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iPhone 6S, 6S Plus: Apple SHAFTS eager fans with STRAPPING VIBRATOR

New mobe is heavier with smaller battery

Teardown Apple's iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, lovingly crafted by Cupertino's chief designer Sir Jony Ive, have landed – and with them the first teardowns shedding light on what's packed under the hood.

Dissections of both the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus have confirmed earlier speculation that Apple has indeed traded a smaller battery for more room to cram in hardware to power the new features in iOS.

iPhone 6S battery

Rumor: CONFIRMED. The slimmed-down battery is real

For the 6S, iFixit found that the battery pack was reduced from 1810mAh to 1715mAh, while the 6S Plus went from a 2915mAh battery to a 2750 mAh. Despite the reduced battery size, Apple maintains that its 6S and 6S Plus handsets have the same battery life as their predecessors.

For one thing, the brains inside the 6S and 6S Plus is a 14nm-process-size system-on-chip, meaning it performs faster and needs less power than the 22nm chip in the previous generation of iPhones, and thus can cope with a smaller battery.

iFixit attributed the need for the smaller batteries to the addition of Apple's vibrating Taptic Engine tech – the hardware that helps power the new 3D touch interface and gesture controls on the mobes in iOS 9.

iPhone 6S taptic engine

X-rays of the Taptic Engine's gyrating innards

The teardown researchers also blamed the 3D touch feature for the slight weight gain in both the 6S and 6S Plus. iFixit found the display unit on the iPhone 6S was up from 45g to 60g, while the 6 Plus display unit went from 60g to 80g, making both of the new models heavier than last year's handsets.

Other features, however, didn't seem to require much of an upgrade to hardware. iFixit noted that the touch ID sensors in the new iPhones are no different than last year's, suggesting that any of the improvements Apple touted would come from something other than silicon upgrades.

iPhone 6S Plus heavier screen

He ain't heavy, he's my ... actually, he is kind of heavy

The researchers also noted that the FaceTime camera in the new iPhone, despite jumping from 1.2Mp to a 5Mp unit, does not appear to be much larger than the camera in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

The teardown house was uncharacteristically enthusiastic over the accessibility of the new iPhones, giving both the 6S and 6S Plus repair-ability scores of 7/10. This bodes well for those who will want to fix handsets without sending them off to Apple for complete replacements.

By the way, it's also worth noting that the 6S and 6S Plus have 2GB of RAM each, double the 1GB of memory in Apple's previous generation's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. ®

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