The Samsung Galaxy S6

 

The Galaxy S6  has the usual plastic Samsung has favored for flagships in the past for glass and metal, but the S6 has a more traditional flat front face, as well as a design that can’t help but be compared to iPhone devices, resembling something of a cross between the iPhone 5/5S and the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. It has a 5.1-inch display with glass both front and back, and with a metal edge running all the way along the outer edge of the phone.

While the Galaxy S6 certainly has iPhone-style cues, it would be overly reductive to say it’s at all a clone or copy. The S6 feature a new special treatment that pairs a reflective coating of metallic paint applied in an ultra-thin layer to the underside of the protective glass surface. The machined metal edge, which is part of a solid frame that extends throughout the body of the S6, actually extends at every point slightly above the glass, which Samsung says is designed to help make sure any impact from a drop is absorbed by the part of the phone which is shatter-resistant, instead of the glass surfaces.

The S6’s design is already a huge departure from Samsung’s frankly boring past industrial design, injecting some fresh life in a brand that definitely needs to inspire new passion. In the hand, it feels much more premium than the Galaxy S5, and though some die-hard fans of accessible batteries might feel saddened that the S6’s is locked away (and that the SD card slot is also gone), the trade-offs in terms of Samsung finally having made a flagship that doesn’t feel somewhat like a child’s toy are well worth it.

Hardware and Software Features

The new Galaxy S6 offers a number of features that improve the overall experience vs. past devices, but the two most practical might be the use of a single touch fingerprint reader in the home button, which works like Apple’s Touch ID instead of with swipe-based reading like the the GS5, and a double-tap home button shortcut to instantly trigger the camera wherever you happen to be in the OS on your phone.

A redesigned, much lighter user interface with a lot more in common with stock Android 5.0 Lollipop, combined with the new camera shortcut and the actually useful fingerprint sensor (the previous one worked, but was a pain to operate, especially one-handed) all combine to make this one of Samsung’s best-ever efforts out of the box, based on the time we got to spend with the device.

In very limited testing, both the new front and back cameras proved able to take good pictures in lighting that was fairly challenging in terms of mixed brightness and weird color balance. I did manage to take some blurry photos by basically doing my best to foil it, but based on very early experience it seems like it could be a strong contender in terms of Android smartphone camera excellence.

Conclusion

Samsung’s Galaxy S6 is some ways a less whiz-bang update than others, at least in terms of flashy software features and questionable hardware additions made just with the seeming intent of pushing the envelope. Instead, what they’ve presented is a device that feels in almost every way like a more mature product than anything they’ve shipped previously, with a few smart new features that either 100% improve broken ones from earlier generations, or that genuinely add convenience features people will actually use.