There's the old mantra: Wallet, keys, phone. Many of us have said it silently to ourselves every time we've stepped out for the past 15 or so years. These essential items helped us navigate the world, but we had to remind ourselves to grab them because they weren't no-brainers like, say, shoes. When was the last time you were halfway to work before realizing you'd left your shoes at home? (Shut it, Hawaii.)
That mantra is changing, though. Maybe you're going to a store where you can pay with your phone. (If you're not already, you will be.) Maybe you have one of those connected smart locks that opens at the tap of an app. (If you don't already, you probably will.) Increasingly, the mantra is just phone.
But that's not a mantra. For those who rely on their phones enough to leave the wallet and keys inside the house, a handset has ascended to the firmament of the essential: It is as important as shoes.
Companies like Apple have banked on the inevitability of this for a decade or more. They've waged bloody battle grabbing the most space in pockets and purses. And Apple is winning because it's made the phone that the most people can use just seconds after its protective plastic comes off. Apple's phone, reliable and friendly, can now hang with shoes. The other edge of that honor is that a gadget so essential needs to shock you with novelty in order to not seem quotidian. This s-cycle iPhone does not. You probably don't care.
The iPhone, now in its 6sth (= 9th) iteration, has the most intuitive software and hardware of any phone around. It has an army of accessories waiting to enhance it. Rental-car stereos play nice with it, and hotels have chargers behind their desks in case you forgot yours. It is the best bet for almost anyone. But it is no longer the best at any one thing. If that's important to you, get a different phone. You can get more powerful ones; there are models with better screens, better battery life, better cameras. There are more exciting phones for people who want to be excited by their gadgets.
Coming from an iPhone 6, the extra processing power of the A9 chipset over the A8 is barely noticeable. Games do not run any more smoothly, but the phone doesn't get as hot after long battles with Deathless foes or while ripping 10,000-meter snowboard runs.
It's worth noting, though, that most of the apps available in the App Store were designed to run on previous iPhones, so they aren't really taxing the processor. This definitely could change as developers find new uses for the extra horsepower.
The 2 gigs of RAM is a similar level of improvement. Apps open essentially instantaneously. That's a step up from the iPhone 6, where apps opened almost instantaneously. Multitasking is probably the most noticeable improvement. Double-click to see what's open, and the stacked-screens view pops up super quickly, almost before you're done with the second click.
For most of us, this is the most important feature of every new iPhone—and phone, period. Each year since launching the iPhone 4, Apple has thoroughly owned all comers. Sure, the occasional Nokia offered optical image stabilization, but the iPhone has always rendered the most natural color, offered great low-light performance, and captured finer detail than its seemingly underpowered camera should deliver.
The 6s is no exception. It has a great rear-facing camera: 12 megapixels (up from eight on the iPhone 6), with a protective sapphire crystal lens and super-fast image capturing. It is not, however, the best camera out there. The Moto X and Samsung Galaxy S6 offer more detail. But this makes absolutely no difference until you start zooming in. Aim the camera at what you want to photograph, and you should be fine.
