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The ultimate guide to your new Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus

By James Lu - 6 Oct 2015

The ultimate guide to your new Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus

Whether you're a savvy veteran or a complete beginner to iOS, we've got you covered in our ultimate guide to your new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus. Learn the ins and outs of 3D Touch, Live Photos and tons of other tips and tricks for getting the most out of your new iPhone.

3D Touch

3D Touch is without a doubt the signature feature of the Apple iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. In my iPhone 6s review, I called it "the single biggest improvement to the touchscreen since its creation" and I still stand by that. 3D Touch introduces a quicker and easier way to interact with your phone that just makes everything more efficient and convenient.

An earlier version of the technology with a slightly different implementation known as Force Touch can be found on the MacBook Pro's trackpad, and on the Apple Watch. According to Apple's Senior Vice President of Marketing, Phil Schiller, 3D Touch took Apple "multi, multi, multi years” to develop. Working with Corning, Apple developed a pliable iPhone cover glass. Swipe it, and the phone works the way it always has. But press it, and 96 sensors embedded in the backlight of the retina display measure microscopic changes in the distance between themselves and the glass. Those measurements then get combined with signals from the touch sensor to make the motion of your finger sync with the image on screen. When you press the screen, an integrated haptic feedback engine delivers a 10- or 15-millisecond vibration, which Schiller says is the iPhone's way of telling your fingers “good job” when an action is complete.

What makes 3D Touch so good is how seamlessly it's integrated into every part of iOS 9; whatever you're doing, 3D Touch can make it quicker and easier. On the homescreen, 3D Touch serves as a shortcut launcher. Press harder on an icon on the homescreen and a few shortcuts, called Quick Actions, related to that app will pop up in a little menu - like taking a selfie with the camera, or calling one of your favorite contacts. Right now it's mostly Apple apps that work, but some third party apps have been updated as well (see below for a list of our favorites). If an app doesn't support 3D Touch, you'll get a longer vibration through the haptic feedback engine to tell you that nothing is going to happen.

Where 3D Touch really comes into its own is when it's used within an app. Here, Apple has given you two main features to play with: 'Peek' and 'Pop'. The basic idea is this: you can hard-press on an SMS message, an email in your inbox, an image you found in Safari, a website url your friend sent you or pretty much anything the iPhone recognizes as a link of some kind, and a preview window (a "peek") of the thing you pressed will appear on the display. From there, you can read the entire message, then simply lift your finger off to quickly dismiss it. This makes it super easy and fast to scan through messages or emails without having to open each one individually. If you don't want to close the window you can press a bit harder to 'Pop' it, which launches the preview window into the relevant app for that content. 

Hard press an email or message...   ...to get a 'peek' at it.   Then press harder to 'pop' it open.

There are other options in the 'Peek' view too. Slide your finger up and options will appear. For example in Safari, you'll be able to open the link, add it to your reading list for later, or copy the url. If you're viewing an image, you can save that image or open it up in Safari. In email, you can slide up for a bunch of options, or slide left to mark it read, or right to archive it.

Slide up in 'Peek' view to access a list of options.

Oh and when you're typing an email, message, note or anything else that uses a keyboard? Hard press the on-screen keyboard and it will turn into a trackpad that you can use to quickly and accurately place the cursor where you want it. Let go of the screen and it turns back into a keyboard. Genius.

Press hard on the keyboard when you're typing a message, note or email and it will turn into a trackpad you can use to re-position the cursor.

By the way, you can change the sensitivity for 3D Touch (or even turn it off completely if you want). Go to the Settings menu > General > Accessibility, then scroll down until you find 3D Touch. Tap it, then make your selection. By default, 3D Touch sensitivity is set to Medium, with lower (Light) and higher (Firm) levels available to the user. After setting the desired 3D Touch sensitivity option, you can try it out 'peeking' and 'popping' on the test image.

Notes

While Notes has been revamped for all devices running iOS 9, it deserves a special mention on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus thanks to its interaction with 3D Touch. The new Notes lets you format your text, add photos, either through the dedicated camera button or just by inserting an image, add maps and URLs, create to-do-lists and best of all, you can use it as a sketch pad. Tap the sketch button at the bottom of the screen to begin drawing. This brings up a series of digital drawing tools (pen, highlighter, pencil and eraser), along with a ruler for drawing straight lines. Use two fingers to turn the ruler to any angle you want.

Turn the iPhone to landscape mode and you'll see a range of color options when drawing. The harder you press with your finger, the thicker the lines you draw.

A masterpiece. 

Third-party apps optimized for 3D Touch

A number of third-party apps have already been updated to support 3D Touch. Here are some of our favorites:

Instagram

   

Hard pressing the Instagram app on the home screen will bring up a shortcut menu with options for posting a new photo, viewing activity, search and sending a photo message directly. When you are browsing through photos on an Instagram account, you can 'Peek' to get a preview of the photo. Want to see the full-sized photo? Simply 'Pop'.

WeChat

   

Hard press the WeChat app on the homescreen to start a new chat, record a short video and access your QR code. You also can get a Peek of individual messages in your inbox.

Dropbox 

   

Hard press the app to access shortcuts to the most recent file added to Dropbox, view offline files, upload a photo, and search files in your account. You also can Peek at individual files inside the Dropbox app.

Evernote

   

Evernote supports Quick Actions on the home screen with shortcuts for creating a new note, taking photo or setting a reminder. Within the Evernote app, you can take a Peek into website links or notes from your Evernote home screen.

Twitter

Twitter

Hard-press on the Twitter icon and you will get the option to search through your Twitter feed, post a new Tweet or send a direct message on Twitter. 

Shazam

If opening and waiting for the Shazam app to load takes too long, hard press on the app icon on the home screen and you get the option to "Shazam Now". You also can activate Visual Shazam to activate the QR reader when you see the Shazam camera logo on posters, magazines or books.  

Touch ID 2.0

First introduced in the iPhone 5s, Apple's Touch ID fingerprint scanner has become the benchmark against which all fingerprint scanners are measured. While Apple's rivals seemed like they had caught up with their own fingerprint scanners, Apple has once again left them in the dust with its second-generation Touch ID scanner.

The new Touch ID, found exclusively on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is about twice as fast as the previous (already fast) scanner. In fact, it's so fast, it's often impossible to use the Home button to view the lock screen (e.g. to check for notifications) because by the time the display has turned on your phone is already unlocked and loading the home screen.

Don't believe me? This is how fast the new Touch ID scanner is (yes, this phone is fingerprint locked)

Here are some tips for using the new Touch ID scanner:

Feel free to register multiple fingers

On the old Touch ID scanner, the more fingerprints you stored, the slower your Touch ID scanner became (due to it having to check against all of the stored prints). The new Touch ID scanner doesn't seem to be slowed down at all by multiple prints so feel free to add up to the maximum of five.

Scan your finger upside down

When you register your fingerprint, the directions make it seem as if you have to line up your finger in a certain orientation, but in reality, the Touch ID sensor has 360-degree readability, so if your phone is across the table from you or you just feel like showing off, you can unlock it upside down without having to turn it the right-way up. 

Five tries, not three

If your finger fails to scan three times, you'll get a passcode prompt to unlock your phone. However, you actually have two more attempts before you're forced to use your passcode.

Set up a wet fingerprint 

I've found that the only time the Touch ID scanner fails to unlock is when my finger is wet. But if you register a new fingerprint while your finger is wet, this will no longer be a problem.

Which finger is which?

If you've registered multiple fingers, but didn't label them, you can easily identify which is which by scanning them in Touch ID Settings. When you scan one of your fingers, the matching print will briefly be highlighted from the list.

Live Photos

In addition to upgrading the 6s' camera module, Apple has introduced a new camera mode, called Live Photos, which are basically the real world version of the magical moving photos from Harry Potter. When Live Photos are enabled the iPhone will record 1.5 seconds of video footage before and after you hit the shutter button - it captures the before footage by constantly recording whenever your camera app is open and Live Photos are enabled, but only saves the footage if you actually press the shutter button.

When you look at your Live Photo later, you can press and hold the photo and it will turn into a three second looping video complete with audio. It's really clever and adds a bit of fun and context to your pictures. Incidentally, Live Photos still work even if you have 3D Touch turned off. Each Live Photo takes up twice the storage space of a regular still photo. While that may not seem like much, Live Photos are on by default and the majority of your photos are unlikely to benefit from it (hello food pictures) so they can chew through storage space fairly quickly, especially if you have a 16GB or even 64GB iPhone. My suggestion would be to turn Live Photos off (by tapping the Live Photo icon at the top of the camera app), and only activate it when you know you want to capture something special.

By the way, if you want to delete just the Live Photo portion of a photo, select the photo, press Edit, then hit the Live Photo icon in the top left, then hit Done. Take note that once deleted, you can't restore the Live Photo part.

Record in 4K

For those really special moments when you want video longer than three seconds, the new iPhones are able to shoot 4K video (3,840 x 2,160). To shoot 4K video on the iPhone you'll need to turn it on. For some reason, you can't actually do this from the camera app. Instead, you'll need to head into the Settings Menu, then Photos & Cameras. Scroll down to Camera and you'll see an option for Record Video. Tap that and you'll be able to select the 4K option. If you're planning on shooting a lot of video, you'll definitely want the 6s Plus, since its optical image stabilization now works on videos.

Take better selfies

The front camera has also been upgraded on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and is now a 5-megapixel module. The front camera also supports Live Photos and HDR mode, and there's also a new flash-mode that uses the iPhone's display as a flash, driving it up to three times brighter than normal and adjusting the color of the flash to match the lighting for the scene. If you have flash on, this is done automatically, so you don't even need to set anything up!

Squeeze out more battery life

While the 6s and 6s Plus already have much improved battery life on their predecessors, Apple has also introduced a new way to get even more battery life out of your device. You'll be promoted to turn on Low Power Mode when your battery hits 20 percent, and again at 10 percent, but you can also turn it on manually at any time if you know it'll be a long time until you can get to your next power supply.

To enable Low Power Mode, open the Settings app in iOS 9, then choose the new Battery parent menu. From here a toggle switch for Low Power Mode can be turned on. While you're here, you might also want to toggle on the battery percentage indicator, which will give you a more accurate reading of how much battery life you have left.

Once enabled, Low Power Mode changes the battery indicator in the top right corner to yellow, reminding users that their device is running in a more efficient state. Low Power Mode reduces power consumption by turning off certain features, including mail fetch, background app refresh, and automatic downloads. In addition, some visual effects are reduced or disabled to squeeze more out of the device's battery. Low Power Mode is also said to affect networking capabilities to boost uptime.

"Hey Siri" anytime

Siri is Apple's virtual assistant, first introduced in the iPhone 4s. Siri can respond to natural language questions, and can answer questions, make recommendations, and perform tasks such as searching the Internet, sending an SMS, making a phone call or setting an alarm.

Since iOS 8, you've been able to voice activate Siri with the phrase "Hey Siri". The only catch was, your phone needed to be plugged in to a power supply. But thanks to smarter power management and the integration of the M9 motion co-processor into the main A9 chip, you no longer need a power source for "Hey Siri" to work on the new iPhones. Just wake her up whenever you feel like it.

To turn the feature on,  go the Settings Menu, then go to General > Siri and toggle the Allow "Hey Siri" option to on.

Turn off Wi-Fi Assist

Wi-Fi Assist is a new feature in iOS 9 that automatically enables your cellular data plan whenever the Wi-Fi signal strength drops below a certain level. The feature is designed to tackle the "dead-zone" around your house, where your phone desperately tries to cling to your wi-fi signal, but isn't able to actually download anything.

However, many users have found that Wi-Fi Assist seems a bit overzealous in its desire to use your data plan, and will often use cellular data even when you're at home and the Wi-Fi connection seems fine, resulting in much higher than normal data usage.

Until Apple fixes this issue, our suggestion is to turn off Wi-Fi Assist for now (it's on by default). To turn it off, go to Settings, then Mobile Data. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen (past the apps) and you'll be able to toggle Wi-Fi Assist off.

For even more guides and how-tos for your new iPhone, be sure to check out these articles:

 

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