Galaxy S6 Impressions and Reviews (1 Viewer)

After 8 hours setting up and playing with it, here are the few things that really stick out:

It feels great in the hand. Actually, it feels great overall. The front glass is chamfered on the sides, allowing your finger to gently slide off the edge. In contrast, the S5 had a faux chrome band that created a lip on the edges. Nothing on the S6 digs into your hand - it's comfortable in every aspect.

The screen is as nice as advertised. As I'm typing this on the S6, the words really look like letters on a printed page.

I haven't messed around too much with the camera, but the couple of low light pics I took came out great. These are the kinds of lighting conditions that were so far past the limit of S5's capabilities that I never even bothered to take them in the past. Again, as good as advertised.

There's nothing majorly different about the dimensions of the S5 and S6 - 1.4mm thinner and 2mm narrower. And yet the S5 feels like a brick in comparison.

Fingerprint scanner is da bomb. Haven't missed once and it unlocks almost instantly.

I'll follow up tomorrow when I get my Google Cardboard.

I'm two weeks away from being able to upgrade through my carrier and it's like waiting for Christmas.


I've had my present smartphone (my first) for a few years now and looking forward to the LEAP from a Motorola Razr M to the S6. Now I've got to decide on which storage amount.

Eh... The battery is pretty bad. It almost feels like my Evo 4G, although it's probably more like my S4. It's literally the only bad thing about the phone. Judging by all the battery tests, the real problem here is standby endurance. Android is typically poor with standby because Google wants to communicate so many things back to the mothership all the time. I am hopeful that the Lollipop 5.1 update fixes some of these battery issues like it did for Nexus devices. Not a deal breaker, but it's made more glaring by the fact that it's the one thing keeping the S6 from perfection.

Wow, I am really impressed with the fingerprint scanner. It's so fast that was making some customizations and I forgot what my lockscreen wallpaper looked like because I barely ever see it. I'll probably disable my lockscreen notifications because I can wake and unlock the screen with the home button as fast as it takes to hit the power button.

Battery life update: I've rediscovered the panacea to battery issues on the S6,and it's the same fix I used when I first got the S5: disable location services.

There's a commonly used metric for battery life called SOT (screen on time). The logic is, the screen typically uses the most power. If you are getting low SOT, then the battery is not up to delivering power for the screen and the system. 4 hours SOT is just okay. 5-6 is good. Over 6 is great. Under 4 is poor. With location services, I was getting 2-3 hours projected SOT (I say projected because I never let it run down to zero, which is bad for the battery). After disabling location services, I got 1:30 SOT at 80%, which projects to 7.5 hours SOT.

I personally only need location services for weather updates and navigation, and I can live without the weather and enable location services for navigation as needed. Presumably, Google services keeps wifi running for location so much it eats battery life even in standby mode. This same battery drain issue was found on all the Nexus devices with 5.0, and was fixed with 5.1. So this is a good temporary fix until the Android 5.1 fix makes its way to the S6.

Seems like a lot of hoops to jump through. How do you expect non tech heads will deal with this? Just live with it?

You mean pulling the shade down and toggling location services on and off is only within the realm of techies?


It's really up to the user. They can do this one simple thing to extend their battery life or get a Mophie pack. There were a lot of complaints about the battery when the iPhone 6 was released -- some were smoothed out over time via updates.

Disabling location services is a lot of hoops?


If someone can't do that then they should get an iPhone.

Sam is always looking out for the little guy, although he thinks the little guy is a drooling idiot who can barely hit the power button.

Location services is a core functionality of a phone these days, I can see disabling it on an app by app basis but turning it off phone wide doesn't seem like something the average person will do. Maybe I am misunderstanding you.

Relevant to the battery issues:

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/590173169744420865

As I understand it, Samsung already issued a fix for this. In any case, none of these issues apply to my Exchange Active Sync account.


In other news, the grippability of the phone is a bit on the low side. I typically don't have too many problems holding on to the phone, but if my hands are dry because I've just washed the dishes, it's kind of like a bar of soap. I never use cases, but I may be inclined to get something very thin just for grippability. But beyond grip, the phone slides around on almost any surface it touches. If there's any sort of incline to the surface, it slides right off. I was unplugging it from the charger while it's lying on the nightstand like I always do, but this time the phone almost shot off the edge once the cable disengaged. The back of the phone seems to be made from ice rather than glass.

I realized why the phone slides around so much. If it sat completely flush, there would be enough friction to keep it in place. But when I put the phone down, the camera hump prevents it from lying flush. So there are actually only two points making contact with the surface - the bottom edge of the phone and the bottom edge of the camera hump. That's why it's so skatey - you could practically play air hockey with the S6 as the puck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhvv2-iCKao&feature=youtu.be

The S6 is the best reviewed Android I've ever seen, and with good reason.
So I will take this opportunity to list my pet peeves and disappointments:

1) The base of my thumb keeps activating the screen. Not all the time, but when I reach all the way to the other side of the screen, the meaty part at the base of the thumb registers as a touch. Depending on the app, it either suppresses my intended touch or activates something completely different than intended. In one instance, it deleted one of my Flipboard subscriptions.

2) The touch screen isn't as responsive as the S5 if I use the side of my thumb. This happens in the further reaches of the screen, where I have to tap multiple times for things to happen.

3) The camera's Pro Mode is severely limited. The shutter can only get to 1/10 sec, which is too fast for low light effects. The manual white balance is horrendous. Other than the ability to separate focus and exposure, Pro Mode is generally useless as Full Auto will usually give you a better picture. Granted, full auto on the S6 is remarkably good, so Pro Mode is more of a hobbyist thing than a necessity.

4) The Direct Dial and Direct Message widgets are gone. Perhaps a bit nitpicky, but there's absolutely no reason for removing these and they were very helpful.

5) Speaking of gone, the ability to launch voice search by uttering "okay Google" at any screen stopped working. It's still unknown if this was a result of a Samsung update or a Google update and whether it was inadvertent or done with intent. We'll have to wait for the next update to find out if it's been restored.

6) WiFi drains the battery like crazy. Everyone knows the screen uses the most juice, but I've had the wifi take even more a couple of times. It's still neck and neck with screen all the time. I am crossing my fingers that this is some sort of Android bug, but it's also possible that the wifi antenna just stinks and needs a lot more power.

Can't use a micro SD card. No point in leaving Apple. The ip6 has a good camera with decent image quality. I've grown hate the restrictions on Apple (my next tablet will probably not be an iPad) products but it's possible to skirt that by using ifunbox. iOS updates usually kill the features ifunbox has but the app usually updates to restore them.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge review: Top-ranking Smartphone has the Edge


Highest marks from DXOMark. Both the Edge and the standard S6 have the same camera sensor and software.

12 days in, and I've collected the 6 reasons the Galaxy S6 is the best Android phone you can buy:

1) The screen is the best you can buy today. Is it the 577ppi? Is it the AMOLED tech? Whatever it is, the screen is phenomenal. Every element looks like it was the printed page. You cannot find a jaggy if you tried -- circles are sharp and perfect, and text is rendered the crispest I've ever seen on a phone. It's this crispness that makes the screen pop -- with so much pixel density, either you don't need dithering or the dithering is unnoticeable. Whatever it is, you will not see a screen with this level of clarity, a clarity you can see when compared side by side.

In auto brightness mode, the screen will crank up to over 700nits to compensate for ambient light, meaning the screen is still viewable in direct sunlight. When I first saw the S5 screen, I thought, "how could it get better than this?" Well, it got better. The S5 screen looks dull and lifeless in comparison, and it was perhaps the best 1080p screen of its time. Way back in... 2014. Jesus, tech evolves so fast these days.

2) The camera is ridiculously good. And even in low light conditions, the S6 camera is a beast. I have taken pictures in low light sans flash that are so good I can't even believe it. A hint of grain here, a touch of noise there, but lots of detail and good color. With the f/1.9 aperture lens and optical image stabilization, the only thing that will stymie any photographer will be moving subjects in low light. And you don't even have to be a tweaker or a shutterbug -- full auto mode with auto HDR enabled will get almost anyone some fantastic pictures and mostly usable photos at the very least. With 16MP shots, you have a lot of room to crop and recompose your pictures if you so desire (which I always do). Although it can push a little yellow in low light and can sometimes actually get overexposed in really low light, things like this are very easy to fix in post.

The Pro Mode is mostly useless but has one great feature, which is the ability to separate AF and AE. In playing around with it, I find Full Auto usually picks the best exposure anyway. It's a very specific use case where this feature would come in handy (dark room with a bright light source). Part of the reason why Full Auto is so good is the real time HDR mode -- through a sensor hack, the S6 can composite high and low exposures simultaneously to create an HDR image without needing two successive images like most HDR modes, which means no ghosting artifacts and you can take pictures of moving subjects. Even more impressive, it does it in real time through the viewfinder so you know exactly how it's going to look.

OIS does wonders for video, eliminating shake and giving you smooth panning. Even 4K video shot at 4.0x zoom is stable and shake free. Why would I ever need to shoot at 4K, especially since it is limited to 5 minutes clips? Well, there may be that time in the future when either a high ppi monitor or VR rig could make it worthwhile. In the immediate, however, I can take screenshots of 4K video and turn it into a 8.3MP screen capture.

The only other "meh" feature of the camera is slow motion -- unlike the iPhone's beautiful 240fps capture, the S6 maxes out at 120fps. 1/4x slow motion looks nice, but 1/8x is stuttery since it's just 15fps and it lacks the buttery smoothness of the iPhone. The actual video quality isn't as nice either.

All in all, this is easily the best cameraphone I've ever used. It will decisively beat any phone in a shootout other than maybe the iPhone 6 Plus (neck and neck), and even then I'd take the S6 for the higher resolution and better cropping options. I'd also take the S6 because of the double press on home to quick launch the camera. No matter what screen you're on, whether the screen is off or on, double pressing the home button launches the camera. You can take a picture at a moment's notice. It's genius in its simplicity.

3) The fingerprint scanner is top notch. Not a lot more to say, it's a fingerprint scanner after all, but I've gotten so used to it that I would consider this to be a must have feature on forward. It works so well and so quickly that I've forgotten what my lock screen looks like.

4) For me, fast charging and built-in wireless charging largely make up for the unremarkable battery life. This is definitely a use case issue -- if you do have access to a wall charger, the S6 recharges as fast as advertised. Furthermore, if you have access to a Qi or PMA charging mat, you can get into the habit of plopping it on the mat for a top off throughout the day. I have multiple options to ensure that I have 100% or close to it at the end of my work day, so I'm not that concerned about the battery for the most part. I never got a full day out of my S5 due to Exchange Active Sync, so charging throughout the day isn't anything new. If you are frequently away from a wall charger because of the nature of your work, then charging packs or Mophie style cases will be mandatory. With the S5, I walked out of the house with a spare battery if I was going out on a day trip. With the S6, I have to take a larger battery pack, although I did find one that's the same size as my phone, so there's not a lot of extra heft. Basic power saving mode can also increase endurance without much of a performance hit outside of intensive gaming. But that feeling you get when you plug the phone into a charger and it's close to 100% within 30 minutes almost makes up for the fact that it needed charging in the first place.

6) After spending a year with a phone that was just a skosh too big with a faux chrome band that dug into my hand a little too much for total comfort, the S6 is a welcome relief. I just wish it weren't so slippery. It's actually not the glass back that's the problem -- it's the aluminum sides that are so slick. I wish they had some sort of texture to them other than matte finish. But when I'm holding in my left hand and scrolling through pages with my thumb, it just feels nice. The way my thumb glides off the side of the chamfered glass and the lack of jutting frame elements digging into my flesh make the S6 a pleasure to hold.

There are some other jumps in quality I haven't pointed out yet. Like the premium materials, the aesthetics and form, the beefed up internals, and the speed of the OS. They're nice, but they aren't make or break features for me. Especially aesthetics -- I had really fallen into lust with the S6 edge in gold at first, but I came around to two conclusions: 1) the gold appeared to be distractingly reflective and blindingly reflective in full sunlight, and 2) whatever little compromises that came with the edge screen would initially be brushed away by the cool factor, but down the road, when the cool wore off, those compromises would start blossoming into full blown pain points. It's basically what happened to my Note 2 experience, with my aching elbow being a literal pain point.

12 days in, the blush of novelty is still bright and vivid, so my opinion may be shaped more by oxytocin than experience. Even so, I am confident that at this point, the Galaxy S6 is the best Android phone you can buy right now, and will likely only be bested by the Note 5. Best screen, best camera, fastest charging, built in dual wireless charging, and a top of the line fingerprint sensor all combine to give it the all around title. Of course, it's not for everyone -- if you need microSD card support or removable batteries or don't care about the camera because you have a DSLR or you need a phone that lasts all day without charging or you just flat out want iOS, there are other options out there. None of those considerations are even close to being deal breakers. The only one that even gives me pause is battery, but I'm already adapting to wireless charging to take up the slack. Oddly enough, perhaps due to some app updates, the battery on the S6 is more or less on par with the S5 now, and that's with all services turned on. So I don't have that anxiety about running out of juice, especially since I can top off so easily.

This review is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel since I would never buy a phone without a through review of all the information at hand, and naturally the one I pick will be the best. But don't just take it from me -- the S6 is easily the best reviewed Android phone of all time, and whose closest competition seems to be the Galaxy Note 4. Everything I've seen of the newly announced G4 screams, "second place", so the S6 will likely be the best non-phablet Android phone until next year. Always next year.

A couple of macro shots. Cropped but otherwise unedited.

Hanson said:

In other news, the grippability of the phone is a bit on the low side. I typically don't have too many problems holding on to the phone, but if my hands are dry because I've just washed the dishes, it's kind of like a bar of soap. I never use cases, but I may be inclined to get something very thin just for grippability. But beyond grip, the phone slides around on almost any surface it touches. If there's any sort of incline to the surface, it slides right off. I was unplugging it from the charger while it's lying on the nightstand like I always do, but this time the phone almost shot off the edge once the cable disengaged. The back of the phone seems to be made from ice rather than glass.

Click to expand...

I got my S6 yesterday. Loving it so far.


But on the subject of slipperyness - I was driving and had the phone laying on the center console of my truck and had to brake to miss somebody on my side of the street. I was going very slow and the phone was connected to the cigarette lighter charger. The phone slid off the console and slammed into the floorboard. After a few choice words in the general direction of the other car, I picked the phone up by the charger cable and expected to find all kinds of scratches or cracks. It survived without any damage however.


I'll be getting a case of some kind too. I found one on Amazon that I like. It's cheap, thin and simple:


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QU4N7AK/ref=psdc_3081461011_t2_B00QU4PN84