Gadgetory

Samsung's Galaxy s6 is an absolutely beautiful smartphone but it's also absolutely impractical for a sporty lifestyle enter the galaxy s6 active a heavyweight version of the 2015 flagship built to take tougher treatment we covered the differences between them in a previous comparison and now after seven days it's time to render our final verdict I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and this is our video review of the galaxy s6 active the actives Hardware looks a lot like the standard galaxy s6 wrapped in a super durable casing and the reality isn't far from that in years past tough smartphones equaled underwhelming smartphones on the spec sheet but with each successive generation of its active line Samsung has brought its durable smartphones closer to parity with its standard offerings here that means you'll find the same quad HD display on the s6 active as on the regular s6 powered by the same Exynos processor backed up by the same three gigs of RAM as you may recall we found the battery on the stock s6 pretty underwhelming so we were pleased to see Samsung boost its size by 37% in the active for longer endurance and here the fact that the phone's power pack is non-removable actually works in its favor previous generations of active suffered from water intrusion due to their battery doors not always sealing properly so omitting that vulnerability entirely makes the phone even more solid backing that up is an alphabet soup of certifications the phone is rated to ip68 and mil standard 810g the former rating means the phone is fully dustproof and capable of surviving immersion in fresh water in this case up to one and a half meters of it for up to 30 minutes the mil standard certification adds resistance to humidity temperature extremes and impact damage Samsung says you can drop it from up to four feet on a hard surface and these claims have all pretty much held up it worked fine after a half hour in the freezer and aside from a single reboot it didn't seem to mind a long stretch in direct sunlight either also after repeated tosses and tumbles against asphalt and concrete the phone's polycarbonate casing is pitted and scarred but there's no lasting damage to speak up and no shattered screen either thanks to the slight recess built into the casing ditto the water testing will be taking it to greater depths in a future feature but over the past week the actives been splashed sprayed submerged and even left in a full bathtub for over 30 minutes with no ill effects it's not without the occasional weirdo moments for a while after taking it out of the water it sometimes thinks a doc is connected which you can fix by blowing on the USB port like it's an old Nintendo cartridge and then waiting a while for it to dry out there are no such shortcuts for the speakerphone which takes forever to dry after a swim during which time it's so quiet and ratalie it's almost useless but sauce for the goose as they say most durable smartphones run into issues like this and on the whole this Hardware lives up to the promise of a smartphone you don't have to worry about too much the software on the s6 active is exactly what you'd expect if you've seen our review of the standard galaxy s6 and that goes for highs and lows alike on the high side this is a slimmed down version of Samsung's TouchWiz user interface that's much snappier and slightly sleeker than what's come before and you can customize it for free with a growing number of available themes on Samsung's App Store which we really like on the low side it's still TouchWiz so some things that work very well in stock Android stumble a bit here also the active is still stuck on a version of Android that brings out the worst in lollipops memory management problems multitasking is inconsistent app crashes are almost routine and there's a bug that causes some apps like the game ingress to crash when launching them from the new active key but not when launching them from the app drawer which is bizarre that odd behavior aside the active key is a really nice addition to this phone the activity zone it links to is the typical predictable outdoorsy hub containing a lot of useful items that have been somewhat uselessly grouped together the real convenience of the additional button is the fact that you can set it to start any two apps of your choosing via a short press or a long press either one will bypass the lockscreen for a very quick launch fortunately you don't need to use up one of those shortcuts for the camera because while Samsung has omitted the fingerprint scanner from the actives home key you can still double click it to jump right into the viewfinder by all accounts the 16 megapixel camera here is the same exact module in the stock s6 and the results bear that out that is to say it's still one of the best cameras on Android and on smartphones as a whole that means crisp colorful photos in daylight with excellent sharpness and saturation it means an HDR mode that does its job and bringing out the highlights and darker areas without going so far as to create halos around everything it means brighter nighttime pictures that aren't without noise but are much better than most competition thanks to optical stabilization and an F 1.9 aperture it means selfies that despite some distortion at the edges more often than not come out the way you want them to regardless of light level and it means a host of manual controls that can make a photo like this into a photo like this with just a few button presses can it take an ugly picture sure is it likely - nope this camera is awesome though and it can take pictures underwater - carrying the galaxy s6 active for a week has reinforced some of the similarity to its less active sibling but it's also thrown the differences into stark relief battery life is the biggest of these with 3500 milliamp hours of lipo power the s6 active routinely delivers solid uptime even with heavy use we've twice been able to get five and a half hours of screen on time between charges that makes it an endurance match for the Nexus 6 and Droid turbo and just like those devices it also offers both wireless and wired charging options using the included adaptive fast charger replenishment time is a little better than one percent per minute it'll go from zero to 100% charge in about an hour and 45 minutes with the power off the negatives are familiar ones for the most part for one thing the battery life would probably be even better without cell standby eating so much of it a problem we also saw on team version of the s6 the storage options are well non-existent you're limited to a 32 gig version with no microSD expansion and much of that is eaten up by the system image out of the box also like it's active predecessors this phone has a tendency to turn its screen on for no reason in a pocket and while the speakerphone is loud when it's dry placing it on the back of the phone makes no sense to us ending on a solid note the sx active gave us our first chance to try out a TN t--'s HD voice it only works when the other caller is on a compatible phone in a supported market but paly megahertz what a difference calls / HD voice are as clear as the best Skype or FaceTime audio calls with more fidelity than you'll find on any standard cellular connection we're looking forward to this becoming the norm for voice calls in the future for now the galaxy s6 active is exclusive to AT&T in the US and if past experience is any indication it's likely to stay that way so you have to be cool with big orange or willing to unlock it for little magenta - consider this device but what you'll get is a more durable and more capable smartphone than any Samsung that's come before it lasts much longer on a charge than the regular s6 and it's effectively the same price to boot if you're in need of an Android phone that takes a beating without surrendering top-tier features the s6 active should be at or near the top of your list of contenders even if that means you've got to think about switching carriers for more on the galaxy s6 active check out our comparison with the stock s6 our 24-hour drop test video and our full text review available at pocket now and June 23rd until next time there's been michael fisher captain two phones on twitter reminding you to keep your galaxy active and your USB dry thanks for watching we'll see you next time