Done. Mainly featuring Apple TV, iPad Pro and two new iPhones, the crowd filled with applause and more applause as the products got unveiled. Amidst the cheer, were gasps of boring and relapsing options and applications which had long released on other operating systems. On top of that, the rumors and expectations in the case of iPhone 6S met the exact level in reality and it was all deja-vu. Sorry fanboys, but this year’s iPhone caught me neither by the eye nor the heart.
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From the requisites
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courtesy: TheVerge
On the stage, it was Phil Schiller most of the time with his enchanting voice but Tim Cook did the introduction with a brief praise towards iPhone 6.
Keeping the analytic and the exaggerated statistics aside, Tim spoke a few words about how the iPhone has performed in the markets across the globe as well as how it’s currently stacking up against the competition, and that’s it – come the iPhone 6S and the 6S Plus. As vibrant as the last year’s iPhone 6, just a tad thicker and grander internals, iPhone 6S is stacked to the gills when it comes to the theoretical spec sheet. The body itself is said to be made of custom Apple 7000 grade aluminium alloy – fancy to say? Yeah, it comes in a new color, that is rose gold.
New aluminium in rose gold
Mentioned in a lower tone, the much-hyped sapphire glass will no longer have its seat on the iPhone. It will be taken over by an industry leading material called Ion-X.
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3D Touch
This is where the matters get interesting. Apple showed a handful of occasions where you could use the new three stage touch panel – tap, press and a harder press. The harder press which released along with the Apple Watch as Force Touch has been re-branded to 3D Touch. Bother why.
When it comes to its applicability, the new gesture has unlocked great new features across all the system applications on the OS. The feature which stood out was the ability to peek inside an app without actually opening it. For example, if you quickly want to jump into the front facing camera from the home screen, you can simply force touch on the camera icon which’ll then present you with an option to do so.
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It has also been deeply integrated with the email app. as Craig Federighi enthusiastically showed how many, not few, options in the app could be accessed directly via gesturing with force touch. What included in the demo showed ways to jiggle around with an email to perform actions like delete and archive without lifting the finger. Psst…we got to know something from Craig’s emails – “El Capitan is going to ship starting on September 30th.”
Press harder, do more
And there is more to the performance. Just hard swipe from the left and you are presented with a slew of recent apps, but Apple has committed to exhibit more than this – do a complete hard swipe from either of the sides and you start jumping back and forth between apps. This thing seriously needed applause than it factually received.
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They also introduced something very similar to Vine, called Live Photos. The camera captures a bunch of images just before and after you click the image and processes into a single image (mind you, it’s an image not a video) which can then be triggered as a short motion video by holding anywhere on the screen. The fun part has ended.
All the new gestures are controlled by a new Apple-made technology called Taptic Engine enabling different kinds of buzzes and reactions from apps. The new API is said to be soon available to all the developers for smarter integration in their services. Instagram has already included the feature in its package.
Internals and Camera
Apple bumped up the primary processing unit on the iPhone to the 3rd Gen 64-bit chip, Apple’s A9. Schiller promised an increase of upto 70% in processing power over the previous generation A8 chip, whereas the GPU performance is theorized to be 90 percent faster “console class”. Accompanying the processor is an M9 coprocessor, set in place to shoulder the movements and motion tracking for reporting.
Few added characteristics were applied to Siri, as to where the TouchID got retouched for 2x performance in the report from Apple.
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Engineers at the Cupertino company have always stressed on the inverse relation between the pixel count on the camera and the photo quality when questioned about the lower camera resolution on the iPhone. And once again they didn’t leave out the point while announcing the new 12MP iSight camera, which is moreover capable of recording stunning 4K videos. Supporting the company’s stance, Schiller explained how the diodes in the sensor where ergonomically optimized in the successful attempt to preserve the quality of the image
“Our goal was fantastic color — the skin tones are really accurate.”apple-iphone-6s
The slideshow of photos, caught using an iPhone 6S were stunningly beautiful, crisp and full of detail. You got a GoPro, a DSLR? These were way out of the constraint – somewhere on par with professional equipment. To add more to that, iMovie on the iPhone is aptly ready to edit the pictures on the go. I consider carrying an iPhone 6S in place of a DSLR now, albeit the real world performance has to be tested before concluding on the camera.
The new camera is born to rule
The front facing camera has also been upgraded to a 5MP snapper, and accompanying it is a unconventional flash. Nothing to worry about, the flash no where make the device look chinese. The screen on the device is preset brighten high enough to throw light at your face while taking a selfie.
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4K video demo was as mind boggling as the wallpaper grade pictures. The short clip Apple allowed us to enjoy was clearly making my heart yearn for this device. We’ll soon see how it’ll blow away the competition – maybe few SLRs too.
Exceptional 4K
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Along with the awesome came something stupid called Live Photos. It seemed like a heavily ripped off version of Vine that is constrained to your local folder – shoots a motion picture by merging a bunch of picture clicked just before and after the shutter press.
Take a look at this breathtaking quality
Picking up age old traits from Android and Windows, iOS now has the option to transfer all the user’s personal files from Google’s OS to the new iPhone. And there are clean and simple cases available for the phone – available in a slay of colors.
Starting with the 16 GB model at $199, the 2-year on-contract price goes upto $399 for the 128 GB iPhone 6S, whereas the 6S Plus tags $100 higher through all the models. Price for the unlocked iPhone 6S hasn’t been disclosed but we hope it to be somewhere around INR 47,000 for the 16 GB model – similar to last year.
Both the iPhones will stock in over 130 countries starting September 25th, 2015. iOS 9 also got a release date on September 16th.
Packing the overview is the brief specification sheet showing the new improvements.