We go hands-on with the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S6. The units that we have are still pre-production design and could have some slight changes once released.
Samsung went all out with the Galaxy S6, putting solid aluminum and glass together to build a premium and elegant construction.
This is an engineering unit so there are some cosmetic sketching/engraving in them.
The Galaxy S6 combines the shape and form of the Galaxy S4, the glass on glass treatment of the Xperia Z3 and the refined aluminum chassis of the iPhone 6. Samsung is perhaps the first one to employ Gorilla Glass 4 at the front and back of the device. This makes the Galaxy S6 tougher and more scratch resistant.
With a 5.1 inch display, it’s still of the right size for a comfortable and firm grip, even feels better to hold than the Z3.
The unibody design has a slim profile that’s just 6.8mm thin. The corners have wide curve that’s pretty close to the shape of the Galaxy S4.
The rear camera slightly protrudes away from the flat glass back panel. Like the 5MP front-facing camera which has an f1.9 aperture, the 16-megapixel rear camera also inherits the same f1.9 feature.
Wireless charging is now incorporated into the Galaxy S6 and is compatible will all Qi chargers in the market.
The power button is on the right side together with the SIM slot, the volume controls are on the left side while the 3.5mm audio port, microUSB port and speakers are at the bottom end.
The chiseled metallic corners are reminiscent of the Xperia Z3
The placement and design is very similar to that of the iPhone 6.
The Galaxy S5 will come with Android 5.0.2 Lollipop right out of the box but with a heavily reduced TouchWiz UI which means less bloatware. The unit we has was very snappy (similar to the Note 4) and the graphics are vibrant and very sharp, considering that it comes with a quad-HD resolution or a pixel density of 577ppi.
Samsung is only releasing an Exynos 7 Octa version and no Snapdragon (due to over-heating issues we reported here earlier). It also supports LTE Cat 6. and the dual-SIM model that will be released in the Philippines will have one LTE support and the other just HSPA+, both of which are nano-SIMs.
Both the black and white colors will be available upon release which is expected to be in the middle of April 2015. The blue variant will come later along with the 128GB version (only 32GB and 64GB on release). With storage up to 128GB, the S6 Edge no longer has microSD card support.
Samsung Galaxy S6 specs:
5.1-inch Super AMOLED quad-HD display @ 2560 x 1440, 577ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 4 (front and back)
Samsung Exynos 7420 64-bit octa-core CPU
3GB RAM
32, 64, 128 GB internal memory
Dual-SIM, 4G/LTE Cat. 6
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.1
NFC
16 megapixel rear camera, OIS, dual-LED flash, f1.9
5 megapixel front-facing camera, f1.9
Qi Wireless Charging
2,550mAh Li-Ion non-removable battery
Black, White, Blue
Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with TouchWiz
6.8 mm (dimension)
Here are some sample photos taken with the Galaxy S6 we took earlier:
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These are all low-light photos taken with the rear camera on auto mode.
Below is a sample of full HD 1080p video recording set in auto mode.
i’m still happy with my Note 4, still waiting for the Lollipop update.
*sigh