
Apple Introduces the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus - chrisked
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/09/apple-introduces-the-iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus/
======
dantillberg
According to [0], these "phones" are 5.4 and 6.2 inches _tall_ (not
diagonally). 5.4 inches should not be the "small" size phone. That's _huge_. I
have reasonably large hands and I really hate this about my phone (I have a
Nexus 5, which is around the same size as the iPhone 6S).

Please, let's make us some smartphones that are nice and compact and small. Or
at least medium.

[0]:
[http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/](http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/)

~~~
ihowlatthemoon
From what I see, Sony is the only manufacturer currently offering a high end
phone at a smaller size with the Xperia Compact line. Still 5 inches tall
though.

~~~
untog
I went from a Nexus 5 to a Sony Z3 Compact and haven't looked back. The form
factor is _so_ much more convenient, I really hope more manufacturers look at
it again.

~~~
reustle
I love my Z3 Compact as well. Am still pulling a solid 1.5+ days of battery
life, and the dock charger is really nice.

~~~
aroch
My one complaint with my Z3c is actually my dock, the magnetic pedestal design
sucks. I've had to RMA seveal docks form Sony just to get one that worked most
of the time. And even then, the magnet disengages and the power pins drop = no
charging, which is an unwelcomed surprise in the morning. I've since moved to
a magnetic cable and I'm much happier.

the Z5c is pretty tempting, but I'll admit the 6s+ is also tempting. I'm
growing tired of Play Services killing my battery on a whim

------
bane
I hate the name, but the 3d touch is a nice interaction model. I really like
peaking as a UI metaphor. It helps slice through layers of information without
committing to the next layer.

 _edit_ and you have to be fucking kidding me with 16GB base models...

 _edit2_ oh, I get it, it's a push for iCloud storage, lame

~~~
vowelless
Why not just call it force touch, like the macbook? Craig Federighi even had a
slip and referred to 3d touch as force touch.

~~~
bane
Side note along with this thought, I feel like Apple is going through some
kind of naming transition in its lineup:

Mac<thing>: e.g. Macbook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro

i<thing>: iPod, iPhone, iPad, iSight

Apple <thing>: Apple watch, Apple pencil

I think the Apple one is the worst, because <thing> seems to be common non-
trademarked words and has a weird marketing exec "let's get the branding out
there!" strategy.

And now it kind of smells like they might be thinking about going to a "Smart
<thing>" naming scheme.

It makes calling things kind of hard and schizophrenic, most people just
default to i<thing> when they don't know what to call it. I hear iWatch at
least once a week.

~~~
c54
They're copying the facebook-esque thing of grabbing the base word and making
that the brand. IE facebook messenger is "messenger", compared to google
messenger which is "gchat". Calendar vs "gcal", and so on.

Facebook effectively owns the word "like" at this point, has "internet.com",
and so on.

Apple wants people to be calling the "Apple Watch" just "the Watch".

~~~
bad_user
I don't think Facebook can make their messenger a memorable brand. The actual
brand that people think about is Facebook. Messengers these days are a dime
and a dozen, with Facebook's messenger being popular because it is "at hand",
but that's due to people being active on Facebook. But it's not like Facebook
has multiple products, their messenger being part of what Facebook is. Before
Facebook my friends where using Yahoo! Messenger. And now it's pretty much
dead.

"gchat" was actually Google Chat and was about voice and video chat. Now it
was replaced by Google Hangouts. It's a pretty cool service, except that they
have had two problems - their fuckup with Google+ and the popularity of Skype.
Now Skype is a very memorable brand. And it has lots of problems, but people
keep using it because it works for group video/audio calls and because it has
good prices on calling phone numbers - like, Skype has a freaking monopoly on
emigrants and their families or on companies working with remote consultants
or employees.

In other words, I don't think the actual name matters that much, plus if you
pick a weird word you might get more out of it. Googling is now a verb in the
dictionary and tweeting should probably be as well.

------
BinaryIdiot
It's 2015, they just added 4K recording and a higher megapixel camera and the
base model is STILL 16GB? Is this a joke? I just can't understand that at all.
That space is going to get used up so fast. Android manufacturers have the
same issue so it's not like it's an Apple only problem.

The minimum at this point should be 32GB.

~~~
mozumder
16GB is fine. Lots of people don't even download apps.

~~~
rokhayakebe
_Lots of people don 't even download apps._

Would you care to expand on this? Thanks.

~~~
tdkl
"The app asked UK mobile carrier Telefonica/O2 about iPhone storage space in
the UK. What they found was pretty shocking: 91% of iPhones in the UK have
16GB or less of storage."

Source: [http://uk.businessinsider.com/iphone-storage-data-market-
sha...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/iphone-storage-data-market-
share-2014-12)

------
DuskStar
>and all iPhone models are made with a brand new Apple custom alloy, the same
alloys used in the aerospace industry.

"Brand New" and "Same as used in X" \- choose one. (I think this is just
standard TechCrunch, not from Apple, but still rather irritating)

~~~
aroch
7xxx series alloys are used in aerospace, Apple's alloying mix is apparently
unique...making it a brand new alloy in the 7xxx series...

------
amazon_not
Apple is going to make bank by turning into a bank. The installment plan with
free upgrades each year is brilliant. The user lock-in is going to be
unsurpassed and no competing phone maker has the mountains of cash required to
match it.

~~~
kozukumi
Yeah that was the biggest thing for me too. We knew what was coming with the
iPhone, Apple TV and iPad Pro. That upgrade program is going to be a big thing
in my opinion.

One thing I wasn't sure about though was do you own the phone or are you just
leasing it? When you upgrade after a year do you have to return your old
phone?

~~~
knd775
If you upgrade after a year, that seems probable. After the full 24 months, I
believe that it would be yours. Don't quote me on this, though.

~~~
jonhohle
At a $120 premium over a carrier's installment plan.

~~~
chipx86
You gain AppleCare+ as a benefit, bringing the price a lot closer. It's also
unlocked, which could be nice for some people.

Here's the big difference, though, at least with AT&T's Next: With Next, the
"how often can you upgrade" and "how long do you have to pay" are highly
mismatched.

The most frequent upgrade plan is once very 12 months ("AT&T Next 12"). To get
this, I have to commit to paying 20 months (or ~3.33 years).

If I want to upgrade two years in a row, I've committed to paying 40 months (2
terms of the plan). That at least gets me 3 upgrades in that term. If I want
to go for a 4th upgrade, we're now at an overall committed payment term of 5
years.

That's fine if you're doing this long-term, but Apple's appears much simpler:
You pay for 2 years. In that time, you get 2 phones.

Verizon's program lets you upgrade "any time" you want, but only once you've
paid off the cost of the new phone. Unless you pay a chunk of change early,
this means one upgrade every 2 years, just like a contract, compared to
Apple's once-a-year.

What I'm not sure about with Apple's is whether you can end your 2 year plan
with a second phone, and then terminate and keep the phone. This is what I'd
most like to know before considering this further. The Terms and Conditions
page doesn't seem to be up yet..

Given that the upgrade is once every 12 months, timing also seems important.
I'd imagine you'd want to activate the plan just after a new iPhone comes out,
and hopefully time it so that you end the 2 years right after another new
iPhone comes out, if you really want the latest-and-greatest.

Overall though, it _seems_ to be more fair compared to AT&T's Next and
Verizon's Early Upgrade programs.

------
devindotcom
This rebranding of video as "live photos" ("they can have sound!") is cracking
me up.

~~~
superuser2
For the same price, a video (or a still from a video) doesn't look _nearly_ as
good as a photo. The development here is packaging a high-quality still inside
a video and doing compression in a way that doesn't kill the photo.

Think about it - why do professional photographers bother with shutters or try
to time the perfect shots? Why not just constantly shoot video and pull frames
out of it later? Because it would look like crap.

This wouldn't be hard to imitate. Record the live preview into a 3 second
buffer. When the user presses the shutter, switch into still mode, take a real
photo, wait 1.5 seconds, and then write both the buffer and the photo into the
same archive. On playback, by default show the normal photo, but on whatever
UI gesture, play the first 1.5 seconds of the video, then the photo for one
frame, then the next 1.5 seconds of the video.

Only barrier I could see to re-implementing this on other phones is long wait
times while the camera switches modes, during which information is lost.

~~~
firloop
>[W]hy do professional photographers bother with shutters or try to time the
perfect shots? Why not just constantly shoot video and pull frames out of it
later?

Photographers are doing this.

[https://news.creativecow.net/story/879117](https://news.creativecow.net/story/879117)

>"RED cameras allow Inez and Vinoodh to simultaneously capture high-resolution
images for their photographs along with their artistic videos"

~~~
superuser2
An entry-level RED (Scarlet Dragon) is $16k. A top-end Nikon (D3X) is $8k.

You _can_ get to comparable image quality, but it's going to cost you.

------
kiddz
tldr: My mom has no idea what force touch is. She'd not going to get 3d touch.

I love all of this, but it seems to me that there is really becoming a divide
in the type of people who can fully appreciate/employ the UI nuances? I'm not
a photographer, and basically only use photoshop to crop and do bullish
things. But I know there's a whole universe of things I could do, if I
appreciated the power set tools.

I think that's where many "smart" products are going, but because they are
distributed to the masses (unlike PS for instance), that divide means
something else.

For some people this is going to make their "daily lives" more enjoyable. For
another set of folks, perhaps equal in size even, I think a lot of this stuff
will just go over their heads.

~~~
krazydad
My mom also has no idea what right-click is. I showed it to her once and it
blew her mind. Then she promptly forgot about it.

I figure as long as you don't hide essential functionality in your app's
3d-touch interface, and primarily use it for short cuts, you are probably
okay...

~~~
kiddz
Yes, it's not that it's not discoverable, it's that it's easy to forget and/or
unnecessary to remember.

------
roymurdock
Interested to hear whether people think the fragmentation/differentiation of
the iPhone line is a good strategy or not. Where there used to be 1 flagship
phone, there are now 4 different models, possibly 5 if they make a (c)
version.

> iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 6c

What made the iPhone iconic was that there was one powerful and curated model,
and that you trusted Apple to make design choices for you. You paid extra
because you knew you were getting a quality phone, not the low-tier/hard to
compare versions of the multitude of Android-based phone. Why move away from
simplicity and curation?

~~~
drinchev
iPhones, marked with "S" are successors of the previous model and doesn't
include any changes in their case.

~~~
roymurdock
Yeah, I understand the naming conventions (S = same case, different internals,
C = cheap case, Plus = large) but my point is: why? Apple is supposed to think
these design choices through and give the user whatever is best. That's what
they've done in the past, and that's why they have such a strong brand.

~~~
mhurron
Turns out one size does not fit all.

Personally I'm sticking with my 5s until it dies at this point, the 6 is too
damn big.

------
IkmoIkmo
Who had to laugh when the guy was like 'live photos .... and they're not
videos guys, really, believe me, repeat after me NOT videos, photos!'

Or when he was like 'this is based on revolutionary technology never seen
before, and it's totally not half-a-vine, either, it's a new breakthrough, 3
second videos'.

I mean I don't even grin anymore when they say 'the iPhone 6 was the most
popular iPhone.... EVER' or when they say 'the iPhone 6S is the best iphone...
EVER' (no shit). I've gotten used to that level of hyperbole, but the rhetoric
around the live photos was pretty ridiculous. (and I like it, too, I think
it's a neat little feature that fits nicely in between photos and vines - the
original massively-popular 7 second videos - the way it was presented was just
way over the top.)

------
hmate9
These Harry Potter images have already been done by Nokie:
[http://lumiaconversations.microsoft.com/2014/04/15/relive-
th...](http://lumiaconversations.microsoft.com/2014/04/15/relive-those-moving-
moments-with-nokia-living-images/)

------
slg
Higher resolution photos and video and somehow Apple is still going to have
the 16 GB base model.

~~~
switch007
The 16GB is only there to make you buy the more expensive model

~~~
kid0m4n
Or possibly, stats showed that a significant percentage of users don't even
come close to filling up the 16 GB.

~~~
unfamiliar
If that was truly the reason, there is no reason to not make 32GB the base
option. A few people would be saved hassle and it would cost Apple pennies and
do their reputation good.

It makes a whole lot more likely that the base model is just to get you to
upgrade to the 64GB at this point.

------
chrisBob
"Live Photos" They must really want more people to start paying for iCloud
Drive every month. That sounds like a big data hog compared to a single photo
every time I hit the shutter button.

~~~
chrisBob
Wow. They actually helped out and increased the storage on each plan along
with that. Now I get 50GB for the same $.99 I used to pay for 20GB.

~~~
zuppy
... and kept the 16 GB base model.

------
Breefield
Still no SD card slot?

So fucking irritating that more/less the primary way Apple does price
differentiation for their product models is by locking you in at storage
capacity sizes.

My life is a hell of iCloud + Dropbox backups & constantly deleting all media
so I can keep all of 40 apps on my 16GB iPhone.

~~~
salgernon
Computer makers, notably Apple although others are guilty of this too, have
always shipped low end hardware to get you in the door. Like a car
manufacturer offering low end engine for some models.

But in this case, how much is your time worth? If you're like most people
hanging out on hacker news (assuming a tech career) its not unreasonable to
expect your salary to be $100/hour.

If you're spending more than 2 hours mucking with moving things around, then
perhaps your next phone purchase should consider how much time you're spending
vs. the price of increased storage.

~~~
cmsmith
Base hardware is fine.

But the iPhone has shipped with 16GB minimum storage ever since the 4s four
years ago. Since then the speed, resolution, and camera have all increased by
at least one factor of two. All of these things also increase the storage
requirements for photos and apps.

If I was the type of user who was satisfied with the base model of my old
phone, and I buy the new base model and am not satisfied, then I am not going
to be happy. I use my phone the same way I did four years ago. If I wasn't a
'pro' user then, why am I now?

------
pazrul
I'm curious what exactly they mean when they say Live Photos are 'not a movie,
it's a photo!' So what's the file format? How does one encode sound to a
moving photo and not call it a movie?

~~~
seiji
You probably aren't cut out for marketing then.

~~~
mxfh
This, but they missed the opportunity to call it a single I-Frame with only
P-frames in each direction, if they actually did some effort in terms of
compression efficiency.

Another thing is that any 4k capable codec is also probably magnitudes more
space efficient than baseline jpeg for stills, with or without added temporal
information.

~~~
seiji
I wonder how long they tried to negotiate the rights to calling it "harry
potter photos" but just couldn't swing it.

------
rebootthesystem
I think a lot of this is going to boild down to whether people give a shit. A
nicer way to put it is: Are these solutions for non-existing problems?

Yes, yes, we teck-heads can geek-out at the idea of a force sensing screen. We
are not the market. The maket is the average Joe or Jane. And it is my
impression Joe and Jane, for the most part, won't give a shit. I know plenty
of people with 4s's who have not updated the OS in a while, no longer get any
apps --free or otherwise-- and feel perfectly served with what they have. When
we ask them if they'd be interested in spending several hundred dollars to
upgrade, the answer is often monosyllabic: "Why."

~~~
Detrus
For a better camera

I use an iPhone 4. Battery life went to hell at one point now it's back to
being decent. It was a software problem.

Wouldn't mind it being slightly thinner, lighter, bigger with better screen
and far better camera. But now the screens got too big.

------
ultimoo
I think once app developers fully adopt 3D touch and Apple refines the iOS UX
in future iterations to take complete advantage of the tech, it's going to be
a _huge_ improvement in how we interact with smartphones.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Not trying to offend you, but have you had your hands on one yet? I don't
think you can say this until you do. It may be crap. Well, it's Apple, so it's
probably not crap, but maybe it actually won't make a <i>huge</i> difference.

~~~
zyb09
It's the first time we get a new interaction idiom since 2007 really. I think
it will bring great changes and improvements to mobile app UIs. Adaption gonna
take a while though, 2-3 years for it to be considered standard on iOS,
another 1-2 years on Android, I'd guess. Also given it's from Apple the
implementation will probably be rather solid.

------
chrisBob
Why can't they just list the prices? Does anyone still get their phone under a
2 year contract anymore? I have no clue what "From $199" means.

~~~
DarkTree
um.. yes? I can't imagine getting an iphone every year when you can just get
one every 2 years for a third of the price.

~~~
smeyer
I'm not the sort of person to update phones every year (I've had my current
phone for almost two years and the one before that for six years), but it's
often cheaper to pay the flat price when upgrading every two years than to pay
the reduced price with the contract. It all depends on how your carrier
structures their plans.

~~~
seiji
_with the contract. It all depends on how your carrier structures their
plans._

Historically, US carriers don't change plan pricing based on having a
contract. So, you can be month-to-month for $100 per month, or get a two year
contract for $100/month plus they give you $500 up front towards the purchase
of a $1,000 phone (as received by just discounting the phone up front).

~~~
smeyer
I know this was the case historically, but I think it stopped being the case
for my carrier (ATT) a couple of years ago. I believe our plan is cheaper by
not taking the phone subsidy, and sufficiently cheaper to justify paying for
the phone up front.

------
Navarr
Very curious as to the intuitiveness of the variations in tapping. 3D Touch
seems neat.. but I'd have to use it personally to know whether or not its a
revolution, or an Amazon Fire Phone-esque gimmick.

~~~
masklinn
The shortcuts on the homescreen looked real useful (though they would depend
on what the application developer decided to add as quick jumps), and I've
done the "open message/back to list/open message/back to list" way too often

~~~
Navarr
I have too but requiring my finger to be touched (over top of the message)
doesn't seem like it'll benefit.

The shortcuts are nice, though.

~~~
masklinn
The finger would obscure part of the display, but it would likely leave enough
uncovered that you have the information you need to decide whether you want to
actually open the resource, don't want to, or want to act (using the
contextual gesture things)

------
xd1936
Why are all of the top links to TechCrunch? They're the worst.

~~~
dang
It's usually pretty random which particular versions of a story get traction
here, especially when there's a media burst of roughly equivalent articles.

If people suggest significantly better sources, we can edit the URLs.

------
meesterdude
All I wanted was more storage and longer battery life. Looks like I have
another year to wait for those. Not to knock the other improvements, but
storage and battery life are the two that bug me the most.

------
edgall
How much RAM does it have?

I thought 16GB was bad in 2014 but it's just comical now considering the 4k
and 12MP camera.

~~~
hutattedonmyarm
I think you're mixing up RAM with storage.

~~~
edgall
I was referring to the 16GB storage.

The RAM should hopefully be at least 2GB.

------
hitekker
Unrelated to the tech: a Warhammer 40k spin-off as a launch game?

Here's hoping that this excellent, science fantasy franchise will hit the
mainstream!

------
nickpp
Is the 6s plus screen still 1080p down sampled from the native resolution?!

------
colmvp
Surprised no one here mentioned A9 and the updated camera. As a person
upgrading from an iPhone 5, I'm pretty excited.

------
zw123456
Claims 23 LTE bands with up to 300Mbps, that means it is a category 6 LTE UE
which means you will only get that if the carrier you are using has deployed
Carrier Aggregation and you have a really really good signal and the you
Carrier deployed backhaul that can handle that speed. So, don't hold your
breath !

------
redditmigrant
To everyone here whose response to the 16GB model is that they are trying to
push icloud, how do you transparently and painlessly free up storage on your
device for photos/videos that are already backed up on icloud?

------
ohitsdom
I'm worried about what the 3D Touch does to the ruggedness of the phone. With
two toddlers, I don't think this phone would last 3 months in my house, even
with a case.

Or is 3D Touch somehow achieved with passive sensors?

~~~
antsar
My interpretation of the keynote: The screen flexes a tiny bit when you press
on it (which my iPhone 6 does as well, so this doesn't necessarily imply new
materials). They now have sensors behind the screen to quantify the flexing,
and translate that into "force".

~~~
ohitsdom
Interesting, didn't realize Gorilla Glass was designed to flex, but it seems
that was an advertised feature of Gorilla Glass 3.

------
aantix
It's nice to hear that the screen is becoming more durable. I've already
broken one screen on my 6+ because I had it in my pocket and my jeans were a
bit too tight and put a lot of stress on the phone.

~~~
seiji
Yeah, I was terrified of super-thin phone in super-tight pants and went with
this last year: [http://www.urbanarmorgear.com/collections/apple-
iphone-6-plu...](http://www.urbanarmorgear.com/collections/apple-
iphone-6-plus-cases)

It doesn't add unusable thickness to the phone and as a bonus it gives you
more friction so if your hands are sweaty you're less likely to drop your
$1,000 magic pocket supercomputer (completely smooth rounded corners look
nice, but sure are slippery and drop prone).

------
JustSomeNobody
What is the iPhone 6 going to do with iOS 9 w/out the, cough, 3D touch? How
will that be handled? For instance, app switching, will it stay the same
(double click the home button)?

~~~
solidr53
It's in-depth. So developers will have to design and implement a middle step,
hence nothing is lost. You'll see all details on press, snapshot on semi-press

------
devindotcom
An auspicious name, the "iPhone Success"

~~~
seiji
[http://www.6smarketing.com/blog/weare6s/](http://www.6smarketing.com/blog/weare6s/)

------
mrfusion
Any improvements to Siri?

~~~
jbrooksuk
iOS 9 wasn't really spoken about, but yeah there are improvements coming.

------
reiichiroh
No USB 3.0 data transfer speeds?

~~~
mewwts
They probably want us to use iCloud.

------
nodivbyzero
3D Touch - what does it mean?

~~~
ihuman
It is force touch, basically.

~~~
pilif
Craig even used the term by accident

------
atorralb
but... does it bend?

~~~
prodmerc
Everything bends, there is no spoon...

~~~
jbrooksuk
I re-watched the Matrix only two days ago, so well made for '99!

~~~
prodmerc
It was revolutionary at the time, it's really a timeless movie

I haven't watched it in years, time for a Matrix marathon :-)

------
tdaltonc
The lack of discoverability in these new interfaces is alarming. Maybe they're
just for super-users, but still.

------
chiph
Force Touch - I've had that feature for years - it's what I do when I get
angry that the phone isn't responding fast enough.

------
Nib
IDK, but really the Force touch adaptation, renamed 3D touch(surprise
surprise) is a nice touch, but really, I wonder if it's worth buying a new
iPhone. I guess, at least with me, it's a somewhat privacy issue. Imagine your
favorite apps revealing 25% of what you do on an app simply by holding your
phone's home screen. Moreover, I often hold/touch my phone in different
manners, like, asleep, just-got-up, really angry, running-to-some-place. It'll
be really irritating if this kind of a feature got in my way while working.
Most of us do NOT always use our phone's the way the advertisements expect us
to.

------
josteink
So nothing new on the iPad, ATV and from what I can tell from this incomplete
TC garbage, nothing new on the Iphone either.

Is that what we call a complete dud? Even worse than last year's event?

~~~
rimantas
well, yes, not counting new iPad, new Apple TV with tvOS, not counting 3D
Touch, there is nothing new. I just wonder, do people making these complaint
even imagine, what new could there be?

~~~
josteink
All this has already been delivered in the form of a Samsung, Google or
Microsoft product.

It's not new, except in the sense that now also Apple delivers it, a few years
later than everyone else.

~~~
oldmanjay
Is there any irony in the fact that variations of your comment get posted on
any Apple-related article, or is that just poetic, or is it just boring?

