In Apple's iPhone 6s, the "s" could stand for shutterbug, sensitivity, or even for signal. This year's iPhone is faster. As always. It's also made from stronger materials, though the design is otherwise unchanged. The more important jumps come in camera quality, signal reception, and the new 3D Touch pressure-sensitive screen, all of which may push existing iPhone 6 owners over the edge to buy the new smartphone. That's enough to earn the iPhone 6s our Editors' Choice on T-Mobile.
Price and Physical Design
The iPhone 6s starts at $649 for a 16GB model. The 64GB model costs $749, and the 128GB model I reviewed costs $849. If you can afford it, you should skip the 16GB model. I'll get to why a bit later.
The iPhone 6s looks exactly like the iPhone 6. At 5.44 by 2.64 by 0.28 inches (HWD) and 5.04 ounces, it's actually a teeny bit heavier and a little bit thicker than its predecessor (by 0.01-inch and 0.49-ounce), but you really won't notice.
We tested the 6s with a range of iPhone 6 cases. It fit into all of the soft cases, as well as Incipio and Mophie battery cases. It didn't fit into a Pelican Progear Voyager, a hard clear case that snaps all the way around the phone. You may have similar trouble with Otterbox cases.
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Just like the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6s has a matte metal back and a glass front with a 4.7-inch, 1,344-by-750-pixel screen. Apple says the display is made from a new Corning glass formulation that's tougher than last year's. Below the screen is the home button, which is also the Touch ID fingerprint sensor. On the back, the camera lens is now slightly larger, and there's an "s" under the word "iPhone" so you don't mix it up with the 6.
Some folks out there say the iPhone is now water-resistant. Apple says it isn't, and we have a policy of not dunking phones that the manufacturer says aren't water-resistant. We suggest you do the same.
Along with the existing black, gold, and silver models, there's a new color, Rose Gold. It's a nice metallic pale pink.
From left: Galaxy S6, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6, iPhone 5.
Wireless and Battery Life
Apple has kicked wireless reception up a notch, upgrading from last year's Qualcomm 9x25 modem to the newer 9x35. In Qualcomm parlance, that moves Apple from an X5 modem to an X7 modem. In our tests, that made for better Wi-Fi performance, and support for Category 6 (rather than Category 4) LTE and new frequency bands promise better speeds on AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.
As before, the iPhone 6s supports more frequency bands than any other phone on the market today, and all models except Sprint's are unlocked by default if purchased at full price, directly from Apple. That makes the iPhone 6s the ideal phone for global roaming.
There are two models of the 6s, differentiated only by support for AT&T's new Band 30. Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon sell the A1687 model, which lacks band 30. AT&T is the only carrier on earth to use that band, so unless you're planning on switching to AT&T, it shouldn't make a difference to you.
Call quality on the iPhone 6s is solid. The earpiece is loud, noise cancellation is pleasantly aggressive, and the phone supports both voice-over-LTE and T-Mobile's WiFi calling. Interestingly, the main speaker on the bottom is 1-2dB quieter than the iPhone 6, while the earpiece is louder; neither change will affect your conversations that much.
Wi-Fi performance has improved dramatically over the iPhone 6, and now matches the performance of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy Note 5. Close to a router with a 100Mbps Verizon FiOS connection, I got up to 40 percent better speed with the iPhone 6s than with the iPhone 6. With a very weak Wi-Fi signal, I got 5Mbps down on the iPhone 6s as opposed to 1Mbps on the iPhone 6. It's safe to say you will see better Wi-Fi speeds on this phone.
That said, watch out for a key setting in iOS 9 that can cause you some grief if you're on a limited data plan. Wi-Fi Assist lowers the threshold at which the phone flips from Wi-Fi back to cellular, and users are reporting that it's led to surprising increases in cellular data usage. It's on by default; turn it off in Settings > Cellular.
The iPhone 6s has a slightly smaller battery than the iPhone 6, and it showed ever-so-slightly less battery life on our admittedly brutal LTE streaming test: 4 hours, 21 minutes, as compared with 4 hours, 33 minutes on the iPhone 6. In our test, we stream a full-screen video over LTE with display brightness set to maximum. In typical use, the two phones had just about the same lifetime on a single charge in my test period.
The Special T-Mobile Consideration
If you have T-Mobile, take a look at this 700MHz map. If you are in one of the pink areas, burn all of your other iPhones and get this one immediately.
Unlike all previous Apple phones, the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus can use a new swathe of spectrum - band 12 - that is greatly improving reception in some of T-Mobile's most congested metro areas. In New York City, for instance, I found it got LTE service when the 6 would often stall out with a 4G HSPA indicator.
The difference appeared to be more than just 700MHz support, too. When I went into a no-signal area and then came back out, the iPhone 6s recovered from the no-signal state about 10 seconds faster than the iPhone 6 did. Perhaps the Qualcomm 9x35 modem in here polls networks more frequently than the 9x25 does.
The 700MHz support alone isn't going to solve T-Mobile's coverage issues. Traveling up to Orange County, NY, about 40 miles north of New York City, all of my T-Mobile phones struggled along in 2G. But in places where T-Mobile is supposed to have coverage and the iPhone 6 struggles, the 6s and the 6s Plus do significantly better.
Performance and 3D Touch
The iPhone 6s is much more powerful than the iPhone 6. In our benchmarks, the 1.8GHz A9 processor in the 6s was about 40 percent faster than the 1.4GHz A8 processor in the 6. It has better graphics performance than any other phone. It's also faster than any other processor on the market, at least in terms of single-core performance, which is most relevant for mobile operating systems that don't multitask very well.
In real life I saw smoother performance in games like Land Sliders and Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but there's an issue of confirmation bias; the benchmarks certainly show better frame rates, but brand-new iPhones always feel fast.
Application launch times haven't changed much, but if you're doing anything involving video editing or image manipulation, you'll find the new phone up to 60 percent faster.
Apple says the phone's new Touch ID sensor is twice as fast as the old one, which was already pretty fast. In side-by-side testing against an iPhone 6, I found that yes, that's true, but we're talking tenths of a second here, so you might not notice.
3D Touch, on the other hand, is one of those innovations that sneaks up on you and then you want to use everywhere. Apple isn't the first device maker with a pressure sensitive screen, but it's the first with peek and pop, which lets you preview content by lightly pushing down - ideal for peeking into news links and previewing emails - and quick actions, which letyou jump to frequently used features within apps from the home screen. I'm still discovering little Easter eggs, like how pressing down on the phone's virtual keyboard gives you a cursor-positioning trackpad.
I've been switching back and forth between a Samsung Galaxy S6, an iPhone 6, and an iPhone 6s while writing this review. I keep pushing various itemsa and expect 3D Touch to work on the screens of the other two phones. You get used to the feature that quickly. And it's getting more powerful as third-party developers get hold of it. There's already a piano app that uses pressure-sensing for volume, and a driving game that really lets you put the pedal to the metal. I'm waiting for pressure-sensitive sketching apps that work with simple capacitive styli.
That said, I've been having some app stability issues that I haven't been able to completely pin down. Occasionally, when launching directly the camera from the lock screen, I'll get a frozen screen. Also, some of my games, especially Land Sliders (which is currently being featured by Apple), sometimes crashes. In the past, this hasn't been a hardware issue; it's been an app compatibility issue that Apple fixes in point releases of the OS, so I'm not too concerned. Apple has a very good track record of fixing these sorts of things.
As for the rest of the phone's user interface, the iPhone 6s, like other current iPhones, runs iOS 9. Our full iOS 9 review has more details.
Camera and Live Photos
Apple makes two dramatic spec improvements to the iPhone's camera in the 6s. It bumps the main camera up from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels, and kicks the front camera up from 1 megapixel to 5 megapixels.
As our camera analyst Jim Fisher found in his lab tests, the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, and Samsung Galaxy S6 all perform delightfully outdoors in good light. I'd go further to say that the 6s's additional pixels give you more detail and more flexibility for cropping. I had serious trouble telling the difference between the 6s and Galaxy S6 images in my standard, outdoor, daytime test photos; maybe the 6s was a little better-saturated, but not enough to matter.
In low light, I saw different results. In real-world conditions, the Galaxy S6 tends to get a little soft in low light, while the iPhone 6s delivered noticeably sharper photos with better detail. The extra megapixels bring out background detail that's quite noticeable when you download the image to a PC.
With mixed lighting, on the other hand — low light with a window backlighting the scene — the Galaxy S6 balanced the exposure best, with both of the iPhones being too dim.
The new front-facing camera is significantly better than any previous iPhone's for two simple reasons: 1MP is just too tiny and grainy in this day and age, and the "front-facing flash" feature (which brightens up the screen to act like a flash, just like on the LG G4 ( at Amazon) ) makes selfies in dark rooms possible when they never were before.
But I was disappointed by the sharpness and quality of the front-facing camera images when compared with the Galaxy S6. Especially in low light, they're blurry and noisy; they look like upscaled images from a lower-resolution sensor. Sure, they kill the iPhone 6, but they're in turn slaughtered by Samsung and LG's latest. But the Samsung Galaxy S6 lacks the front-facing flash feature, which means in low light, there are a lot of images you'll be able to grab with an iPhone that aren't possible with the Galaxy.
Video quality has also been improved. Now you can capture 4K video at 30 frames per second, which isn't on by default because those videos take up 375MB per minute. To really get the best videos, though, you have to get the oversized iPhone 6s Plus ($351.99 at AT&T Wireless) , because the optical image stabilization there really keeps wobble out of the picture.
Live Photos is Apple's most aggressive new camera feature. It's on by default, and it records 3MB, 3-second, 12fps H.264 videos with every photo you take. It's a lot like HTC's Zoe feature, but since Apple enjoys a large market share, it's much more likely to be supported by third parties.
I found that Live Photos requires you to think of snapping pictures in a new way. It records audio, so all of that inappropriate chatter when you're taking snapshots gets captured — that alone is one reason to turn it off. You also need to hold the camera up, and not be lifting or putting it down within 1.5 seconds of snapping your shot, or that gets captured, vertiginously, in the video. And right now, if you upload your photos to a third-party service like Dropbox, to a PC, or even to a Mac running any OS older than El Capitan, your library ends up cluttered with 3-second video files. (On the other hand, you can sew the 3-second videos together with iMovie, which is an intriguing idea.)
Comparisons and Conclusions
As with all iPhone reviews, we need to answer two questions here: whether you should upgrade to the iPhone 6s from an earlier iPhone, and whether you should buy the 6s rather than an Android phone (I'm not mentioning Windows Phone at the moment, because currently, there are no high-end Windows phones).
If you're a T-Mobile iPhone user in a 700MHz coverage area who has had any problems with reception whatsoever, run to get this new iPhone. The improved modem makes a big difference in recovering from dead zones, the new Band 12 support noticeably improves LTE coverage, and the improved Wi-Fi is a better backup. Forget about 3D Touch and Live Photos and all that — the iPhone 6s is better at getting connected and staying connected.
If you take a lot of selfies, you can also go ahead and sell that iPhone 6. While the 6s's front-facing camera could be sharper, it's a huge step forward from the iPhone 6, especially with the new front-facing flash feature.
There's also the iPhone 6s versus the iPhone 6s Plus question. The 5.5-inch 6s Plus is considerably bigger and $100 more. It also has optical image stabilization in the video camera. If you intend to use your phone as a sketchpad, you probably want the larger model. I think most people will generally be more comfortable with the smaller iPhone 6s, which fits much more easily into a range of hands and pockets.
One thing's clear, though: Do not get the 16GB version. With Live Photos and high-res video devouring storage, you'll quickly run out of space, especially if you're the type who keeps all your media on your phone. 64GB should be the minimum capacity you consider. Trust me.
So that means you're looking at $749, at least, for this phone. If you can't afford that, the iPhone 6 is still an excellent device. If you can't afford that, you'll have to go with a less expensive, high-quality Android phone. The upcoming Google Nexus 5X, at around $400, looks like a good option.
As for iPhone versus Android, the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S6 have very comparable hardware at this point. It really comes down to whether you prefer Google's software or Apple's.
But when it comes to apps, especially games, there's still a gap. I just took a look at some of the games I've recently downloaded for the iPhone. Land Sliders, Prune, and Tiny Wings, for instance, aren't available on Android. Many other apps are, of course, but the more uniform nature of the iOS platform means a lot of small developers still turn there first. That's always been the case. It's not just Apple's excellent hardware, but the strength of the overall iOS ecosystem that makes the iPhone 6s our Editors' Choice.
The Apple iPhone 6s may look just like its predecessor, but it offers up some real advantages that make the iPhone experience better.
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