iPhone 6S announced

Apple is introducing the iPhone 6S, an updated version of its flagship smartphone with an identical design and a bundle of new features. Chief among them is a pressure-sensitive display, enabling a feature that Apple calls 3D Touch. 3D Touch allows you to press down on the iPhone's screen to pull up new menus, activate shortcuts, and generally interact with the device in new ways. Apple's Taptic Engine is also built into the phone to provide feedback. The features will also appear in the new iPhone 6S Plus.

While the iPhone 6S maintains the same design and 4.7-inch display size as the iPhone 6, it's being offered in a new color: rose gold. There had been some earlier talk that Apple might offer the phone in pink, and it's easy to see why there was some confusion — rose gold can look very pink in the right light. The phone is also built out of several new materials. It's using a new aluminum, which Apple says is its own custom alloy. And its display is now covered with a new glass, the same Ion-X that's used on the Apple Watch Sport. You can bet that these changes are, at least in part, designed to make the phone less prone to bending.

3D Touch enables two new ways to interact with the iPhone, which Apple is calling "peek" and "pop." Peek allows you to press on app icons and other buttons to pull up shortcuts directly into specific features. Pressing on the Camera app, for instance, offers the option to jump right into taking a selfie. Pressing on the Facebook app gives you the option of updating your status, taking a photo, checking in, or starting a search. Pop allows you to pull up overlays of photos and videos without actually having them take over the screen; once you move away, you'll be right back to where you were before.

The iPhone 6S is also running on a new 64-bit processor, Apple's A9. As usual, Apple isn't giving the nitty gritty details of the processor, but it says that it's going to be 70 percent faster at CPU tasks, 90 faster at GPU tasks, in both cases over the iPhone 6's A8 processor.

-theverge