iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Preliminary Results | Hacker News Reader

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Preliminary Results

anandtech.com

101 pointsaroch63 comments

Was anyone else a bit annoyed by the fact that the 6s and 6s Plus were not both listed on each test? I guess that's why they titled the article preliminary, but damn.

I'm under the impression that the processor in 6s and 6s Plus is exactly the same. The only test you'll see a difference is on screen rendering, because the 6s Plus resolution is higher.

ArsTechnica's article today showed that the 6s Plus doesn't throttle the processor as much because it can dissipate more heat due to it's size.

It shouldn't make a huge difference (neither one throttled much) but there may be differences.

I just upgraded to the iPhone 6s from the iphone 5s. It's pretty good but my only grief, and not a small one though one I could have thought about before buying, is the large size of the phone.

I am not a small guy but I can't reach the whole screen with a single thumb like I could on the 5s. And the problem is that iOS places all sort of important commands at the top of the screen (back button, URL bar, etc), in the unreachable area. So it means the 6s can't be used with a single hand which is not a small UX change.

I hope they will make smaller future versions, or move all the essential functions to the bottom of the screen. Right now even the icons on the desktop are top aligned.

You probably already know about this but this is what the double tap (not press) of the home button is for. Technically you can still use the phone with one hand.

It's not really a great solution but you get used to it.

I actually didn't know. Useful trick indeed. Thanks!

After a little over a year with the iPhone 6, my general workflow goes like this:

1. I can use this one handed, that button over in the opposite corner doesn't look too far away. Reach for it. 2. My palm hits a button in the bottom-nearby corner. 3. Undo last action. 4. Try for the button again. 5. My palm hits another button the bottom-nearby corner. 6. Undo last action. 7. Oh right, that home-button trick. Double-tap the home button. 8. Reach the button.

I don't try to forget that functionality, but it doesn't occur often enough that I instantly think of it. In fact, having used iPhones since the 3gs, the go-to-move when you needed to reach a button out of reach with one-hand way the nose-press, which still comes more naturally to me than "reachability."

I guess if you can train yourself on it, it's good, but after having to use my wife's 4s the other weekend, I long to return to those days, size-wise.

I've heard this referred to as "the footstool" and "the emasculator."

I noticed this too, you can however lightly double tap (don't click) the home button and it brings the top half off the screen down to the middle of the screen.

the large size of the phone.

The joke I've seen floating about is "iPhone 6 users wish they had gone with the larger 6+, and 6+ users hate the large size and wish they had gone with the 6"

I think they're both huge.

Well, yeah, me too.

What I’ve heard is that folks with the 6+ generally love it, 6 users either wish they’d gone all the way w/ 6+ or wanna go back to the 5S.

(my money is on small/medium/large next year, waiting out this whole model/generation)

I would hope for that, but I'm afraid that the rumored 4" device was just the 2015 iPod Touch.

>back button

This is why they've pushed the swipe-to-go-back gesture. The screen edges are curved for this reason.

I just did the same upgrade (this morning). The size and weight increase are definitely noticeable and unfortunate. I'm hoping the speed bump and camera improvement will make it worth it.

There actually are Screen Protector that allows you to press the space next to the Home Button, and the "touch" will signal to the same side's top corner of the screen.

How does this performance compare to what Intel can do at 1-2 watts?

The performance charts have the Surface Pro 3 listed for comparison. The article doesn't specify the chip used, but it looks like all the Surface Pro 3 use some variant of an 11.5 watt Intel chip. Given the that the A9 seems to do about 1/3 slower then Surface, I'm guessing it would do very well against anything Atom based.

I'm very interested to see how fast the iPad Pro's A9X ends up being. If the numbers Apple showed in the keynote are accurate, it will probably be faster then a large chunk of Intel's much more power hungry lineup.

Apple's keynote claims have historically been accurate (within the margin of error rounded to Apple's favor).

Of course, the difference being that the Intel tablets are capable of running full versions of Windows and Linux, and are able to take advantage of huge software library not available on the iPad Pro. Whether one sees this as an advantage or not is up to them.

That has never been a concern for me; very little of that existing base of "full version" software is designed to be interacted with by touchscreen. That makes using it a pretty big compromise; for me, bigger than carrying around an ultra-light laptop for when I need to get "real stuff" done.

As mobile platforms have become more popular, the spread between what you can do on an iPhone/iPad and what you can get done on a laptop/desktop has been shrinking. Pretty soon, it won't really matter IMO.

The Surface is using Haswell chips (wikipedia tells me that three are available), not an Atom.

And FWIW: the "11.5W" number is a TDP, not an expected power under load. Likewise that "1-2W" number above is likely to be a expected average power. I'd be shocked beyond belief if the A9 was drawing that little under instantaneous load.

Even if conservatively the Surface draws 5W and the phone 2W, it's still doing 2/3rds of the compute on less than half the power. That should really worry Intel.

Surface Pro 3 use chips at 22nm, but it's still impressive.

Impressive hardware engineering, exaggerated touch interface aside, it's interesting how apple is able to apply great leaps in engineering to its phone yoy while at the same time not applying the same pace to the iwatch. You'd think that if they wanted to compete with LG/Moto/etc they'd get a better product out this year.

The watch has only been out for just over five months, so I'm not totally sure what you mean by "not applying the same pace" as the iPhone.

The watch has only been out for like 5 months...

True but you can hardly blame people for being confused.

The Apple Watch was announced on September 9, 2014, but did not ship until April 24, 2015. So the Watch feels a year old even if it has technically only been selling for half that time.

Even when it was announced it was behind the competition. By April 2015 (when they shipped the first units) the competition had moved on again. The only reason it is selling at all is because of the little Apple logo.

Moto 360 2 and Huawei Watch are watches that actually look like watches, same thickness, shape, and with a longer battery life. Why anyone purchased an Apple Watch is still beyond me. It is one of their weakest new product launches ever.

I agree it is their weakest product launch. However there are a number of innovations e.g. digital crown, force touch, haptic feedback and the excellent Fitness capabilities that do put in far ahead of the competition in day to day usability. It's really the software that is letting it down. And I don't know if you have seen a Moto 360/Huawei Watch in person but they are ridiculously large and tacky. They are nothing like a normal watch you would see around especially not for females which the Apple Watch's smaller size is an excellent match for.

> And I don't know if you have seen a Moto 360/Huawei Watch in person but they are ridiculously large and tacky.

I have. The 360 looks like a traditional watch, and the Apple Watch looks far bigger[0], and unusual. Have you seen them in real life? We have people in the building who own the 360 and others with the Apple Watch, I see them daily. The Apple Watch stands out as being a "box on the wrist" the 360 is invisible unless brought up or shown off.

> However there are a number of innovations e.g. digital crown, force touch, haptic feedback and the excellent Fitness capabilities that do put in far ahead of the competition in day to day usability.

This is so typical of Apple fans. Ignore everything on the market then claim Apple innovated/created every major product feature. Almost everything on your list pre-existed ahead of the Apple Watch announcement (let alone launch).

The crown is a watch feature which is over fifty years old. It has appeared on digital watches for at least twenty years before Apple "invented it." I myself owned a digital watch in the mid 1990s with a crown (which allowed you to set the time, change the date, etc all on a completely digital watch).

Apple was not the first watch to contain a vibrator ("haptic feedback"), IBM and Citizen Watch created the horrifying "WatchPad" in 2000(!) which had it. Since then many (most?) smartwatches have contained it as standard. It is absurd to call it an Apple innovation for a product released in 2015.

It is laughable to point at the fitness stuff. Even stepping away from smartwatches for a second, there is an entire market of fitness trackers around, many of which have incredible usability and are extremely popular. Fitbit, Garmin, iFit, heck even Microsoft have been producing products in this field for literally years ahead. Then there is the smartwatch competition from Samsung, LG, Garmin, Moto, etc all have fitness tracking capabilities.

It is like you either haven't been following technology at all or are just trolling. There's no other explanation for anyone claiming that Apple "innovated" most of the stuff on your list. I half expected you to claim that Apple invented the LCD screen on a smartwatch, or the wrist strap, it would be no more absurd than your other claims...

[0] http://www.modernhoot.com/372/moto-360-and-apple-watch-side-...

I have no idea what you are ranting on about here. I never said Apple invented the concept of a crown nor haptic feedback. That's just ridiculous. In fact many of their features are not true inventions by any sense of the word. They are merely novel implementations when applied to the context of a smart watch. And they serve to improve the day to day usability which is far superior to the Moto 360 and the other Android Wear devices I've seen. This has been Apple's playbook since the beginning.

My point with the fitness capabilities is that it is the best implementation of it both in terms of accuracy and usability. And I have tried quite a few in my time.

> I never said Apple invented the concept of a crown nor haptic feedback.

Yes you did. To quote you:

Innovation: a new method, idea, product, etc.

So, yes, you did absolutely claim Apple invented the concept of the crown, haptic feedback, and so on. Otherwise that sentence makes no sense.

> They are merely novel implementations when applied to the context of a smart watch.

As I've shown even that isn't the case. I can list a smartwatch which had every feature on your least except one (force touch). Nothing novel about anything else you listed with regard to Apple Watch. Maybe of the features listed can be traced back to the early 2000s on smartwatches.

> And they serve to improve the day to day usability which is far superior to the Moto 360 and the other Android Wear devices I've seen.

Given that both have most of the features, that claim makes no sense. Maybe if you took of your tinted Apple fan goggles for a second and actually tried someone else's products, you would know how inaccurate that statement is.

I've used Apple Watch and a Moto 360. Have you? You didn't even answer my question when I asked you if you had even seen a Moto 360 in real life.

> My point with the fitness capabilities is that it is the best implementation of it both in terms of accuracy and usability. And I have tried quite a few in my time.

So have I. They aren't. Fitbit did it better many many years ago. Apple introduced a fitness product which is like something from 2010. The fitness trackers you can buy today are far and ahead better for anything beyond the basics.

Your misreadings are comical. He claimed that Apple's use of the crown was innovative (and it is) not that they invented the crown. He claimed that Apple's use of haptic feedback was innovative (and it is), not that they invented vibration. And across the board, review after review -- whether from tech press or watch press -- have echoed these claims -- Apple's implementations are innovative. By all means have at those windmills though.

"The only reason it is selling at all is because of the little Apple logo."

Statements like that are not productive.

Neither are statements that claim something isn't productive without saying why.

Your hand-waving dismissal ("It's the logo, duh") shows a profound lack of understanding of how products are developed, marketed and sold.

If it was as simple as slapping a logo on something then companies would be able to do this with impunity. Every brand that's lost focus on what it does and instead seeks to monetize its brand has failed. Eventually your reputation goes from being valuable to being associated with cheap junk.

Maybe you can try and explain why the Moto watch isn't selling very well and Apple's is. Maybe there's more to it than a logo. Maybe Apple is a company focused on engaging with customers and delivering products they want rather than what Motorola is doing by launching a watch just because.

Apple was very concerned with making the watch relevant to people. Motorola was very concerned with getting to market first.

So what we have is watches for early adopters (Motorola, etc.) and watches for ordinary people (Apple Watch). I don't think choice is a bad thing here, and I wouldn't think less of someone for making a decision between the two.

> Maybe you can try and explain why the Moto watch isn't selling very well and Apple's is.

The Apple brand. Nothing more. That was my point. Apple released a watch which when announced had year old specs and technology, and when shipped was older yet still. But just because of the brand every major news outlet had a piece about it, every major tech blog had several articles about it, and people drolled over what is essentially a "me too!" product.

> Maybe Apple is a company focused on engaging with customers and delivering products they want rather than what Motorola is doing by launching a watch just because.

Do you have any basis at all for this? Other companies release stuff "just because" but when Apple releases stuff it is to "engage customers?" That comes across so bias/clouded it is incredible.

> Apple was very concerned with making the watch relevant to people. Motorola was very concerned with getting to market first.

Motorola wasn't first to market, smartwatches are years old at this point. This is third generation tech'. Apple entered the market late, nobody was racing to beat them. You could literally go into any major electronics retailer and buy six or more different smartwatches on the day Apple announced the Watch (and that was six months before it shipped).

So, no, nobody was racing to take Apple's toys. Apple was racing to get into a preexisting market last of any major manufacturer.

> So what we have is watches for early adopters (Motorola, etc.) and watches for ordinary people (Apple Watch). I don't think choice is a bad thing here, and I wouldn't think less of someone for making a decision between the two.

Early adopters are 2011. It is 2014-15 we're talking about. Unless the Pebble (1), Galaxy Gear (1), LG Watch, etc didn't ship for the last three or four years...

There's nothing "ordinary" about Apple's brick-shaped watch. Circular watches blend in. They appear like normal watches. Apple's Watch is for tech geeks who wish to stand out.

I think categorising three years and three generations of smart watches as "early adopters" and anything post-Apple as a copycat product is incredible.

> The Apple brand. Nothing more.

So maybe you can explain why review after review also said it was the first decent smartwatch?

If all you had to do is slap an Apple logo on things the original apple tv, iphone 5c, g4 cube, ROKR (well itunes), 20th anniversary mac, various ipod flops would have all been hits.

Instead it tends to be the case that people like to buy the best products. Apple products that sell very well also tend to be reviewed very well. This could be because the press is also in thrall of Apple but we could also look at the reception of Apple maps, bendgate, and antennagate and say maybe the press is more than happy to savage apple when they can.

> Early adopters are 2011.

Early adopters are associated with products that ship before a product goes mainstream. Currently even people with an Apple Watch are early adopters in my view.

> Unless the Pebble (1), Galaxy Gear (1), LG Watch, etc didn't ship for the last three or four years...

Zero of those watches shipped 3-4 years ago.

> So maybe you can explain why review after review also said it was the first decent smartwatch?

Because many of those reviews are from people who haven't used another smartwatch. If you look at the dedicate technology press, they're at best lukewarm about the Apple Watch. It is the non-tech press that praise it endlessly. But as far as they know smartwatches haven't existed for years ahead of it.

> ...as they know smartwatches haven't existed for years ahead of it.

And this is Apple's fault? Blame Motorola for their incompetent marketing, please. Blame HTC for not being able to market their way out of a wet paper bag. Blame Samsung for being at a complete loss for what to do unless they can copy someone, anyone else.

Apple put together a compelling package that combined technology, fashion, and lifestyle and people bought into it. Many of the other vendors put out "a smartwatch" without really building a lot of momentum to it pre-launch. They delivered an answer to a question nobody asked.

Motorola failed to answer the "Why would I want a smartwatch?" question. Apple gave a much more compelling pitch (fitness, health, payment) than Motorola did (Android! On a watch!) People are buying the Apple Watch because they understand it, not because of the logo.

There was a time when the Motorola name was more valuable than Apple's. You'd probably be bitching about people buying Motorola for the logo and nothing more, but it wasn't about the logo. It was about their reputation for making solid, nearly indestructible gear, for making it practical, for making it look good. Other companies might've been first to market with color screens or more bands, but Motorola packaged it up better and sales reflected that. They were utterly dominant for a time.

There's one other company doing this right: Pebble. That team has been working hard and promoting their product. They're doing fantastically well for a tiny company.

Remember, Motorola is a huge company. They should be able to figure this out. There's no excuse for their utter cluelessness.

Is there are point really to a new hardware so soon, when the software is still not there? I mean, we haven't even received proper "native" apps in wOS2. Apps are still watered-down middleman apps, instead of opening full PepperUICore framework, or even better, UIKit (flavored, like they did with the tvOS version). Hacks have demonstrated full UIKit apps running smoothly on the existing hardware. I think the limiting factor is not the hardware.

> "I think the limiting factor is not the hardware."

Well, not CPU/GPU hardware, but battery life is still a major concern. That said, I think the Apple Watch's battery life has proven to be better than advertised (~2 full days for me before it gets critically low, better than the ~1 day advertised) so there's definitely some room to play there.

I also picked up a Pebble Time Steel, and have been mildly disappointed. It definitely lasts longer than the Apple Watch, but the margin is not nearly as wide as you'd hope. The marketing copy says ~7 days, but in reality it's been more like ~4 days, and between the Apple Watch @ 2 day battery life vs. Pebble @ 4 day battery life, I know which I'd pick.

I agree about the battery, but has battery technology advanced so much in the year since development of the current hardware? I doubt it is such that would warrant another hardware cycle.

The outsider's perspective (I own no Apple products and don't follow announcements from them that closely) is that when their product is obviously outclassed (as opposed to slightly outclasses as the normal phone leap-frogging entails) they quietly wait long enough to have a major performance and/or feature drop and then release it all of a sudden. It helps that their media relations are second to none and can use this time to eviscerate the competition. Say what you will about Apple, but they are very savvy when it comes to product development and marketplaces.

They release a phone at the same time each year and have done so for a fair while now. The marketing aside, the schedule is pretty predictable.

We aren't talking about phones though, so I'm not sure how this applies.

Don't know what you are talking about on any points.

a) 3D touch is not exaggerated. I have spent a few days with the iPhone 6s and it is a game changer for future mobile interaction. It is very reminiscent of contextual menus and in a year once all developers get on board (and they will thanks to Apple's excellent iOS9 adoption rate) it will be hard to use any phone that doesn't have it.

b) There is no need for new hardware for the Apple Watch. I have one. Every problem with it is software related. Many animations are superfluous, the app strategy is misguided, native apps are still too slow (yet Apple's apps are fast), the watch faces are not nearly customisable enough and it is not situation aware enough.

Mostly good points, but one gripe:

> they will thanks to Apple's excellent iOS9 adoption rate

Adoption rate does not matter when discussing 3D Touch because it requires hardware and is only available on the latest models. But I still think devs get on board quickly because Apple sells a lot of phones, and it's a cool feature (and a bummer when not implemented).

OS adoption rate helps with the incentive to support new API, regardless of the hardware. You support it, and the hardware will catch up. Since we are already at 50% at least, implementing support is an easy decision. What more, the API here is very easy to implement, so even more incentive to implement.

If iOS9 adoption is fast, developers can start building iOS 9 apps that include 3D Touch features. The 3D Touch support will obviously only work on the 6S series for now, and there may be different code paths involved but it's easily do-able.

If a majority of users stuck with iOS8 for some reason, developers would need to target that, iOS8 apps couldn't support Touch 3D features even optionally since none of the relevant APIs would be available.

You don't need to drop iOS 8 support to include 3D Touch support in your applications.

a) nice marketing buzzwords. I'm sure '3d touch' will work great in the winter or with screen protectors.

b) bad battery life? non-round design? poor software? expensive? There's "no need for new hardware"? :^)

a) 3D touch would work fine with gloves if that's what you're implying just like it works fine with screen protectors (Apple has stated this already).

b) Battery life is 1.5 days. A watch either needs to have 1 day or 7 days battery life. Anything in between is pointless since you will still charge it every night. And the non round design is a conscious feature which I appreciate every time I have to scroll through my calendar. And software/expensive has what do with hardware ?

"How is apple able to apply great leaps in engineering to its phone while at the same time not applying the same pace to the iwatch?"

"How dare apple release a new iwatch after less than six months? Shouldn't they give everyone a new watch?"

Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

This Watch release isn't new internal hardware. It's simply an increase in the options you can buy in terms of case colors/materials and bands. As a watch is something you wear, it makes sense to give people more options to customize it to their personal tastes.

Also you don't just slap a faster more power hungry processor into Watch. Watch is highly power optimized so you can't add something that's more power hungry without touching everything else in the system.

It's just not correct to think of Watch as an iPhone on your wrist. It's selling point will not be that it just has an improved processor.

As usual, the Apple zealous blogs cherry pick results and only included older Android devices to compare against

For a better comparison, check out the Galaxy S6 Edge http://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-Galaxy-S6-Edge-Smartpho...

Antutu v5 72094 Points

Octane v2 8650 Points

Internal mem 256k sequential write 151.11 MB/s

Geekbench v3 64 bit single core 1503

Geekbench v3 64 bit multi core 5619

GFXBench 3.0 Manhatten 3 offscreen 25fps

I'm not exactly a fan of Apple-focused reporting either, but every single graph except one in this article has statistics for the S6 Edge. The one that doesn't has stats for the S6, which has the same compute hardware as the S6 Edge.

Anandtech is historically not a Apple-focused reporter; in my experience they've been fairly neutral.

Yeah, I actually meant edge plus (which has much faster UFS 2.0 vs prior filesystem performance). Not that it matter. The HN hivemind has decided to love Apple at all costs and just downvoted me anyway.

Are you sure it isn't because you claimed the article cherrypicked results by not including a phone that was, in fact, included in all but one graph, and then justified your misplaced criticism based on the omitted phone having faster storage -- even though the phone in question was specifically included in the storage benchmarks?

It's not fair to blame the HN hivemind when you make a pointed request in biased language, and aren't even correct in your request. Look inwards.

Perhaps it is well worth your time to consider other reasons for the down votes. Doing so may prove beneficial to you in terms of inter personal communication.

Don't confuse "hivemind" with you acting like a jackass and getting down-voted for it.

If you've got a concern, try and express it in terms that aren't combative.

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