More than 13 million people took delivery of their shiny new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus handsets this past weekend, and they spent the hours that followed digging through every nook and cranny of the new phones’ software. Apple baked a number of exciting new hardware enhancements and software features into its latest and greatest iPhones, and many are calling them Apple’s biggest iPhone update ever.
Of course, not everyone managed to get their hands on a new iPhone 6s this past weekend. Luckily, there are hundreds of hands-on videos out there that show off all of the phone’s best new features, including the new “Live Photos” feature that Apple showed off on stage earlier this month when it debuted its new iPhone lineup.
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There is little question that the new 12-megapixel rear camera on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus is one of the stars of the show this year. 2015 marks the first time in several years that Apple upped the megapixel count on its iSight camera, but the improvements aren’t only on the hardware side. Apple made a number of software changes that improve the quality of photos captured with its new iPhones, and it added some fun new features as well.
Among them, Live Photos are probably the most talked-about new camera feature on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.
With Live Photos enabled, the iPhone 6s camera continuously records video at 15 fps while in standard photo mode. Each time you capture a still photo, the phone saves 1.5 seconds of video before the image was captured and 1.5 seconds after it was captured. The rest of the video is then discarded.
In practice, I personally have had mixed results with Live Photos. If I don’t hold the phone very still before and after taking a photo, the result is generally pretty bad. The results obviously hinge largely on the subject’s movements, so every Live Photo is basically a gamble.
If you haven’t experienced Live Photos for yourself and you’re looking to get a feel for them, MacRumors ran a great little video that’s embedded below.
