The new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus both come with some intriguing new features, but one piece of information released this morning is harder to swallow.
As part of its grand annual unveiling, Apple revealed that the price of its new iPhones in Australia will start at $1079. And, this is just for the 16GB iPhone 6s. Track the prices up through to the 128GB iPhone 6s Plus, and you can expect to pay an eye-watering $1529. That’s just short of the price of a new MacBook and what we expect you’ll pay for the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
Compared with the $899 price tag of a comparable 16GB iPhone 6 from last year, this is $210 more and represents a 24% price increase. This price and percentage difference is similar when you compare the iPhone 6s 16GB with a 32GB Samsung Galaxy S6 — which costs $899.
New iPhone prices vs last year's
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
New price |
$1079 |
$1229 |
$1379 |
$1229 |
$1379 |
$1529 |
|
Release Price last year |
$869 |
$999 |
$1129 |
$999 |
$1129 |
$1249 |
|
Difference |
$210 |
$230 |
$250 |
$230 |
$250 |
$280 |
Monthly Telco pricing is still yet to be released, but it is hard to imagine the carriers will be willing and able to shoulder this big jump in price. Last year, Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Virgin all asked for about $20 per month in handset repayments for plans under $80. For plans of $80 and above, the iPhone 6 handset cost a few dollars per month. This year it could be that we see the ‘$0’ price for the iPhone 6s start on plans at about $100 per month.
This begs the question: are the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus really worth all the extra money?
A better camera and 3D Touch
The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus both come with improved internals; Apple’s new A9 processor, and the new M9 dedicated motion processor. The iPhone 6s also receives a screen update and now features as many pixels as the iPhone 6s Plus. But the features that will resonate most with shoppers is the new 12-megapixel camera, a 5-megapixel selfie camera and new touchscreen tech Apple is calling 3D Touch.
The camera upgrades are a no-brainer. Fans of iPhone praise each and every upgrade in photographic capabilities, and the new iPhone camera is reportedly an awesome photo maker. The new, larger image sensor is the beginning of the story, but it is Live Photos that will have everyone talking.
Basically, Live Photos is a software trick which takes a few seconds of video before you hit the shutter button, and it continues shortly after the shot is fired (reportedly 1.5-seconds before and after). In your image gallery, these photos will come to life, sort of like the photos in newspapers in the Harry Potter films.
It’s a neat trick, and a great feature for slipping into 30-second TV advertisements, but it will be interesting to see how long the feature maintains the spotlight after the iPhone is release, or if the masses will immediately revert back to using Vine and Instagram video.
3D Touch, on the other hand, is a feature that can’t be replicated by other apps. As predicted, 3D Touch acts as an enhanced way to interact with apps — introducing Peek and Pop gestures to apps which include the necessary code. The tech can detect the pressure that you use to press on the screen, and can initiate different response. For example, a Peek gesture in your email might show a preview of the message under the title. A Pop gesture might open a completely different app related to the message contents.
This seems like the next big step in the way that we interact with touchscreen devices, and we expect to see everyone else follow Apple’s lead in this technology. Our days of hen-pecking on the screens of our phones may soon come to an end.
So, what do you think?
When you skim over the new elements in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus it is hard to see how the price of the new phones is justified, especially when equally capable phones are available and cost several hundred dollars less. We include the current iPhone 6 in this too, it will certainly drop in price in a couple of weeks, and still seems very attractive next to the newer models.
Telco pricing in Australia may make the difference, though. iPhones have always been expensive gadgets and yet over 30% of phone owners in Australia use one — thanks to generous subsidies from the telcos which make Apple phones seem affordable.
If the telcos dig deep this year, deeper than ever before, the iPhone 6s will continue the success Apple enjoys with phones in Australia. If the telcos don’t, we might see a big move towards older iPhone models or a renewed interest in Google’s Android.
Joseph Hanlon
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