Iphone 6s -Review 2

News

The news section is what irks me the most. If you're not in the US you won't have Apple's News app yet - so clicking these links will open up Safari. I'm not into politics, but that's all the app wants to serve me.

Download the News app (by changing your region to the US) and clicking these links will take you into the app itself. However, they still don't populate with the topics you're interested in, and all that happens is you're reading it in a slightly nicer manner in the app.

Apple's News app is massively underwhelming. I've used Blinkfeed, Flipboard and Pocket aggregators before, all of which try and suggest news you'd like, and most of them do a better job than this. Football gets confused between the American variant and soccer, the mix of news can default to just one 'channel' (which you can choose to subscribe to) and at startup the app will force you to choose a news site you like, even if you don't like anything on offer.

It's early days for the app, but it's currently getting very close to joining Stocks in the 'meh' folder.

For the rest of the platform, it's hard to decide how to review the current iteration of iOS 9 on the iPhone 6S as it's both radically different and very much the same - which sounds ridiculous but is the only way to describe it.

The familiarity comes from the way it's all set out - Apple's not changed anything in the way you use the phone, meaning you've still got the same rows of apps on the home screens and the Settings menu is still the place to get all your information for what apps are up to.

And that latter point is something that's hugely annoying - Apple's been slowly integrating elements from Android over the last few years, but the ability to change apps inside the actual program is something that's evaded it so far.

This means that if you're having a problem with Facebook and it's sucking down too much battery, you can't do anything about it in the app, rather having to jump out to another app to make the tweak.

Perhaps that's not the best example though - after all, Facebook's app is a complete mess when it comes to trying to alter anything within the app itself - but if you're in the camera and decide you want to film in the new 4K resolution, or alter the quality of the slo-mo video, then you can't do it in the camera app.

It's a trip down to Settings and through the Camera and Photos section (for some reason clumped together) before you can make this tweak.

OK, you can argue that Apple's being consistent in this approach, but it doesn't encourage the user to play with certain new features, and that's a failing in my eyes.

But that aside, I still really like the simplicity and subtle tweaks that Apple's added into iOS over the years, and iOS 9 is by far the best version of it yet. The new font is nice, Siri's abilities are excellent and being able to say 'Hey Siri' from anywhere is a nice move.

I'm not sure how much this impacts the battery life, but it's one of the things that gets turned off when you enter Low Power Mode, so it must have some effect.

The performance of the iPhone 6S is strong - in our Geekbench 3 tests, it ran to an impressive 4417 score, which puts it slightly above the iPhone 6S Plus and within striking range of the Samsung Galaxy S6.

While that's a huge uptick over the iPhone 6's performance, we're at the point where such boosts are becoming redundant. It's helpful, but I can't honestly say the iPhone 6 had a real problem.

But how does that compare in real world usage? We tested the iPhone 6 next to the iPhone 6S (although the former was still running iOS 8) and the new version managed to complete our test 12 seconds faster - the caching and speed with which apps loaded was insane.

Check out the video above to see what I mean, but you'll definitely feel less annoyed with apps taking a few seconds to load with the iPhone 6S.

Siri is now a really functional part of the phone, with both the accuracy and results impressing time and again. Being able to type in a sports team to find out their results and news is cool - for instance, key in the name of your favorite football team and you'll not only get their recent score but also web content that's related, such as video and news.

The ability to work out what you're talking about, making voice searches contextual, is really cool too - being able to see all your selfies in one go is nice to do, although not the nicest thing to see.

Similarly being able to ask to see snaps from a certain holiday is neat (although you'll have to say 'show me pictures from San Francisco in 2013' rather than 'show me pictures from my holiday last year'.)

iOS 9.2

The latest software is iOS 9.2 and you can upgrade the iPhone 6S right away. It's only an incremental upgrade but it brings with it a few different updates that change the iOS experience a little.

Apple News now has a Top Stories section so you can get the most important news of the day in one easy hit. There are a few tweaks within Apple Music making it much easier to create playlists as well.

There's also a new Mail Drop option within the Mail app to help you send larger attachments in your messages. Plus peek and pop 3D Touch functionality is now available on iBooks.

That's all accompanied by a variety of bug fixes that make the whole iOS 9 software that little bit better - so download it as soon as you can.

The camera app on the iPhone 6S is very similar to previous years, with a few small tweaks to add in new features.

The first is Live Photos, which takes a 1.5 second picture before and after the snap and turns it into a small video you can play to capture the memory. Apple's clearly realised that you can only do so much to enhance the camera in terms of image quality and started to work out how to capture more of the moment you're after.

It's hardly a new idea though - although the integration here is impressive and is less onerous than trying to use the Zoe mode on the HTC One series, for instance. The speed with which you can take a photo hasn't diminished either, so you can take multiple pictures in quick succession and the iPhone's A9 processor can work out what needs to be saved to create the Live Photo.

Viewing them is simple too - when in the gallery just prod the screen harder to activate 3D Touch and the memory will come to life. Apple's demo showed beautiful images of waterfalls and children smiling, and it seemed the option seemed to really capture the warmth of the situation.

In reality, the results are a mixed bag. If you're not bracing the camera perfectly against something, or using a tripod, then the video will often start off rather choppy and seem a bit low quality.

The same is true in low light - the frame rate seems to drop a lot in these situations as the phone perhaps is processing the images harder.

Live Photos is meant to be there as an enhancement to your photos, rather than a dedicated moment that you're capturing, which is why it's excellent that it runs so silently in the background. In fact, only a slight movement in the picture in the gallery hinting that there's anything to check out.

But in reality too many of them will seem a bit too erratic and choppy to be something you'd want to show off - this is a nice idea, but like Nokia and HTC before it, Apple's not really nailed this feature. Having the audio is great though - it really adds to the image.

And I'll be fair - I've been using this phone for a month and I've enjoyed Live Photos far more than I thought I would. 90% of what I took is boring when viewed as a Live Photo - it's just vague movement of people posing, and the software update to get rid of the bit where you put the phone down can't come soon enough - but there were a few genuinely great moments.

The first was at a surprise foam party. It's hard to convey the beauty of being covered with foam by a grumpy-looking man in the corner, but a picture doesn't do it justice. Showing our exploits to others was a series of wet-looking people as pictures, but poking the screen showed foam flying everywhere and the music we were all dancing to.

Again, there was the weird speeding up of the footage and a really choppy look to things, but the magic of the night was brilliantly captured.

The option to toggle Live Photos on and off is good though - it's only a tap in the bottom corner of the phone, and the feature can still work with HDR mode activated too.

The camera itself is fine - with a bump to 12MP, the sensor can capture more than ever before, letting you zoom in a little more and get more refinement in your snaps.

Apple doesn't seem to have upgraded the camera much here beyond bumping the megapixel number though - the launch focused on the fact that the pixels are more adept than ever at focusing quickly and eliminating cross talk, and that's fine.

It's just the 8MP iSight sensor on the iPhone 6 took really great photos too, and focused quickly, and didn't have a huge amount of crosstalk.

A cynic might suggest that Apple's only bumped the number up to compete with Samsung and Sony, who are getting great snaps from 16MP and 23MP sensors - but that would take away from the great quality of pictures on offer here.

In practice I really couldn't see a great deal of difference between the iPhone 6 and the 6S in terms of picture quality. There were some differences, obviously, and that was mostly seen when zooming in on the pictures - but the brightness levels or colour reproduction seemed pretty similar.

In extreme testing, there are improvements to be found, as with almost minimal light, the new iPhone is more adept. That's all the more impressive given the higher amount of pixels, which usually leads to poorer lower light performance.

Better selfies

The iPhone 6S comes with a 5MP camera to help improve those pictures that can only be taken from the front of the phone and the rear 12MP iSight camera simply won't do.

The front facing camera is imbued with all the same features as the rear sensor, and that means it even includes a flash.

Before you spit out your smoothie / tea / soy latte in amazement at the thought of an iPhone having a front flash though, don't get too excited. It's not an LED light taking up precious space from the front of the phone, but Apple's way of using the screen more effectively.

The LG G3 had a special mode to illuminate selfies, but that just shoved the viewfinder into a smaller image on the screen and lit up the edges, which provided an erratic glow.

The iPhone 6S has a smarter mode: it'll take a quick look at the surroundings by brightening the screen then amp up the brightness by three times to provide said flash. What's impressive is that the phone works out the colour balance of your surrounding and then provides the right level of white to get the best picture.

It's awesome to have all the same options - HDR mode, filters, timer and flash - all available in the front-facing and rear-facing camera - and the quality of the photos is improved as a result, with the 5MP sensor providing a real enhancement over the paltry 1.2MP sensor used in previous models.

The rivals

We've pitted the iPhone 6S camera against the snappers on some of the key competition; the Samsung Galaxy S7, HTC 10, LG G5, Huawei P9 and Sony Xperia Z5.

During our test we snapped a variety of different shots so see how each phone performed. The iPhone 6S was consistent with its ease of use and it didn't take any bad pictures. That said, it didn't exactly shine either, falling into the middle of the pack overall.