Apple iPhone 6s Review - It's as Good as They Say!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,250 words · ~11 min read
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so for the first time ever I'm reviewing both the number and number s variant of
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an iPhone why you might ask well maybe
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it's happening because I've gone full mainstream that is when I'm not busy
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running two gaming systems off a single Tower like I did in this recent video or
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maybe it's because the 6s is legitimately a really interesting phone
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maybe even more so than the six before it what makes it so interesting you
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might ask I guess we'll find out won't
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we V cell cases are exquisitely finished
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bumper cases made of wood and aluminum for the iPhone 5 6 and 6s series
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products they're stylish slim minimalistic and just plain gorgeous
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check out the link in the video description to learn more For Better or
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For Worse other than the new pink color and yes it's pink rose gold Apple has
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changed pretty much nothing about the device outwardly in spite of outcry
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about the antenna panty lines or the ever popular rumors about Apple removing
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headphone jacks or doing away with the physical home button it is to the naked
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eye indistinguishable to anyone but a member of cooks cult from the previous
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generation device which isn't to say at
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all that this is the same phone being repackaged and sold to us as if it's new
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they really did change a lot first there
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was the knee-jerk reaction to the iPhone 6 Plus's Bend gate Fiasco which was to
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assure us that the new phone is made of 7,000 series
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aluminum then there's the really cool under the hood stuff like man this is
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great if the S is for Speed then wow did the engineers ever take that to heart
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first you've got the new A9 CPU which is lightning fast and single-threaded tasks
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and even surprisingly competitive with quad and eight core processors in
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multi-threaded workloads not to mention it's chart topping new GPU which is
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useful for accelerating a lot more than games by the way with video and image
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processing workloads both being capable of utilizing a graphics processor second
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while Apple retains that inexcusable
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$900 16 gig model a capacity that cost
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$500 off contract back in February of 20
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8 by the way they have at least acknowledged that RAM has gotten cheaper
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and have finally upped the anti when it comes to system memory giving both the
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6s and the 6s plus a bump to 2 gigs for
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better multitasking which coming back to storage leads to our next s bullet point
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the onboard storage it's noticeable like
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daytoday opening apps switching between them loading web pages noticeable that
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the 6s is fast and it's too much of an
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improvement M over the six for it to be CPU speed alone but I had no idea why
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until I read Joshua ho from a nonex early benchmarks of the 6s where he
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figured it out Apple engineered an nbme
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SSD controller for this new lineup no wonder it feels so fast we're talking
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about a phone with storage that's nearly twice the speed of other Flagship
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devices out there that are still using emmc holy crap and there are actually a
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few more s notes before we move on the
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AC Wi-Fi Now appears to be Wave 2 which resulted in the following speeds
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compared to our iPhone 6 on a Ruckus r710 access point running on a gigabit
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fiber internet connection the S6 supports LTE Advanced if you're one of
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the lucky bastards with service in your area and the fingerprint scanner is more
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reliable when covered with Grime or water and it is lightning fast now like
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to the point where it's actually kind of inconvenient if you're like me and
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habitually wake your phone to view notifications with the home button
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they'll be gone before you even have a chance to see them enough about speed
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though let's talk about 3D touch right
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now the way it's used in some cases is just kind of a party trick a really cool
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well-executed party trick but if we're being honest with ourselves the amount
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of time that you save Force touching the camera app and then clicking selfie
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versus launching the camera with a gesture like you can do on some Android
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handsets and then choosing selfie mode is not sign significant where it really
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got my attention was in Safari where it legitimately changed the way that I
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browse the web similarly to how tabed browsing did for me on the desktop like
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I'm I'm a skimmer so being able to force
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touch articles or threads in a forum and read now in a new tab or save for later
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is flipping awesome and I can see this being used in so many ways because now
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with Force touch we effectively have three different clicks that we can
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execute on a single thing you've got your short your long press and then
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you've got your deep press and like I said in my 2015 MacBook video it just
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feels great to use like I complain about
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crappy vibration Motors in phones but for the most part the guys that are
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doing it well have all been doing it the same level of pretty well for a while
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uh-uh this is a whole new level it's easy to feel while it's next to you it
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is damn near silent when it's not next to you so you don't get that
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noise with the only disadvantage here being that uh it's kind of hard to find
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if you accidentally drop it between a couch cushion like I did good thing for
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me though I had an Apple Watch on when I did that so I was able to Ping it with
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that little feature which is about the only good experience I had with the
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Apple watch first gen while I was doing this review I was really hoping that
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watch os2 would change my mind about the Apple watch and I could justify doing a
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full review of watchos too but that's not going to happen time travel is
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slower than just swiping through events would be and the way that it desperately
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clings to its pathetic battery life makes for a terrible experience I feel
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bad for me and everyone else who bought one still which on the subject of
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software I guess leads us to ios9 there's still a lot of random stuff that
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drives me crazy clearing the search field in apple map still requires me to
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click again to start typing a new address and that ridiculous multitasking
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Rolodex thing that I thought we all agreed was bad in Windows Vista why is
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that back in fashion and and holy Apple
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Implement T9 dialing if you're watching this it's
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2015 let me dial the numbers that correspond to the names of my contacts
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it is way faster than going through the
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contacts list and you know what some people have more than you know 10
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contacts okay it's way better on a more
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positive note Apple continues their excellent support of older devices some
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that many Android users poo poo noting that performance is often degraded in
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these cases but I personally prefer to
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having gaping security holes and what was it something like
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87% of the user base out there so
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there's that and on the subject of features they've added some welcome
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stuff like that handy proactive thing when you swipe to the left that shows
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you you know cool nearby stuff relevant news that kind of thing they've got this
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cool battery life widget for your phone and your connected devices in the today
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pull down um the scrubbing browsing
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feature in photos I absolutely love especially when combined with the HTC
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zoyes Snippets of live action with a second and a half on either side of the
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shutter press that go along with your still photos in live photo mode those
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are cool and then there's about 60 other some odd cool things this isn't a
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comprehensive iOS 9 review check out the article Linked In the video description
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on iphon hacks.com for a more complete list back to photos in the meantime
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though the rear camera is great but not nearly as revolutionary as you might
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think given the huge megapixel bump from 8 to 12 I mean to be clear it's very
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competitive with the Galaxy S6 and the LG G4 but so was the iPhone 6 and if you
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do a lot of lowl Photography or 4K video
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recording which by the way it records 4K now which is cool the lack of optical
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stabilization in the non-plus model will hurt you that is to say unless you
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happen to be rocking inline skates when it's time to capture a moment the selfie
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camera is a big Improvement it's 5 megapixels now and I guess having the
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screen boost its brightness to act as a pseudo flash is better than nothing but
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I still prefer the super wideangle lens on the Galaxy S6 for my portraits which
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I guess leads us finally to the conclusion you can like apple or you can
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hate Apple I don't care and frankly I doubt that they do either but what I'm
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tired of hearing from the haters in particular is Apple doesn't innovate
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innovate a new thing to criticize them about I mean sure Apple didn't invent
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the idea of higher resolution displays being better when they launched the
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iPhone 4 they didn't invent fingerprint scanners for authentication with the 5S
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and they sure as hell didn't invent fast storage being critical for overall
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system performance with the 6s but what they did do is Implement these
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Technologies in a compelling way in a real product that isn't just a tech demo
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the six didn't impress me it was uh hey
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I can make a bigger phone 2 response to the changing Marketplace and did nothing
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to lead the industry the 6s on the other hand is a striking return to form and
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takes the place of the iPhone 4 as my
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favorite iPhone yet this is a device that has so much to offer that Apple
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didn't even feel the need to draw attention to the fact that it's just
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about as water resistant as any other phone on the market it's a device that I
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feel like you could buy with confidence knowing that it will last a long time
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before there is a meaningful reason to need an upgraded iPhone that is to say
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unless they finally decide at some point to compromise a millimeter here or there
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and deliver a 4.7 in device with a half decent sized battery in it I made it
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through the day without a charger only about 70% of the time but for some
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reason we all accept that aspect of the iPhone experience so I guess complaining
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about it won't do me any good and on the
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subject of complaints we've had a few complaints that our phones always have
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those vinyl skins on them in our b roll
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and so we took those complaints and we burned them in a fire today's episode
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sponsor is dbrand you head over to dbrand.com you put in whatever device
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you've got whether it's an iPhone 6s or whether it's a PlayStation 4 or like a
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Macbook or they even do game controllers those ones are freaking cool and then
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you go ahead you go through their customizer utility which is awesome and
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gives you a really great idea of what your device is going to look like you
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pay a reasonable price for a high quality vinyl skin and then you pay $3 flat
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shipping to have it shipped to you they've got tons of happy customers
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they're one of the sponsors that we get just boatloads of positive feedback
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about they've got great customer service and overall we can't say enough positive
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things about dbrand so will phones continue to have dbrand skins on them in
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our reviews yes they will so there you
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go thanks for watching the video today guys if you disliked it I think you know
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what to do but if you liked it hit that like button get subscribed to lus Tech
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contribution get a cool badge next to your name if you're done doing all that
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stuff and you're wondering what to watch next check out this video where I
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actually took the iPhone 6s and liquid cooled it compared to some other top
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tier devices like the Galaxy S6 Edge as well as the LG
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G4