Tested In-Depth - iPhone 6S and 6S Plus

**iPhone 6s and 6s Plus Review: A Comprehensive Look at Features and Performance**

### Introduction

In this video review, Norm from Tested and Jeremy from Tested discuss their experiences with Apple's iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Having had the phones for about a month, they share their detailed thoughts on various features, performance, and overall user experience.

The two reviewers approach the discussion from different perspectives: Norm, who has owned every iPhone since the beginning, and Jeremy, who switched to Android before returning to iOS with the iPhone 6s. They structure their conversation around 12 key points or salient features of the new iPhones, covering hardware, software, user experience, and recommendations for potential buyers.

### Key Features and Observations

#### 1. **3D Touch and Taptic Feedback**

One of the standout features of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is Apple's implementation of 3D Touch. This technology allows users to press the screen with varying levels of pressure to trigger different actions, such as opening shortcuts within apps or accessing additional menu options.

While 3D Touch has potential for power users, the reviewers note that app support is still limited outside of Apple's own ecosystem. Jeremy mentions that even inbox (the email app) doesn't currently support this feature. Additionally, there's no way to customize shortcut options in third-party apps.

Taptic feedback, introduced first in the Apple Watch and now integrated into the iPhone, complements 3D Touch by providing physical feedback through subtle vibrations. The reviewers praise the motor for its responsiveness and control, which enhances the overall user experience.

#### 2. **Camera and Video Capabilities**

The camera on the iPhone 6s has been upgraded from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels, offering better detail and digital zoom capabilities. Both reviewers agree that while the improvement is noticeable, it's not as significant as previous upgrades (e.g., from 5 to 8 megapixels in the iPhone 4S).

The front-facing camera has also seen an upgrade from 1.2 megapixels to 5 megapixels, making video calls and selfies much better. The reviewers highlight the improved sensor quality but note that it's still not as advanced as some competing Android phones.

Video capabilities have been enhanced with the introduction of 4K recording. However, Jeremy questions the practicality of 4K on a 1080p display, suggesting that shooting in lower resolutions (like 2.7k) would be more useful for everyday use. He also mentions that slow-motion video remains unchanged at 720p and 240 frames per second.

#### 3. **Siri and Voice Commands**

Another notable feature is the improved Siri experience, which now listens for voice commands continuously (similar to Google Assistant on Android). While this is a step forward for Apple, Jeremy points out that the iPhone's microphone isn't as effective at picking up commands in noisy environments compared to Amazon's Echo.

Despite this limitation, both reviewers acknowledge that having Siri always ready to respond is a significant upgrade over previous iterations.

#### 4. **Performance and Touch ID**

The A9 chip inside the iPhone 6s delivers impressive performance, handling tasks like video editing in iMovie with ease. The reviewers also praise Touch ID for its speed and reliability, though Norm notes that he sometimes wishes for a slight delay to check notifications on his lock screen.

#### 5. **Battery Life**

While both phones offer solid battery life, the reviewer who tested the iPhone 6s Plus found it particularly impressive. Jeremy mentions that he often gets more than a day of use out of the phone, though he also notes that the Samsung variant of the A9 chip may drain power faster in CPU-intensive tasks.

#### 6. **Water Resistance and Design**

The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are more water-resistant than their predecessors, with an IP67 rating. This means they can survive brief submersion in water without damage. The reviewers also appreciate the improved design of the phones, with a sturdier frame that addresses past issues with bending.

#### 7. **Storage Options**

Apple has introduced a new 128GB storage option for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, but the base model remains at 16GB. Jeremy questions this decision, noting that 16GB is no longer sufficient for most users who take many photos or videos. He suggests that potential buyers should consider the 64GB model for better storage capacity.

### Conclusion

While the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus offer several improvements over previous models, including enhanced cameras, faster performance, and better water resistance, both reviewers agree that these updates don't necessarily justify an upgrade for everyone. Jeremy points out that users who already have a recent iPhone (like the 6 or 6 Plus) might not notice significant differences in their daily use.

Norm highlights that while the new features like 3D Touch and Taptic Feedback are innovative, they're still evolving and lack widespread app support. He concludes that for now, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus feel like incremental upgrades rather than revolutionary devices.

### Final Thoughts

The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus continue Apple's trend of offering subtle improvements across the board. While some features, like the camera and performance, stand out as significant enhancements, others like the battery life and water resistance are more modest updates. Potential buyers should consider their own needs and usage patterns when deciding whether to upgrade.

If you're looking for a reliable, high-performing smartphone with cutting-edge features, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus remain strong contenders in an increasingly competitive market.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's Norm from tested and I'm Jeremy from tested that's right Jeremy is here with me today because we are going to review the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s plus Apple's new iPhones for the year uh now the phones have been out for a while they' out for about a month we got them day one and we've waited to do the review because we wanted to really live with the phones Y and we're kind of come at them from a different perspectives you as someone who's owned every single iPhone every iPhone and me as someone who had all the iPhones until the five and then switched the Android and I love Android and then coming back for the 6s so the 4S was your last phone I had the five for a few months the five was your last phone yeah and I gave that to my parents uh and the way we're going to structure this conversation is we're actually going to talk about I think 12 uh Salient points the 12 things uh features and things we've notice about using the new 6s phones uh for this year um some of that's going going to be talking about speeds and feeds some of that's going to talk about user experience and at the end uh give you some recommendation recommendations as well if you're still on the fence um so first thing I think the big Flagship feature and there are many of them but is uh is 3D touch M and uh that's something you're not going to get maybe going forward you're going to see on a lot of Apple products but it is in uh it has appeared before in some capacity on the watch for example that's right in force touch um and the way it works it's well integrated with iOS is that the the screen now can sense pressure and Apple has uh activated and given the apps the ability to detect different levels of pressure and you can press it one level of hardness or press it deeper to do things like activate shortcuts it's sort of an analog feel like it's not just two levels that which was how they pitched it it's actually more of like a sensation of pushing harder and harder and harder and harder till you reach different thresholds right which I think is great now the glass doesn't actually Bend or to press it's all in kind of the the software in in detecting you know the micro movements of how much pressure you're putting onto the phone the way it's implemented though I think a lot of people called it out as like a rightclick you know for example if you're on Windows or if you're in Mac OS and you right click on a mouse you see a context menu you see your properties you create shortcut all that stuff it's a way to do everything that you could do even opening an app that's right uh with 3D touch on iOS it's not a right click what it is is actually a menu of shortcuts within the app it's a way for you to access for example in the camera going directly to shooting video or directly to shooting a selfie camera and as shortcuts I think that's a really great way to use this Contex sensitive menu sure yeah the problem though is that nobody's supporting it yet besides Apple that's you know we're already a month in and I don't think any of Google's apps support it yet and as someone who uses inbox for email that would probably be my most used uh 3D Touch app but it just doesn't support it and unfortunately there's no way to tell which apps do support it you just have to test it you have to try every single icon and if it doesn't support it it sort of blurs out the screen and it goes uhuh right right it's one of those things that uh because app updates come pretty frequently and overnight every time I see oh there app updates I go to test it out and try and hold and press hard on that icon and more often than not it's just giving me that uhuh right no no context sensitive no right click no no shortcut menu it's a new feature that say as much Hardware as it is software you know unlike like a camera Improvement which is just immediate and you can you can appreciate it all at once this because it has its software component it requires people to get on board and implement it right and there's no way right now I think for developers to even let you customize what those shortcut options are um it could you know if a developer wants to give you five shortcut options but you only use two of them or you want to change the order of them you can't do that right now so hopefully going forward that's something you can use and even Apple's own apps I want to see 3D touch use more frequently it's a a feature that has a ton of potential for power users especially now do you use that peek and pop for example when if you're in messages and clicking harder a link for an address to pop up a map or show a preview of a website well it's a cool feature but I don't get too many text messages that include those kind of links you know it's mostly just conversational um I do use it in the photo app it's a way to sort of enlarge the the grid of photos so you can take a look at them quickly um so no I wouldn't say I use a peek and pop as much as they you know spent time demoing it in there their demonstrations so along with the 3D touch there's also this feature that they're calling taptic feedback right so we got that first in the watch and now they've implemented the same taptic engine inside of the phone right it's basically just a different uh vibration motor different Rumble it is one of those things I think that when people uh could nitpick about like was they if they're uh looking at differences between generations of phones oh is the motor stronger this year you know is it annoying on the side of the bed and this one is a completely different motor have they ever upgraded the motor they've made it quieter they've made it stronger it totally is one of those things but it's always been a kind of rotational Rumble it's always been something that has that speeds up and slows down this one they can start it and stop it in a millisecond like they can do just one pulse or they can do two or three they have a lot of control over what it feels like and I think pulses is a great way to describe it now the big question we had because it is also something that they introduced first in the watch is does it feel localized does it feel like Happ to feedback if I'm pressing on one part of the screen right is it feel like it's bumping up where I touched in that part of the scen that's kind of the Holy Grill I think that's what we're that's what we want and I think if you if you like want to believe and you close your eyes you can imagine it does but it really just is across the entire phone that it gives you that pulse um and because it is aligned with 3D touch like if I'm hard pressing an icon I want to feel like that icon is pressing back at me it kind of does feel a little bit like that I think because they have so much control over when you get the feedback that lends it to a feeling like it's localized yeah that motor actually also adds a lot to the weight of the phone and something I noticed was that the 6s plus weighs a lot it feels Hefty if you compare to something like the 6 or the 6s the regular one or even last year's plus it is noticeably heavier yes um you look at phones and obviously they're metal aluminum body uh on the Android side some of the phones like the Nexus 5 which I really love I went back to pick that up over the weekend it's like wow that was a really light phone you know it's a higher aluminum this year too like it's more it's heavier than last year's phone because of this new frame which is a lot more rigid right right uh now another big feature that people really stress on and one of the reasons people upgrade their phones is for the camera the photo quality yeah um as someone who used the six before the 6s what's been your experience well the the S years they often upgrade the camera like um and this year they went from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels um I feel like it's you know it's clearly the best iPhone camera ever but it's not as huge a leap as maybe like when we went from 5 to 8 with the 4S I feel like the 4S was the first time that I ever said I don't need a point and shoot anymore um at this point like the 8 megapixel was pretty great and now it's a little bit better um I'm not using those extra pixels um for much because I don't I don't necessarily need them and it's not getting as much detail because the sensor is the same sensor as it was last year isn't it that's right yeah well it's a it's a same size sensor and when we think about camera phones point or even dslrs you look at the physical dimensions of that sensor now because the phone is only so big and the sensor is aligned with the lens it can use they actually have the same physical size sensor with the same lens but the sensor they're using now has more more pixels in there they are more slots for photons to drop in they found a way to different to isolate each of those slots too now in practice what that means is that when you look at a 12 megapixel photo from the 6s uh you can crop in more you can do better digital Zoom you get finer details in like hair for example but if you're just looking at a pH photo on your phone or even in a web browser or you do any additional level of compression um I don't think it's that big of a difference from the six in my comparison between what I think is still the best camera phone sensor um the LG G4 which also shoots in raw and has a wider aperture lens I think that that still beats out the iPhone um at least in detail now where the iPhone camera sensor really excels is quality uh skin tones and taking portraits of people and in photos of just faces it looks really nice yeah I will say when I do take a picture now and I zoom in it remains sharper than it used to so yeah there's definitely certainly an appreciation for more pixels there yes and of course there is Optical stabilization on the 6s plus models as it was last year as it was last year there's stabilization both in photos and also for video 30fps video now that to moves us to talking about video video uh another Flagship feature because there's a faster chip in here on the A9 it can now process 4K video and you made a really good point when you think about a 12 megapixel sensor the resolution of that is 4,000 by 3,000 and that 4,000 pixels wide is what you would need just about what you need Fork what you need to do 4K video if you had a 8 megapixel sensor it's like 3820 yeah right you could 3860 you couldn't um you couldn't actually process that um so 340 uh with the 4K video uh my big question was why would you need 4K video this is only a 1080p phone on the highest end yeah and not even near that on the 6s and the Apple TV even the new Apple TV doesn't support 4K video yet right so you need a 4K Mac well the 4K video does have it is a higher bit rate it's 50 megapixel bit rate and it does shoot at a maximum of 30 FPS at 4K the 1080p video you can shoot at 60 FPS that's still only about 26 megabits per second higher bit rate detail if you resize that or if you upload to something like YouTube YouTube supports 4K video yeah it will look better um in full screen um what I really wish though was that there was an intermediate because you either shoot between 1080 or 720 1080 or 4K there's no 2.7k you can't shoot 2560 by 1440 and I wish I mean the processing power can obviously handle it I wish Apple gave you that option to shoot that at like 60 FPS or 48 fps or something why would you want that for just for the higher frame rate the higher frame rate I think I think you know 4K 60 would be the dream or 4K 48 but 4K 30 the frame rate matters a lot for you're shooting action I think uh what it is also cool though and that's uh something brought into iOS 9 is you can actually pinch the zoom in your videos so that's while you're shooting uh no while you're Rie reviewing it oh yeah yeah when you're watching a video because this is only a 108p screen you can actually pinch and zoom in and see more detail if you're shooting a static shot or something I did I did that on my wife's phone which is the the last year's phone so maybe that's an iOS 9 it is an iOS 9 feature yeah cool yeah U there is of course a highspeed slow motion but uh hasn't changed that's 720p and that's 240 frames a second yep and that's the same as your highend GoPros yeah yeah and you can change that setting in the settings whatever frame rate you want to record at but the 240 is pretty awesome I mean if you have you know kids they all they want is for you to record in slow motion and it's a it's a pretty cool feature to have um I think the like something that's really really interesting for the younger folks is that it has an improved front-facing camera much improved now yeah so it's a it's a they went from went from what like a 1.2 they went from 1.2 to 5 megapixels on the front-facing camera I'm not a selfie guy personally but I know that I'm very alone in that it's like this point of Pride I think for uh for internet olds we're not selfie guys but if you do a Skype FaceTime it's going to look better it's true it's a better sensor in the front 5 megapixels and also the phone flashes the entire screen it's a novel idea I think other phones have done it before but now the iPhone do it's now the same resolution as the iPhone 4 regular camera was yeah you know it's a great camera yeah it's some good context um also with the cameras one thing we want to call it is the idea of live photos Apple did make a big deal about that in their in their announcement of the phone yeah uh the idea of a live photo it's just a JPEG stacked on top of a 12 to 15 FPS move file uh kind of packaged in so really integrated into iOS and the Mac e system um like 2 and half seconds before and after your shot is taken right so the the the camera processor is continuously rolling and when you take the photo it will not only stap the photo but also capture time before and after and I think I've actually kind grown accustomed to it I like it I do turn it on and off so I know if I'm taking just you know picture of food that's not moving I'm not going to turn it on there's no penalty for leaving it on really except it does take up a little more space about twice as much space as a regular high resolution photo um so it can add up over time um and then you activate it in your photo roll by just hard pressing the screen and it is something that will be brought into the photos for for Mac for Mac OS yeah I you also you know you do have to hard press it in order to view the whole footage but what's interesting is if you're scrolling through your photos when you come to a live photo as it Scrolls on the screen you get this almost Harry Potter like animation that freezes on your photo so let you know quue you up that is a live photo um what I I don't like is that there a lot of places to view them outside the Mac ecosystem yeah I think Facebook was inter like experimenting with you know live photo style you know profile pictures so maybe with so many people with iPhones that's gives them a reason to incorporate that feature and I also found that when I'm thinking about taking a live photo like a kid for example you know one of our friends children like doing funny things I focus Less on taking the photo and the photo itself ends up being kind of bad so you're kind of taking a short video clip yeah it's almost like that right and you can think of it two ways if you want to just take the photo and suddenly have as a bonus Little Live photo live video or if I'm thinking like okay I want to capture this 4 second moment and the photo is kind of just the thumbnail yeah for that it is an interesting concept I mean you have to normally when you take a photo once you're done clicking you're you think you're done but if you're thinking about taking a live photo you have to hold it even after you've taken the photo you know to continue to capture that moment in time and apple will be bringing in a software update so that it'll turn off the live photo if you just take your phone away if you like lower your phone said that yeah oh that's interesting it hasn't been implemented just yet um yeah uh another thing in addition to live photos um well Siri is a little better well Siri listens to you all the time now which is a feature that you guys had on on Android for years now yeah there are some dedicated co-processors on some phones like Motorola's phones had the co-processor so you can say um Okay Google and it'll pop up the search and Siri in the last generation uh with iOS update you can plug it in so as as it was plugged in she would do the same thing but now she listens all the time so so you have to train your voice yeah well if what do you mean so if you have to say that's right so now she makes you say Hey Siri a few times and say your name and things like that but if you say Hey Siri anytime although she's not waking up now hey Siri no nothing no neither of us and that's the thing with with this feature is more hit than Miss in my experience you mean the other way around more no or more Miss and hit yeah yes yeah I mean and maybe that's just because I've become so accustomed to using Amazon's product the echo which is Flawless when it comes to listening to you in a room uh the mic on the iPhone was not designed for that so I don't I mean I understand that it's not as perfect um but it's certainly not a feature that I'm using at all because it if I ever was using it before it was when I was in the car and when it was plugged in so it worked anyway and I'm I'm just it's just not a feature that um has any utility for me right now it's almost one of those features where when it works I feel like oh awesome it worked this time right um and you know coming from and roid I really do miss the direct access to Google Now you told me you can actually have Siri just Google anything by saying Google in front of the phrase right in front of the question yeah for a Google query but you certainly don't have your Google Now stuff or you know access to the other Google services yeah um now uh we mentioned the processor a little earlier and the processor the new A9 is what allows for like the 4K encoding um I found that this phone is really fast it's it's nuts fast yeah and the fact that it can shoot 4K video from a technical standpoint is just blow away I mean the shoot and edit in iMovie yes I mean it's amazing that you can do this now basically desktop level processing on a phone that's right you can actually I hadn't touch IM moving in such a long time and shooting 4K video without being able to layer on on top and clip and edit it does drain a lot of power uh but you can do it I mean that's that's amazing um I think people should experiment with that the S with with the four first S phone was a 3Gs and people said that stood for Speed I think it's always kind of stood for Speed cu the S phones are always a massive speed improvement over speed bump over the previous generation yeah now another thing that's really fast and maybe too fast Touch ID I think fast I I mean I understand that they wanted to improve the speed because who wants to make people wait but there's one point that I actually do want to wait and that's when I touched this to check my lock screen to see what my notifications are maybe I haven't gotten them all in my watch or whatever reason I have so I've had I've what's your solution is if you want to get to your lock screen and actually watch it you use the power button on the side yes theep button otherwise if you don't I mean if you just tap your your lock button the touch ID is so fast that you're in instantaneously I've taken to pressing it with my fingernail ah you know works just as well I mean Touch ID is just so well integrated it's one really one of the great features of iOS and a testing to how Apple incorporates the hardware and the software I don't think they'll ever give us an option to add like a second delay to slow it down cuz they want you to access it and when you're using it to input passwords I mean when you're actually in the app store or if you're using it to get through a password to get into your bank app or using it to make a payment you want it to be fast so that's the main utility for it makes sense having not having to type in my 30 character password for one password to access everything using Touch ID has been that's that's changed my life I I will say um that there's something called um Family Sharing I don't know you probably don't use that with your house do it's a way that everybody can have their own Apple account um what do they call it Apple ID um but everybody goes back to One credit card and you get approval from the people who own the credit card so the kids can say I want this app that and they just hit it they say request I get a notification tap if I want to buy touch ID it used to be Touch ID to allow the purchase no longer for whatever reason they disabled that um and so you have to type in your password I wish that they would bring that back for Family Sharing because that was a that was the my most use that was my most used uh Touch ID was for Family Sharing and you only can still hold five fingerprints on on your phone that's right that's an interesting limitation yeah who knows why maybe this the amount of ram that they have in this chip because they're very protective of those that fingerprint information they they've said publicly there's no way to access it it's all very internal we cue this special chip and the C chip says is that is that the right fingerprint yes or not but yes or no but there's no way to get those fingerprints out of there and so maybe that chip doesn't have enough RAM maybe they don't want you to have too many false positives if they let you put in 20 fingerprints it increases the chance of false positives who knows but yeah five print is what you get two thumbs two index fingers and a pinky finger when I'm eating chicken wings see I I have I get along with just my two thumbs but I do have my fingers otherwise I don't know five is enough for me uh what's been your experience with battery life on this phone I haven't had a problem with iPhone batteries in years uh I mean this is improved again which is impressive as always given that the power has increased and it's using more power um but I charge it every night and I use it all day long I'm never at 0% what people have discovered is you know there was a smaller capacity battery in the 6s as opposed to the 6 but you haven't noticed any difference in the 6s plus uh the plus model had a great battery life will really liked the battery life on his phone last year and he's been disappointed um I think it's like good for a full day easily sometimes I get a little over a day and a half but it really depends what you're using now I actually have the Samsung chip in here there are two models of chips there's the tsmc version and the Samsung version and in some benchmarks you can tell the Sams chips actually drain battery faster with CPU intensive tasks uh if you're doing things like looking for GPS all the time if you're running benchmarks right I mean that's basically what it is I mean didn't Apple come out and say that is a that's not really fair of them to do that test because it's not real world use right and I I think you can make the argument that in real world use in my experience I haven't had short battery by any matter any stent but the fact that even with a benchmark it shows that there is maybe a sign ific statistically significant difference it says something about how the chips are actually different that you're not going to have the same experience and maybe the real world use today could be equal but who knows about apps in the future if there becomes a killer app that is CPU intensive then you're going to get a different experience between the two phones fa point so it is something to look out for you know if you buy an iPhone 6 download the app check out which processor you have and if you have the Samsung one that one maybe over time uh won't have as long battery like Apple's not going to do any Replacements though based on your processor are they no but you can I guess pay the pay it for the restocking fee um something interesting that I think iix it discovered and we haven't actually been able to test this is it's more water resistant yeah that's interesting I mean it's almost like obviously if you're going to make a product more water resistant and I think they found like actual lining in there like a gasket like it's not just like a few screws were changed they actually spent some money in R&D in order to make this more water resistant it seems like it was a feature that they either just decided not to promote or is beneficial to Apple because it means you know fewer repairs yes and for people I know for the the plus it makes doesn't make a lot of sense to have it tied to your wristband like people who run with their phones uh that was a big problem in the old iPhone days it's just a nice thing um it's not definitely something not to go swimming with or even take a shower with but you have to worry less if you know for example you accidentally spill water on it um it's not going to get in all the nooks and crannies and fry your phone yeah it's not a reason to get the phone but it's a nice thing to have if you have the phone yeah um as far as capacity goes um this is this the first year you can do 128 gigs in the phone I think you can do it before as you do it last year okay but they still offer that 16 GB version I know the iPhone 6s is offered in three capacity sizes 16 GB 64 GB and 128 GB it makes really no sense to me that 16 GB is the lower end it's very strange it's not it's not a doubling anymore it's a it's a quadrupling for 16 to uh 64 it's very strange and the same price difference and if you're talking about a device where 4K video is one of their more key features it takes up a lot of space I I'm already on the 64 gig model I'm using I'm already down to less than like 10 gigs left just because of that the fact is if if there's any question at all about what size you should get never don't even consider the 16 gab version right I think there is a use case for the 16 GB version but ironically it requires more technical Savvy um than you know most people probably even care to think about that's right uh I think a lot of people come up and ask you know do you should I buy the iPhone 6s if you have only the $200 plus contract or $300 you want to spend X fixed amount of money I would tell them actually to buy last year's version and get the 64 gig as opposed to buying this year's version and get the 16 gig at the same price you're going to make better use of that storage um so let's jump to our conclusions and uh what do you think what do you think about this year's iPhone I mean just based on what you just said that's sort of along the lines of what I would say as well because I think last year's phone is practically as good from a utility standpoint un like every S phone I have enjoyed buying um the 3Gs had an awesome speed you could record video for the first time you know the 4S had Siri and it had uh you know an amazing new camera uh the 5S had Touch ID like features that actually had a real difference in how I used the phone and and what I used it for this year you know Touch ID is is interesting but as I'm not touch ID I'm sorry 3D touch is kind of interesting but as we said it hasn't been really embraced yet or the apps haven't come out yet so it's hard to tell and there's really no other feature that um has transformed the way I use the phone uh it's still it's faster it's got higher resolution it's got some great new features but it's really the first iPhone I've ever had that you know I would have been okay with last year's phone honestly Yeah Siri was obviously a really big feature and I think if Apple had come out and partner with a lot of program a lot of app developers and made a whole giant ecosystem of 3D touch enabled apps and done some really cool things then maybe that changes the daily use um but if you're just talking about getting to your selfies quicker or checking your direct messages on Twitter half a second quicker you know it's not a reason to buy a new phone this year if you already have the six I feel like this this phone marks the point of diminishing returns in terms of iPhone features I'm curious what they can do in the future that really says to me I'm going to need that Fe that that's amazing I want to be to be able to do that I don't what that is I mean maybe you know it's like Oculus support or something like that you know fingers crossed but it would be something it has to be something that's pretty major because all the improvements now are I don't want to say incremental but they don't have the impact that they used to and you also still have the software updates every year with a new version of iOS 9 and I think iOS 9 especially in the iPads is where that transformative changes those transformative changes happen this year when you have now that we can do real split screen multitasking that is a big deal you know we can actually do two apps at the same time that changes the way that you use the iPad very cool well those are our Impressions after a month of using the new iPhones the 6s and the 6s plus uh if you have a new iPhone or if you're curious about whether you should upgrade we'd love to hear from you please post a comment in the comment section below like our video subscribe to our channel uh but until the next we see you next time that's Jeremy I'm Norm bye byehey guys it's Norm from tested and I'm Jeremy from tested that's right Jeremy is here with me today because we are going to review the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s plus Apple's new iPhones for the year uh now the phones have been out for a while they' out for about a month we got them day one and we've waited to do the review because we wanted to really live with the phones Y and we're kind of come at them from a different perspectives you as someone who's owned every single iPhone every iPhone and me as someone who had all the iPhones until the five and then switched the Android and I love Android and then coming back for the 6s so the 4S was your last phone I had the five for a few months the five was your last phone yeah and I gave that to my parents uh and the way we're going to structure this conversation is we're actually going to talk about I think 12 uh Salient points the 12 things uh features and things we've notice about using the new 6s phones uh for this year um some of that's going going to be talking about speeds and feeds some of that's going to talk about user experience and at the end uh give you some recommendation recommendations as well if you're still on the fence um so first thing I think the big Flagship feature and there are many of them but is uh is 3D touch M and uh that's something you're not going to get maybe going forward you're going to see on a lot of Apple products but it is in uh it has appeared before in some capacity on the watch for example that's right in force touch um and the way it works it's well integrated with iOS is that the the screen now can sense pressure and Apple has uh activated and given the apps the ability to detect different levels of pressure and you can press it one level of hardness or press it deeper to do things like activate shortcuts it's sort of an analog feel like it's not just two levels that which was how they pitched it it's actually more of like a sensation of pushing harder and harder and harder and harder till you reach different thresholds right which I think is great now the glass doesn't actually Bend or to press it's all in kind of the the software in in detecting you know the micro movements of how much pressure you're putting onto the phone the way it's implemented though I think a lot of people called it out as like a rightclick you know for example if you're on Windows or if you're in Mac OS and you right click on a mouse you see a context menu you see your properties you create shortcut all that stuff it's a way to do everything that you could do even opening an app that's right uh with 3D touch on iOS it's not a right click what it is is actually a menu of shortcuts within the app it's a way for you to access for example in the camera going directly to shooting video or directly to shooting a selfie camera and as shortcuts I think that's a really great way to use this Contex sensitive menu sure yeah the problem though is that nobody's supporting it yet besides Apple that's you know we're already a month in and I don't think any of Google's apps support it yet and as someone who uses inbox for email that would probably be my most used uh 3D Touch app but it just doesn't support it and unfortunately there's no way to tell which apps do support it you just have to test it you have to try every single icon and if it doesn't support it it sort of blurs out the screen and it goes uhuh right right it's one of those things that uh because app updates come pretty frequently and overnight every time I see oh there app updates I go to test it out and try and hold and press hard on that icon and more often than not it's just giving me that uhuh right no no context sensitive no right click no no shortcut menu it's a new feature that say as much Hardware as it is software you know unlike like a camera Improvement which is just immediate and you can you can appreciate it all at once this because it has its software component it requires people to get on board and implement it right and there's no way right now I think for developers to even let you customize what those shortcut options are um it could you know if a developer wants to give you five shortcut options but you only use two of them or you want to change the order of them you can't do that right now so hopefully going forward that's something you can use and even Apple's own apps I want to see 3D touch use more frequently it's a a feature that has a ton of potential for power users especially now do you use that peek and pop for example when if you're in messages and clicking harder a link for an address to pop up a map or show a preview of a website well it's a cool feature but I don't get too many text messages that include those kind of links you know it's mostly just conversational um I do use it in the photo app it's a way to sort of enlarge the the grid of photos so you can take a look at them quickly um so no I wouldn't say I use a peek and pop as much as they you know spent time demoing it in there their demonstrations so along with the 3D touch there's also this feature that they're calling taptic feedback right so we got that first in the watch and now they've implemented the same taptic engine inside of the phone right it's basically just a different uh vibration motor different Rumble it is one of those things I think that when people uh could nitpick about like was they if they're uh looking at differences between generations of phones oh is the motor stronger this year you know is it annoying on the side of the bed and this one is a completely different motor have they ever upgraded the motor they've made it quieter they've made it stronger it totally is one of those things but it's always been a kind of rotational Rumble it's always been something that has that speeds up and slows down this one they can start it and stop it in a millisecond like they can do just one pulse or they can do two or three they have a lot of control over what it feels like and I think pulses is a great way to describe it now the big question we had because it is also something that they introduced first in the watch is does it feel localized does it feel like Happ to feedback if I'm pressing on one part of the screen right is it feel like it's bumping up where I touched in that part of the scen that's kind of the Holy Grill I think that's what we're that's what we want and I think if you if you like want to believe and you close your eyes you can imagine it does but it really just is across the entire phone that it gives you that pulse um and because it is aligned with 3D touch like if I'm hard pressing an icon I want to feel like that icon is pressing back at me it kind of does feel a little bit like that I think because they have so much control over when you get the feedback that lends it to a feeling like it's localized yeah that motor actually also adds a lot to the weight of the phone and something I noticed was that the 6s plus weighs a lot it feels Hefty if you compare to something like the 6 or the 6s the regular one or even last year's plus it is noticeably heavier yes um you look at phones and obviously they're metal aluminum body uh on the Android side some of the phones like the Nexus 5 which I really love I went back to pick that up over the weekend it's like wow that was a really light phone you know it's a higher aluminum this year too like it's more it's heavier than last year's phone because of this new frame which is a lot more rigid right right uh now another big feature that people really stress on and one of the reasons people upgrade their phones is for the camera the photo quality yeah um as someone who used the six before the 6s what's been your experience well the the S years they often upgrade the camera like um and this year they went from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels um I feel like it's you know it's clearly the best iPhone camera ever but it's not as huge a leap as maybe like when we went from 5 to 8 with the 4S I feel like the 4S was the first time that I ever said I don't need a point and shoot anymore um at this point like the 8 megapixel was pretty great and now it's a little bit better um I'm not using those extra pixels um for much because I don't I don't necessarily need them and it's not getting as much detail because the sensor is the same sensor as it was last year isn't it that's right yeah well it's a it's a same size sensor and when we think about camera phones point or even dslrs you look at the physical dimensions of that sensor now because the phone is only so big and the sensor is aligned with the lens it can use they actually have the same physical size sensor with the same lens but the sensor they're using now has more more pixels in there they are more slots for photons to drop in they found a way to different to isolate each of those slots too now in practice what that means is that when you look at a 12 megapixel photo from the 6s uh you can crop in more you can do better digital Zoom you get finer details in like hair for example but if you're just looking at a pH photo on your phone or even in a web browser or you do any additional level of compression um I don't think it's that big of a difference from the six in my comparison between what I think is still the best camera phone sensor um the LG G4 which also shoots in raw and has a wider aperture lens I think that that still beats out the iPhone um at least in detail now where the iPhone camera sensor really excels is quality uh skin tones and taking portraits of people and in photos of just faces it looks really nice yeah I will say when I do take a picture now and I zoom in it remains sharper than it used to so yeah there's definitely certainly an appreciation for more pixels there yes and of course there is Optical stabilization on the 6s plus models as it was last year as it was last year there's stabilization both in photos and also for video 30fps video now that to moves us to talking about video video uh another Flagship feature because there's a faster chip in here on the A9 it can now process 4K video and you made a really good point when you think about a 12 megapixel sensor the resolution of that is 4,000 by 3,000 and that 4,000 pixels wide is what you would need just about what you need Fork what you need to do 4K video if you had a 8 megapixel sensor it's like 3820 yeah right you could 3860 you couldn't um you couldn't actually process that um so 340 uh with the 4K video uh my big question was why would you need 4K video this is only a 1080p phone on the highest end yeah and not even near that on the 6s and the Apple TV even the new Apple TV doesn't support 4K video yet right so you need a 4K Mac well the 4K video does have it is a higher bit rate it's 50 megapixel bit rate and it does shoot at a maximum of 30 FPS at 4K the 1080p video you can shoot at 60 FPS that's still only about 26 megabits per second higher bit rate detail if you resize that or if you upload to something like YouTube YouTube supports 4K video yeah it will look better um in full screen um what I really wish though was that there was an intermediate because you either shoot between 1080 or 720 1080 or 4K there's no 2.7k you can't shoot 2560 by 1440 and I wish I mean the processing power can obviously handle it I wish Apple gave you that option to shoot that at like 60 FPS or 48 fps or something why would you want that for just for the higher frame rate the higher frame rate I think I think you know 4K 60 would be the dream or 4K 48 but 4K 30 the frame rate matters a lot for you're shooting action I think uh what it is also cool though and that's uh something brought into iOS 9 is you can actually pinch the zoom in your videos so that's while you're shooting uh no while you're Rie reviewing it oh yeah yeah when you're watching a video because this is only a 108p screen you can actually pinch and zoom in and see more detail if you're shooting a static shot or something I did I did that on my wife's phone which is the the last year's phone so maybe that's an iOS 9 it is an iOS 9 feature yeah cool yeah U there is of course a highspeed slow motion but uh hasn't changed that's 720p and that's 240 frames a second yep and that's the same as your highend GoPros yeah yeah and you can change that setting in the settings whatever frame rate you want to record at but the 240 is pretty awesome I mean if you have you know kids they all they want is for you to record in slow motion and it's a it's a pretty cool feature to have um I think the like something that's really really interesting for the younger folks is that it has an improved front-facing camera much improved now yeah so it's a it's a they went from went from what like a 1.2 they went from 1.2 to 5 megapixels on the front-facing camera I'm not a selfie guy personally but I know that I'm very alone in that it's like this point of Pride I think for uh for internet olds we're not selfie guys but if you do a Skype FaceTime it's going to look better it's true it's a better sensor in the front 5 megapixels and also the phone flashes the entire screen it's a novel idea I think other phones have done it before but now the iPhone do it's now the same resolution as the iPhone 4 regular camera was yeah you know it's a great camera yeah it's some good context um also with the cameras one thing we want to call it is the idea of live photos Apple did make a big deal about that in their in their announcement of the phone yeah uh the idea of a live photo it's just a JPEG stacked on top of a 12 to 15 FPS move file uh kind of packaged in so really integrated into iOS and the Mac e system um like 2 and half seconds before and after your shot is taken right so the the the camera processor is continuously rolling and when you take the photo it will not only stap the photo but also capture time before and after and I think I've actually kind grown accustomed to it I like it I do turn it on and off so I know if I'm taking just you know picture of food that's not moving I'm not going to turn it on there's no penalty for leaving it on really except it does take up a little more space about twice as much space as a regular high resolution photo um so it can add up over time um and then you activate it in your photo roll by just hard pressing the screen and it is something that will be brought into the photos for for Mac for Mac OS yeah I you also you know you do have to hard press it in order to view the whole footage but what's interesting is if you're scrolling through your photos when you come to a live photo as it Scrolls on the screen you get this almost Harry Potter like animation that freezes on your photo so let you know quue you up that is a live photo um what I I don't like is that there a lot of places to view them outside the Mac ecosystem yeah I think Facebook was inter like experimenting with you know live photo style you know profile pictures so maybe with so many people with iPhones that's gives them a reason to incorporate that feature and I also found that when I'm thinking about taking a live photo like a kid for example you know one of our friends children like doing funny things I focus Less on taking the photo and the photo itself ends up being kind of bad so you're kind of taking a short video clip yeah it's almost like that right and you can think of it two ways if you want to just take the photo and suddenly have as a bonus Little Live photo live video or if I'm thinking like okay I want to capture this 4 second moment and the photo is kind of just the thumbnail yeah for that it is an interesting concept I mean you have to normally when you take a photo once you're done clicking you're you think you're done but if you're thinking about taking a live photo you have to hold it even after you've taken the photo you know to continue to capture that moment in time and apple will be bringing in a software update so that it'll turn off the live photo if you just take your phone away if you like lower your phone said that yeah oh that's interesting it hasn't been implemented just yet um yeah uh another thing in addition to live photos um well Siri is a little better well Siri listens to you all the time now which is a feature that you guys had on on Android for years now yeah there are some dedicated co-processors on some phones like Motorola's phones had the co-processor so you can say um Okay Google and it'll pop up the search and Siri in the last generation uh with iOS update you can plug it in so as as it was plugged in she would do the same thing but now she listens all the time so so you have to train your voice yeah well if what do you mean so if you have to say that's right so now she makes you say Hey Siri a few times and say your name and things like that but if you say Hey Siri anytime although she's not waking up now hey Siri no nothing no neither of us and that's the thing with with this feature is more hit than Miss in my experience you mean the other way around more no or more Miss and hit yeah yes yeah I mean and maybe that's just because I've become so accustomed to using Amazon's product the echo which is Flawless when it comes to listening to you in a room uh the mic on the iPhone was not designed for that so I don't I mean I understand that it's not as perfect um but it's certainly not a feature that I'm using at all because it if I ever was using it before it was when I was in the car and when it was plugged in so it worked anyway and I'm I'm just it's just not a feature that um has any utility for me right now it's almost one of those features where when it works I feel like oh awesome it worked this time right um and you know coming from and roid I really do miss the direct access to Google Now you told me you can actually have Siri just Google anything by saying Google in front of the phrase right in front of the question yeah for a Google query but you certainly don't have your Google Now stuff or you know access to the other Google services yeah um now uh we mentioned the processor a little earlier and the processor the new A9 is what allows for like the 4K encoding um I found that this phone is really fast it's it's nuts fast yeah and the fact that it can shoot 4K video from a technical standpoint is just blow away I mean the shoot and edit in iMovie yes I mean it's amazing that you can do this now basically desktop level processing on a phone that's right you can actually I hadn't touch IM moving in such a long time and shooting 4K video without being able to layer on on top and clip and edit it does drain a lot of power uh but you can do it I mean that's that's amazing um I think people should experiment with that the S with with the four first S phone was a 3Gs and people said that stood for Speed I think it's always kind of stood for Speed cu the S phones are always a massive speed improvement over speed bump over the previous generation yeah now another thing that's really fast and maybe too fast Touch ID I think fast I I mean I understand that they wanted to improve the speed because who wants to make people wait but there's one point that I actually do want to wait and that's when I touched this to check my lock screen to see what my notifications are maybe I haven't gotten them all in my watch or whatever reason I have so I've had I've what's your solution is if you want to get to your lock screen and actually watch it you use the power button on the side yes theep button otherwise if you don't I mean if you just tap your your lock button the touch ID is so fast that you're in instantaneously I've taken to pressing it with my fingernail ah you know works just as well I mean Touch ID is just so well integrated it's one really one of the great features of iOS and a testing to how Apple incorporates the hardware and the software I don't think they'll ever give us an option to add like a second delay to slow it down cuz they want you to access it and when you're using it to input passwords I mean when you're actually in the app store or if you're using it to get through a password to get into your bank app or using it to make a payment you want it to be fast so that's the main utility for it makes sense having not having to type in my 30 character password for one password to access everything using Touch ID has been that's that's changed my life I I will say um that there's something called um Family Sharing I don't know you probably don't use that with your house do it's a way that everybody can have their own Apple account um what do they call it Apple ID um but everybody goes back to One credit card and you get approval from the people who own the credit card so the kids can say I want this app that and they just hit it they say request I get a notification tap if I want to buy touch ID it used to be Touch ID to allow the purchase no longer for whatever reason they disabled that um and so you have to type in your password I wish that they would bring that back for Family Sharing because that was a that was the my most use that was my most used uh Touch ID was for Family Sharing and you only can still hold five fingerprints on on your phone that's right that's an interesting limitation yeah who knows why maybe this the amount of ram that they have in this chip because they're very protective of those that fingerprint information they they've said publicly there's no way to access it it's all very internal we cue this special chip and the C chip says is that is that the right fingerprint yes or not but yes or no but there's no way to get those fingerprints out of there and so maybe that chip doesn't have enough RAM maybe they don't want you to have too many false positives if they let you put in 20 fingerprints it increases the chance of false positives who knows but yeah five print is what you get two thumbs two index fingers and a pinky finger when I'm eating chicken wings see I I have I get along with just my two thumbs but I do have my fingers otherwise I don't know five is enough for me uh what's been your experience with battery life on this phone I haven't had a problem with iPhone batteries in years uh I mean this is improved again which is impressive as always given that the power has increased and it's using more power um but I charge it every night and I use it all day long I'm never at 0% what people have discovered is you know there was a smaller capacity battery in the 6s as opposed to the 6 but you haven't noticed any difference in the 6s plus uh the plus model had a great battery life will really liked the battery life on his phone last year and he's been disappointed um I think it's like good for a full day easily sometimes I get a little over a day and a half but it really depends what you're using now I actually have the Samsung chip in here there are two models of chips there's the tsmc version and the Samsung version and in some benchmarks you can tell the Sams chips actually drain battery faster with CPU intensive tasks uh if you're doing things like looking for GPS all the time if you're running benchmarks right I mean that's basically what it is I mean didn't Apple come out and say that is a that's not really fair of them to do that test because it's not real world use right and I I think you can make the argument that in real world use in my experience I haven't had short battery by any matter any stent but the fact that even with a benchmark it shows that there is maybe a sign ific statistically significant difference it says something about how the chips are actually different that you're not going to have the same experience and maybe the real world use today could be equal but who knows about apps in the future if there becomes a killer app that is CPU intensive then you're going to get a different experience between the two phones fa point so it is something to look out for you know if you buy an iPhone 6 download the app check out which processor you have and if you have the Samsung one that one maybe over time uh won't have as long battery like Apple's not going to do any Replacements though based on your processor are they no but you can I guess pay the pay it for the restocking fee um something interesting that I think iix it discovered and we haven't actually been able to test this is it's more water resistant yeah that's interesting I mean it's almost like obviously if you're going to make a product more water resistant and I think they found like actual lining in there like a gasket like it's not just like a few screws were changed they actually spent some money in R&D in order to make this more water resistant it seems like it was a feature that they either just decided not to promote or is beneficial to Apple because it means you know fewer repairs yes and for people I know for the the plus it makes doesn't make a lot of sense to have it tied to your wristband like people who run with their phones uh that was a big problem in the old iPhone days it's just a nice thing um it's not definitely something not to go swimming with or even take a shower with but you have to worry less if you know for example you accidentally spill water on it um it's not going to get in all the nooks and crannies and fry your phone yeah it's not a reason to get the phone but it's a nice thing to have if you have the phone yeah um as far as capacity goes um this is this the first year you can do 128 gigs in the phone I think you can do it before as you do it last year okay but they still offer that 16 GB version I know the iPhone 6s is offered in three capacity sizes 16 GB 64 GB and 128 GB it makes really no sense to me that 16 GB is the lower end it's very strange it's not it's not a doubling anymore it's a it's a quadrupling for 16 to uh 64 it's very strange and the same price difference and if you're talking about a device where 4K video is one of their more key features it takes up a lot of space I I'm already on the 64 gig model I'm using I'm already down to less than like 10 gigs left just because of that the fact is if if there's any question at all about what size you should get never don't even consider the 16 gab version right I think there is a use case for the 16 GB version but ironically it requires more technical Savvy um than you know most people probably even care to think about that's right uh I think a lot of people come up and ask you know do you should I buy the iPhone 6s if you have only the $200 plus contract or $300 you want to spend X fixed amount of money I would tell them actually to buy last year's version and get the 64 gig as opposed to buying this year's version and get the 16 gig at the same price you're going to make better use of that storage um so let's jump to our conclusions and uh what do you think what do you think about this year's iPhone I mean just based on what you just said that's sort of along the lines of what I would say as well because I think last year's phone is practically as good from a utility standpoint un like every S phone I have enjoyed buying um the 3Gs had an awesome speed you could record video for the first time you know the 4S had Siri and it had uh you know an amazing new camera uh the 5S had Touch ID like features that actually had a real difference in how I used the phone and and what I used it for this year you know Touch ID is is interesting but as I'm not touch ID I'm sorry 3D touch is kind of interesting but as we said it hasn't been really embraced yet or the apps haven't come out yet so it's hard to tell and there's really no other feature that um has transformed the way I use the phone uh it's still it's faster it's got higher resolution it's got some great new features but it's really the first iPhone I've ever had that you know I would have been okay with last year's phone honestly Yeah Siri was obviously a really big feature and I think if Apple had come out and partner with a lot of program a lot of app developers and made a whole giant ecosystem of 3D touch enabled apps and done some really cool things then maybe that changes the daily use um but if you're just talking about getting to your selfies quicker or checking your direct messages on Twitter half a second quicker you know it's not a reason to buy a new phone this year if you already have the six I feel like this this phone marks the point of diminishing returns in terms of iPhone features I'm curious what they can do in the future that really says to me I'm going to need that Fe that that's amazing I want to be to be able to do that I don't what that is I mean maybe you know it's like Oculus support or something like that you know fingers crossed but it would be something it has to be something that's pretty major because all the improvements now are I don't want to say incremental but they don't have the impact that they used to and you also still have the software updates every year with a new version of iOS 9 and I think iOS 9 especially in the iPads is where that transformative changes those transformative changes happen this year when you have now that we can do real split screen multitasking that is a big deal you know we can actually do two apps at the same time that changes the way that you use the iPad very cool well those are our Impressions after a month of using the new iPhones the 6s and the 6s plus uh if you have a new iPhone or if you're curious about whether you should upgrade we'd love to hear from you please post a comment in the comment section below like our video subscribe to our channel uh but until the next we see you next time that's Jeremy I'm Norm bye bye\n"