2degrees gets jump on the pack as new iPhones go on sale

LATEST: Five things to love about the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, five to hate

The good news for iPhone fans: the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus hit the streets today. You can pick up one of the new models from a Spark, Vodafone or 2degrees store, or various Apple authorised resellers.

The bad: If you want to buy one from your telco, or a store, it has to be on a contract [UPDATE: Vodafone says customers within a 24-month contract can buy the iPhone 6s or the 6s Plus outright].

And, in terms of resellers' contract deals, 2degrees seems to have got the jump on the pack. Noel Leeming, for example, is only selling the 6S and 6 Plus on a 2degrees pay monthly plan. And Dick Smith's flagship store in Queen St also told NBR it would only sell the new models on a 2degrees contract.

However, it was a bit of a hollow victory for 2degrees at Dick Smith Queen St. The store had neither the 6S or 6Plus in stock when NBR phoned just a few minutes after it opened but a sales rep said they should be in other stores.

Bummer. But no matter. Apple is selling both models off-contract through its website. Ship times are listed at up to three to four weeks, depending on model.

And if events follow their usual course, the nonsense over scarce supply and contract-only retail sales will abate in two to four weeks. 

ABOVE: 3D Touch

What's new


The new models have the same case but some better hardware under the hood including support for 4K (ultra HD) video and a boost in rear camera resolution from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels. Bear in mind that one hour of 4K footage gobbles up about 42GB of storage, so it's going to be a suck on onboard storage or your free 5GB on iCloud (the new iPhones default to standard HD to save space).

There's also a new pressure-sensitive 3D Touch feature that's the equivalent to right-clicking an icon on a PC.  For example, when you push the Camera icon hard, options like "Take Selfie," "Take Video" and "Take Photo" appear on a drop-down menu. Similarly a new "peek and pop" feature lets you preview the contents of, say, an email and quick-response or filing options, or press harder again to go into the email proper. For now, 3D Touch options are mainly supported by Apple apps, but the API has been made available to third-parties and some like Instagram are already taking advantage of the new capability.

The camera also gets more smarts including the ability to capture a couple of seconds of motion either side of a still photo for a "Live Photo" effect (see video clip below).

Apple also says its Touch ID fingerprint logon is now twice as fast (UPDATE: Having now got the new phones I can confirm Touch ID is now instant. Magic).

The  iPhone 6s is available in gold, silver, space grey and the new rose gold metallic finishes for $1199 (16GB), $1399 (64GB) and NZ$1599 (128GB).

The  iPhone 6s Plus is available in the same finishes for $1399 (16GB), $1599 (64GB) and $1799 (128GB).