Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge: A treat for consumers and a big leap for Samsung

A design that changed the mind set about Samsung

Carrying the smartphone for over two weeks, I am now use to of hearing things such as; Is it really a Samsung’s device, Is it a dummy or an actual working smartphone, I should have wait for this one (iPhone 6 user), Oh man, this is best looking phone I have ever seen.

So what all these signifies. It clearly suggests that S6 Edge is the very smartphone, which changed the perception that Samsung cannot produce a good looking device. Moreover, the dual edge display is still not considered as a working model for some consumers and Samsung scores full points in making it work.

S6 Edge is very light and sleek. The bottom edge has a micro USB port, 3.5 mm jack, microphone and a speaker unit

Now talking about the aesthetics, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge  feels razor sleek (7 mm) in hands. The 5.1 inch display bends to the either sides and meets the metal frame at the end of the edges. It looks much better than the single sided curved display of Note 4 Edge because the dual curves add symmetry to the overall design.

The smartphone feels very light (132 grams) and can be operated with one hand but with extreme care as it is the most slippery smartphone I have used. You have to handle it carefully otherwise it’s going to take frequent falls.

The rear of the S6 Edge is complete glass. It feels very premium but the glass easily catches fingerprints and smudges

Samsung has not made any compromises in terms of quality of the material used in construction. The metal frame and glass rear makes S6 Edge the most premium smartphone in the market. However, the glass laden rear easily gets smudgy and is also a fingerprint magnet.

The edges and buttons on the S6 Edge feels premium and offer a good tactile feedback

The metallic volume rockers on the left and the power button on the right offers a good tactile feedback. There is a speaker grill at the bottom edge, which delivers loud and clear audio.

Summing up all, we would say that Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is the best designed smartphone from the house of Samsung, which feels like a device from future made of metal, glass and an eye-popping dual-curved display. The smartphone is available in gold, black, white and emerald green.

The crazy pixel dense display

The 577 ppi makes S6 Edge's display the sharpest in the market

Last month we reviewed Moto Turbo which at that time was the master in terms of display sharpness. It packed a whopping  545 ppi that made it deliver the crispiest content in smartphone market. Sadly, that title is taken from it in a short period. Galaxy S6 Edge surpasses the pixel count with an amazing 577 pixels scattered per inch on a 5.1 inch display. It is ridiculously sharp and the content is the crispiest we have seen yet on any smartphone display. It actually spoils us (reviewers) as we test products from all the price categories and at some point of time, a comparison could pop up in mind.

Unlike previous AMOLED screens of Samsung, S6 Edge screen does not have a warmer tone. the colors are very accurate and punchy

But there is something more about the display on S6 Edge than the pixel count. Samsung’s AMOLED display units have this warmer tone which made colors somewhat unnatural. However, S6 Edge’s display is not a victim of the same. The colors on this Quad HD are very natural. The colors are not unnecessarily vivid and over-saturated. For instance, the whites are not yellow and the oranges don’t look red. This makes it the best and the most accurate AMOLED display in the market. The amazing pixel density makes images, videos, texts and everything else stunning.

Simply the best camera on a smartphone

S6 Edge is equipped with a 16 MP rear and a 5 MP front camera units with f/1.9 lens, provided by Sony.  We loved the camera on the S6 Edge. The shots have rich colors, fine details and the icing on the cake is the Quad- HD AMOLED display on which the images look just brilliant.

The 16 MP camera integrates OIS and is able to deliver brilliant shots

The camera integrates OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) to capture stable shots if you are in motion and that works quite well.  The Auto real time HDR effectively manages the frames with low and high exposures.  The selective focus mode let you select the focus area of the shots taken. We really liked the Pro mode that allows you to manually adjust ISO, exposure, white balance, focal length and color tone. It can deliver amazing results if you know how to manage the settings according to the lighting conditions.

Besides these you have Panorama, Slow motion, fast motion for video recording and a Virtual shot that allows you to capture a 3D shot of a still object.

The 5 MP front camera is equipped with the wide selfie mode that is the best thing in the market to take group selfies. You just need to move the phone in left and right direction to capture the wide frame. And you also get the Beauty mode to enhance the skin tone.

You can check the sample images taken from the S6 Edge in the slider.

The Lollipop adds sweetness to the overall UI and Touch Wiz also feels quite light  

With the Android 5.0.2 Lollipop, S6 Edge is smoothest Samsung smartphone till date

Samsung S6 Edge ships with Android 5.0.2 Lollipop and is the fluent Samsung smartphone we have tested till date. To the most part there were no lags in day to day usage and all the applications loads up in a jiffy, unlike previous phones in the Galaxy series which were most of the time laggy.

Moreover, Lollipop’s material UI comes with a pallet of bright  and vivid colors that look amazing on the S6 Edge’s Quad-HD display. The flatter and cleaner approach is followed throughout the UI; and the icons, settings panel, notification and other animations look really good.

The smartphone comes with Microsoft goodies to enhance the productivity tasks

The TouchWiz UI on the S6 Edge also gets improvements. It feels light and unlike Samsung's previous smartphones, there are no significant lags. You have the Samsung’s goodies such as Flipboard styled magazine, S Health, Multimode, etc Besides this you get OneNote and OneDrive form Microsoft for productivity.

Handy tweaks from Samsung

Besides the regular Samsung’s add-ons, there are some tweaks which comes quite handy in day to day tasks. The double press Home button to quick launch camera lets you take pictures in a jiffy. You can use the ‘Éxtra Volume’ button to increase the audio during voice calls if you are in a noisy surrounding. And taking selfies becomes easy with the heart rate monitor that doubles as a shutter button.

The Edge becomes a victim of poor application ecosystem

We were expecting some cool new Edge screen tweaks this time but that’s not the thing. S6 Edge has the usual information stream options (as seen in Note 4 Edge) such as RSS feeds, Yahoo news, Stocks, Twitter feeds, Sports feeds, etc. that you can customize in the Edge screen settings.

The Edge display lights up when your favorite tries to reach you

The addition is the People Edge, which can be accessed from the upper left or right part of the screen. It let you assign up to five contacts with a specific color option. The edge lights up with the respective color when these contacts try to reach you. And in case you miss a notification from these contacts, the respective colored tab will display the details of the missed notification that can be accessed by a swipe.

Moreover, you can access all the information streams without lighting up the whole screen by rubbing the edge up and down in a continues motion. Besides this, the edge screen serves as the usual bed side clock.

Summing up all, we must say that there are no significant software developments for Samsungs’ innovative edge screen. We hope developers come out with some cool tweaks for the same in the upcoming months.

A great multitasker with a battery back-up that is good but not the best

The 3 GB RAM makes S6 Edge works smoothly with more than 15 applications in the background

With Samsung’s Exynos octa-core CPU and 3 GB RAM, S6 Edge offers a zero lag computing performance. Everything works buttery smooth and there is nothing that can’t be run on the smartphone.

In terms of synthetic benchmarks, the smartphone beats every other flagship in the market. It beats the Moto Turbo by a huge margin of 14,000 and touched an unbelievable mark of 66,527. The numerical score of Quadrant and Vellamo (browser) are 7,653 and 5,336 respectively. In the 3D mark ISU, S6 Edge scored 21,210.

S6 Edge packs a 2,600 mAh battery unit that has to support a 5.1 inch Quad HD panel. We were able to get a 14 hour back-up with calling, social applications, music playback, browsing, gaming and changing wallpaper almost every five minute, because it’s just amazing to see your favorite pictures on Edge’s eye popping display.

In our standard video playback test, the smartphone survived a mark of five hours 45 minutes at 100% brightness, 100% volume with Wi-Fi on. So in moderate conditions it can offer continues video playback of up-to 8 hours.

During our two week’s usage with the smartphone, we did not face any difficulty with the call quality. And the small mono speaker unit at the bottom edge delivers loud and clear sound.

Compromises in the wake of much needed design

Till now, a removable real panel that allows consumers to replace battery and integrate a microSD card was a form factor of Samsung’s smartphones. However, to accomplish such features, the Korean giant used plastic and materials such as faux leather and was always criticized for its unattractive and boring designs.

So Samsung dropped the microSD storage expansion, the removable battery and water resistivity to bring such an irresistible design. Yes, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are not certified with any IP rating so make sure you don’t carry them in rains or swimming pools like the Galaxy S5. Moreover, the design makes the S6 Edge gets heat up easily with processor or graphical intensive applications and as we mentioned earlier, it’s also a fingerprint magnet. Having said all these, we must say that the all metal and glass design is simply a head turner but has its own problems.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge