Best new phones 2016: Sony Xperia Z6

Sony has had a rough ride in the smartphone market this year and while it will hope the Xperia Z5 range will be a big success, its thoughts must now be firmly with the Xperia Z6.

There's little in the way of leaked information on the phone but it does seem that Sony will stop its six-month refresh cycle meaning the Xperia Z6 will arrive around September 2016.

We're expecting a similar offering to the Z5 with waterproofing and a fingerprint scanner but we hope it will shake things up a bit with something very different to past phones.

Best new phones 2015

We've just looked at some of the best new phones still to come in late 2015/early 2016, but some great phones have already been released this year. You can check out some of 2015's best flagships on the following pages.

Also check out the best smartphones of 2015, best Android phones of 2015, best Windows Phones of 2015, best budget phones of 2015, best cheap 4G phones of 2015, best phablets of 2015 and best selfie smartphones of 2015.

Best new phones 2015:Apple iPhone 6s

Apple's iPhone 6s went on sale in the UK on 25 September. (See also: best smartphones for business.)

There are some key changes in the new iPhone 6s, with a new Rose Gold colour option and a 12Mp iSight camera with support for 4K video recording. Live Photo is a fun new feature, with the iPhone recording a second and a half of video either side of the still image to help it come to life.

iOS 9 comes preinstalled on the new iPhone, and there's a new 3D Touch screen that can differentiate between a light and hard tap, allowing you to 'peek' and 'pop' into content. The screen is otherwise the same, a 4.7in Retina HD screen with 326ppi.

Also new is a second-gen Touch ID fingerprint scanner that's reportedly twice as fast, and an Apple A9 processor, now with the M9 motion coprocessor built-in and always-on. Apple says it's 80 percent faster for CPU tasks and 90 percent for GPU tasks.

Best new phones 2015:Apple iPhone 6s Plus

As well as the iPhone 6s (previous slide), Apple has made available the new iPhone 6s Plus, on sale in the UK from 25 September.

As with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the key differences between these two phones are in their screen size and overall dimensions and weight. With a higher-resolution 5.5- rather than 4.7in screen, the iPhone 6s Plus is necessarily larger and heavier, at 158.2x77.9x7.3mm and 192g. It also has a larger-capacity battery.

 The 6s Plus gets the same new features as the iPhone 6s, which means the A9 processor, 12Mp iSight camera with Live Photo, the 3D Touch screen (which can also go up to three times brighter to serve as a Retina Flash for the 5Mp selfie camera), and new Touch ID fingerprint scanner.