Gadgetory

for the third year in a row Samsung has augmented its fancied top-shelf smartphone with a ruggedized version for outdoorsy types and for the third year in a row it's an AT&T exclusive in the US I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and this is an unboxing and quick look at the samsung galaxy s6 active the first thing I thought when popping the cover here is that there must have been a mistake the s6 active is so similar to the s5 active at first glance that I thought it was the older phone but nope check it out of the box and you realize it's a little thinner a little sleeker though that's not saying much and there's no jungle camo paint job to be seen at least not on our grey review device the imitation rivets have been carried over from predecessors to give the s6 active that burly construction site certified look and while the rubberized back panel almost looks removable it isn't usually that's not reason to celebrate we like removable batteries a lot but here it's actually a big relief the galaxy s4 active featured a famously finicky battery door that led in water unless it was sealed just right and last year's s5 active had a similar problem with its hatches when dropped on hard surfaces so omitting a removable cover entirely was probably a good move also at 3,500 milliamp hours the battery is much bigger than on the standard s6 and in a first for the active line it can also be recharged wirelessly or plugged into the included adaptive quick charger without the need to fiddle with a hatch cover the USB port here meets the ip68 standard just like the headphone jack so it can free flood when the phone's underwater up to 1.5 meters of it without damaging the hardware the s6 active is also rated to military standard 810g for impact resistance which we'll explore more thoroughly in the full review we'll also be taking a look at Samsung and ATT's custom software load here which means we've got to boot the phone which means we need to take off the screen protector quiet please the specs under the hood are almost all the same as on the standard s6 by the way screen size and res to processor to camera and controlling the phone is just like controlling the standard s6 as well except physical keys replace the capacitive ones for easier interactions through gloves and so on there's also an added active key above the volume controls that allows for jumping right into the activity zone which includes everything from a compass to a flashlight to a barometer you can also assign specific apps to the active key to be launched with a long or a short press if that's more useful and AT&T has also bundled its usage manager for battery life RAM and connection optimization in the coming days I'll be testing the Galaxy s6 active in bad weather and with power draining applications like ingress to see how that big battery stands some real outdoorsy use let us know what you want to know about the Galaxy s6 active and we'll do our best to answer your questions in our full review coming soon that pocket down till then check out our earlier Galaxy S active coverage here on YouTube see our standard galaxy s6 review at pocket now and join us on the PocketNow weekly podcast this Wednesday to talk active smartphones until next time this has been michael fisher captain to phones on twitter thanks for watching see you soon