Gadgetory

Samsung's Galaxy S phones have always been good enough yeah they felt cheap and they were laden with overbearing software on top of Android but they usually did their job better than other Android phones but what if Samsung phones didn't feel cheap and plasticky compared to the iPhone what if the software wasn't the perpetual annoyance what if Samsung tried to out Apple Apple when it comes to hardware design well we know the answer to all those questions it's the galaxy s6 actually it's two phones because Samsung has made another version called the galaxy s6 edge that has a screen that curves around to the left and the right side of the device both are basically identical otherwise and they're gorgeous for the first time in forever Samsung has managed to produce a phone that flat-out looks and feels great instead of a plastic back in faux plastic rims the s6 is all glass and metal where before there was a sense of Machinists and cheapness and flimsiness to the galaxy phones now it's hard Gorilla Glass 4 well sculpted aluminium edges and perfectly machined speaker grilles and ports yes you can't deny it the galaxy s6 looks a lot like the iPhone especially on the bottom where the similarities are so stark I have to imagine apples layers are already drafting up papers and Samsung took another idea from Apple the fingerprint sensor it works with just a light touch now instead of a swipe it's much much more accurate than the s5 was and it's faster too it's maybe not quite as good as the iPhones but it's miles better than any other unlocking scheme I've used on any other Android phone yeah you can get angry about the copying or make jokes but me I'm just happy that Samsung has found a way to finally finally create a phone that makes me feel good when I hold it now making this beautiful machine required trade-offs and the ones that might make hardcore Android fans turn up their noses the battery is sealed in now there's no SD card slot for removable storage and it's not waterproof anymore either I'm also a little worried that it might be a little bit more delicate than the last galaxy phone and that the gorilla glass might shatter when I drop it but to me every single one of those trade-offs is worth it the only real complaint I have while the hardware is the huge camera bulge on the back of the phone it's a big ungainly blemish on an otherwise wonderful design another wonderful thing the screen I don't know anybody that actually needs a screen with this much resolution it's a 5.1 inch Super AMOLED display on both devices at 2560 by 1440 pixels that's 577 pixels per inch which is 40% more dense than what you'd find an iPhone 6 plus it's just insane radical overkill and I love it everything is sharp colors pop and they aren't oversaturated in the way that Samsung used to do things as long as we're talking about screens let's talk about the edge variant of the s6 it's about a hundred bucks more and for that hundred bucks you get a pretty unique looking phone but the extra functionality those edges give you isn't really all that great you can swipe in from the home screen to get color coded favorite contact shortcuts when those people call you the edge lights up with that color when the phone is faced down you can also get a night clock and finally there's a thing that shows basic information like weather and random headlines from Yahoo but the gesture used to get it to show up is weird and the feature seems buggy and laggy basically don't buy the edge for the software features because they don't amount to much more than gimmicks but you could buy it for the wow factor or maybe the nice feeling of pulling in a sidebar menu from a curved piece of glass it is really nice but the trade-off is that the edges feel a little bit sharper and less comfortable for me and I think for most people the trade-off just isn't worth it I like the regular s6 better the camera it's pretty good it's probably one of the best cameras I've used on an Android phone and Samsung has always been at the top of that heat but the question everybody always wants to know is is it as good as an iPhone and well mostly no but it's damn close the 16 megapixel sensor with optical image stabilization tends to be a little bit too much on the yellow side with white balance and especially in low-light shots it can be really aggressive in lightening things up too much and as always with high megapixel cameras you can see artifacting when you zoom in more often than you like but this is probably the closest any Android phone has ever come to the just shoot mentality I love about the iPhone especially with real-time HDR I found myself trusting the galaxy s6 to get it right instead of futzing around with the settings I also love that you can double tap the home button to launch the camera a camera that launches fast from anywhere that you can actually trust is a huge step forward for Android that's all the good news now some bad news battery life has been really inconsistent for me I'm mostly getting through a day but it's by the skin of my teeth it seems worse when you use games in the video it's better with basic web browsing and email I've definitely seen both versions of this phone crap out around 6:00 p.m. at least the s6 supports both major wireless charging standards and fast charging via cable so it isn't too hard to top off in terms of speed though the s6 is as fast as any Android phone I've ever used in fact the phones tend to get warm and I don't really know if that's by design or not there's an insanely powerful octa-core processor inside this thing so it's not entirely surprising if it runs a little hot I am impressed that it can run two apps in split screen or windowed mode without breaking a sweat even if those features aren't really all that useful on a phone this size I did see some stutter and some bugs on the first day or two but t-mobile pushed an update that seemed to settle things down I do wish the t-mobile would have pushed an update to get rid of the aggressive crap where it installed almost all of it is redundant and annoying but Samsung has toned down its customizations the software design has stayed mostly true to Google's vision of material design for apps and most of the crazy Samsung features are off by default they're all there if you want them and I find myself using a few but mostly they just stay out of the way the Galaxy s6 and the s6 edge are easily the best phone Samsung has ever made and I think they're the best Android phones you can get today the screens are just Walker's good the design is lovely the cameras are solid and they're fast Samsung even seems to finally be learning that it needs to chill out with its software my only reservation is that battery life isn't quite what I'd hope but it's more a matter of being an average thing at an otherwise outstanding phone between the two here's my advice go look at the edge it's pretty and cool but then get the regular s6 it just feels nicer and I promise you you won't miss the gimmicks the last year so hasn't been kind to Samsung iPhones are big now and lots of companies are making cheap phones that are good enough to beat them on the low end Samsung really needed to hit a home run here just to stay in the game and the s6 knocks it out of the park