Gadgetory

it's the well-worn phrase that's kicked off every major Samsung smartphone launch for the past three years but this year the next big thing is actually worth the hype I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and this is our video review of the Samsung Galaxy s6 brought to you by squarespace every so often a product comes along that you pick up and don't ever want to put down the galaxy s6 is one of these and picking it up is important because without the context of touch it's easy to confuse the s6 for one of its predecessors slightly rounded rectangle with a big screen and a big home button it's only by holding it that you grasp its significance this is like no Samsung that's come before it not the industrial alpha nor the leatherette note nor the plastic II at Eve this is something entirely different the galaxy s6 is a slim sandwich of glass and aluminum less than 7 millimeters thick and much more substantial in the hand than its hundred and thirty-eight grams would suggest there's not a trace of compromise to be found in the fit and finish everything from the corner seams to the button travel and feedback is top-notch the phone is available in several colors we tested both white pearl and black sapphire in our nine-day review period with the latter picking up fingerprints much more readily than the former and despite the creative color name it's not sapphire material its Gorilla Glass 4 also regardless of color it's a slippery phone prone to sliding off crooked tabletops if you're a butterfingers you may want to consider a case spec for example sent us a bunch to try out the case for a case is bolstered by the protruding camera bump on the back begging to be shattered with a too hard drop on a to tough surface the Galaxy s6 has such a beautiful design though that it seems a shame to cover it up especially since we've so rarely been able to say that about Samsung phones in the past while upping its game in industrial design the company hasn't forgotten to play to its main strength display manufacturing this year's quad HD Super AMOLED panel is sharper than ever it's black levels and contrast excellent its saturation rich but adjustable based on your preferences it can still overpower to around 600 nits in bright sunlight or cranked way down to almost nothing in a dark room annoyingly this time around the dim setting is sabotaged by the two bright capacitive keys at the bottom for some reason the timeout controls have been removed meaning they always light up with every screen interaction and there's nothing you can do about it put your thumb on the home button in the middle and you'll see another of Samsung's many improvements the new fingerprint sensor is leaps and bounds better than the cumbersome swipe jobs of previous generations getting you past the lock screen just as quickly as the best of the competition the other side of the lock screen is where Samsung has fallen short for the past few years spending more time on useless or half-finished features while letting its interface aesthetics stagnate and at first glance with its goofy icons and garish colors the new software doesn't seem all that different but shaking things up is just a long press away like HTC Samsung has introduced full theming capability to its latest flagship allowing you to change everything from icon packs to system sounds to wallpapers to accent colors with the swipe of a finger at the moment the theme store is pretty barren but already I found a couple that work with my particular sense of style and I really liked that the theme changes extend to almost every corner of the OS including places like the notification shade and SMS chat windows whether you run a custom theme or not there's a market improvement in responsiveness and a more intelligent layout overall continuing a trend that began last year Samsung has culled or buried many extraneous features resulting in a faster experience in day to day years the last out of place elements from the old nature UX have been removed and you can now swipe on the stock keyboard for precision cursor placement multi-window one of Samsung's biggest standouts is still better here than on any competitor phone supporting a long list of apps capable of running side by side with its direct access to the phone's onboard blood-oxygen and heart rate sensor s health is more capable than ever and better laid out to even the Flipboard powered newsreader is snap here than it once was not all the changes here will be welcomed the replacement of overflow icons with the word more takes some getting used to and that combined with some of the industrial design and the parallax effect and the wallpaper makes the s6 seem like it's trying a little too hard to be something else then there's the matter of how well the software performs in real life which we'll get to in a second but I want to wrap up the section with my favorite software feature of the s6 the reason I don't have a camera shortcut on my home screen anymore double click the home button and you'll find yourself almost instantly in the viewfinder that viewfinder is a welcome improvement over earlier Clojure builds automatic settings are available so the phone can decide for itself if it needs to turn on night mode or activate HDR and you can also preview HDR effects before taking a photo a handful of shooting modes are available out of the box with others available to download and there's a pro setting for manual adjustments to my favorite sort of fun feature is probably virtual shot which allows you to combine multiple angles of an object into one faux 3d photo the best feature of the galaxy s6 camera though is that it doesn't rely on gimmicks to kick out beautiful photos the 16 megapixel sensor delivers outstanding pictures whether the subjects are hundreds of feet distant or mere millimeters away the HDR effect brings highlights to the dark zones with only a minimum of color washout back in standard mode colors are sometimes a little punched up a little on the warm side but I find that the saturation boost helps more often than it hurts importantly it doesn't mean blues and greens are lost on the contrary the s6 has no trouble rendering the cooler side of the spectrum and where at sundown you better take care with other phones this camera's f 1.9 aperture and optical stabilization combined to pull out a lot of light without the need for the harsh LED flash color reproduction wanders further into the yellow-green area of the spectrum the darker the scene gets but this is still one of the best low-light performers we've seen on android combine that with the front-facing camera and its wide-angle lens and the still side of the scene is pretty well covered the galaxy s6 brings a lot of capability to its camcorder mode too but as the man said don't take my word for it the worst part of the camera experience over the review period wasn't the cameras fault at all it happened when the viewfinder crashed immediately when I tried launching it and it wasn't an isolated occurrence ab crashes have been fairly common over the past week and while a recent software update has helped a bit it didn't completely eliminate the problem and given how poorly some Samsung software has aged over the years it does give me pause now this isn't necessarily a Samsung issue like the slight delay and calling up the multitasking screen and the occasional unaccountable lag Android lollipop is just funky sometimes no matter what phone you're using but it is frustrating when you're in the middle of something and you're interrupted by a notification that an app you didn't even want installed and didn't even know was running has crashed now some of the blame does fall at t-mobile's feet for this uninstalling or disabling the carrier bloat that comes with the phone does help to a degree still put all that together and it's not a great experience ditto for androids too aggressive memory management you think a phone with three gigs of RAM could manage to keep a radio streaming app loaded in memory after taking a quick video with the camera but sadly that's not the case elsewhere Samsung's in-house silicon seems to stack up while the Exynos processor warms up the hardware with a quickness it does a fine job rendering even heavy websites in either Chrome or the stock internet browser and it runs games like asphalt 8 about as well as the Snapdragon 810 does you've just got to be careful not to squeeze the s6 too hard in those stressful moments lest your palm activate the capacitive keys and kick you out of the game and you'll want to keep your fingers clear of the bottom firing speakerphone port to when it's wide open it's a formidable little driver but it's easy to cover up by accident already what about the much belaboured lack of a memory card slot and removable battery I only really miss one of them expandable storage has been increasingly marginalized by other Android OEMs and by Google itself and with the s6 available with up to 128 gigs of admittedly pricey on-board storage I don't think many people will miss microSD on the other hand it would have been really nice if Samsung had managed to retain a swappable battery so we could carry a spare around despite usually lasting me through the day our galaxy s6 never managed to hit 4 hours of screen on time between charges our unofficial benchmark for acceptability but the phone does include support for both leading wireless charging standards and it's also one of the fastest charging smartphones we've ever tested with an adaptive quick charger right in the box that juices it up from dead to a half charged in about a half hour so whether you can live with its endurance will depend on how often you can top up there's also some question about t-mobile unit's performing differently from other carrier variants see our full review at pocket now for more on this finally the galaxy s6 is also a phone of course and aside from its seems occasionally snagging the hair around my ears something the iPhone 6 also does it's a very good phone its antennas hanging onto t-mobile signal both above and below ground in Greater Boston and it's earpiece adroitly walking the line between loudness and clarity the galaxy s6 itself walks another line well the one between changing things up and sticking with what works Samsung has kept the physical aspect familiar but upgraded it so it now looks and feels like the premium hardware it is it's kept the software accessible but also made it customizable so users can more easily make the phone their own and it's thrown in the best camera and arguably the best display ever to hit a smartphone it's not without its compromises and it won't be for everyone but the Galaxy s6 is one of the best Android phones you can buy in 2015 and it's probably the best Samsung smartphone in history to us that makes it worth every penny this review was brought to you by Squarespace and its new version 7 drag-and-drop UI Squarespace is the all-in-one solution that makes it fast and easy to create a beautiful website blog or online store for you and your ideas visit squarespace.com slash pocket now for your free trial and up to 10% off you'll be getting a good deal and showing your support for pocket now while you're at it Squarespace start here go anywhere for more on the Galaxy S six be sure to check out our full written review @ pocket now available April 8th and see our comparisons with the HTC One m9 and the iPhone 6 right here on YouTube this review was conducted using two units purchased from t-mobile US will update this review if and when Samsung sends us a review device subscribe so you don't miss future features and please give this video a thumbs up if you did enjoy it until next time this has been michael fisher with PocketNow reminding you that sometimes redemption is only one cycle away thanks for watching everyone we'll see you next time