The Samsung Galaxy S6 is Samsung's answer to the iPhone 6. But can the Galaxy S6 take on Apple's iPhone 6 in 2015? Let's find out
Rating:
Typical Price:
£599.00
Pros:
Excellent Design; Awesome Display; Brilliant Camera; Great Battery Life; TouchWiz Still Needs Work But Is A LOT Better Than Before
Cons:
No MicroSD; Battery Is No Longer Removable; Fingerprint Scanner, While Improved, Still Struggles Too Much
Verdict:
The Best Android Phone On Market Right Now –– Bar None.
So 2014 wasn't the best year for Samsung, it did ok with the Galaxy Note 4, but that was after the critical and commercial ass-paddling that came from the Galaxy S5, the firm's then flagship. That was pretty much the first time a major Samsung device had been roundly greeted with a sharp inhalation of breath through gritted teeth. It didn't sell well; people didn't like it. The era of the plastic fantastic smartphone had come to an end, and for some reason Samsung hadn't clocked it.
That meant something radical was needed - Project Zero. That's what Samsung called the Galaxy S6 internally when it was in development; the firm was literally going back to the drawing board. Clunky, generic design made from plastic was to be replaced with something sleek and stylish, fashioned in metal and glass.
The plan didn’t exactly work, however, as Samsung’s sales, profits and ownership of the mobile space began to dwindle inside 2015. The main reason for this was Apple’s iPhone 6, which basically destroyed EVERYTHING in 2014/15. Unfortunately for Samsung, this looks likely to happen again this year with the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, which sold in excess of 15 million during their first week on sale.
Samsung’s only countermove to this is its Galaxy S7 series of handsets which are due out at some point inside Q1 2016. A lot has already been written about the Galaxy S7’s specs, hardware and overall design but you can bet your ass there’ll be plenty more leaks and information published between now and Christmas.
So without further ado, let's take a look at how the Samsung Galaxy S6 stacks up...
Samsung has pulled out all the stops when it comes to processing power, battery tech, and camera hardware. The use of its own Exynos processor chip over the darling of the Android space; Qualcomm's Snapdragon, tantalisingly promises an even more robust and powerful smartphone experience than many key rivals.
The Galaxy S6 also launched alongside the Galaxy S6 EDGE, essentially the same phone but with some advanced display technology featuring a unique curved design on the two longer sides of the touchscreen. However, neither handset has managed to match Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in terms of sales –– at least just yet. According to data, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 EDGE are seriously outperforming last year’s Galaxy S5, though neither are likely to give Apple’s iPhones any trouble anytime soon.
The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 EDGE are fantastic Android handsets. They look great. They perform great. They even have decent battery life and some of the best displays in the business. But Samsung just isn’t selling enough of them – and this is bad new for the company. Very bad news, indeed.
According to the company’s Q2 financials, Samsung’s mobile business took a massive hit in the nuts, dropping 37.6% year-on-year. Meanwhile, Apple experienced HUGE growth during 2014/15 and is now by far and away the most profitable phone maker on the planet – nobody else even comes close.
“Samsung misread demand for its unique curved screen Galaxy S6 Edge model, instead focusing production efforts on normal versions that went head to head against iPhone,” notes Apple Insider. “A report covering Samsung's earning estimates earlier this month cited a source as saying the company thought regular S6 sales would outpace S6 Edge four-to-one.”
Counterpoint expects Samsung’s flagship devices to hit sales of 50 million units by the end of the year.
Anyway...on with the review of the Galaxy S6 flagship!
Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: Design
Samsung is one of the world’s most popular brands, next to Apple and Google. But the thing about Samsung is that it didn’t really get there on merit –– it sort of bought its way in with INSANE levels of spending on marketing and advertising (reportedly $12 billion in 2012). It has always made excellent handsets, a prime example would be the Galaxy Note which gave birth to the whole phablet scene, but more recently it has fallen on tough times (sales dropped, the Galaxy S5 flopped) because people got sick of the company drumming out the same old crap year after year.
And then something happened in late 2014…
Samsung began to pump out great looking handsets. The Galaxy Note 4 was, of course, brilliant –– Note updates always are. But for me it was the Galaxy Alpha that really showed a change in the way Samsung built and designed phones; it was just stunning to behold. For this reason, I began (for the first time in a very long while) to actually get excited about the prospect of a new Galaxy S flagship.
The Galaxy S6 takes everything that was great about the Alpha, its gorgeous shape, sleek profile and excellent contouring, and takes it several steps further. The result is a brilliantly realised handset that sits perfectly in your hand and pocket. The Galaxy S6 is a goldilocks handset if ever there was one, being just the right size. Handy if phablets aren’t your thing and you want a phone with the very best specs and hardware currently available.
The front and back of the Galaxy S6 are constructed from glass which looks nice but means two very important things: 1) it smudges like a mother trucker, and 2) if you drop the handset, even from a small hit, it will almost certainly crack or, worse, shatter. This means you WILL need a case. Aside from these issues, though, the look and finish of the handset is superb. I love the metal trim around the edges too, which aids grip and ties the whole aesthetic together very nicely.
The Galaxy S6 is available in four, very fetching colour schemes: White Pearl, Gold Platinum, Blue Topaz and Black Sapphire. The handset itself is also exceptionally thin at 6.8mm and super light too, pushing the scales at just 138g. For me, this handset represents the perfect compromise between modern, phablet-sized handsets like the Nexus 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and more traditionally sized units like the HTC One M9, iPhone 6 and Moto X. But in an odd twist of fate, Samsung now makes the best looking handset on market; not even the HTC One M9 or iPhone 6 can hold a candle to this baby. It truly is stunning and then some, as the saying goes.
All this stunning design innovation does come at a cost, however, as the handset no longer supports microSD cards and you can no longer remove the battery. Both of these things have been staple features on Galaxy S units since day one, so their omission this time around will almost certainly set a few handbags in motion amongst Samsung’s old faithful.
This isn’t a deal-breaker for me, if I’m honest. I don’t use cards and I never carry a spare battery around with me. But I do get why some users may be a little cheesed off about this switcharoo; nobody likes building up year’s worth of media on cards and then not being able to use them on their shiny, brand new handset.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: Display
I’ve been pretty vocal about my disdain for QHD panels in recent months and the main reason for this was battery life; QHD panels simple require too much power and, as a result, need HUGE battery cells to run them which in turn require a huge chassis to house them. Hence every QHD phone to date being a phablet.
This is where the Galaxy S6 is different, however. It uses a 5.1in QHD panel in a normal sized chassis with a normal sized battery, and yet by some form of voodoo it manages to last longer than both the HTC One M9 (a 1080p handset) and the Google Nexus 6 –– more on this later though.
The screen itself is stunning. There really is no other word for it. This is the best screen I have ever used. Period. Everything looks wonderfully vibrant; colours are precise, yet pop right off the display; TouchWiz looks sublime, almost like paper; detail is off the charts; videos look immense; NOTHING has been left to chance here. The panel itself surpasses even the Galaxy Note 4’s impressive QHD setup, paying testament to just how much effort and resources Samsung puts into making its displays. I really cannot say enough good things about this panel, so I’ll simply relay to you its pertinent details: the Galaxy S6 uses a 5.1in Quad HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1,440 x 2,560 and a pixel density of 576ppi.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: TouchWiz and Operating System
The Galaxy S6 is of course running Android Lollipop out the box and benefits from all of its excellent and well executed optimisations and tweaks. Most Android handsets these days run pretty damn smoothly, but it is clear some firms –– notably HTC and Samsung –– are better at tying their software in with Google’s world-beating mobile OS. Sense and TouchWiz are both liquid-smooth these days, running with the same level of performance that was once usually only reserved for iPhones.
I recently tested the HTC One M9 and found it rather lacking as an upgrade from last year’s model. Part of the reason for this was because I just couldn’t find anything to really get excited about, but the Samsung Galaxy S6 is the EXACT opposite; there is almost too much going on here –– everything has been tweaked and upgraded, so much so the experience of using it feels completely different from last year’s model, which is exactly how a flagship experience should feel.
Samsung has also done A LOT of work to TouchWiz. It still looks bloody awful, mind, but the software runs smoother than ever and the multitasking carousal is off the charts –– it is insanely fast, unlike anything else I’ve experienced this year in the Android space. This “lean-down” has been a long time coming, however, so while I am glad Samsung has FINALLY listened to its customers, I’m also sort of peeved that it took this long to happen!
Less is definitely more here, though. Everything looks and feels great, refreshed almost –– despite the fact it still looks god-awful compared to stock Android. It’s not all sunshine and cider, however, as there are still plenty of dubious apps onboard the handset like Samsung Apps, S Voice (you know, the Siri alternative that only six people have ever used), and “Briefing” which is sort of like HTC’s BlinkFeed, meaning it is largely pointless and you only ever open it by accident.
The BIG takeaways here for me, though, are the speed and general performance of TouchWiz, its stripped down nature and the fact that it now kind of gets out of the way and lets you get on with what you want to do. This is a BIG change from previous Samsung handsets and I am very pleased that Samsung has finally listened to what people have been saying for donkey’s years. It's not perfect. Not by a ling stretch. But it is a HUGE improvement over what shipped aboard the Galaxy S5.
By and large, though, the torrent of crap that we once knew as TouchWiz is a far more subtle and useful beast these days, almost as if it’s grownup from an annoying teenager into a lovely, well-rounded 20-something. The software itself takes up less room on your device, is less intrusive and –– best of all –– it doesn’t constantly ask you to sign in to Samsung Apps or to start tilting the device to read webpages, which I might add was one of the worse ideas EVER devised for a phone.
Now, if Samsung could finally get around to making it look a bit less rubbish…
Samsung Galaxy S6 Will Get Android Marshmallow & New TouchWiz in January 2016
In November 2015 multiple leaks have appeared in rapid succession detailing Samsung's plans to update its phone line-up to Android Marshmallow 6.0 - we've repeatedly seen database entries for Samsung's update roadmap. By time of writing this update - November 19 - we've now seen three such leaks in a few days, and while the latest one does inlcude a few changes, they have all consistently pointed towards a January rollout for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, both of which will get Marshmallow in the opening month of 2016. The latest report comes via PhoneArena's anonymous sources, and shows a photo of the Samsung roadmap database.
As of December 2, we've been treated to a little leak showing what TouchWiz and Android Marshmallow will look like on the Galaxy S6. A batch of screenshots captured from a Galaxy S6 were published on Chinese social network Weibo, although they were quickly taken down. Thankfully, SamMobile managed to snatch them before this occured.
The images don't show much in the way of features we can expect to see, but it's clear the overall design is very clean and minimalist, the cleanest TouchWiz has ever been, in fact, and far more in keeping with Google's simple Material Design aesthetic than Samsung has ever offered before.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: Specs –– CPU, RAM, GPU and Storage
Like everything else in this handset, Samsung has pulled zero punches when it comes to the Galaxy S6’s power unit. Inside you’ll find the insanely powerful, 64-bit 14nm OctaCore Exynos 7420 CPU running alongside 3GB of RAM and a Mali-T760 GPU. As you’d expect the results of all this grunt are pretty startling and I’m willing to wager this handset is the most powerful smartphone ever created.
That Exynos 7420, which comprises twin quad-core CPUs (one running at a frequency of 2.1GHz and one at 1.5GHz), will devour everything and anything you can throw at it. TouchWiz runs smoother than ever before, intensive games run without a hiccup and even things like photo and video editing are taken well inside the Exynos’ stride. Benchmarks tell a similar story, though we won’t bore you with those, as the performance on show here requires zero pomp or ceremony; nothing else in the Android space comes close to what’s going on inside this handset. No wonder Qualcomm is getting Samsung to build its next-generation Snapdragon 820!
Beyond this the most impressive thing about the Galaxy S6 is just how reserved it is; the handset doesn’t feel showy. It just does what it does in a very satisfying and efficient manner. Yes, the omission of SD-support is a pain, but the handset is outfitted in three storage versions (32/64/128GB) alongside 100GB of free Drive storage, so even those running on the lowest storage version should have more than enough space to play with.
The Galaxy S6 supports CAT 6 LTE, meaning 300 Mbits/sec download, 50 Mbits/sec upload, Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2x2 MIMO) and Bluetooth 4.0 as well as all the usual bells and whistles –– NFC, wireless charging, etc –– you’d expect on a top flight Android handset. Pound for pound, the Galaxy S6 offers up perhaps the best array of specs and hardware we’ve seen on a phone so far this year. All that could change with the launch of the LG G4 and Galaxy Note 5 later this year, obviously, but for now the Galaxy S6 really does look, feel and perform like a flagship in every sense of the word.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: Camera
Samsung, even back in the days of the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S5, has a very good pedigree when it comes to imaging technology. The Galaxy Note 3’s imaging unit was exceptional. Ditto for the Galaxy Alpha and Galaxy Note 4, so it’s no surprise the imaging aboard the Galaxy S6 is yet another step forward for the company.
Android Lollipop 5.1.1 Update To Bring MASSIVE Camera Boost
It is being reported that Samsung is working on a new update to the camera app. The update, according to sources who spoke to SamMobile, will roll out with the Android 5.1.1 update, Reports The Irish Examiner, citing Sam Mobile. “Both the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are set to receive some extra camera features. It’s not clear what these features will be.”
The update is believed to be bringing the full Google camera API into the mix, meaning support for RAW shooting and shutter speed control. This would obviously be very cool and make an already excellent camera setup even better. Android Lollipop 5.1.1 update will likely begin rolling out very shortly, so keep your eyes peeled.
This isn’t a dramatic overhaul of what came before; rather, it is a refinement (a la Apple’s style with the iPhone) of what came before, aboard the Galaxy S5, just with a few key tweaks in the exact right places. You have the same 16MP sensor onboard, for instance, only this time it is backed up by Optical Image Stabilisation and a wider aperture which allows for more light and, in the end, better shots regardless of the setting you’re shooting in.
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