionary as multi touch with all competitors scrambling to copy it. After a month of using 3D Touch, there is no way I’ll be able to go back to using normal phones. Peek and Pop is a huge deal and third-party developers have also quickly adapted to it. 3D Touch also has other neat little features like moving the cursor while typing and selecting text. Another place where 3D Touch is used is with live wallpapers. I don’t find any use to it except for showing 3D Touch to people.

With the camera part, Apple has finally gone to 12MP and adopted 4K video recording. The front camera has also been greatly improved which is 5MP now. Touch to focus is also crazy fast. It focuses on any object instantly and sticks with it. There is no flash for the front facing camera. So Apple has devised a workaround where the whole screen lights up giving extra light when it’s really dark.

Live Photos is another interesting feature of this new camera. It automatically records 1.5sec before and 1.5sec after the shutter is pressed as a video which can be played back using 3D Touch. For the first few weeks, I never really found much use to it and considered turning it off. But then, the other day I met my 2-year-old nephew and discovered the purpose of this feature. When you’re around kids, it is almost impossible to get the perfect shot. Live Photos should fix that. Anyone who calls Live Photos to be a gimmick has never been around kids.

The last part of the upgrade is what’s under its hood. iPhone 6S Plus is crazy fast! This is why I chose to make the upgrade and everything works the way it is meant to be. No more waiting around and the boot time is under 5 seconds! iPhone is a powerhouse now and with 2GB of RAM, multitasking is a breeze. No more constant page reloads on Safari!

One last hardware upgrade is Touch ID 2. It is smoking fast now! It is so fast, that it can be annoying at times. There is no way you’ll be able to catch the notifications on your lock screen if you turn it on with the home button. Apple has made some real improvements and we should not be complaining about it. Previously, Touch ID was unreliable and would work only 6 out of 10 times. Also, if you have sweaty hands, good luck getting it to work. With Touch ID 2, it works every single time. Apple has finally perfected this.

This S upgrade is a meaningful one. But, the price of the upgrade is really steep. If you already have an iPhone 6, it is a meaningful upgrade, but not an essential one. If you have any iPhone which came before that, this is a must have upgrade.