First things first, every Apple user ever would agree with me when I say that switching from one iPhone to another is delightfully easy. As soon as you insert that SIM card, the iPhone (any iPhone) guides you through a set-up process, one that is self-explanatory. A few taps here and a few presses there and Voila! Post the 5 minute long setup, my iPhone 6S had all my contacts, all my apps, my Apple Music library, my photos and my videos. I have to say, the ease of setting up a new device is best experienced on an Apple product. I have used Android devices before but there’s always an app or two that you need to download just to get all your stuff on to the device. With Apple, all you need to do is make sure your iCloud Backup is ‘On’ for each category like apps, photos, music, calendars, mail, etc and the device does the rest for you. Remember the feeling of coming back home from a long day of work and finding out that someone’s put on a fresh pot of tea, someone’s made your bed, someone cleaned your wardrobe in your absence and someone cooked dinner? Well, Apple is that 'someone'.
Now, coming to the real point of this article, is the iPhone 6S a sea change from its predecessor iPhone 6? The answer is not that simple. I wish I could give you a simple yes or no, but unfortunately that won’t be fair.
Let’s start with the Display
When you power on any new device, the very first thing that welcomes you is the display. For me, a good display is very important and both the iPhone 6 & iPhone 6S have similar 326 ppi, 1334×750 resolution displays. I for one think that there’s barely any difference that a user can notice in the displays, except for the 3D Touch (ofcourse!).
Honestly, I find myself hardly using 3D Touch. It’s been about three days that I have spent with Apple’s latest offering, but my iPhone 6 instincts are preventing me from forcibly pressing down on app icons and email links. When used, the 3D touch is helpful but the question is – do we really need a preview and how much time & energy are we actually saving? I for one think that if you really want to commit to Apple's new 3D touch, you need to recondition yourself to actually make use of it. You need to know everything you can do with it. For example, did you know that you could make your 'Live Photo' wallpaper animate on your lock screen using the pressure sensitve touch? This way you can 'quickly' re-live a moment straight from your lock screen (and impress a bunch of people who think this is great innovation).
Enough about the display, lets get down to what's faster, the iPhone 6 or the iPhone 6S?
Since this is not one of those articles where we quote benchmarks, let me just tell you what I experienced. The iPhone 6S is faster, a lot faster. If you think there isn't much to look forward to on the iPhone 6S, think again. The upgrade from the A8 to the A9 processor can be felt instantly. The phone is more responsive and the way the hardware talks to the software is a lesson in performance Android needs to learn from Apple. Even the Touch-ID responds quicker. That's because Apple has used the Touch ID V2 to tweak the response time and the difference is quite stark.
Coming to the Camera
iPhone 6S has the upgraded 12MP primary & 5MP selfie cameras, but after using an iPhone 6 (which has an 8MP rear camera and a 1.2MP front facing camera), the difference is marginal. It really is! I took both the phones, put their displays to 100% brightness and went around a room full of people asking them the point out which camera is better. The results were quite confusing. Some people preffered the iPhone 6S for its warmer skin tones whereas others thought the iPhone 6 captured natural lighting more efficiently. So, purely from the prespective of an experience, both cameras are quite homogeneous and that is dissappointing. If you really want to see the disparity between the iPhone 6 & 6S, with respect to the cameras, try recording a 4K video on the 6S. You may not be able to tell the difference when you playback 4K videos on your phone, but playing them on a 4K TV will bring out the superior quality of the videos.
Moving on to Battery
The battery of the iPhone 6S is well optimised for the A9 processor and even though the phone has a 1715 mAh battery life as compared to the 1810 mAh on the iPhone 6, it lasts around 15-16 hours with 3G. The standby life of the battery is pretty good though. I barely lost 2-3% battery while sleeping.
Interestingly enough, there are 2 companies that make the A9 chip for Apple. One is Samsung and the other is TSMC. Now if rumours are to be believed the TSMC made chip can give an extra 1.5 – 2 hour battery life. To know which chip your phone posseses, you can download an app called- Lirum Device Info Lite from the App store. On the Home screen of the app, note the model number you have. N71mAP is the model number for – TSMC, and N71AP – Samsung.
Apart from that, the battery performance of the iPhone 6S does not feel like a major improvement over the iPhone 6. In fact, this is probably the one area Apple forgot to pay much attention to. I played the Angry Birds-Transformers edition (a fairly simple game in terms of graphics) on the iPhone 6S and after 15 minutes of busting pigs and eggheads, the battery dropped from 65% to 50%. Extremely upsetting and very much like the iPhone 6.
On the weighing scale, the iPhone 6S is obviously heavier than the iPhone 6 but its not Thor-hammer heavy. The weight difference is obvious, but not distasteful.
All-in-all
Apart from a few highlighted differences, both phones have clone-like qualities. On the face of it, everyone who was asked to identify one phone from the other, could barely tell them apart. So, if you do plan to upgrade from the iPhone 6 to the iPhone 6S, my advise is, book a holiday somewhere in that much money instead. You don't really need the update, question is, do you want it?