A little over two weeks ago I bought an iPhone 6S. Coming from a 6 Plus (for reasons outlined below) I found the device to be wonderful, but not without a couple of complaints.

This time I bought a space grey 6S (not the Plus edition). Having used it as my main mobile device in my regular environment, with my usual above–average to heave use, there are a lot of things I find similar to the 6 with one key difference — this device will probably last longer as an old model than an iPhone 6 would, I would bet at least till iOS 12, and this longer shelf life in the future means better performance now, and that really is what it all comes down to. In any case, let us try to keep this review as brief as possible.

OUTSIDE

The 6S is a lot more comfortable to hold than the 6 Plus (or the 6S Plus for that matter). That was reason one for my buying a smaller iPhone — after four years of 5.3 inch screens, I was getting rather fatigued. In many ways the 6S seems to be sized near–perfectly, until you try to reach for the opposite corner: impossible. You still need to make some minor circus moves, but handling is still more sensible than on a 5.5–inch device.

Speaking of handling, the 6S (what with its new 7000–series Aluminium — scientifically, that is precipitation–hardened Aluminium with Zinc alloy) feels different to hold. It has a different texture from my old 6 Plus, which makes it much, much easier to hold without letting it slip. That apart, coming from the Plus edition, the simple (underrated) fact that I can handle the phone one handed easily makes a world of difference.¹

Courtesy, AnandTech

INSIDE

The next thing you notice after getting past Apple’s 45 set up screens, the TouchID is crazily fast. If you (like me and nearly everyone I know or have heard of or seen) unlock your device directly from the home button instead of the dedicated power button, you will have to retrain your muscle memories, especially if you want to simply wake your phone to check for lock screen notifications as opposed to actually work on it, then you realise that TouchID is so fast it makes lock screen notifications absolutely useless. Perhaps a brighter way to think of this is that Apple has now given the power button more relevance.

I will try to step away from commercial, lab–review tests and write–ups and stick to my own experience for now. They say the 6S has twice as much RAM as the last iPhone models, and this is pretty obvious as you use the device. For instance, older apps rarely reload, Safari tabs almost never reload, and everything is snappy — especially (to my utter delight) the camera.

Etc.

Included with some extremely useful features are a few subjective, probably useless, ones. Live photos, for example — I have no idea who needs them. 4K video setting is hidden in the farthest corner of the settings.app you can think of. It is nowhere in the camera.app where is should have been. In addition, a 1080p 240fps slow motion capture that I have long been awaiting is missing.

What I noticed is that with continued use, the battery calibrates itself and lasts a lot, lot longer than the first couple of days after buying it.

3D Touch, on the other hand, is terribly useful in two places: app switching, and cursor control. Although, in my experience, cursor control is often a hit or miss, app switching is what I find most reliable. It came as a surprise to me given how much peek and pop were advertised, but they are yet to become natural gestures for me. That is not to say they will not become natural in the future — indeed they will — but right now, app switching and cursor control are it.

Chipgate and battery life

I am not much of a complainer. When I first heard of shipmate, however, I did rush to see which chip my iPhone 6S has and I found it to be Samsung. Strangely enough, I was not bothered at all. The only reason I checked was to see if the difference was dramatic enough to warrant a claim for replacement. Honestly, I do not think so. The phone performs great and seems to get better as I will explain in a moment.

Battery life (since I come from a massive 6 Plus) is not great, but is definitely manageable. One interesting outcome since getting my 6S is that my iPad has seen considerably more usage. I have outsourced battery–demanding multimedia tasks to my lovely iPad Air. I have, in fact, gone so far as to getting rid of media apps such as YouTube and Vimeo altogether from my iPhone (I only have Apple Music — I subscribe to it — and podcasts). This sort of work distribution pans out well in more ways than one, but I digress.

What I noticed (having panicked and bought a Spigen Volt Pack 3,100mAh battery case for my 6S²) is that with continued use, the battery calibrates itself and lasts a lot, lot longer than the first couple of days after buying it. So be patient and let several charge cycles pass and you will notice considerable improvement in battery life. It still does not come close to the 6 Plus, but on its own is useful so long as your day job is not staring at your iPhone’s home screen.

Peeping and popping into e-mails (unfortunately) takes longer than previewing a few lines and swiping to file them away.

Should you get it?

All–in–all, the iPhone 6S is worth the price. It performs flawlessly, looks great (I have mixed to no feelings about the (rose) gold), feels even better, and — having moved from a white iPhone, I like the black slate–like look when in idle.³ but white or black, I find them both great and buying either colour should, as I see it, be merely a matter of aesthetic and not usability. It has not been long since I got the 6S, but I expect the software user experience to be somewhat similar to the 6 Plus I have been using for exactly one year now (almost to the date), while two weeks with the hardware is sufficient time to understand the phone.

As for whether you should get the new iPhone, if you do not own it, then probably, yes, unless you are satisfied with your phone (still try it) or own the 6/6 Plus. However, coming from the 6 Plus, the processor and RAM upgrades on the iPhone 6S are not just marks on paper. You can feel it and that alone is worth buying the phone for.

1. I say easily, because handling a 6/S Plus one handed is not an impossibility, merely cumbersome. ↩
2. This case is wonderful and provided one full and a half charge on the go, and I do not regret the purchase since it has been useful more times and once. Further, while photographing outdoors, the battery on iPhones tends to drain faster — this, of course, is expected behaviour — and the battery case helps immensely then. ↩
3. Seriously, think 2001: A Space Odyssey. ↩

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