I'm so envious. I'm one of the rare few on this forum who has problematic fingerprints. Touch ID on my old iPhone 5s works perfectly for my daughter. Even on the 6s plus I can't get all my fingerprints consistently recognized. Just the right thumb.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Holy ****, Apple well done!
- Thread starter syphern
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Glad you got that one fingerprint working all you need is one good print.
I love my 6s. Incredible device, very satisfied with the purchase. It is just an all around great phone. 3D touch I am getting more and more used to every day and its a nifty thing to implement. Don't notice any usage difference from my 6 in terms of hours, in fact with iOS 9 and better saver its about 45 mins to 1hr 15 mins of extra battery usage I can get with normal use.
Touch ID is almost too fast, but I am getting used to it and prefer it this way. And the 2GB of ram makes such a huge difference, its a wonder Apple didn't make the switch earlier.
I have to disagree here; incremental CPU hike?? You're also implying worse RAM usage with the 64 bit devices?
Are you sure you didn't mean to say the iPhone 6?
Cyclone was in no way incremental over Swift - it was a huge improvement in design, efficiency and power. Remember the context in 2013 during the early part of the year when the iPhone 5 was pretty state of the art but going toe-to-toe with flagship androids and losing out to some in the chip battles. Then the 5s came out and blew away every device in terms of power. It is hard to argue against the A7 being the largest design achievement for Apple thus far as far as mobile chips are concerned; it is also partly the reason why the A8 was such a small bump - because the A7 was such a leap forward. The 5s was a marvel in mobile design, with the A7 leading the way.
If anything, the iPhone 6/6+ was the "lamest" so to speak - the jump to the bigger screens and rounded designs was nice from a user perspective, but overall the A8 was a small bump in power and they used the exact same type of RAM. It was still a very powerful device, but that had more to do with the A7 being such a step forward in mobile design.
Regarding the ram usage in the 5s vs the 5; it is almost negligible and actually more in the favour of the 5s/6 than the 5 as you suggest - given the RAM in the 5s (LPDDR3) is about 1.5-2x as efficient and fast in most counts than the ram used in the 5/5c (LPDDR2), including bandwidth - never mind that the 5s has a much faster chip that push way more instructions than the 5 and way more cache shared by the system, and much lower latency. This is a big one as not only is the RAM faster but from what I recall about 4 times less latent...no way is less latent ram going to be worse, especially when its faster ram which all points to better memory management, not worse. 1GB on the 5 would perform worse than 1GB in the 5s/6.
It was evident on iOS 7 where everything was just instantaneous relative to the 5, and even more evident on iOS 8 where the 5/5c struggled at times with laggy frames pretty much up until iOS 8.3, whereas anecdotally the 5s and 6 were probably the two smoothest devices on iOS 8 (similarly specced too) - never mind the significant GPU bump the 5s was over the 5...safari tabs alone are not a great measure in terms of memory, especially when the 5 and 5s/6/6+ have the same amount. The 6+ smoothness and all that - those issues were not experienced with the 5s or 6 given they didn't have to put up with the downsampling that the 6+ did.
1GB ram was still a huge disappointment with the 6 and 6+, and the 1GB of ram limitations were real - don't get me wrong; more memory is always better - but the 6+ had its own set of issues that made it run worse and crash more than the 5s or the 6, and perhaps even the 5. To say the 5s was incremental over the 5 and imply that the RAM in the 5 would work better because "64 bit uses more than 32 bit" is not correct.
Regardless - the 6s blows every iPhone out of the water in specs, and that extra 1GB of ram is incredible with iOS. We both have the 9th generation iPhones - and seem to be in agreement that its been a solid upgrade to the 8th generation phone. Similarly to you, i found the 8th generation iPhone underwhelming but that was mostly because the 5s set a very high bar.
Touch ID is almost too fast, but I am getting used to it and prefer it this way. And the 2GB of ram makes such a huge difference, its a wonder Apple didn't make the switch earlier.
I have to disagree here; incremental CPU hike?? You're also implying worse RAM usage with the 64 bit devices?
Are you sure you didn't mean to say the iPhone 6?
Cyclone was in no way incremental over Swift - it was a huge improvement in design, efficiency and power. Remember the context in 2013 during the early part of the year when the iPhone 5 was pretty state of the art but going toe-to-toe with flagship androids and losing out to some in the chip battles. Then the 5s came out and blew away every device in terms of power. It is hard to argue against the A7 being the largest design achievement for Apple thus far as far as mobile chips are concerned; it is also partly the reason why the A8 was such a small bump - because the A7 was such a leap forward. The 5s was a marvel in mobile design, with the A7 leading the way.
If anything, the iPhone 6/6+ was the "lamest" so to speak - the jump to the bigger screens and rounded designs was nice from a user perspective, but overall the A8 was a small bump in power and they used the exact same type of RAM. It was still a very powerful device, but that had more to do with the A7 being such a step forward in mobile design.
Regarding the ram usage in the 5s vs the 5; it is almost negligible and actually more in the favour of the 5s/6 than the 5 as you suggest - given the RAM in the 5s (LPDDR3) is about 1.5-2x as efficient and fast in most counts than the ram used in the 5/5c (LPDDR2), including bandwidth - never mind that the 5s has a much faster chip that push way more instructions than the 5 and way more cache shared by the system, and much lower latency. This is a big one as not only is the RAM faster but from what I recall about 4 times less latent...no way is less latent ram going to be worse, especially when its faster ram which all points to better memory management, not worse. 1GB on the 5 would perform worse than 1GB in the 5s/6.
It was evident on iOS 7 where everything was just instantaneous relative to the 5, and even more evident on iOS 8 where the 5/5c struggled at times with laggy frames pretty much up until iOS 8.3, whereas anecdotally the 5s and 6 were probably the two smoothest devices on iOS 8 (similarly specced too) - never mind the significant GPU bump the 5s was over the 5...safari tabs alone are not a great measure in terms of memory, especially when the 5 and 5s/6/6+ have the same amount. The 6+ smoothness and all that - those issues were not experienced with the 5s or 6 given they didn't have to put up with the downsampling that the 6+ did.
1GB ram was still a huge disappointment with the 6 and 6+, and the 1GB of ram limitations were real - don't get me wrong; more memory is always better - but the 6+ had its own set of issues that made it run worse and crash more than the 5s or the 6, and perhaps even the 5. To say the 5s was incremental over the 5 and imply that the RAM in the 5 would work better because "64 bit uses more than 32 bit" is not correct.
Regardless - the 6s blows every iPhone out of the water in specs, and that extra 1GB of ram is incredible with iOS. We both have the 9th generation iPhones - and seem to be in agreement that its been a solid upgrade to the 8th generation phone. Similarly to you, i found the 8th generation iPhone underwhelming but that was mostly because the 5s set a very high bar.
Last edited:
Maybe you should try using the device before commenting so surely about it? Just because you can't imagine how it could be faster doesn't mean it can't be faster. Yes, there's a huge improvement over both the Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6+. I've used it over the past week and it is much faster and smoother than both of the devices I mentioned before. And yes, you can tell the memory difference when apps don't constantly reload when switching to answer a text or email for a few seconds. Go read some customer reviews and they'll pretty much confirm what has been written on this thread thus far.
My mom can't get any of her fingerprints to work. It's a bummer because sometimes she just wants to check a quick thing and she needs to out in her passcode every time (we have it activated since my son likes to grab phones and mess with settings lol). She thinks it has to do with doing manual labor all her life. She's also one of those old school European ladies who scrubs her fingers to the bone when cleaning pots and pans. A dishwasher is the devils work.
The reality is that it just is faster. Texting? Maybe not. Email? Yes it loads faster, but more than that, I can more quickly go between nails since they stay loaded in memory longer. If we start talking about safari, which I would easily get an error loading screen 1/20 times (which sounds faulty infrequent but when safari and Mail are consistently 70% of my battery usage that gives you an idea), I can now load 10 tabs before even thinking of worrying about reloads. That is an incredibly performance increase because in neither wasting time nor data reloading pages.
At the end of the day it depends on what you use your phone for. My phone is my mobile computer and it even replaced my computer at home for most tasks. We control our media center in the living room and our music in the bedroom as well. I didn't think the 6 plus was a very solid device. It was, in my opinion, simply underpowered. This new 6s plus is the phone we should have had last year.
I will say, my wife doesn't. Price a difference between her 6 and 6s outside of the rose gold color.
That may explain why I'm having problems. I do gardening and landscaping for my own acre lot as well as a school's gardens and of course a ton of housework. An above average amount of housework, because we have a lot of animals and I'm a germophobe who also happens to be allergic to dogs and cats so I'm always washing and scrubbing a 4500 sq. ft house from top to bottom so the pets and I can stay together. It's the work of at least three people, judging from the fact a friend with a similar house and yard has two maids and a gardener to handle what I do for my place. I take good care of my hands though and they look normal to me. But I have subtle vertical grooves in the prints. Maybe that throws Touch ID off somehow.
My battery is definitely worse than my 6. However, the speed increase and reducing of reloads makes it worth it. Add in 3D touch and these Harry Potter live photos, and for me it's an okay compromise.
6s, it's still not bad:
My battery is definitely worse than my 6. However, the speed increase and reducing of reloads makes it worth it. Add in 3D touch and these Harry Potter live photos, and for me it's an okay compromise.
6s, it's still not bad:
![2d650ad9c8ae9869709bc4d5bbe30ca7.jpg]()
Your battery is waaaaay better than mine. Using my 6, my morning routine (email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, news) would take me to around 92 - 95%. Using my 6s I'm at around 80 - 85% before even getting out of bed and I haven't been able to make it through a full day without an extra charge. With the 6 I normally ended my day between 20 and 50%. I also have a dark blotch in the upper left corner of my display and the color temp is inconsistent from left to right.
I'm out of town on vacation but as soon as I get back home this phone is going back to Apple.
that's strange. The actually battery capacity is only about 5-6% less, and the efficiencies with the new logic board components [seem to] offset that balance, plus iOS 9's battery saver mode has helped extend my 6s battery beyond what I was getting with my 6 - on average by 1 hour.
I wonder what is happening with your device? It could be a "launch batch" issue perhaps. That dark blotch you describe doesn't exist on my 6s, so perhaps try an exchange at the apple store, and if you still have the same issues then you can experiment with the battery options.
So far, my 6s has been perfect for me. Probably the most satisfied I've been with an iPhone since the iPhone 4.
Yes you are right, i am very happy with iphone 6S. Coming back to iphone from android and missed IOS.