Picture Credit: Apple.Com

 We are a couple of weeks in since Apple held its “Hey Siri” event in the grand city of San Francisco. 

And, since then,  the stars have perfectly aligned in the creation of Apple’s newest iPhone – the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.  I am so happy that I waited until my contract played out because, if I owned the Phone 6 right now, I would  have been seriously – well – not happy! 

There are two reasons for this statement: 

• The addition of a new technology called 3D Touch, allowing consumers to dig deeper within an app based on the strength of their touch.

• Optical Image Stabilization – which noticeably reduces the shaky movements in your videos. This feature, however, is only available on the iPhone 6s Plus – which is why I threw my money in the direction of the Plus over the iPhone 6s. It pays to do your homework, everyone! 

Now back to those aligning stars:  the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus reviews throughout the blogosphere and major news outlet have been nothing short of phenomenal.  And, much of the hoopla surrounds the implementation of 3D Touch and Optic Image Stabilization. 

Mashable called 3D Touch a game changer. And John Gruber from DaringFireball.Net wrote an in depth report about these new iPhones: 

3D Touch can be used in a few ways:

Quick Actions: The pop-up menu you see from the home screen when you press on an app icon.
Peek and Pop: Press a little to get a peek, press harder to pop whatever you’re peeking at open. This works mostly on list items. So in Mail, from your list of messages, you can peek to look at a message, then pop to open it all the way up. It works almost everywhere in Apple’s own apps: Messages, Camera, Maps, Weather, Safari (page previews on links), Notes, Calendar, and more. It pays to explore.

Multitasking: As an alternative to double-pressing the home button, you can now press on the left edge of the display. Press-and-swipe all the way across and you switch back to the previous app you were using. Press-and-swipe just a little and you’re left in the “card view” where you can switch to any previous application. The former is like hitting Command-Tab just once. The latter is like hitting Tab repeatedly while holding down the Command key. This is quickly addictive, and a great accommodation now that the iPhones are bigger than they used to be — you can switch between apps without changing your grip to allow your thumb to reach the Home button.

Trackpad Mode: Press on the keyboard and it turns into a trackpad. iPads running iOS 9 can trigger this trackpad mode, too, with a two-finger swipe on the keyboard. Doing it with a single finger on the iPhone, though, is a tremendous boon to text editing. This might be the single best new feature for text editing on the iPhone since the addition of selection and Copy/Paste in iOS 3 in 2009. In addition to moving the insertion point around, you can press again and switch to selection mode — like double-clicking the mouse button on a Mac. Trackpad mode is a once-you’ve-used-it-you-can’t-go-back addition to iOS.

One other camera feature demands mention, and it breaks my heart. Last year, the iPhone 6 Plus, and only the Plus, included optical image stabilization. This year, OIS remains a Plus-only feature, and Apple has made it even better, because it now works with video. The advantages of OIS for video are even greater than for still images, in my opinion. You know how when you watch a video someone shot on their phone — any phone — and when they walk around, you can see the picture rock up and down with each step they take? It’s a signature of amateur video shot on consumer cameras, and it’s unpleasant to say the least.

You should really read the entire Gruber article. It gives you a full overview of the creative and engineering process in the creation of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. 
And, in case you were wondering what the differences were between the new numbered iPhone models and its “s” successors (hey, maybe this is what the “s” stands for?  Successor?), this was an interesting bottom line from John Gruber:

New-number iPhones (4, 5, 6) are about showing off Apple’s design prowess. The S models are about showing off Apple’s engineering prowess. Storage capacities and battery life are unchanged from last year’s iPhones. Everything else — the materials they’re made from, the performance of their custom CPU/GPU, the quality of the cameras, the smoothness of the user interface — is noticeably, tangibly improved.

So, it makes one wonder, what will the iPhone 7 bring to the tech consumer?  What will set it apart from the iPhone 6 models? 

Whatever it is, it will be great but I will hold out for the iPhone 7s – by then the 6s Plus will be paid off in full. 

Hey, I am Senior Citizen and on a fixed budget. I have grandchildren to spoil, after all!