Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus: Australian pricing and availability

Another year, another new iPhone series. Following its now traditional system of iterating and tweaking every second year, as opposed to releasing newly designed hardware, we'll soon have the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus on sale in Australia.

The straight pricing might be a bit of a shock to the wallet for many: the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune mean that there has been a large dip in the value of the Australian dollar since the original iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were revealed. That's seen the minimum cost of the new phones start at AU$1,079 and head on up to a rather hefty AU$1,529.

This pricing means that if you are after an upgrade you might be looking at something on plan rather than scraping together one lump sum when September 25 arrives.

Official Pricing

Carrier Pricing

In general we've compared the pricing between carriers for the plans offering around 6GB of data, which is fast becoming a nice average in terms of mobile broadband allowances.

Telstra

Telstra offers four tiers of plans, mostly differentiated by the different data on offer. For the iPhone 6s and Plus, the carrier has added a bonus 1GB of data on the 'L' tier plan, making the total 7GB along with unlimited talk and text. The costs for the different models on this plan breaks down as:

The cheapest possible deal will see you get the 16GB iPhone 6s with a paltry 1GB of data and AU$550 of included call value. That's AU$87 a month and AU$2,088 over the 24 month contract.

The most expensive will hand you the 128GB version of the 6s Plus, along with 15GB of data. You'll pay AU$165 a month, AU$3,960 all up over the 24 month contract.

Optus

The AU$80 plan from Optus has 6GB of data plus unlimited talk and text. Optus is also offering a data bonus: in this case you'll get an additional 2GB on the 10GB data tier. For the 16GB iPhone 6s, that makes a pretty nice deal of AU$100 a month for 12GB of data. There's also an additional 4GB on the top level plan, making for a total of 20GB per month.

The cheapest you'll find is again, the 16GB 6s for AU$73 a month and just 500MB of data. That's AU$1,752 for the 24 month contract. The most you'll pay is, of course, for the 128GB 6s Plus: AU$149 a month for a whopping 20GB of data. All up that's AU$3,576 for the life of your contract.

Vodafone

Vodafone's AU$80 plan usually gets you 6GB of data. For the iPhone 6s and Plus that's been bumped up to 8GB, still with infinite local calls and text. The data bonuses continue onto the AU$100 and AU$130 plans, making them 12GB and 20GB respectively, up from 10GB and 15GB.

The cheapest deal is the AU$79 a month plan for the 16GB 6s. That's 1GB of data and a total minimum cost of AU$1,896. On the other end, the max you'll pay is AU$140 a month for 20GB of data, which ends up at AU$3,360 over 24 months.

Vodafone is also taking the unusual route of selling the handset on instalments for customers who have a month-to-month SIM only plan. Payments can be spread out over 6, 12, 18, 24 and 36 months. The 16GB iPhone 6s would be AU$180 a month on the six month plan and AU$30 for the 36 month.

Virgin

Virgin normally only offers 3GB on their AU$70 plan, but it is doubling that for anyone switching to the Virgin network or upgrading their plans for the new iPhone range. This also includes unlimited calls and text around Australia.

The top plan for the 128GB 6s Plus is a relatively affordable AU$112 per month for 13GB of data. That's AU$2,688 over 24 months. The cheapest will see you pay AU$61 a month for the 16GB 6s. That's a mere 300MB of data and AU$300 of call value for AU$1,464 all up.