A week ago, the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge officially went on sale in Singapore. I got my hands on one, and would like to share some of my personal thoughts on the device.
Unlike the Galaxy Note 4 which had similar design language with the Galaxy Alpha, the Galaxy S6 brings a new design language. It is a glass sandwich construction held together by a metal band, not unlike that of the Sony Xperia Z series of devices. The front and rear of the device should be familiar to Samsung users. The only difference this time round is that the material used is glass rather than plastic. The back is no longer removable too. But like any glass surfaces, it is a fingerprint magnet. Personally I would go with a nice skin to save myself the need to wipe the phone every now and then, if you are the type who like to keep your device clean looking.
The metal band around the phone is nice. Really nice. The power and volume button placement were very well thought out, making it easy to reach, but not too easy to hit accidentally. The click and give of all the buttons were just nice, and required just the right amount of pressure to activate as well. I really like the way the sides are designed too. In fact I really like the way the sides of the Galaxy Alpha and Note 4 are designed too. Samsung has really stepped up their game here.
Yes, the bottom side does look remarkably similar to the iPhone 6, including the tendency to accidentally cover the bottom firing speaker (which is pretty decent by the way). But the strangest thing is that the more I use the phone, the less similar to the iPhone 6 I think it looks and feels.
Talking about similarities with iPhone 6, the Galaxy S6 houses a much-improved fingerprint scanner compared to the ones before. You no longer have to do a swiping motion like on the S5 or Note 4. The sensor now works by just placing your fingers on the home button, much like Apple’s Touch ID. It works really well actually. Though it still feels like Touch ID has a bit more consistency in speed, and a slightly higher hit rate of recognising my print at the first try.
Maybe it is because of the longer and slightly lifted home button on the S6, which means that sometimes I can be depressing the button but the position of my finger is not exactly on top of the sensor. Whereas on the the iPhone, the round button is sunken in, and the size is almost just nice for a finger. Making it easier to find the “target” so to speak, and making it feel like it has a higher hit rate. In fact after some testing, if I were to be more careful and make sure my finger is in contact with most part of the button, the S6’s sensor works just as well as Touch ID. So something to take note of.
The phone houses a 5.1 inches screen, in a body that is still relatively comfortable to use one-handed. It is a gorgeous 1440 x 2560 Super AMOLED screen, with a pixel density of about 577 pixels per inch (ppi). It is much like the already great looking display on the Note 4, but only in a denser package. Daylight visibility is excellent, and in the dark the display is able to get to a comfortably dim setting too. Colour reproduction is just a tad on the saturated side, but does make everything you do “pop” on the display. This is definitely one of the best displays I have seen on a phone just yet.
The phone handles most that I throw at it with ease. It uses the 14nm Exynos 7420 at its core and 3GB of LPDDR4 RAMs. I do see some pauses, and hesitation in parts of the UI randomly, which is probably more an issue with Lollipop and UI optimisation rather than the lack of horse power. Other than occasionally running warm (especially when charging while using the phone), there is very little I can complain about the hardware aspect of the S6.
Continuing on the hardware front, another advantage of using an Exynos chipset would be Wolfson’s DAC. It simply sounds so much better than what you get from a Qualcomm powered device. Even on entry level balanced armature earphones like the Ultimate Ears UE600 and TDK CLEF-BA 700, and listening to compressed audio from iTunes, the difference is still pretty substantial.
A QHD display on a phone with only 2550 mAh battery capacity sounds like a recipe for piss poor battery life. But my experience with it says otherwise actually. On average, I was able to get it to last 12-14 hours on moderate to heavy use with Screen on Time of more than 4 hours.
Onto the software side of things, Samsung’s UI on the S6 has been drastically toned down compared to the S5. The icon design while updated, still looks pretty archaic and reminiscent of Samsung Galaxy of old. Overall I find the design of Samsung's UI update lacking a bit of cohesiveness. On the bright side, it now has a theme engine which allows you to change the look of the UI drastically. Personally, I am not a fan of them.
Many of Samsung’s apps and features have taken a backseat in order to make the UI look cleaner. But dig a little deeper and you will still find some of them around in the settings app. I would not say they are exactly moving in the right direction though, more like diagonally. While the paring down of bloat is nice, they added some other more questionable ones as well. The Smart Manager app that includes an option to delete “unnecessary data” to free up storage space has good intentions, but the “Powered by Clean Master” part does not inspire confidence.
Then there is the pre-bundling of apps from the likes of Facebook and Microsoft for example. While I understand the monetary value for Samsung behind that, I am not exactly sure it is the right approach. Apple’s iOS has no pre-bundling of apps or bloatware (other than their own), and that has become a selling point in my opinion. While I understand the need to make money from selling Android devices, doing pre-bundling of apps might actually be helping Apple’s cause, and helping them build a selling point. But well... the consolation is that at least consumers can disable them if they wanted to. Well, most of them anyway.
While we are talking about software, one of my favourite software feature is undoubtedly the double click to launch camera feature. The feature works no matter what you are doing on the phone at the moment, or even when the phone is on standby. It is by far the fastest camera launch on a phone yet, and best of all, the launch times are extremely consistent.
Of course having a fast camera launch is not enough. You need to have a camera which is able to take great pictures too, and the S6 definitely achieves that. Like the Note 4, the camera on the S6 is good. Really good. It has a 16MP rear facing camera with an aperture of f/1.9, optical image stabilisation, and object tracking autofocus. Photos looks vibrant (albeit a little over saturated at times), and details are plenty. Proof of Samsung's strength in image processing. The camera is also extremely quick at capturing images, which makes the whole camera experience silky smooth.
Samsung’s camera UI has been greatly simplified, and “Auto” mode pretty much have you covered in most lighting conditions. The camera knows precisely when to use HDR and when not to. Sometimes I even had to look for the icon to see that I am actually taking an HDR shot. The image processing for HDR is natural and well-balanced, and the capture speed is fast too. There is also no “Night” mode, no “Portrait” mode, no “Landscape” mode, no “Macro” mode. “Auto” mode takes care of everything. Which is what a phone camera should be like.
If I were to sum it up in 2 words, it would be “effortlessly great”. Because it takes very little effort to capture great looking images on the S6. It is pretty much what I have wanted in an Android device for years, and what Apple had a monopoly on for years. Not anymore.
But the camera is not without its flaws of course. At night, “Auto” mode has the tendency to go for a higher ISO than necessary. You can either tap on different areas of the photo to change the auto exposure, or you can set a lower ISO in “Pro” mode. But even in "Pro" mode, the shutter speed has a limit on how low it is willing to go. So you are unable to go for too low an ISO too, if not the photos will turn out too dark. It is at this instance where you start digging around to adjust the shutter speed, only to realise this “Pro” mode does not allow you to adjust the shutter speed.
While testing close up shots in dimmer lighting, the camera seems to struggle finding focus too. Something that can be solved by going into “Pro” mode to set manual focus distance. Which is a little annoying considering I have see other phones being able to focus on the subject in the same lighting conditions.
A few things that I am not a fan of though. The camera bulge on the back of the phone is pretty substantial which raises some concern how it will hold up over time. But on the bright side, since the bulge in pretty wide and higher up of the phone, the phone does not wobble around when you tap on the screen while the phone is on a table.
Next, would be how bright the capacitive buttons are, and how there is no option to disable them completely. At night the capacitive buttons are really distracting and even brighter than the display itself.
Another minor complain (and I am really just nitpicking here) is the finishing choice for the call speaker. I would have preferred a matte finish like the metal band on the phone. They used a matte surface on the Note 4, but why not here?
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The Galaxy S6 like the rest of the S series of devices, represents Samsung’s flagship Android smartphone for the year to come. For a few years now, the S series of devices have been pretty underwhelming compared to its competitors. But this year, I think Samsung finally brought their A-game. Samsung's TouchWiz has been toned down sufficiently to a bearable level, and the hardware package is top-notch. I have minor gripes with some aspect of the device, but as an overall package, it is an extremely compelling phone.
This makes me excited for future Samsung devices. A while back I posted a blog post titled "Samsung Galaxy Alpha: The Sign of Better Things to Come?". Since then, better things did indeed come from Samsung. Like the Galaxy Note 4, the Samsung A series of devices, and now, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. I cannot wait to see what Samsung will do with their next flagship device.
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