Gadgetory

the iPhone 6s may look identical to last year's iPhone 6 but it's not the same phone as with previous S models Apple put most of the changes on the inside and you know what that means I'm Bill Detweiler and this is cracking open hold on iPhone 6 next to an iPhone 6s and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the two apart like the previous model the 6s measures 5.4 inches tall and 2.6 4 inches wide it's a few millimeters thicker and about half an ounce heavier but I doubt most people will notice these differences the 6 and 6s both have a 4.7 inch retina HD display but the newer phone features Apple's 3d touch technology which can detect how much pressure you apply to the screen and perhaps this is why Apple covered the 6s s display with a new kind of chemically strengthened glass now in addition to using stronger glass Apple also used a different aluminum on the 6s instead of using a serious six thousand alloy as they did on the iphone 6 apple built the 6s s body out of a more rigid series 7000 aluminum alloy so hopefully we won't see any bendgate stories about the 6s now that we've looked at the phone's outside it's time to break out our tools and take a look at the inside to crack open the iPhone 6s I removed the two pentalobe screws located along the bottom edge and then use our handy opening tool to pop loose the display now with the front panel open the first thing we're going to do is remove several metal plates which cover connectors for the battery front panel and other components we'll then disconnect the battery and remove the front panel now the overall hardware layout is the same as on the iPhone 6 there's a speaker and lightning connector assembly at the bottom battery along the left side motherboard along the right and the camera assembly at the top one change we can see however is Apple's new taptic engine sitting below the battery it replaces the older phones vibration mechanism and is slightly larger which means the speaker next to it needed to be just a bit smaller also smaller at least in terms of capacity is the 6th SS battery which is rated at 1715 milliamp hours compared to the 6 SS 1810 milliamp hours now despite this reduction apple claims battery life on these 6s will be the same as it was on the older phone turning our attention to the new front panel assembly we find the new 3d touch display a 5 megapixel FaceTime camera which is an upgrade over the older phones 1.2 megapixel unit sensors and earpiece speaker and the improved home button while I would usually remove the battery as part of our teardown I'm going to leave it in place as I remove the other components now this will keep me from having to glue it back in later now the first component to come out is the new I side camera which has been upgraded to 12 megapixels and can now shoot 4k video at 30 frames a second a small antenna comes out next and then after removing a few screws dealing with a new hex head standoff and attaching the remaining connectors we can lift out the motherboard now unfortunately the shields that cover the iPhone 6 SS motherboard are soldered in place obscuring our view of the new a9 processor and m9 motion coprocessor that's built in and most of the other chips as I want to put this phone back together in working order I'm going to leave the shields in place the last pieces to come out are the speaker assembly and the taptic engine still attached to the case are the headphone and lightning connector assembly volume buttons ringer switch power button and a slew of connector wires most of these components are held to the case with both screws and adhesive if any of these components were damaged removing them and replacing them wouldn't be difficult but I don't want to risk damaging them during removal so I'm going to leave them where they are except for a small s label on the back of the iPhone 6s and a newly available rose gold finish the phone looks identical to last year's six looks however can be deceiving Apple packed lots of new tech into the iPhone 6s and if you're still using a 5 or a 5s and maybe even a 6 I would definitely think about upgrading for a complete list of specs pricing and real world performance tests check out the full CNET review to see more teardown photos read my full Hardware analysis go to TechRepublic calm /tracking /