On Sept. 25, Apple released its newest additions to the iPhone family, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Within the first weekend, Apple sold 13 million of its newest products, breaking their previous record of 10 million in 2014 with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Every year a new model is released, and an “s” is released every other year. Apple states that it does this to give the engineers more time to makes changes and update technology. Generally the small changes that consist of slightly faster hardware and a slightly better camera. On the years where it advances a number larger changes like size, layout, camera, appearance/structure, and iOS take place.
With Apple’s new release, the designers have shown that they know what they are doing. The 6s has brought with it vast changes, most being inside the camera. The camera quality has improved, jumping from eight mega-pixels to 12 mega-pixels and 4K video. The FaceTime HD camera is now five mega-pixels as opposed to 1.2 and includes a retina flash (which helps with those selfies). Panoramas are now much better quality as well. A completely new camera feature, Live Photos, has been introduced. With Live Photos you can actually go back and share the context of a photo.
Harding alumnus and University of Central Arkansas Campus Photographer Grant Schol received his new iPhone the weekend of it’s release. When asked what he thought about Live Photos he was more than impressed.
“As a photographer, I capture moments.” Schol said. “Up until now that meant a single still frame, but sometimes that doesn’t give justice to all that was going on in that particular moment.”
Another feature of the 6s and 6s Plus that seems to have impressed people is the 3-D Touch. 3-D Touch allows you to interact not only by tapping a glass screen, but also by gaining more control of the phone and its contents. The phone now gauges the sensitivity of the touch, allowing you to maneuver your apps more efficiently.
The last notable change would be the color. Apple added a new color to it original line up of space gray, silver,and gold, which has since been removed from 6 and replaced with Rose Gold. The news of a new color much excitement as many people exclaimed “rose gold or bust.” The new color sold out first. However, I was able to try out the new phone, and didn’t much like the new color. Everything else was a huge improvement.
Though we are college students and this is not exactly cost efficient, I do believe that the release of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus was a good move and investment. The features of the 6s, and the phone itself, are yet another stamp that Apple has put on technology.
