iPhone 6S announced: 3D Touch, 12-megapixel rear camera, rose gold finish

Aerospace-grade aluminum and sturdier glass

Apple says that its phone may look the same as last year's model, but its iPhone 6S duo has achieved more inner strength. This time it uses a different grade of aluminum for its chassis, one that's also used in the aerospace industry. They call it Series 7,000, and it's the same aluminum alloy Apple puts into its Apple Watch Sport. The company clearly hopes this reinforced material will help deflect against future "Bendgate" backlashes, where some customers complained that their 5.5-inch iPhone 6S phones "bent" after being sat on.

Apparently, a new type of chemically strengthened glass also tops the iPhone 6S, though the company hasn't confirmed if this is cover material from Corning's Gorilla Glass line or not.

Brand new 'force' touch

Apple has included a variation of Force Touch, which you find in different capacities on the Apple Watch and on some Mac trackpads. Called 3D Touch here, the iPhone 6S phones will adopt the same pressure-sensitive capability that calls up secondary menus and actions when you press and hold the screen.

The iPhone 6S features a pressure-sensitive display which adds more functionality to its apps.

ress down and you can pull up context-sensitive menus, switch apps, or examine photos. But it's a subtle riff on what already exists on iPhones: tapping and holding.

Another use is to access shortcuts from the home screen for your most frequent actions, say messaging a friend. And if you're in your email inbox, applying fingertip pressure to an element in the message will surface more information, like maybe the flight number on an emailed travel itinerary, for instance. (Apple called this concept "peeking in" during the live demo.)

Pressing harder on an app will likewise generate more options, like viewing all the photos of a contact's Instagram photo stream. In the context of a game, pressing harder could zoom you in to get closer to the action.

(Apple hasn't explicitly sad this, but we're thinking that renaming Force Touch as 3D Touch makes for better PR. "Force," while accurate in that you're applying pressure, has some pretty negative social connotations. But that's just us.)

New hardware inside

The biggest news here is the hugely upgraded front and rear cameras and video capability, but there are a few other tidbits here and there as well.

Cameras and video with more megapixels

A 12-megapixel camera is a huge jump for Apple, which has been holding onto its 8-megapixel sensors in its iPhone for years. Autofocus will pick up the pace, according to Apple, and color accuracy is a point of pride.

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera now brings the iPhone 6S on par with a lot of today's competing handsets. Of course, it includes the company's proprietary voice chat feature, FaceTime video. Here's something wildly different, though. Instead of including a dedicated flash for the front-facing camera, which only a few phones do, Apple is using the home screen to light up instead. This is meant to increase the brightness of those selfies even in low-light situations.

Touch ID

The second-generation sensor promises to snap open the phone faster than before. Hopefully fingerprint authentication will also speed up.

Processor

Under the hood, we have an upgraded, proprietary A9 processor that continues Apple's theme of mystery when it comes to exactly what's going on in there. Though it's impossible to appreciate during our quick demo, what we do know is that this is Apple's third-generation 64-bit chip. Apple claims that the A9 is 70 percent faster than last year's A8 when it comes to the usual computing tasks (like opening an app, for example), and 90 percent faster at graphical tasks, like gaming.