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Microsoft bites back with flagship Lumia 950 and 950 XL

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It’s been many years since we’ve seen something that’s got our juices flowing in the mobile work with Microsoft’s name on it, but its new pair of handsets might have done just that.

The Microsoft Lumia 950 has a 5.2-inch 1440 x 2560 QHD screen, a hexa-core processor, 20MP PureView rear camera complete with optical image stabilisation, a 5MP front-facing snapper, 32GB of built in storage and a microSD card slot with support for cards of up to 2TB.

That’s a lot of power for the phones that have traditionally been behind the spec curve compared to the top Android phones, but with Windows 10 on board the Redmond brand has stepped up its game.

Bigger, better?

Joining the flagship 950 is the catchily-named Lumia 950 XL, which (as you’ve guessed) is a larger device – but comes with a more powerful octa-core processor and the same 3GB of RAM.

Plus there's a 20MP PureView camera on the back with optical image stabilisation, a 5MP camera on the front, 32GB of storage and a microSD card slot, just like the Lumia 950.

Both phones have USB Type-C ports that can charge to 50% within 30 minutes of being plugged in and even include face scanners so you can unlock your phone without even touching it.

Sadly the design doesn’t look up to much given they appear to be covered in lovely plastic – but hey, with liquid cooling on board perhaps you won’t care as much.

The new phones will be a little cheaper than their flagship rivals, and will be landing in your palms (should you go to a shop and convince an assistant to open the box and drop one in) from November.

Amazon fans the 4K flames with the new UHD Fire TV

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The new 4K Fire TV will stick to the same price point, just $99.99, but will provide access to the latest Ultra HD content from both Amazon Prime Instant Video and streaming rivals, Netflix.

The new Amazon Fire TV is available for pre-order today and will start shipping on October 5.

It’s also prepping a new Fire TV Stick too, bundling it with the Voice Remote to give Siri a run for her money on the Apple TV side. And that’s going to be a $49.99 device shipping a little later than the new 4K Fire TV on October 22.

Apple TV-beater

The new Amazon Fire TV though is going to be the only one of the two able to rock the latest Ultra HD content, however thin on the ground that might be right now. That’s definitely a feather in its cap with the new Apple TV still only capable of coping with a Full HD 1080p stream.

Amazon is also claiming it's the UK's only 4K Ultra HD streaming media player. That may be true, but with Nvidia's SHIELD box set to arrive very soon it's not going to be on its own for long. It will, however, remain the best value – at just $99.99 the new Amazon Fire TV could be the cheapest way to get 4K content onto the 4K TVs out there without access to the latest versions of Amazon Video or Netflix apps. 

“The team has packed an incredible amount of technology and innovation into a tiny package,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “The new Fire TV includes 4K support, more processing power, great selection, and exclusive features—for less than $99.99. The Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote brings voice search for less than $49.99. These are powerful devices at incredible prices.”

The inclusion of an HEVC encoder in the new Fire TV does though also do good things for non-4K content too. With the Amazon Video app the new device will use the H265 codec to practically halve the bandwidth necessary to stream 1080p content.

That ought to mean more folk than before will be able to enjoy high-definition content as it’s not going to be quite so tough on your connection.

iPhone 6S review: more of the same plus 3D Touch

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Well, Apple’s been decidedly kind and kept to the same pattern again – the iPhone 6S is almost identical to 2014’s iPhone 6, to the point that we could barely tell the difference between the two in the hand, with a little extra thickness and weight to give you the clue that you’re holding a next-gem phone in your hand.

 

But while the outside is identical, the stuff that Cook’s Crew crammed inside is supposed to be a big change – hence Apple’s decision to give this phone the tagline: ‘The Only Thing That’s Changed Is Everything’.

With an all-new way of touching the phone, an improved chassis and a pseudo-magical way at viewing your photos, will this be the first iPhone ’S’ variant that is just a polished version of the previous year’s model?

 

iPhone 6S design

 

The design of the iPhone 6S is, well, the iPhone 6 with 0.2mm thickness and 14g more weight. That’s it.

 

Everything else is the same as the iPhone 6, with even the same cases from last year slipping snugly around its svelte form.

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The same ceramic-feeling metal is in effect once more, but this time it’s been given a 7000 series aluminium upgrade – the same as used in space programs to make rockets that little bit stronger.

 

If it wasn’t for the hoopla around Bendgate last year, you’d say that this was an utterly unnecessary upgrade – after all, you’d hope that Apple wouldn’t have made a phone that bent in the first place, so needing to strengthen it should be necessary.

 

The screen on the iPhone 6S is identical to last year’s model as well, with the same 4.7-inch, 750p display adorning the handset. It’s easy to be snobbish and say that’s terrible for a phone that costs well over £500, but it still looks stunning thanks to being laminated close to the glass.

 

Then again, it’s not in the same league as the Super AMOLED of the Samsung Galaxy S6, with its QHD resolution starting to offer a better experience for everything from photo viewing to web browsing.

 

Perhaps we don’t need that level of clarity just yet, but 1080p wouldn’t have gone amiss here to add a little bit of shine to the screen.

Here's what the iPhone 6S looks like in the flesh.

 

 

 

iPhone 6S 3D Touch

 

The big, headline-grabbing element of the iPhone 6S is the new way you can interact with the phone. Instead of being limited to swiping up, down, left and right, now you can actually go INTO THE SCREEN.

 

Sadly, it’s not like a mobile version of Tron (notes down idea for screenplay) but the iPhone 6S is able to measure the force with which you push the screen and thus can react accordingly.

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Got an email but not sure if it’s worth opening? Push the screen and a preview pops up. If you’re not bothered about what the Nigerian prince has to say you can let go and return to your inbox, or you can push harder to open the email and claim your millions.

 

Or perhaps you get link in a message from your Mum and you don’t know what it is – a swift poke will show you in preview that it’s a clothing sale at that shop you used to like when you were five years old, and you can dismiss it with no more thought – content that you’ve not wasted time jumping in and out of the messaging app.

3D Touch is littered throughout the iPhone 6S, and it’s almost a game to work out where Apple has enabled it. You can see movie previews, check out pictures you’ve just taken or manipulate the cursor on the screen with ease.

 

It’s a neat system and easily the highlight of this new phone – and when developers get their hands on it, it’s going to be a real winner when you’re able to do even more Crazy Candy Crushing. It\s a potential feature, rather than one that’s fully formed right now, but it’s something that you’ll really be into after spending a couple of days with it.

 

iPhone 6S Live Photos and camera

 

The other big change to the iPhone 6S is to the camera – not just the 12MP sensor that’s packed in there, but the fact that pictures have now been imbued with magic. Live Photos, which is enabled by default (but can be easily toggled off with a switch in the bottom corner of the screen) adds a sprinkling of Harry Potter to your snaps by taking a 1.5 second video before and after the snap, recording a cheeky a bit of audio as well.

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The result is your normal colourful, sharp snap from Apple, but with when you poke the screen a little more force the picture will begin to move, showing the moment as it was around the photo. With the audio it really adds to the memory, giving you more of a flavour of what actually happened.

Well, that’s the theory anyway. If the camera is braced well and taking the picture in strong light it works really well, capturing the moment and adding to what was there before.

But in our testing this didn’t happen very often. Generally the result was rather choppy, and if the light levels were lower, the Live Photo was rather jumpy.

 

The overall quality of the actual snap was never bad though – like the iPhone 6, the 12MP sensor leads to some brilliant pictures. The focusing is strong, the lighting and colour levels excellent and the overall composition is good thanks to the intelligent scene levelling from the phone’s engine.

 

We couldn’t see much of a difference from the iPhone 6 in terms of overall picture quality, but then again that sensor didn’t let us down either. The overall sharpness was marginally better, but the low light performance was pretty much identical.

 

The front-facing Facetime HD camera is probably the biggest upgrade within the phone, in terms of raw output. Up from 1.2MP to 5MP, the new sensor takes some great self portraits, with clarity and definition all over the place.

Live Photos are included here too, and even a flash. It’s not a dedicated LED sensor, but the iPhone 6S working out the colour balance of the scene it’s presented with and firing the screen to an insane brightness for a fraction of a second to simulate a flash.

 

The result is pretty good – the scene is definitely lit, although not all of the face is bathed in light if it’s particularly dark. Get the right lighting mix though and the flash really helps – a pub atmosphere is perfect.

Check out our video of how Live Photos look on the iPhone 6S.

 

 

iPhone 6S battery

 

The battery life of Apple’s phones has never been that good, but at least the iPhone 6 managed to bring things up to the level of other Android phones. However, it still wasn’t long enough to last the whole day, and the iPhone 6S Plus actually seems to have managed to go a little bit backwards

 

That’s partly down to the smaller battery pack that’s been shoved in there, to accommodate for the extra circuitry of the 3D Touch. As such, even with the more efficient A9 chip and the upgraded iOS 9 platform, the iPhone 6 and 6S last for roughly the same amount of time.

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At least the new version of iOS brings an enhanced battery saving mode (cunningly called Low Power Mode) which will turn off Siri listening to you all the time and background activity – but it’s not enough to make this an industry-leading battery by any stretch of the imagination.

 

T3 verdict

 

If you’re someone stuck with the iPhone 5S or, whisper it, earlier, you’ll be badly wanting a new iPhone – and the iPhone 6S is the best Apple handset that’s ever been made.

It’s not a huge claim though, as if Apple didn’t make its best phone this year we’d have a really worrying situation at the Cupertino firm.The big upgrade on offer is the 3D Touch interface, which quickly feels like second nature when you’ve used the phone for a few days.

Live Photos fails to impress in the way Apple probably hoped, and the improvements to the chassis seem a bit unnecessary – merely there to prove that nothing is going to bend this year.

 

If there’d been something tangible to grab onto with the new iPhone – a longer lasting battery, a higher-res screen – then perhaps it would have been easy to recommend this model without question. But even still, if you're an iPhone fan then there's no question which is the right one to go for, with the 6S offering future proofing a really fun new interface to play with.

Liked this? Why not read 10 awesome iOS 9 features you really shouldn't miss

Apple announces a new generation of iPhones

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UPDATE: Apple has confirmed to launch the iPhones in more countries, including India. Both variants will be released on October 16, just in time for Diwali. There’s no information on the pricing yet but we will keep you updated.

To the surprise of no one except for a few hermits living on an island, the iPhone 6S was announced, and it comes with 3D Touch – which was originally included with the Apple Watch.

As with last year’s iPhone 6, the iPhone 6S was also accompanied by a bigger brother, the iPhone 6S Plus, which comes packed with all the goodies of its smaller brother, but with a larger 5.5-inch full 1080p display.

The much rumoured 3D Touch, which Apple claims is the biggest change to how we interact with our phones since the inclusion of multi-touch with the original iPhone.

As expected the iPhone 6S comes with a new and improved A9 64-bit chip, which is 70% faster at processing tasks than the A8 chip in the iPhone 6. It’s also 90% faster at graphics, with Apple promising “console-class” graphics – but will Sony or Microsoft be quaking in their boots? The games shown on stage certainly looked the part.

An all-new 12MP iSight camera has also been included, which comes with 50% more pixels for even more detail in your photos – and it also boasts a faster auto-focus speed.

For the first time ever the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S can also take videos in 4K resolution, and from what we've seen the results are stunning.

The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus also supports LTE-Advanced and also has two times faster Wi-Fi as well, and of course runs iOS 9 as well.

If you're tempted to move from your Android device to an iPhone 6S or iPhone 6S Plus, Apple has created a new app that makes transfering all your data and contacts to your new handsets as easy as possible.

The iPhone 6S will start from $199, with the iPhone 6S Plus starting from $299 in US. You can pre-order them on Saturday 12 September, and available from September 25.

The new Apple TV is here, and has brought Siri with it

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The sleek new box is running the Apple’s first tvOS operating system, a hybrid of its iOS 9 with a few El Capitan features too, designed to get you to the content you want to see quicker and easier than any other media streamer around.

Key to that is the new Universal Search function.

Working like Roku’s search feature, you can chat away to your new Siri-enabled Apple TV and she’ll pop off and find you whatever TV show or movie you want, from wherever she can find it. Or even if you’re just after something by your favourite director or with your favourite actor in it.

Whether that’s in one of your streaming accounts, like Netflix or Showtime in the US, or via the iTunes store, she’ll be able to dig it out for you.

You can also use Siri to control the video playback, skipping backwards and forwards or bringing up captions if you missed something that was said on screen.

And while you're watching Siri can be used to bring up information from other applications, like weather data or sports results, shown at the base of your screen during viewing. She'll also help you switch out to different fullscreen applications.

The Bluetooth 4.0 Apple TV remote is a big help here too, with its glass touch surface offering the same connected experience as your iPad you can swipe and tap as you would on a normal iOS device. 

It also comes with new screen savers with shiny new HD videos to stop your TV getting bored when you leave it to its own devices.

Applications

You also get the new Apple TV App Store, providing you with new ways to interact with your TV, including Apple Music, shopping apps and games not before seen outside the console, like Disney Infinity.

There are also some seriously Wii-esque games coming out, like Beats Sports, utilising the motion sensors in the new Apple TV remote.

Inside the sleek new exterior is a 64-bit Apple A8 processor with either 32GB or 64GB of storage. As a media streaming device you’ll not really need that much space, but with Apple putting a large focus on the gaming potential of the new Apple TV you’re going to need that capacity.
 
The new Apple TV goes on sale and costs $149 for the 32GB device or $199 for the 64GB version. At launch in October it will be available in eighty countries, with that going up to 100 by the end of the year.