iPhone 6S debrief: one year on, how did it do? | Technology | The Guardian
Apple unveiled the really quite large iPhone 6S a year ago. Photograph: Stephen
Lam/Getty Images
Alex Hern
@alexhern
Tuesday 20 September 2016 09.00 BST Last modified on Tuesday 20 September 2016
12.19 BST
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When the iPhone 6S hit the shops, we called it “a very good phone, ruined by
rubbish battery life”. A year on, with the iPhone 7 on the shelves and iOS 10
on devices, the 6S is now the budget option in Apple’s line-up. But how has the
phone aged? Is it still very good? Does the battery life still suck? Will the
6S be remembered as a high point in the iPhone’s history, or an era to be
slightly buried?
I’ve been using an iPhone 6S – in rose gold, naturally, and I’m not even sure
if I’m doing this out of irony anymore – for the past year. Some of what I
hated, I’ve come to love, and some of what I loved, I’ve come to hate. And some
bad stuff is just still bad.
The good
Apple’s marketing is usually true: each new iPhone is the best it has ever
made. Even a “bad” new iPhone will see enough incremental updates in areas like
the camera, processor and wireless connectivity that it’s hard to recommend its
predecessor over it – for the same price, anyway.
In those areas, the 6S continues the trend, even after a year of wear, tear,
and lust over other devices pushing the envelope with rival operating systems.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest People walk past stores promoting the Apple iPhone
6S in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Photograph: Bobby Yip/Reuters
Take the processor. The A9 which sits at the core of the iPhone 6S still feels
snappy, a year on, whether you’re running iOS 10 or sticking with the older
version until the bugs are ironed out. It’s a blessing and a curse for Apple:
the A10 is faster still, but the phones are reaching the point where it’s
increasingly tricky to argue that faster processors really improve anything.
That helps explain why the company focused instead on the battery life
improvements when showing off the new silicon.
AdvertisementAnd the camera also holds its own. The “Shot on iPhone 6S”
campaign makes the case better than words can: it’s possible to take really
good pictures with the 6S. But the better the camera gets, the more the
intrinsic flaws of the form factor are highlighted. The tiny focal length means
that all iPhone pictures are ultra-wide angle. It’s perfect for portraits taken
from very close up, and snaps of large things which you can’t get some distance
from, but it’s generally quite hard to frame a nice picture.
But that’s a good problem to have. The 6S is a good enough camera that you
start noticing the ways in which it falls short of actual cameras, rather than
comparing it just to phones. It helps explain why Apple decided to shove a
“telephoto” lens in the 7 Plus, however.
One surprise positive is 3D touch. For my first few months with the 6S, I was
scathing about the feature, which largely existed to provide a few shortcuts to
apps developed by trendy devs with a desire to support every new aspect of the
hardware at launch. But as time went on, the cohort of apps that support 3D
touch swelled, and the shortcuts became a regular part of my routine.
The launch of iOS 10 has only improved things further: 3D touch now feels
perfectly analogous to the right click button on a Mac. Do you need it? No.
Will it make things easier if you’re any sort of power user? Yes.
The bad
Where 3D touch grew on me, one of its flagship uses has not. Live Photos felt
cool and new when the 6S launched: a nice flourish on top of the already-strong
camera, which gave me something to interact with when showing pics to friends
and family. “Here’s the beautiful waterfall we saw on holiday, look at it move!”
AdvertisementBut a year on, the downsides are outweighing the fun flourish. The
extra storage space required for the pictures is starting to bite – not only on
my phone, but also on my iCloud storage and on the Mac the whole thing syncs
to. The requirement to 3D touch the screen to activate the live photos is
irritating and surprisingly difficult to pull off, requiring me to shift the
position I’m holding my phone in. And worst of all, beautiful moments are stuck
in a format I can do nothing with.
Back when I got the 6S, Live Photos felt like a best of both worlds thing: if I
didn’t know whether I wanted a picture or video, I could take a Live Photo and
get both. But a year on, I look back at moments that I would previously have
shot a Vine of, and regret that I took the Live Photo instead, leaving me with
a video that can’t be shared to social media, played by default, or easily edit
or remix.
That’s a mere irritation, though. The battery life of the 6S is a fatal flaw.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘At its worst, my phone has managed to completely
discharge by 9:30am.’ Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
There was unease when it was revealed that the phone would have a lower
capacity battery than its predecessor, but Apple assured users that it wouldn’t
affect the battery life over all, thanks to the power efficiency of the A9
processor.
AdvertisementWell, it doesn’t feel that way. At its worst, my phone has managed
to completely discharge by 9:30am, from a full charge overnight. It’s easy to
look for explanations for that abysmal performance: I had bluetooth headphones
running; I was on the tube, forcing my phone to expend battery vainly seeking
signal; my phone was glued to my hand for the entire time. But it’s just as
easy for me to counter it: I don’t have the Facebook app, I didn’t play any
power-hungry games in that period, I didn’t watch video, I didn’t make a call.
The battery life is just rubbish, and it’s relieving to see that Apple knows
it: the launch of the iPhone 7 was big on battery life improvements. But then,
so was iOS 9, introducing a battery saver mode that, as far as I can tell, does
absolutely nothing.
One year on, though, and there’s an even worse aspect of the battery life: the
iPhone 6S seems to have problems with cold weather. Last winter, when the
temperature in the UK hovered around 2˚C, my phone got in the habit of shutting
off when its battery dropped to about 30%. It would turn on again, only to
close a few seconds after booting, until you went inside and it warmed up. I
even managed to replace the device at the Apple Store, but the problem was only
fixed when summer came.
While we’re on problems which Apple doesn’t seem to think exist, the 6S seems
to have a poor bluetooth antenna. My Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones connect
just fine, but if you put the 6S in tight jeans and then head to a place with
some bluetooth interference – in most cities, that just means “outside” – the
audio stutters. At least one other phone (the Nexus 5X) has this problem too,
but it’s something that bodes ill for a company that just released a phone with
no headphone jack at all. Hopefully the problem doesn’t re-occur in the iPhone
7.
The ugly
The camera nubbin is exactly as irritating as it was when it was introduced
with the iPhone 6, two years ago. Objectively: it prevents the iPhone lying
flat on surfaces, or sliding smoothly over ledges. Subjectively: it’s an
absolutely awful design choice, a nasty compromise between two unasked-for
poles. Apple decided the phone had to be the slimmest ever, and the camera the
best ever, and the nubbin was the only way to achieve that goal. It is, at
heart, the sort of compromise which used to define the difference between Apple
hardware and its competitors. No longer.
AdvertisementIt’s been said before, but: an iPhone 6S which was a couple of
millimetres thicker, had no nubbin, and used that extra width to fit more
battery capacity would have been a substantially better phone.
It would still have been too big, though, just not in that particular
dimension. It’s the flip-side of what we wrote in our iPhone SE review: that
phone, Samuel Gibbs argued, is too small for people used to larger phones.
Well, a year on (two if we count my time with the iPhone 6), I can confirm that
the 6S is still too large for people used to smaller phones. I’ve started to
appreciate the extra size for text content, I will admit, and it makes watching
video almost bearable. But the permanent cramp in my little finger is always
there reminding me that it’s uncomfortable to hold and use one-handed, and the
bodge that is the iPhone’s ‘reachability’ mode reminds me that Apple knows it
too.
My little finger will have to suffer a bit longer, though. While the iPhone 7
looks like it improves the battery life, and capitalises on
