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  • Buk Lau - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    how distinguishable are the force levels?
  • JoshHo - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    They're distinctly different levels of activation. I suspect we'd need to use metal slugs to really determine what the activation levels are. The haptic feedback for 3D touch is distinct.
  • ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/

    The spec sheets for the 6s Plus confirms OIS for video.

    How discoverable and/or standardized are the 3D Touch options though? I don't want to have to try every button in different apps to see if they offer long press, medium-press, and hard-press options and find out what they do.
  • tuxRoller - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    The whole force touch thing seems really fiddly, especially (as arstechnica reports) since long touch is still enabled. They were also claiming that some people still had problems using force touch after extended experience with it. Not too surprising, and definitely an avenue worth looking at, but for now it looks to be too difficult for the average consumer.
  • dsumanik - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Lol, gotta love how anandtech writes such an in depth revelation about force errrr 3d touch.

    Dudes.... Wake up......it's essentially the touch version of a right or middle mouse click.....not a revelation.

    Wanna impress me?

    Where's the haptic feedback and texture morphing surface we been hearing about for years, seeing patents filed for? 3d touch implies it senses distance/position from screen surface, could definitely see some new handy pull away/ hovering gestures from something like that.

    All said and done the new iPad pro looks pretty badass, just don't like the weight I'll wait for iPad Air pro probably, iPhones are totally meh and they need to up the display...1080p is friggin 2012.

    Also why no 4k Apple TV? Especially in light of 4k recording on iPhone. That right there is the difference between jobs and cook, jobs made the magic by making the devices all work with each other.

    I see what like ....8 iPad models now all doing the same thing? Get it together Cupertino. I need a new phone bad, I've been apple since the 3G but for the price, I'm just not feelin it this fall apple, sorry.
  • edzieba - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "Where's the haptic feedback and texture morphing surface we been hearing about for years"

    Waiting for stretchable (not just one-axis flexible) substrates for electronics to be developed to the state that they are viable for commercial processes.
  • osxandwindows - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Why have a 4k apple tv?, you can have a 21.4 inch iMac, it has a way larger SSD
  • Gigaplex - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    21.4 inches is rather small for a TV.
  • sor - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    I see what you mean about right click in the sense that it offers a way to touch the same point but get different results, but the use cases and functionality enabled are quite different, and for good reason. On larger screens where you have a mouse, you have screen real estate to have a mail preview window, for example, so there's no need to preview messages via right click.

    I've been a nexus guy for the past few years, but this feature actually has me thinking about switching, if it is implemented well. Yes, its not revolutionary to have different kinds of clicks, but having the user experience streamlined in an easy and intuitive way seems nice. I'm pretty tired of long pressing when typing numbers, going back and forth between apps, clicking and opening each conversation to find the one I want after narrowing with search, etc. There are just a lot of things that are still clunky to do on a phone, and this seems like it has the potential to make many of those things more natural. All pending that they got it right, of course.

    An article I read a few days ago was concerned that the new input may muddy the waters a bit. An example was having a force touch delete an email in one app, but select an email in another. I thought it was interesting that Apple seems to have tackled this via the "peek" and "pop" guidelines. Ultimately I imagine app developers can do what they want with the inputs, but the push seems to be to leverage them as universal preview and open functions. Then there's the edge force which is also universal because its an OS level function for task switching.
  • ejwu - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    Does anyone know where I can buy those blue mats on the table? It looks like leather but it's really soft.
  • Samus - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    They have those at Apple Stores. I'm sure they are available there for free*
  • valinor89 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "free*" I see what you did there...
  • sonny73n - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link

    Really? Lmao... I think Apple invented those blue rectangle mats. Walmart can't have them or they'll be sued.
  • anandreader106 - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    "On Android, the standard for a long-press is usually around 500ms. This doesn’t seem like a long time, but if done repeatedly or if under time pressure half a second can start to feel like an eternity."

    Isn't the use of the word "eternity" a bit much in this context?
  • HunterKlynn - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    "Feels like an eternity" is a pretty standard figure of speech.
  • ingwe - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Yes it is. It is called hyperbole and is a common feature in modern English.
  • anandreader106 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Thanks for explaining hyperbole to me.

    Being raped and saying it felt like an eternity is an understandable example of hyperbole.

    Stating that 500ms can feel like an eternity is a stretch for me, even as a hyperbole. That's all I was saying. It simply highlights how privileged we are to live in a time where this could be a legitimate concern for someone. What technology can do for us is amazing. Our expectations for how technology should work, in near instantaneous fashion, is equally amazing.
  • snuuggles - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Uh, it is kind of weird that you object to a pretty common way to say "it took longer than I'd prefer" by bringing up rape, and the duration of rape. That is... odd to me, though I can't put my finger on why.
  • nikaldro - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    You know, settings. I set my keyboard long press at 180ms.
    I guess that magic display won't be enough to make me shell out a grand.
  • slashbinslashbash - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    Apple was using "LED Flash" back since at least the early Intel days with Photo Booth on Macs with integrated screens and FaceTime cameras (such as iMacs and MacBooks). The whole screen would light up white to "flash" for a photo. So I'm not really sure who's got the prior art there, but I know for sure that Apple has been doing it for nearly a decade, although who knows if it was actually invented by somebody else and then copied by Apple in that implementation.
  • Devo2007 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Sure that wasn't just an animation used to show the photo was taken? Would it actually light up someone's face to capture it in low light?
  • retroneo - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The whole screen turns white. It's a flash and was announced as such.
    Photo Booth still does it even in OS X El Capitan.
  • Timbrelaine - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Yes, it was/is flash. The screen gets noticeably brighter than the normal maximum for a moment, and it's enough to make your face clearly visible in a dark room.
  • name99 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Likewise for overdriving the screen.
    Apple considered years ago (on CRTs) a feature codenamed High Sparkle which would shut down the electron gun over most of the screen which would provide thermal room to boost the electron gun over a particular small rectangle. This would allow the video in that rectangle to "pop".
    It wasn't shipped because turns out most people, when they're watching video specifically, want it to be full screen, and would rather have dim full screen than bright smaller rectangle.

    Point is
    (a) Apple invents a ton of stuff internally
    (b) It doesn't LOOK like they invent this ton of stuff (hence these constant complaints about how whatever Apple ships this year is "stolen" from someone) because Apple don't ship most of their ideas; either because the ideas don't work, or they aren't yet ready.

    cf Companies shipping half-assed fingerprint readers built into laptops, or lousy screen projectors built into phones.
  • Zoide - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    How noticeable is the extra weight? According to another website, "the 7000-series aluminum may make the phones sturdier, but they're also noticeably heavier than the 6 and 6 Plus. The 6 and 6 Plus were 0.27 and 0.28 inches thick and weighed 4.55 and 6.07 ounces, respectively. The 6S and 6S Plus are 0.28 and 0.29 inches thick and weigh 5.04 and 6.77 ounces."
  • Samus - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I thought that was strange too. The phone is physically larger and heavier than its predecessor. I guess it goes to show they actually cut too many corners with the iPhone 6's. Although, knock-on-wood, my 6 and wifes' 6+ have not bent.
  • Eidigean - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The aluminum backplate of the 6S is actually 2 grams lighter than the 6, despite being larger and thicker in key spots. It's all in this video http://youtu.be/bSMUGGu7l-4

    The extra weight must come from the much larger haptic feedback engine.
  • takeship - Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - link

    Is Anandtech aware that ads for "Windows Driver Download" are being served to their site? Seriously, www.driverupdate.net, sketchy as hell people. Even if they are a "Microsoft Gold Certified Partner". Or maybe because of it.
  • solarisking - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Please give a full write up of the LTE chip this time. Is there going to be one iPhone to rule them all?
  • osxandwindows - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    not yet
  • PC Perv - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Unbelievably lame. Why anyone would want this at that price, especially if this phone still runs on 1GB of RAM, is beyond me.
  • Pissedoffyouth - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Wait still has 1GB ram???
  • WorldWithoutMadness - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Apple didn't publish the RAM spec yet so anybody can say anything about it.
    We have to wait till it is released and hopefully ifixit can clarify it directly from the hardware

    It actually has 16 GB RAM in 6s and 0.5 GB RAM in 6s+ :D
  • Timbrelaine - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Nobody knows yet, and certainly not PC Perv.
  • Valis - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    They say 6S and 6S plus has 2 GB RAM.
  • RussianSensation - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    It's 2GB:

    http://www.gsmarena.com/iphone_6s_and_iphone_6s_pl...
  • osxandwindows - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    2gb not 1gb
  • Peichen - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Seems like an usual Apple product announcement. Something new, something old, something borrowed all integrated seamlessly and working smoothly. Apple's biggest advantage is always the homegrown SoC and software.
  • 0iron - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "...when recording 4K video there’s no time limit like in most phones..."
    Kinda irony with 16GB storage. I wonder what is the average file size for a minute of 4K video.
  • psychobriggsy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Assuming on a mobile device it's about 40mbps, and we translate that to 5MB/s, then you can record about 3 minutes of 4K video per gigabyte of available storage. I might be off on the bitrate that Apple uses for 4K recording of course.
  • romrunning - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    16GB as the base storage size seems to be just another money grab by Apple to push people into buying the 64GB model. They could have at least made the base storage = 32GB. This is useful not only for 4k video, but it's also useful when that next iOS patch is released that needs 1-2GB free storage just to install. Some of the recent patches have been smaller in size, but it always seems to be just out of reach for the amount of free space that you have left.
  • blackcrayon - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I love this goofy argument repeated over and over. The whole product is a "money grab", that's the point. And what about all of the people who bought the 32GB model before, now they get 64 for the same price. But that goes against the Evil Apple Whiner Brigade... Just pretend the 16 GB model doesn't exist if that suits you, and pretend the 64GB model is the only one available. If you don't have the money for it, buy something else.
  • catinthefurnace - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Couldn't have said it better myself balckcrayon
  • osxandwindows - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Iphone 7
  • name99 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    And your brain cannot comprehend that
    - the set of people who want the OTHER phone features but don't care about 4K recording
    does not overlap with
    - the set of people who want 4K recording
    ?

    Like I have said many times: Android users claim they are all about choice --- except when it's Apple providing that choice (whether it's smaller amounts of storage or now larger iPads).
    Lotsa tiny fascists out there claiming to support choice.
  • osxandwindows - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    You can connect a lightning flash drive to it, not shur if its usb 3.0 tho.
  • The3D - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "humans are fundamentally not capable of true multitasking"

    try asking to Antonio Sanchez or Benny Greb.
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Muh outliers!
  • PC Perv - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    iPhone 6s+ will be even more difficult to hold. The 6+ was not an ergonomic phone to begin with. Now it's heavier, thicker, and potentially top-heavy as well (like the original 6+).

    Total arrogance from Apple. Reviewers should point it out.
  • Eidigean - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The new haptic feedback engine is the extra weight, and it's at the bottom below the battery, so it should actually lower the center of gravity, not raise it. It will not be top heavy.
  • dawheat - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Still I'm a bit concerned/surprised with the weight increase of the 6S Plus - at 192g it's basically the weight as comparable 6" phone (e.g. Mega 2). It's even heavier than the much larger Nexus 6.

    It's a non-trivial amount of weight to be holding one handed for a while - I assumed there was a reason Apple/Samsung/etc all stabalized around 170g for their phablets as it's still a reasonable weight.
  • name99 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    So Apple sucked for not providing phablets, and now they suck for providing phablets?
    Got it...
  • osxandwindows - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I don't know about you but I like it a little thicker.
  • Klug4Pres - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "The first, and probably most important change to the iPhone 6s from a user experience perspective this generation is going to be 3D Touch. After using it, I’m sure this will be widely adopted throughout the smartphone industry in about 18-24 months after the iPhone 6s."

    Maybe. I haven't used it yet, but I am quite sceptical that this is a killer feature. A checkbox feature, that I find more plausible, so in that sense it may become widespread.

    Some will make good use of this, but from your description it sounds too complicated for the average user.
  • ingwe - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I think you are spot on. Yes, it will probably be implemented by others, but I don't think it will be make or break.
  • smorebuds - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    It's not any more or less complicated or intuitive than long pressing. Also, since force touch is on macbooks it's just another extension of UI logic from OSX to iOS and vice versa.
  • nerd1 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    iPhone has a single physical button. Android phones have three.

    It's the same as apple mouse vs windows mouse - windows mouse have two buttons, clickable wheel, side buttons - so they do not require all mumbo jumbo like triple click, swiping over mouse and so on.
  • SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Do You have any info about HEVC econding and decoding?
  • Fiernaq - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Does nobody remember the Blackberry Storm? The whole screen was a button so you could touch the display or you could press the display to activate different functionality. Apple's "innovation" is more of a maturing of that same concept and from my (negative) experience with the Storm I am not holding my breath to see if this version works better. I wish they'd just give in and give us 3 physical buttons at the bottom. Maybe that will convince Android phone manufacturers to go back to 3 physical buttons too. Touch is great for a lot of reasons but there are some things that a physical button just does better with.
  • Peichen - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    That was rushed old software running on outdated hardware. I doubt there would be a lot of similarity.
  • blackcrayon - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I don't think Apple is going to require you to force press every key and then let it go before pressing the next one like on the Storm :) I think this is a huge difference from having 1 pressure level and having the entire screen be a hinged "pop-o-matic" button.
  • smorebuds - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    You are really reaching on this one.
  • Valis - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The allround biggest concern of the 6S is the fact that it has a smaller battery than the previous 6 version. Why they didn't up it to 2200 or 2500 mAh is beyond me.
  • stingerman - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The battery is a heavy and space occupying component. It's highlights Apple's advances in power efficiency while still increasing performance and feature set. The ideal would be that the battery keeps getting smaller. It's an indicator of engineering excellence.
  • nerd1 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    It's due to die shrinking thanks to TSMC and samsung.
  • FunBunny2 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    -- The ideal would be that the battery keeps getting smaller. It's an indicator of engineering excellence.

    Not until someone invents a non-exploding new chemistry. Leakage loss is already noted in current, cutting-edge, node size. That will only get worser.
  • osxandwindows - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Same battery life
  • casperes1996 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    iPhone 6 Plus (not s) also has OIS.
    The screen as a flash thing was already a feature on Mac with Photo Booth, as was presented at a keynote a long time ago.
  • notposting - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Just need Glance screen, a nice xenon flash, some nice high res coupled with oversampling and reframing, OIS, 2-stage shutter release, some live...icons, and Qi charging (iPlug? iWireless?) in the iPhone 7 and I'll be ready to switch!
  • JohnK83234 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    It's a stupid phone, eventually apple will slip into oblivion in a few years. 1 year for what, 3d touch, 12mp camera, and some minor tweaks, give me a break s/w guys. It's all just a hype for an overpriced phone, which has a good user interface (I agree). There are quite a few phones out there that can rip the iphone 6s apart, feature, functionality and technology wise, but to the consumer it "apple" and all the glitz, and that's all there is to it. No wonder the stock is going down, we'll see more of it. The stylus pen, cool factor, what a JOKE, hear what Steve said about the stylus 8 years ago. -JohnK
  • freeskier93 - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Oh please, Apple will never slip into oblivion. At worst they turn into another IBM but that's not likely for at least another 10-20 years. IBM has been around since 1930, Apple (and Microsoft) are young companies in comparison.
  • osxandwindows - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link

    Yea 74.5m iPhone sold, o man they are going to crash to the ground
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  • alexPixel - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link

    can't wait for the full review, hope it will come soon... :-)

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