It’s hard to believe that just a year ago, there were no size options in the iPhone line. Small was best in the Apple world. In fact, Steve Jobs chose the original iPhone's design so it could easily be operated with one hand.

Apple, however, is making a habit of defying expectations, doing things Jobs said the company would never do. The introduction last year of an iPhone phablet, the iPhone 6 Plus, was, as I see it, the start of those expectation-defying impulses. And consumers embraced it.

A year later, the iPhone 6 Plus has proven its worth and popularity. Sure, Apple never tells us how many of each type of iPhone it sells, but the signs are all around us: There appear to be almost as many 5.5-inch iPhones in the wild as there are 4.7-inch models. What’s more, Apple has put the larger iPhone on the same upgrade path as the smaller model, which brings us to the iPhone 6S Plus, a thoroughly recognizable smartphone that is something of a performance beast.