Apple iPhone 6s Plus review: Big, beautiful and still fabulous (but still no bargain deals)

Nearly a year after release, and the iPhone 6s Plus still doesn’t come cheap. The iPhone 7 is just around the corner, so realistically you should probably hold off to see if the new handset offers a significant upgrade – or what kind of impact it has on the iPhone 6s Plus’ pricetag.

Still, if you absolutely must have the iPhone 6s Plus today, then there are some decent deals out there. Mobiles.co.uk can sell you the 16GB model for £75 upfront, and then a 12 month contract worth £31.50 per month with o2, which is a reasonable deal including a generous 3GB data. Alternatively, if you don’t want to pay anything upfront you can get similar terms with Vodafone for £37 per month.

Buying the phone SIM free isn’t much more appealing. Currys sell the 16GB handset at £599, which only £20 less than the Apple store, so not too much of a bargain. Seriously, if you can: give it a month. 

The original review continues below.

When Steve Jobs first mocked the trend for giant smartphone screens, he couldn’t possibly have envisaged how popular they’d become. I’m all but certain he’d have spun it in his favour, though, simply by stating that Apple’s phones, though late to the party, “did it better”. Fast-forward to now, a year after the super-sized iPhone 6 pairing first hit the market, and Apple has released the Apple iPhone 6s Plus – it’s no bigger, but it is most definitely better.

I’m going to leave a lengthy discussion over the size of the iPhone 6s Plus aside for this review. Physically, it’s much the same phone as last year. A fraction thicker and very slightly heavier, maybe, but in isolation you’d struggle to tell the 6 Plus and the 6s Plus apart.

To my mind, though, it’s a little too bulky for a 5.5in phone. Companies such as Samsung and even Huawei have produced handsets that squeeze bigger screens into ever smaller bodies – by comparison, the iPhone 6s Plus feels oversized and heavy. It badly needs to go on a diet.[gallery:1]

Apple could also do with getting rid of the unsightly camera bulge at the rear, which remains from last year. If you choose to snap a case on your iPhone, it’s not an issue – but that’s not to everyone’s tastes. Choose to go without, though, and the phone will rock slightly when you put it down on a flat surface.

Apple iPhone 6s Plus: Bigger screen and battery

Still, there are some tangible benefits that the iPhone 6s Plus carries over its smaller, more pocketable sibling. The first of those is its larger, 5.5in (1,080 x 1,920 resolution) display, which makes it far better for watching movies, playing games and browsing the web.

The extra screen real estate also helps out with the pop-up menus that appear when you employ the phone’s new 3D Touch system. You can read about how I think 3D Touch is going to change the way we use our smartphones in my Apple iPhone 6s review, but on the iPhone 6s I occasionally found that fingers and thumbs would obscure menus and options – here it’s much less of an issue.

Despite the extra layers of pressure-sensing technology, screen quality remains a match for the 6s and last year’s 6 Plus, offering a top brightness of 584cd/m2, a contrast ratio of 1,331:1 and sRGB coverage of 91.3%. It’s not quite the match of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+’s fantastic Super AMOLED screen, but it’s still very, very good.

The iPhone 6s Plus also has a bigger battery than the standard iPhone 6s, which delivers tangibly longer life between charges. In real-world use, I regularly reached the end of a day with a fair amount in reserve – between 30% and 40% – and even on days where I used the phone more intensively, iOS 9’s new Low Power Mode was there to help out.

Low Power Mode disables certain background functions in an attempt to give you longer battery life. Switch it on and you’ll notice that certain animations are disabled, background email sync and downloads are turned off, as is the always-on Hey Siri command.

In the Alphr smartphone battery tests, the iPhone 6s Plus performed extremely well. When streaming audio over 4G, with background tasks set to a minimum and the screen off, the battery ran down at a rate of 2.3% per hour. Playing a 720p video with the screen set to a brightness of 120cd/m2 consumed capacity at a rate of 5.5% per hour.

These results are slightly worse than last year’s, but only by a smidgen, and the iPhone 6s Plus remains among the longest-lasting smartphones on the market. Unfortunately, if that still isn’t good enough for you, you’re stuck with it, at least from an official standpoint. Although Apple has released an official battery case for its 4.7in iPhone 6s it hasn’t done the same for the larger iPhone 6s Plus.

Apple iPhone 6s Plus: Performance

The iPhone 6s Plus has the same performance-sensitive components as the iPhone 6s. That means the next-generation A9 processor takes pride of place, accompanied by 2GB of RAM – a pairing that’s fast enough to significantly outgun its predecessor.

Put the iPhone 6s Plus next to last year’s model and the comparative speed of the two devices is noticeable. Apps launch quicker, animations happen with a little more snap, and the fingerprint reader unlocks the phone in a trice.

In benchmarks, the 6s Plus is way ahead:

What’s interesting here is how the Plus compares with the smaller iPhone 6s when it comes to graphics and games performance. There’s no difference in the T-Rex HD test – because that’s now too easy – and the 6s Plus is capped by the refresh rate of the display.[gallery:5]

The Manhattan test, which is far more demanding, proves a tougher task for the A9 processor. This reveals that, although the 6s Plus is quicker than its predecessor, it’s slower than the standard 6s, and that’s because its Full HD display gives it more than twice the number of pixels to draw per frame.

Clearly, the iPhone 6s is the slower performer, but what does this mean out in the real world? Exactly what you’d expect. Most titles, like the T-Rex HD test, won’t stretch the iPhone 6s Plus at all and they’ll run at 60fps. More demanding games will see frame rates fall a touch, but not to the point at which games will be unplayable. It will be a good few years before we see the iPhone 6s Plus struggle to run apps or games.[gallery:2]

Apple iPhone 6s Plus: Cameras

It’s much the same story with the iPhone 6s Plus’ camera. Look casually over the specifications of the cameras in both the 6s and the 6s Plus, and you’d be forgiven for thinking they were identical. In most circumstances you’d be right. In good light, the two phones take fantastic photographs: packed with the extra detail that the new 12-megapixel sensor brings with it, and as reliable at taking usable, good-looking photographs as any smartphone camera around.

In low light, however, the iPhone 6s Plus has the edge, since it’s able to employ optical image stabilisation (OIS) to reduce the effect of camera shake. In my regular low-light test, captured in the dingy environs of the Alphr podcast studio, the iPhone 6s captured my test shot using a shutter speed of 1/17s and a sensitivity setting of ISO 320, while the iPhone 6s Plus was able to snap the same scene at 1/8s and a sensitivity setting of ISO 100.[gallery:3]

The result? Well, I can’t say it’s a huge difference, but the iPhone 6 Plus’ images do look less noisy, more detailed and cleaner in low light than those of the iPhone 6s. As I said, though, the difference isn’t huge – it’s only once you pore over the images side by side that the benefits of OIS become clear.

What’s perhaps more significant is that, unlike last year’s iPhone 6 Plus, Apple has implemented OIS for video. This doesn’t make a massive difference, since the iPhone’s digital stabilisation works very well, but it does have some impact: even though the quality of the video looks largely the same as before, videos shot on the iPhone 6s Plus do look more steady and stable.[gallery:7]

[gallery:8]

There’s no difference, therefore, between video captured by the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus. The quality is excellent, and as with the smaller 6s, this larger phone has the added  capability of being able to capture both 4K footage at 30fps or 1080p at a super-smooth frame rate of 60fps.

The front-facing camera is also a dead ringer for the one on iPhone 6s, and this time there are no hidden extras. Apple has bumped up the resolution from 1.2 megapixels in the iPhone 6 Plus to 5 megapixels, which means your wrinkles/pimples/eyebags (delete as applicable) are captured in more detail. Apple has also implemented a clever front-firing flash system, which lights up the screen in white, then in pale yellow in an effort to mimic the dual-tone LED flash on the rear, and capture more flattering skin tones.

Elsewhere, you also get the new Live Photos feature, which captures 1.5 seconds of footage before and after your shots, like a sort of auto-Vine. It works well, but is flawed in precisely the same way as on the 6s. It’s effective, but only as long as you remember to keep the camera pointed at your subject until the Live icon disappears from the screen – otherwise you’ll just end up with a shot of your shoes at the end of each clip.[gallery:4]

And as far as the camera app is concerned, it’s business as usual. Apple’s approach with the iPhone camera has always been one of simplicity and ease of use, and there’s no change here. There’s no manual mode, nor a plethora of features, but I suspect we’ll soon see a host of third-party apps designed to do just that, so it’s no great loss.

Apple iPhone 6s Plus: Verdict

For all other aspects of the iPhone 6s I’m going to refer you to my review of the iPhone 6s. That’s because, to all intents and purposes, the iPhone 6s Plus is identical. It may have a larger screen and a slightly better camera, but the rest of the package is the same – same ion-strengthened glass, same new iOS 9 features, same Touch 3D.

As a result, my verdict is much the same too. If you get on with larger phones (and make no mistake, this is one of the biggest there is), and you don’t mind paying the extra £80 premium over the 6s, the Apple iPhone 6s Plus hits all the right buttons.

The bigger question is whether it’s caught up with the Android-based competition, and that depends on your point of view. It’s certainly heavier and more unwieldy than, say, the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, but battery life is better. It has fewer features and its screen doesn’t quite have the same pizzazz, but it’s arguable that many of those extras don’t make much difference in day-to-day use anyway. There isn’t even the differential in price that there used to be.

In fact, aside from Apple’s pig-headed insistence on retaining a 16GB model – which is all the more baffling a decision now that 4K video and Live Photos are on hand to gobble it all up – the iPhone 6s Plus has no significant weakness. It’s a great feat of smartphone engineering that ranks among the very best examples of the oeuvre.

If you can’t afford Apple’s iPhone 6s Plus, take a look at our favourite smartphones of the year. We have smartphones for every budget on the list, so you should be able to find something to fit your needs.