Samsung Galaxy S6 Review ? Still good Enough ?

PROS

• Excellent camera
• Quality look and feel
• Wireless and fast charging
• Superb screen
• Powerful performance

CONS

• So-so battery life
• Some App crashing issues

KEY FEATURES

• 5.1-inch 1440 x 2560 resolution screen
• Octa-core Exynos 7420 chipset
• Wireless Charging
• 3GB RAM
• 2,550mAh non-removable battery
• Android 5.0 L with TouchWiz
• Samsung Pay
• IR Blaster
• Manufacturer: Samsung
• Review Price: 4000MAD

WHAT IS THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S6?

One of the finest phones of the year, we recently gave the Samsung Galaxy S6 – and its curvier S6 Edge cousin – the Trusted Reviews Smartphone of the Year award.

Thanks to a more affordable price, the S6 is still one of the best Android phones you can buy right now. It's got a sharp screen, stunning camera, slick build and it's a lot more compact than most other similarly specced phones on the market.

If the S6 Edge+ is simply too big for you and you're not keen on going over to IOS with the iPhone 6S or the iPhone 7, the Galaxy S6 is a great choice.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S6 – DESIGN

Metal chassis; Gorilla Glass 4 rear; 142 x 70 x 7mm; 132g; Home button; Soft keys

Samsung has managed to make the Galaxy S6 a great-looking phone. The Galaxy S6 Edge is arguably the more stylish of the two, but you only need to spend more for it if you really want to. Smooth Gorilla Glass 4 front and rear, and aluminium alloy bands on the sides, means looks and feels like flagship phone. Unlike last year’s S5, the S6 feels like it’s worth over £500/$684.99. That’s important.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S6 – SCREEN

5.1-inch; 1440 x 2560 pixels (QHD or 2K); 577ppi; Super AMOLED; Gorilla Glass 4

The 5.1-inch screen on the Samsung Galaxy S6 is truly brilliant and definitely one of the best screens we’ve seen on a mobile phone. Only the LG G4 and Galaxy Note 4 can match it for sharpness, but the Super AMOLED panel on the S6 is cut above in every other respect.

Compared to most LCD-screened phones the Galaxy S6’s screen is more vibrant, though Full HD (1080p) screens look just as sharp unless you start looking at the screen from a couple of inches away. The S5’s screen is just as vibrant as the S6, but the S6 produces cleaner, more natural whites. Whites look slightly blue on the S5, while the S6 looks closer to the iPhone 6, which is the best in this department.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S6 – SOFTWARE AND PERFORMANCE

The Exynos 7420 processor has an advantage over the powerful Snapdragon 810 processor used by the HTC One M9 because the chip is smaller and more energy efficient. You can read the software and performance sections of our Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge review for a more detailed breakdown of how it compares to the competition, but needless to say the S6 impresses.

Fingerprint scanner

The fingerprint on the Samsung Galaxy S6 is excellent - and I didn't think I'd be saying that after the sliding option we had on the Galaxy S5. I was under the impression that Apple had the monopoly on decent scanners, but this changes things.

Like Apple, Samsung employs the single touch way of verifying your print, but after the simple set up the scanner here is amazingly accurate. A light touch will be enough to open the phone, and it rarely fails.

Battery Life on the Galaxy S6 ?

Battery life on the Samsung Galaxy S6. Now we get to the real issue of this phone. It's not good enough, and that's hugely frustrating.

The reason is simple: the battery pack in the new S6 is smaller than last year, 2550mAh compared to 2800mAh. The reduction is there solely so Samsung could make a slimmer phone, focusing on design over functionality. And unlike previous years, the battery can no longer be removed, taking away one of the big things fans loved about the phones.

The media capabilities of all Samsung phones have always been nigh-on unbeatable, and that's largely remained the case here – it's not even shouting about the fact it can manage hi-res audio as well.

The main issue some will have here is the lack of microSD expansion on the phone. That's a real deal breaker for some.

However, the way Google is working with Android is starting to make the memory card a little redundant, as you're not allowed to install a great deal to the extra storage any more, where previously you could dump most things in there and save space.

Samsung's done this for a very simple reason: to improve performance. It's a simple fact that the more you rely on the microSD card, the more the performance suffers, be it from opening the picture gallery or apps that have installed stuff to it.

By keeping things all in one place, you're guaranteed the best possible experience in terms of stability and speed, and Samsung has prioritized that for the S6. 

SAMSUNG GALAXY S6 – CAMERA

One of the main selling points of the Samsung Galaxy S6 is its main camera. It uses the 16-megapixel Sony Exmor RS IMX240 sensor, which is the same sensor used in the Galaxy Note 4. But Samsung has made some improvements to the camera’s algorithms and lens. The benefits of the tweaks are most notable in low light and in the amount of raw detail the camera can capture.

Launching the camera takes less than a second and its autofocusing speed is impressive in good light. The Galaxy S6’s camera is so easy to use and so consistently good that it encourages you to take pictures of absolutely everything.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge

This should be an easy decision for most of those deciding between the S6 and the curved edge variant: can you afford it? It's a lot more money both on contract and SIM free, and apart from having a battery that's fractionally larger and a bent screen at each side, there's not a lot of benefit.

It certainly looks cooler, a spacephone in a sea of identikit black slabs, but the screen also makes it less comfortable to hold. It's more status symbol than anything else, albeit it one with all the brilliant bits of the S6 underneath.

OVERALL SCORE

SCORES IN DETAIL

• Battery Life7
• Calls & Sound8
• Camera9
• Design9
• Performance9
• Screen Quality10
• Software9
• Value8