iOS 9 brought out a new feature for iPads called easy text selection which lets you slide two fingers on the screen to turn the keyboard into a trackpad of sorts. While in this mode, you can control cursor movement and select chunks of text with precision.
Thanks to 3D Touch, you can bring up this trackpad-esque functionality on your iPhone 7 or later in order to easily select and manipulate text with great precision, here's how.
Using a grid of 96 sensors that read microscopic changes in the distance between the cover glass and the backlight, your iPhone is able to detect different degrees of pressure. This headline feature, called 3D Touch, is used to reveal content previews and contextual menus within apps and quick actions on app icons on the Home screen.
Do you feel like 3D Touch requires you to press the screen too hard? If so, iOS offers a handy slide to change the amount of pressure you need to activate the feature.
So you got your brand new iPhone and decided that 3D Touch is more of a nuisance than gets in your way than a time-saving feature you'd like to use on an everyday basis. Worry not, for iOS gives you an easy way to disable 3D Touch on a system-wide level with just a few taps.
3D Touch, of course, offers shortcuts to commonly used app-specific actions right from the Home screen and lets you preview content or jump straight into it within supported apps by applying varying degrees of pressure to the screen.
People with disabilities, those with limited motor skills and everyone who would rather do without these handy shortcuts for one reason or another can easily disable 3D Touch on your iPhone.
Safari. It's one of our go to apps, and arguably the most popular app on iOS. It's also one of the apps that has suffered the most over the past few years due to lack of resources. Safari has been starved for far too long, and its resulted in perpetual Safari tab refreshing and frustrated end users.
Starting with last year's iPad Air 2, Apple decided it was time to change that. It was time to feed Safari and other RAM starved apps. The results were great and immediately noticeable. It's one of the reasons that the iPad Air 2 can keep on trucking just fine without a yearly refresh.
Today, Apple extended the same favor to its most popular product, the iPhone. Like the iPad Air 2, the iPhone 6s benefits heavily from the extra gig of RAM.
But how much does the extra RAM truly benefit day to day usage on a phone? Is it something that everyday users will notice, even if Apple refuses to place emphasis on it? Watch our video pitting the iPhone 6 Plus vs the iPhone 6s Plus, and see for yourself.
After an agonizing two week wait, the iPhone 6s is finally here. Although this is an 'S' model year, a time when most of the changes are internal, there are lots and lots of new and notable additions to the iPhone 6s.
In this video overview, I consider 20 new features that you'll find in Apple's new flagship phones. Some claim that not much has changed with the iPhone 6s when compared to last year's model, but this lengthy list says otherwise.
When Apple says that a redesigned vibrator inside the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, branded as the Taptic Engine, gives you “real-time feedback” in the form of subtle taps, the company is not exaggerating. The new oscillating mechanism, now enclosed with its own aluminum shell, reaches its full power in just one cycle (and stops just as quickly) versus ten or more oscillations for most other smartphones.
This allows for a more precise level of haptic feedback to accompany the new Peek and Pop deep-presses provided by 3D Touch. As part of iFixit's detailed teardown analysis of the new iPhones, the repair wizards have blasted the Taptic Engine with X-rays to show it in action.
Repair wizards over at iFixit have performed their teardown routine by prying open the 4.7-inch iPhone 6s (model A1688/A1633) in an effort to identify its components, analyze their internal layout and calculate the device's repairability score.
While the new phone does feature a slightly smaller battery due to a heavier display with additional capacitive sensors, Apple's new Taptic Engine and a bigger 'A9' system-on-a-chip, the device packs in fewer chips overall and has the same repairability score as last year's iPhone 6.
Answer: far, far less than the previous model. Apple hasn't focused much on a lot stronger body of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus so, naturally, we've been eager to find out just how Bendgate-proof the new devices are. A new non-scientific stress test video from Australia demonstrates that the iPhone 6s Plus is nearly unbendable versus the iPhone 6 Plus.
The new Series 7000 aluminum body can apparently withstand a significant amount of force being applied without bending. But don't take our word for it, watch the embedded video and post your impressions in the comment section.
The new iPhones are upon us and with them comes a headline feature: 3D Touch. Its name might suggest a marketing gimmick though 3D Touch is anything but, thanks to Apple's clever, elegant implementation.
In a word, 3D Touch is fast and instantaneous, unlike the tap-and-hold gesture, and responds to different levels of pressures. It's used to access app-specific shortcuts right from your Home screen.
Within apps, 3D Touch lets you peek something without leaving the context of what you're doing or pop from a content preview into the full view. We've put together a quick list of ten popular third-party applications for your brand spanking new iPhone 6s that have been graced with 3D Touch shortcuts and gestures.
Download them now and start peeking and popping like there's no tomorrow.
Here we go again...
In what could only be described as a continuation of its miserable anti-Apple advertising campaign, Samsung has hired people to wear backpack-mounted banners advertising its Galaxy smartphones to folks who queued up for iPhone 6s launch this morning outside the Apple Store in London’s Regent Street, The Inquirer reported.
The banners promote Samsung’s latest Galaxy S6 edge and S6 edge+ flagships and carry the provocative tagline “The itch to switch just got bigger.” In addition, International Business Times is reporting that Samsung even gave queued customers bright blue pillows and bottles emblazoned with the hashtag #NextIsNew.
But wait, there's more.
It's not even officially out yet, but Apple has released the first firmware update for the iPhone 6s. iOS 9.0.1, an update that contains several bug fixes, was released yesterday for older devices, but Apple has gone ahead and released the 9.0.1 update just ahead of tomorrow's iPhone 6s launch as well.
We speculated about the difference between the iPhone 6s and the 6s Plus when it comes to the lack of optical image stabilization in the former. We've even read first hand accounts of how much of a difference it makes.
But seeing is believing, and this new video really emphasizes the differences between taking video with the iPhone 6s, a device that lacks OIS, and the iPhone 6s Plus, which features OIS built in. If you plan on taking lots of handheld videos with your new iPhone, you don't want to miss this.