This is one area I hope Anandtech pay special attention to during the reviews. My biggest complaint with my S3 was speaker loudness, it was pretty pathetic. This affects both normal handset calls and speakerphone calls. Same goes for microphone quality. I'm just fed up with struggling to hear or be heard on phone conversations and so knowing a phone had superior abilities in this area would significantly impact my purchasing decision.
Apple either especially on the the Ipads from the iPad 2 to now a front facing set of stereo speakers would be nice compared to a single or dual speakers in the bottom side where the charge port is. Makes no sense to me.
That's like saying "use a real camera instead of the phone camera if the phone camera stinks". I watch youtube videos and others occasionally on my phone and the fidelity of stereo speakers on a phone is tough to give up at this point. And i don't want to carry around headphones or a bluetooth speaker for watching a random youtube video.
You cant beat physics when it comes to speaker quality. Small speakers might sound slightly better than another pair, but they all sound shit in general. If you truly need better fidelity, bluetooth, headphones, or stop cryin'.
I want to be able to hear it ring or hear alerts come through though. I've had phones that with not exactly quiet ringers or text message sounds, I couldn't hear it when it was in my pocket.
Which makes the complaint even less relevant, as the speaker on this is on the same edge you have to have facing upwards, towards your ears, as the headphone jack is on that edge. The HTC speakers will almost certainly be muffled by your body as I think we all place phones with the glass facing inwards.
"If you truly need better fidelity, bluetooth, headphones, or stop cryin'."
WHAT!!!??? You're a real jerk accusing someone for crying and telling him to stop. If I pay a premium price for a flagship device, I want it to have better sound than the previous models. Have you ever played games with with sound thru Bluetooth headphones or Bluetooth speakers? The sound thru Bluetooth would get delayed and there's no way to sync it. And what if I just record a video (say in a party) and want to review it with the people there right after? Are those good enough reasons for better speaker sound? Some people (myself included) doesn't like to wear earphone/headphone especially wired ones. Anyway, it doesn't matter these S6s have good sound or not, I don't care because I'm not interested in these ugly overpriced junks.
BTW if you can't take any constructive criticism which wasn't even meant for you in the first place, move on to the one that you like. Stop being rude.
If you want truly decent sound quality in a smart phone, Blackberry can't be beat for that. It'll also run Android apps, too, and has the best messaging/inbox software in the business.
So, the reason I use a device with a front-facing speaker is so I don't need to carry around a portable Bluetooth speaker or headphones everywhere I go. In the case that I want to show something to friends or want to watch a video and actually hear it, I have a device with front facing speakers that are powerful enough to make sure sound is heard in most settings (currently it's a Nexus 6, previously Xperia Z3 and HTC One M7).
Both of your points to refute front-facing speakers are "carry around a speaker", which is why people want front-facing speakers - so they don't have to carry around a speaker/headphones to hear their device.
I hadn't really understood the value of having a good speaker on a phone -- I mean, there are a million more important things on my laundry list. But when you put it that way -- that it means you don't need a bluetooth speaker (in most cases) -- I definitely see the value in it.
Because of people like you we lost battery and SD card port.
Now you want front speakers
Go buy HTC or Iphone
Its shame Samsung listen to people that never ever buy their phones and with that they lose buyers like I am that actually BUY their hones (1 S4 and 3 S5 i bought unlocked).
I was waiting S6 to replace my S4 but . . . .
No micro SD no buyer in my case. It is a deal breaker for me
So Samsung lost me and he never had you. Smart move i must say
wireless charging is great... in theory. In practice it is worthless. I tried the S5 just so I could do wireless charging. Thing is, as soon as it finishes, it will turn on and alert you. No way to turn that off without rooting the phone, and I don't buy brand new top of the line equipment so I can hack it and redo what should be done in the first place. So at night, after about 3 hours of charging, the phone comes on, lighting up my room like the sun came up, then beeping at me. So I turn it to vibrate, but then when this happens it vibrates "waa waa". I need my phone on to some extent in case I get an emergency call from my kids. (I tried turning it off, and sure enough, 4 days later, worst case scenario happened, I missed an emergency phone call).
You might think one vibrate tone isn't bad, but you see, Samsung decided if it finishes charging to stop charging completely. So a minute passes, and it decides it now needs to charge again, so once again it comes on and beeps or vibrates. This continues, every 60-90 seconds until you take it off the charging pad. Since the phone has to face up, you can't get around the screen lighting up your room either.
As if that weren't enough, you have to have it centered on the pad. I don't mean close, I mean dead center. If it is off by more than about a half centimeter, the whole cycle of turning on and beeping/vibrating will start up, about 30 seconds apart.
So I would say that while wireless is a cool idea, expecting it to be a selling feature that is actually useful is really pushing it.
Why so? AMOLEDs don't necessary draw more power as the resolution goes up - the Note 4 1440p screen drew 14% less power than the Note 3 1080p. It's not like LCDs (e.g. G3).
Most people I know don't do 3D games on their phone so none of this matters to them regardless, but really the only issue is load on the GPU when gaming. If the 14nm SOC ends up being able to handle it without too much power draw, then what's the problem? Let technology advance in every area - you get a sharper, brighter, more accurate, and efficient screen. How's that a bad thing?
With OLED phones power consumption of 1440p versus 1080p is mostly matter of SoC, not screen. A lot more data to process and calculate. Hence bigger power consumption and lower frame rates in graphic applications such as games.
However, since OLED screens do not have normal RGB pixels 1440p helps with making picture quality better. 1440p in LCD would be definitely excessive, but in OLED it is debatable.
Right. It's AMOLED, not AMOLED+, so is probably RGBG pentile. That is, each "pixel" is an alternating RG or BG set of just 2 subpixels. The effective layout (of R to R, or B to B subpixels) is diagonal*, so it's not really comparable to RGB. But if you did compare, it'd be:
1080p RGB stripe = 5760x1080 = 6.22 million subpixels 1080p RGBG pentile = 3840x2160 = 4.15 million subpixels 1440p RGBG pentile = 5120x1440 = 7.37 million subpixels
So in terms of subpixel density (luminosity resolution), 1440p pentile is only slightly higher than 1080p RGB.
I don't usually like characterize to screens this way because it emphasizes subpixel count, and leads to the misleading conclusion that RGB is superior. It's not. RGB allocates an equal number of subpixels to each color, but your color vision is much better in green than in red or especially blue. So by the time you have enough G subpixels to fool 20/20 vision, you've got way more R and B subpixels than you need. Pentile's RGBG better approximates your eyes' color resolution, so can achieve the same threshold (fooling 20/20 vision) using fewer subpixels. http://nfggames.com/games/ntsc/visual.shtm
* This diagonal symmetry is actually why pentile RGBG is so attractive for phones and tablets. With the right layout, RGBG is symmetric horizontally and vertically. The same subpixel rendering algorithm can be used in landscape and portrait mode. In contrast, a subpixel rendering algorithm in RGB no longer works if you rotate the screen 90 degrees. Meaning the software needs to be aware of subpixel orientation on the panel. To the best of my knowledge tablets and phones using RGB don't even bother trying to do subpixel rendering, which is a shame since you're leaving potential resolution gains on the table.
Solandri, I simply cannot understand why you would willingly spread such obvious FUD about the little technological progress that we actually do achieve these days. The absolute last thing that we need is more people pushing for stagnation in the "good-enough" computing age. I do also want to give my opinion regarding this announcement and about the display resolution race in general, but first I would like to take this opportunity to correct, from your post, several points which are quite simply, either factually inaccurate or a grossly misinterpreted account of the truth.
1) Fiction: "So in terms of subpixel density (luminosity resolution), 1440p pentile is only slightly higher than 1080p RGB."
Truth: In the best case scenario this is fairly accurate, however for a display, pentile's "black-and-white" resolution is actually a bit worse than that of 1080p RGB panels (especially when displaying colourless text at 1-pixel line widths).
Explanation: The subpixel density of an additive colour display (i.e. where each subpixel is part of a set of, mostly independent, primary colours) does not equal the density of the resulting image's luma plane. To differentiate between luma and luminance it is necessary to compute the gamma correction values, for the display primaries that your display uses, and then use that corrected values in the calculation of the luminance value of each pixel. To simplify my explination, I am not going to refer to gamma correction's relatively minor (in comparison to the error I am trying to point out) contribution. The actual "colourless" or "black-and-white" resolution of a display is equal to the amount of pixels for which distinct "brightness" values can be obtained. Since a pixel's luminance is equal to the weighted sum of all of the primary colour values that are associated with that pixel, it would be reasonable to assume that the resulting luma plane would have a resolution equal to the amount of complete 3-subpixel pixels in that display. While this is generally true for content with a spacial resolution significantly below the Nyquist resolution being sampled at (this is why a Bayer filter works on a high-end, high-resolution camera), it starts breaking down very quickly once your image data approaches the Nyquist limit. The reason for this breakdown is, of course, that each neighbouring pixel is not guaranteed to have approximately the same intensity (or "brightness") anymore; consequently one cannot, for example, use a neighbouring pixel's "red" primary to complete the computation of the current pixel's (having only a "green" and a "blue" primary subpixel) intensity value.
2) Fiction: "your color vision is much better in green than in red"
Truth: "The distributions turned out to be largely random but with the ratios of red to green cones varying by a factor of 40" (image url: http://www.laserfocusworld.com/content/dam/lfw/pri... Reprinted from Vision Research, 51, David R. Williams, "Imaging single cells in the living retina," 1379–1396, 2011
Explanation: On average, a normal, healthy eye (with no colour blindness) has many more (about 3x as much) red than green cones. Image comparing the Beyer distribution with an average retinal mosaic (image url: http://ivrg.epfl.ch/files/content/sites/ivrg/files... Meylan, D. Alleysson and S. Susstrunk, A Model of Retinal Local Adaptation for the Tone Mapping of Color Filter Array Images, Journal of the Optical Society of America A (JOSA A), Vol. 24, Nr. 9, pp. 2807-2816, 2007 This is partly responsible for the horrible colour imagery obtained from such Beyer filters, however it also casts doubt on any compression technique which makes use of the so-called "luminosity function" to separate an image's luma and chroma components. (image url: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0... The reason why this does not reliably work, for example in image compression, is the fact that the curve's mathematical deviation assumed that there are more green than red cones in the retina, thus assigning green light a higher "brightness" weight than the same "amount" of red light receives. (Although red and green light share a similar absolute spectral sensitivity; image url: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f... This also explains why some people (most likely individuals that have many more green than red cones) so convincingly defend that colour subsampling techniques, such as pentile and the similar Bayer filter (also "chroma sub-sampling" for film), are visually lossless while others (those with a more normal distribution of more red than green cones) seem to find the images so produced to be severely lacking in quality and detail. In conclusion, the distribution of and relationship between red and green cones in a normal human retina varies too much for any generalised statement to be made about the visual data thereby rendered redundant. Also, all the mathematical models we use to convert and compress images (such as those referenced above) are based on subjective measurements and do not denote any hard, objective fact about our physiology. As a side-note: looking at the colour matching functions and going by the exact meaning of your post, "your color vision" seems to be much better (more efficient) in blue than in either red or green. Blue vision is, however, of very low spacial resolution, especially, close to the fovea...
3) Fiction: "So by the time you have enough G subpixels to fool 20/20 vision, you've got way more R and B subpixels than you need"
Truth: Normal, healthy, well developed, young eyes are limited to a general acuity of about 20/8; However, certain tasks can be done with a precision exceeding even the size of an individual cone receptor cell, for example, Vernier acuity that exceeds 20/2.6.
Explanation: This roughly means that normally sighted people will still be able to see certain artifacts of the display process (such as the regular pixel spacing leading to the "screen door" and various other "moire" effects) even when the resolution density meets the 20/8 resolution limit of a normal retinal receptor. A spacial dithering technique (such as random dithering) would eliminate most of these cases without any substantial negative effects, assuming that the display can keep track of where the pixels actually are positioned and interpolates the signal they receive accordingly and that the pixel density exceeds the 20/8 ratio of good vision at the distance you normally view the display.
In Conclusion, I sincerely hope that I could extinguish some lingering FUD about the tangible improvements of increased pixel densities together with proper tri-chromatic subpixel structures. I also want to add, that even though there is still quite a lot of progress to be made by improving the resolution of displays, there are some other areas of display performance that have been so badly neglected that their shortcomings are much more prevalent and annoying (at least to me) than the blurry or aliased images that a display optimized for 20/20 vision produces. If I had to choose only one, I would gladly pick either improved refresh rates (144hz still looks way too discontinuous, jumpy and unnatural), greater colour gamut and bit-depth (how can we approach the spatial resolution limits of the eye and still not be able to display more than half of the colours that our eyes can perceive or even produce a realistically smooth colour transition without gross banding or dithering "grain") or even just an aspect ratio that more closely matches a human's field of vision (like, the "unfashionable" 4:3 ratio) over a further increase in display resolution.
That does not mean that I would simply like all engineers to simply give up on improving display resolutions (no, they should still improve those to the levels of "real" perfect human vision), I still want to see a future where a real-world holodeck is at least closer to reality than it is today.
Epic comment. There are so many subtleties of human vision that can make a display look like shit even if the conventional wisdom is that you can't see more than 24 fps or if you can't make out a single black pixel on a white background then there's no way that pentile can make your eyes burn.
That's not accurate at all. Samsung improves power efficiency of their OLED with each iteration in addition to the SoC.
But I just think it would have been better if they stuck with 1080p on the GS6. It would still have been the best screen at that size, with the added benefit of even faster rendering and lower power consumption. The benefits go beyond gaming; rendering text, webpages and other assets takes a hit when the SoC has to do 70% more work and wouldn't rush to idle as fast.
Again, the GS6' should be more efficient **overall** compared to last year's GS5, BUT it could have been **even better** if they stuck with 1080p instead **in addition** to the added benefits of the _newer panel_.
You are wrong. I use my HTC One with mount on my bicycle for commuting to and from work. Sounds awesome, no extra bulky speakers to mount, and much safer than headphone because I can still hear traffic, people, etc. around me.
Totally agreed on the 1440p madness... A *perfected* 1080p panel (perfect color accuracy, better pixel arrangement, brighter and more power efficient) would have been much better for performance, battery life, and overall user experience. Those who can tell 441ppi and 577ppi apart are superhumans, which most people probably aren't. Oh, and screw VR........
The Note 4 1440P screen was already close to perfection in terms of color accuracy, brightness, contrast, viewing angles, etc. To think that a higher resolution automatically means lower gaming performance, is a bit otudated too. There are several free apps available that allow you to set your resolution (if needed per app) at any resolution at or below the screen resolution, to fit your desired balance between quality and framerates. Therefore it adds choice. High (gaming) framerate is still part of that choice.
Wrong...no app can change the native res that fills your entire screen. You have to either run non-native res and stretch pixels, or display 1:1 with 4 black bars.
It's not stretching, it's interpolation. No different from using lower resolution on a gaming PC to increase framerates. If you had ever tried it (I use it on the Note 4), you'd know it still looks no worse than gaming on say a 1080p screen and achieves similar framerates (read:higher) too.
Oh yea, sure, because EVEN THINNER is right up there with the ddr4 and camera improvements.
Seriously, the 1440p resolution helps a lot with the "pentile" dither-like effect by reducing the size of the pixel "grains" on smooth colour gradients. I will concede that 1440p is not good enough to hide the subpixel detail at a distance of less than about 30cm from your face, but saying its stupid/idiotic is (in my opinion) completely unfounded.
Furthermore, the only results of this stupid quest for ever thinner/weaker phones has been improved cosmetic appearance together with an excessively light and difficult to hold phone body, a decreased heat transfer ability (limiting performance), decreased battery life (smaller/lighter battery) and overall structural weakness (easily damaged by falls due to being difficult to grip). I also really don't get the point of having a sub 10mm thickness, when I am just going to get a protective cover thats thicker than that anyway.
1440p is very noticable(to an extent) on 5.4 inch screens and up.... 5.1 inches with 1440p....kinda really dumb... just make contrast and everything else good on 1080p. the resolution alone for 1440p will drain that battery people
Too sad of a comment. The iPhone 6 speaker is excellent and is located at the bottom. So is the S6 speaker and they are saying it is much louder and clearer than the S5. I'll take that over the overheating S810 and the 20 mp camera that isn't that good after all.
Nice to see that someone cares about audio and have an appreciation for HTC's strong efforts at differentiation and their goal of crafting an Android flagship with premium materials while Samsung focused on gimmicky features. That being said, HTC's efforts to differentiate didn't really pay off and Samsung's S6 will probably not benefit a whole lot from outperforming HTC on integrated speakers.
Same Samsungy look and feel. It's either you like it or you don't. If you don't, there is no amount of hardware/technical one-upmanship that can make any of there mobile devices desirable.
Agreed - the hardware/process node is impressive and ahead of the competition. By look/feel, I was speaking more to the user experience (TouchWhiz) than to the phone's appearance. :)
Ya, it's a shame they didn't include microSD storage this year, but at least they've eliminated 16GB options for good. In the end, if I choose the S6 this year, I'll probably just suck it up and get the 64GB version.
I'd generally agree, I stream a lot more these days than I listen to local music files; however, I find I need a cache of local files on my phone to cover situations where I don't have good connectivity. This arises from the poor state of mobile connectivity where I live (Canada). You can get unlimited data, but coverage is mediocre and reliability due to network congestion leaves lots to be desired. Or, you can get fast, reliable connections, but with low caps and high prices.
In either case, you can't rely on streaming in all situations, which is why I prefer the ability to store a sufficient amount of music on the phone. 16GB was completely unacceptable, 32GB is good, and I think 64GB would be my ideal amount of storage.
Also, battery life is substantially better listening to local music files versus streaming music. For those long days without a charger, having local music files to listen to is amazing.
If you're getting the Edge, you don't have a choice other than "sucking it up" for the 64GB, as that looks like it'll be the base size for that model according to Samsung's UK site. :)
Yeah, they traded the nice construction for swappable battery and microSD.
It's a shame because it was a point of differentiation from the other smartphones, but the S6 seems that just played the one-upmanship card rather than being different.
I'm one of those people who used to strongly defend the microSD storage. Not anymore. I'm over it. I realize that if the phone has 32GB on board that's enough and I'm good.
I'm not entirely sure if the 32GB model would do without the SD card, but the 64gb and 128gb ones certainly would. Flash is cheap these days, lets see more of it phones.
Well it seems like whatever Samsung implement is ok and justified but when Apple does it, it raises a hell of criticism. People simply grilled Apple for not adding removable storage and battery but now that Samsung does it, their excuse is 'Oh, the on board flash is good enough, more than what I'd ever need' as if Apple hasn't been doing that all along, yet they got heavily judged over it. Bet you those anti-wallhuggers will now say sh*t like 'Oh, the 14nm process should allow the S6 to run longer than the 'other' phones' so it doesn't need a removable battery'. Yes, a process shrink can save battery life but using that to justify Samsung not allowing that option with the S6 is pure hypocrisy.
So they made it more "iPhone like" Unibody construction. Apple has led the Non removeable battery and No MicroSD card bandwagon since the start of when they made phones.
What made you change your mind? I'm just curious because I've been trying to tell this to people for a while now but there are many who are adamant that they need a 60 gig music collection on their device at all times and other ridiculous requirements. Just wonder what you feel was the tipping point where your realized massive amounts of local storage is no longer a requirement?
Oh come on its like the most obvious argument trick. To pretend that you used to support the other side of the argument.
He doesn't actually provide any reasons even... Just "I used to but now everything is different"
When ofc it isn't. Nothing has changed, cloud storage is still shit, data charges are still through the nose and extra built in nand is still massively overpriced.
There is still literally no argument for dumping microsd cards.
I've read that the base S6 price will be $749, and the Edge will bring that to $749. Other sites I've been reading say that pricing hasn't yet been given out, so who knows?
But if these prices are real, it's goi g to be a big problem. Will Android users pay that much for a phone? The Notes sell in small numberserk, and they are priced that way.
This is the first time I'm considering upgrading to a Samsung phone. I'm still not a fan of the looks, but I'm overall impressed with their showing. Well done, Samsung.
this is the first time i consider NOT to upgrade anymore to a samsung phone (having had samsung phones for 4 years now) all the unique selling points (that i also really use) like micro sd and swappable battery are gone...
I fully disagree. In fact, I am sure other companies will see the opportunity to capitalize on Samsung stupid mistake and grab a few more % of the market. The fact is, if I wanted a phone without SD card and battery replacement, I may as well go for Google and get the fastest updates instead.
I couldn't help but chuckle at two comments during the live steam:
1) "We didn't want to have a built-in battery until we felt absolutely sure about users feeling comfortable about recharging their device."
So the whole user replaceable battery thing is going away. There goes another anti-Apple argument.
2) "My first language may not be engineering, but I do know that this stuff will not bend."
OK, so Apple made no such claims and we had countless videos of people forcibly bending them well beyond what is reasonable or a pocketable device. Are we going to get another #bendgate for the S6 as people try to prove Samsung wrong? I'm guess it won't ever be a thing.
PS: Yes, I mentioned in Apple in post about the new S6 series of phones, but their entire presentation clearly focused on Apple.
They actually went taller lol, the back cam sticks too much, the cyranoesque home button is unreal (looks like a fake). The curved screen implementation is so much better than in the Note and encouraging but the curvature is not ideal and they failed to mask the side bezels well enough. The lower bezel looks even weirder on the Edge. The worst is that there is no microSD, guess Samsung is in panic mode and they just lost their minds. Oh and if the DRMed accessories rumors are true ...... If the Edge was reasonably priced and they had enough supply it would sell but reasonable pricing is not something to be expected. On the vanilla S6 they still have the fast SoC and NAND but is that enough to offset the bulky bezels and the lack of microSD at a price that is 50% too high?
No sd expansion and no user replaceable battery which is really disappointing as both of those are the main reasons I chose a note 4 and I think it's one of the few features that separate them from the other mainstream android devices.
If I'd wanted an android unibody phone, I'd have bought an HTC so I don't see the point in a me too effort from Samsung when it comes at significant cost to functionality. With huge power hungry screens and power hungry 4g I'm finding a user replaceable battery is all the more important as it allows you to quickly switch to full power when you run out rather than the clumsy and slow solution of attaching a charger pack.
Downgrade to USB 2.0 ? Hope it's a typo. Combined with Internal only memory (not very happy about that one) - filling up 128gb would take a bit less than forever. gsmarena also mentions usb 2.0 - damn, but says MHL is support - small consolation
So No removable battery nor storage, usb 2.0, smaller battery (isn't that the who point of unibody - make room for bigger battery??!!!) and prices are still unknown but typically higher storage models demand heavy markup - all this together makes me think - NO THANKS
If that's the case (or at least faster than USB 2.0's speeds) and if the Type-C connector is available for their April launch I would be shocked that they didn't use it. I'd guess the Type-C connector simply wasn't an option for the S6.
I am very curios to know why do you consider usb 3.0 on S5 was mistake? Also Do have experience of copying large files over usb 2.0 ? How about filling these ultra-fast 128Gb flash internal storage? Even if C-type connector wasn't available, I'd take 10 faster "semi-proprietary" cable over plain old and slow usb2
They "regressed" because USB3 generates RF noise in the 2.4GHz that appears to ineradicable. (Intel tells you how you can mitigate it, but the combined experience of a bunch of phone manufacturers is not promising, suggesting Intel was overly optimistic...)
We have no idea what the ultimate specs of Lightning are, but it's possible, IMHO, that Apple was aware of this as a likely problem, and designed Lightning so as to avoid it (even if that, perhaps, means that a lower ultimate performance level).
I've no idea how this plays out with USB C connector. Maybe there is something in the USB 3.1 spec that really does avoid the problem (OR maybe the problem is eve worse there because the power null that, in USB3, is at 5GHz moves to 10GHz and 5GHz picks up the same level of RF noise that 2.4GHz is seeing today?)
The C connector does seem to be a nice improvement, and presumably will work well on laptops/desktops; but it would be a shame if lack of concern for the realities of phone design meant that it's not feasible for phones (unless, perhaps, we move to a USB3.2 where the signal is specifically shaped to force nulls at both 2.4 and 5GHz).
So... What's the difference between the S6 and the S6 Edge? The only difference I can see from what's in the article, is literally the rounded edges on the S6 Edge. Is there something else? Do rounded screen edges really make for a new SKU?
Fair enough, I'm just wondering if that's literally the only difference. A rounded edge just doesn't sound like a compelling reason to have two production lines.
Were you not aware of the Note 4 and the Note 4 Edge? They introduced a single curved display side last fall. This is the next logical step.. having both sides be curved. It looks pretty impressive.
It's a terrible feature if you're not open minded enough to figure out how to configure the software that detects touch, which Samsung has had for quite some years with the Note series and its S Pen.
The batteries in phones like this tend to be Lithium-Polymer vs Lithium-Ion, the former being a 'long term battery' that is meant to endure better than Lithium-ion.
On second thought HTC M9 with 4.6-4.7" AMOLED 1080p display without the hideous bottom bar with stock rooted Android will do nicely as well. I don't mind the thickness as long as I get great battery life.
It would be interesting to see how Samsung's pseudo 14 NM process+ARM software combination holds up against Qualcomm's 20 NM+Qualcomm software combination.
I'm really not ok with how my S4's original battery was. Bloated itself after 2 months. Followed by a free-ish replacement from sammy. Which bloated again.
I'm currently using a 3rd party one which has lasted about a year give or take but will need replacement soon too.
Disappointed with the lack of microSD and 4GB of RAM. Was also hoping for USB Type-C connector, but I guess it was a bit unrealistic to expect it this early.
Anybody know if BCM4773 GNSS chip has been confinrimed in Exynos 7420? It apparently supports all four major GNSS constellations (GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo) and reduces power consumption by 80% compared to current solutions.
This definitely looks like the phone that the Galaxy S5 should have been. Samsung focused on what mattered, rather than filling a spec sheet or loading it up with bloatware. I'm not sure what the real world usage case is for the Edge yet, but the base model is impressive.
I hope the improved display doesn't have the same burn-in issues as the Note 3. I've been pretty disappointed with Samsung's OLED screen and will be waiting for confirmation of that before taking the plunge on another Samsung. At least an OLED version.
What does that look like for you? Where do you notice? How many hours per day is the screen on in your case?
I used to be a little worried about the limited life time of OLED screens and the burn in effects I've seen on plasma and even some old LCD screens. My very first Galaxy S started to have the lower 80% of the screen at a lower brightness after I had passed it on to a son of mine, who knocked it around quite a bit, but my Note 1 and my Note 3 never seem to have suffered any noticible change.
But then I rarely ever use them with the display turned on hour after hour, except when I use them for navigation on long trips.
Do you see ghosting on screen tests or something similar?
We still have 2 Galaxy S2 phones with noticeable dimming of the screen. Maybe they've improved this. I prefer IPS screens simply because I think colors look better. (maybe they've imporved this as well, but the Galazy S2 was pretty bad in that respect).
The GS2 is a 4 year old phone... I suggest you look at Samsung's last year offering of AMOLED. Beats all IPS displays in all aspects (including color accuracy).
Samsung has followed the unibody idea, but contrived a design that isn't waterproof, doesn't have either a user-replaceable battery or a microSD card slot, has a smaller battery than its previous phone, ignores Android design guidelines by retaining hardware buttons, and still looks cheap and tacky.
On the plus side, it's good to see Exynos on an improved process, and SAMOLED may not drain the battery as much as LCD screens at 1440p.
Any idea on the DAC being used in the S6? I really appreciated the article comparing the One M8 and S5 audio quality. Any improvement in audio quality for headphone use in the S6 would be greatly appreciated, considering the M7 sounded much better during my limited use with that phone.
This article failed to mention that due to this new unibody design, Samsung can no longer implement removable batteries, expandable storage(i.e. microSD cards) and water-proofing. So much for mocking Apple about wall hugging, LOOOL, seems like they're the ones late to the wall hugger's party XD And no expandable storage? Well I guess there's a reason Apple didn't implement that in the first place, now Samsung finally realized the advantage of hardwired NAND over slow@ss removable storage not to mention integrated flash memory generally uses less power and are more efficient.
You must be an iPhone owner. That would explain how wall-hugger commercial hurt you. But the problem with iPhone goes way beyond the battery being not replaceable. iPhone has the smallest battery out there: 1810mAh for iPhone 6 vs 2550mAh for Galaxy S6. And GS6 has the first SOC manufactured with 14nm FinFET process. So keep hugging the wall. Do not worry about GS6 owners.
Battery size doesn't matter - it's how long it lasts in real life. I've had an LG phone for the last 1.5 years, but before that I had 4 years of iPhones. The real-life battery time was much better with my old iPhones. If I wasn't too cheap to upgrade early, I'd have switched back to iPhone by now, but as I'm cheap, I'm waiting for my contract to end. Work pays for my phone service, I just buy the phone. I do like the microSD card, but can easily live more memory on the phone itself.
Stupid or not we expect Samsung to try and do better than the others, go forward not backward. There is a bandwidth constraint with USB 2, which does affect *some* use cases and that I've long wished to be eliminated.
But I'll be the first to admit, that having a USB 3 connect which doesn't deliver any advantage whatsover in terms of bandwidth (like the one on my Note 3) only makes for a bigger hole, right where I often have a finger while holding it one-handed.
I've been very disappointed at the unavailablilty of a USB 3 docking station for the Notes.
No MicroSD and expecting me to transfer loads of files over USB 2.0? Ha ha ha. No Glass back? So my screen and the back can crack at the same time when I drop it.
Don't really want the M9 so I guess I'll wait for whatever the G4 has to offer.
You can knock down GS6. Alternatively you can look at it this way: Samsung is the only company that used USB 3.0 in their phone (I might have overlooked something but I have never heard of any other phones using USB 3.0). So enjoy your Samsung phone. Even without USB 3 it is still by far the most advanced phone on the market.
Or you can knock down lilo the Samsung shill... After years of knocking the iPhone for lack of SD slot and lack of removable battery, now none of that matters on the Galaxy S6. LOL.
Samsung's flagship phone (Note 4) still has both. Regardless, my post was about USB 3.0 not the decision to get rid of SD slot and replaceable battery but apparently me pointing out iPhone deficiencies hurt you too much to pass this one out. Even without memory card (which I use) and replaceable battery (which I don't) GS6 is still way more of the phone than iPhone 6: 3x RAM, 2x camera resolution, 4x screen resolution, 2x video recording resolution, 2x simultaneous on screen applications. It's rather surprising that these phones are even being compared sometimes. There is no comparison there. They are in completely different categories.
That would be fine if the inclusion of USB 3.0 had been a good one for the S5. As it turns out, it wasn't, which is why it's not unexpected that Samsung has dumped it for saner features and specs. They still aren't there, but they are getting better. Hopefully this isn't a one-time trend for them.
P.S. S6 is literally a downgrade in everything bar HW specs compared to the S5.
And in 2015 I'm struggling really hard to give a damn about hardware specs on phones... Since the general performance has been "good enough" for the last 2 years or so.
So they came up with a unibody design that leaves out water- and dust proofing, a removable battery and microSD slot for what exactly? Perceived durability? That stupid glass back will shatter instantly when the phone hits pavement.
Here's hoping sane Samsung engineers won't change the Note 5 as drastically.
Unfortunately engineering departments have to do what marketing departments tell them to. And when most publications (including AT, unfortunately) year after year publish in my opinion ridiculous reviews praising "premium" materials in other phones (despite them having all sorts of issues: antennagates, bendgates etc. with zero advantages) Samsung had to respond. Being a diverse company let's hope that they will still have a model with real premium materials (i.e. plastic back)
QHD screen for extra battery drain, smaller battery, pointless aping of iphone 6's side curves and 5's shatterable glass back, loss of sd card and removable battery... what am I supposed to like about this new phone?
You do not know anything about "extra battery drain" yet. We'll see. iPhone 6 side curves were nothing new. Tons of phones (including ones from Samsung) used similar shape before. Those are fine. I agree about SD card and removable battery. I do not replace battery myself but with phone features reaching maturity in general people will keep their phones longer (including the resale path) and replaceable battery is a good thing. The glass back... Well Samsung had to go with so called "premium" materials which for uneducated crowd means either aluminum or glass. It looks like Samsung chose the lesser of two evils - at least this one allowed them to implement wireless charging.
Entertain the thought that maybe most people in the premium segment prefer the look and feel of metal/glass over plastic regardless of whatever chemical, or other, superiorities it possesses.
The good thing about Samsung is that they typically offer choices: One single device cannot make everyone happy!
So I am urgently hoping, that for the Note variant (which I'm typically using, because I like the bigger size), they will stick with plastic, removable batteries, potentially an SDcard slot, real USB 3 and ideally DP or HDMI on a real USB 3 docking station and full open source driver support for that external display.
For me these devices are PCs, that's personal computers with a big emphasis on *personal* meaning choice and full authority to the owner not the manufacturer.
At 64-Bit, >2GHz, 128GB of SSD class storage and 4-8GB of RAM, they certainly even qualify as a personal workstation, so please Samsung (or anyone) start offering such a device.
I don't need the S6 to be that device, I just hope Samsung sells so many of them to those who cherish "unibody" and glass over "survives minor mishaps and plain works" that they can also produce that personal workstation out of very much the same ingredients they have in stock.
I'm still missing the type of USB3 or "wireless PCIe" class connectivity to a charging docking pad which I keep dreaming about, which offers external screens, gigabit networking, CIFS/NFS/iSCSI or even USB 3 storage and potentially some noiseless cooling so the phablet form factor PC can clock to 3 GHz for a moment, when doing some really strenuous work.
There is probably very few phone applications out there, which can keep a 2GHz high performance quad core CPU with a matching GPU busy, except 3D games, but quite a few desktop ones, who might get a lot closer.
So since the hardware capabilities are finally there: Why not simply allow using these personal workstations as such by enabling a full Linux desktop inside a container launching and operating much like a game under Android with switching forth and back?
And while you're at it why not even more than one to segregate enterprise and private or other use cases? The tech, the hardware, hypervisor support even and the software are all there!
I want a personal workstation, that fits into my pocket, can be operated like a smartphone or phablet, but switches to full workstation mode, when put on a magic pad, which is really a docking station that doesn't require docking but uses ultra-short distance (millimeters) and ultra high bandwidth (gigabtes/sec) communications to display, storage and network.
It should "dock" in the office, in meeting rooms or lounges, at home wherever I sit down to do 5, 15 or 50 minutes of 'whatever' and connet to screens and networks in a manner appropriate to the context.
What's so difficult about that, that you haven't gotten it done for the last five years?
Am I wrong in seeing that the back is not all metal, if it is not all metal then what is the exact logic of dropping removable battery? And I did not see waterproofing so what was the point of losing external sdcard? All this achieved is 1. Sub par look. 2 Smaller battery capacity 3. Lack of expandability. 4. Slower USB
Only positives 1. Better camera. 2. Better finger print reader.
.. I would have preferred Samsung just add the processor, camera, USB type c and finger print scanner to s5 and released it as s5+. This should not be difficult for Samsung as it already release multiple models, so why loose a large section of customers who stuck with galaxy line for the expandability.
There are few doubts and improvements which samsung made and obv many areas where they dint cope or did badly..
1. Smaller Battery - not good 2. Removable battery option - v bad 3. Why no HiFi DAC? - too bad.. i m still carying my mp3 player for this 4. DDR4 vs DDR3 - i think major improvement comes in the form of 128gb DDR4 and not DD3 option. And not because of some processor or graphics.. 5. No FM - why? 6. No mention of IR Blaster? - is it there? 7. No mention of Water & Dust resistance - is it there? 8. Same old design language - m bored... 9. No microsd - no matter what this is a must 10. Sony camera - i thought s5 samsung inhouse camera is better , wish it cud hav OIS with it
Apple invents the original iphone which revolutionizes the electronics industry and creates a whole new category of devices.
Samsung creates a cheap plastic copy of the iphone!
Samsung gains a significant amount of market share in the smartphone industry by offering a cheaper imitation of the iphone.
Apple introduces touch id, a fingerprint sensor that works extremely well and is very easy to use.
Samsung copies Apple by adding a fingerprint sensor to their smartphones! but it’s a swipe type sensor and doesn’t work well at all!
Apple introduces Apple Pay, a revolutionary mobile payment system that works in conjunction with touch id.
A lot of customers who had purchased Samsung phones for being more affordable, switch back to iphone in flocks after experiencing the horror that’s Samsung’s cheap design and laggy touchwiz bloatware! Samsung starts losing marketshare to Apple in the high-end of the market and its profits decline by over 60%!
Samsung resorts to copying material design of iphone 4 and shape of iphone 6 to try to offer a more premium looking copy of the iphone. it shamelessly copies the touch id and Apple Pay, calling it "Samsung Pay" !!!
I understand how the history might look this way from Cupertino but this is not how this all transpired in reality. The first smartphones were invented by NTT Docomo (Japan). Later Nokia, HTC, Blackberry and Samsung joined the trend and contributed a lot. Almost a decade later Apple released their first smartphone. The only big difference there was the use of a capacitive screen (although LG released first smart phone with capacitive screen a few weeks before Apple) Apple did not invent capacitive screen.
All "cheap" Samsung" phones (speaking about Galaxy S series) were more expensive to make and used more expensive components than contemporary iPhones (iPhone's Bill Of Materials has always been the lowest among the flagship smart phones). First iPhones were plastic too.
It was not Apple that introduced fingerprint sensor. It was Motorola. Apple bought a company that made he sensors that worked "extremely well". Before that many companies used the same sensors.
Google introduced Google Wallet (available on Samsung phones). Apple copied it.
Samsung introduced a lot of things later copied by Apple. Here are a few examples: smart phone, 3G phone, LTE phone, phablet, barometer, sensor hub (to look different Apple called their differently - motion coprocessor but it's the same thing that was introduced first by Samsung), full HD screen, QHD screen (well Samsung might not have been the first among Android phone manufacturers but definitely way ahead of Apple which still does not have a QHD phone), Samsung popularized 8MP camera and Apple followed suit, fist phone with USB 3.0 etc. The list is too long. Apple rarely invents anything. They do popularize some things (thanks in part to rabid following) but that's about it.
My account of the history of the modern smartphone was precise and factual while your version mostly looks like fantasies of a fanboi!
The first smartphone was actually introduced by IBM not NTT Docomo! but there is no doubt that the modern smartphone, i.e. the multitouch rectangular slab we call a smartphone today, was invented by Apple.
Anyone who understands technology knows that modern smartphones are not called "smartphones" because they have capacitive touch screens or round corners! The full featured mobile OS and its multi-touch UI, e.g. slide to unlock, pinch to zoom, double tap to zoom, rubber-band feature, swipe to scroll, mobile browser, concept of an app store, etc. are what constitute modern smartphones and they were invented through the original iphone and its subsequent iterations.
Apple introduced the first touch-based fingerprint scanner (the only kind that works well) in phones and Samsung is now copying it (business as usual). It's really ignorant to claim that the failure called Google Wallet has anything to do with Apple Pay! Apple Pay introduced local encrypted storage of credit card info, payment through secure tokenization and Touch-based sensors and that's what made it hugely successful and that's why Samsung is copying the exact same methods for "Samsung Pay" (they even shamelessly copied the name!!!)
The problem is that people who defend Samsung are usually ignorant and don't understand the underlying technology behind smartphones yet they think they know a lot and loudly comment about it! it's laughable to claim that chip technologies such as 3G, LTE, sensor hub, etc. that are developed by companies such as Qualcomm and Infineon and sold to device makers are somehow innovations by the device makers ... I mean you gotta be pretty clueless to claim that!
Please, please, please do not let this guy write Galaxy S6 review. Or any other important Android device review. This dude is a twisted individual with truly bad judgments (and obvious biases), lacks competence (e.g. Nexus 9 review), and unable to write. I don't care how deep his technical knowledge is (if he has one) - he just cannot write coherently. This dude should be limited to writing obscure stuff or Apple stuff, together with Brandon Chester.
If you fee like I am attacking him unfairly, ask other AT editors in confidence. Ask what they think of his writing. (and Brandon Chester as well) By letting him writing important reviews, you not only lose readership but you lose opportunities to leave those landmark reviews that AnandTech is known for.
There is no irony. I wrote in a comment section, from a mobile device. And I am not talking about grammatical errors when I talk about flaws of Joshua Ho's writing.
I do not get why people are still complaining about MicroSD and Removable battery. It is been years since the last time I used these two outdated features. It is 2015 people; modern batteries lifetime and charging time have considerably improved. We can almost have a day-long of intensive use without charging. I admire Samsung for all the technologies they develop, build, and offer to the industry. The use of 14nm is a huge announcement. I did not expect they would get this one right before the end of the year, but somehow they did. Besides DDR4, SSD, QHD S-AMOLED display, UFS2, and out of the box wireless charging. I think the new device is great. I hope they price it right.
Removable battery: smart phones nowadays can easily last 4 years. Battery life starts degrading after two years. Being able to replace a battery for a dozen bucks is a nice feature. You can buy 128GB MicroSD card and then transfer it from your current phone to the next one. This way, not only do you save money by buying models with smaller memory, you also transfer all your music/pictures to a new phones in 2 minutes (as opposed to 2 weeks via USB/Lighting cable - slight exaggeration but yo got the point) So, maybe not such a big deal but still a bonus. Also, consider the fact that the argument against these features has to do with the benefits of unibody design which as has been proved by antennagate and bendgate are just a fiction. Add the wireless charging to this list too (plastic back helps)
Batteries are easily replaceable by opening the device and replacing the device. No battery is ever soldered on those devices, they just don't waste space on 'hotswap' hardware. The replaceable battery kit, including all the required tools for an iPhone costs around $10. It is trivial job to replace it, in few minutes.
Considering, that you need to do this according to you every two years (my iPhone 4S still runs off it's original battery, with very heavy use) -- this is not a big deal at all. Even if you need to ask someone else to do it for you.
I will NOT upgrade my S5 to this new S6. No microSD card and no replaceable battery. These 2 very important missing features are the kiss of death. Bye bye Samsung, you lost me as a customer.
Why can't the iPhone have green and blue colors? I've gotten tired of the same old white and black. And the gold doesn't even extend to the sides or the bezels, so from the front it looks white.
True Tone flash, Touch ID, NanoSIM, ApplePay, physical home button, sealed battery, no MicroSD, audio jack at bottom, 2 rows drilled speaker grills, all rounded corners, no bloat and UI copied from iOS. Move the Samsung logo to the back and no one can tell it is a knockoff.
All valid points. But then look at how much iPhone borrowed from Galaxy S phones: * dual core CPU (aka Galaxy S2, circa 2011) * [almost] Full HD screen * barometer * co-processor * LTE * NFC * Google Play * Notification center * Widgets * Gorilla Glass 3 (a year after Samsung started using it) * All rounded corners (borrowing from the design language of ATIV S Neo, 2013)
Sorry buddy, but Samsung didn't invent most of the items on your list. LTE, NFC, all come from Industry consortiums. And when the first LTE phones came out, their battery life was unacceptably short.
And Gorilla glass was originally used by the first iPhone from which everyone else then copied. Google Play came a year after the iOS App Store so don't even know why you're mentioning it (its a Google feature comparable to the App store/iTunes, nothing more), guess you're desperate to expand your feature list!
Fanbois like you lack engineering knowledge (electronic or software) and so think the longer the spec sheet, the better the device. This is demonstrably false. Eg: The first phone with fingerprint sensor was the Motorola Atrix. Worked like crap with an extremely low success rate and usually failed completely after a mere 6 months due to grime and oil polluting the sensor. No review of the fingerprint sensor in the S5 rated it much better since it was still a flaky swipe sensor, Samsung was just desperate to match Apple as quickly as possible.
You mention being first with dual core, yet don't mention those cores were ARMv7 ISA and Android apps at the time did not make use of it since few were multi-threaded. Pointless! All Samsung's processors are generic ARM reference designs upon which it runs a generic OS (Android) and then adds a layer bloat on top called Touchwiz. Hence, they're not optimised to the maximum extent possible (unlike say A8/iOS8 where for example camera control via the Image signal processor is directly in silicon rather than software, enabling the iPhone to focus faster than its competitors). To make up for the non-optimisation, they bump up the clock speed and stick a bigger battery in to compensate.
The things that interest me are not worthless specs but how the device functions. And whether those functions are useful to me.
I could point more than ten flaws but I'll just mention thee:
1: no microSD?? Yeah, let me just fill the phone up with important data to lose it all when the phone dies or breaks, just like it happened with my Galaxy s2. Way to go Sammy! Where do I apply for a job? It looks like whoever is running Samsung is actually working for the opposition.
3: No Hi-Fi DAC. Buy a phone worth an arm and a leg just to find out it sounds like a cheap $5 Chinese MP3 player. ***Cough***Galaxy s2***
2: Samsung has been in bed with the NSA since the Galaxy s4. Well Sammy, no more Samsung ever for me or anyone remotely awake I hope. Stick your Smartphones and Spying TVs were the Sun doesn't shine.
Hi, I have some questions because I'd like to preorder the phone: - What about HEVC encoding? Does the rear camera support at least 1080p60 o 2160p30 mode in HEVC format (and maybe using IOS)? - What about modem? Is it Samsung made? What are it's specs and differences against Qualcomm X12 LTE? - Display accuracy seems to be bad again based on François Simond anlysis https://plus.google.com/+supercurioFran%C3%A7oisSi... , can You do a deeper test? - Same for audio reproduction, so that even a S4 seems to be better: https://plus.google.com/109625418534467664286/post...
He says he measured at 100% brightness, but shouldn't he of all people know that the latest AMOLED panels adjust gamma curves at 100% brightness to give a better outdoor viewing experience? Not at all representative for indoor/normal usage where 100% is way too bright anyway. I'd be more interested in the gamma curve at say 50% brightness...
Went from a Galaxy S3 to an iPhone 5s. Looks like Ill be going back to Samsung with the S6 Edge. Beautiful phone and the screen will be the best, you just know it.
What i don't like is the glass on the back. I mean whats the point of that.....the glass will have fingerprints every time we would use the phone and afterwards cleaning it every time (same as Nexus 4)
The so-called iCloud 'hacks' were phishing attacks which apparently a lot of those celebrities fell for.
Apple was remiss in allowing unlimited login attempts and not implementing 2 factor authentication, both of which are now rectified. We can thank the naughty celebs for bringing these deficiencies to Apple's attention :-)
Did I miss it or did you really just write an article about a smart phone and not find out if the battery can be replaced. This is an important to a lot of users. I hope Samsung has not abandoned this critical feature for so many.
people are saying that they're not going to buy a s6 is literally nothing for samsung, for me it's ok to not to have a removable battery and micro sd since 32gb is enough and galaxy line flagships offering Brutal battery life, peoples in here whose not going to buy these phones are like drop in a bucket a very big bucket actually, it means nothing for Samsung, most people not going to complain about lack of sd or removable battery they'll look at design and speed of it cuz not everyone is a techmania like us in here, the real goal of this products are the mainstream users so go buy an htc or stupid lg phone if you like sd
With any luck this will be the death of their smartphone venture. I just received my Oneplus One a couple of days ago and I have really hard time understanding why anyone would buy this device for the price asked. I do understand why people buy I-devices, they do have a brand and a unique system, but a Samsung Android device??? What will this phone do that my One+ or a MOTO X couldn't do equally good - at half the price?
The article mentions PDAF being improved. No other sites talk about PDAF, even Samsung's own spec sheet does not mention it. Can the author provide a reference for the statement? Thanks.
Yuck, I'm not with the style consensus I guess. The chrome and clinical design is not for me, looks like what GE would envision for an ultrasound device of the "future"
SD police here. I agree with boslink: no microSD, no buy. Because this is Android it might need to be a read-only media tank to avoid security issues, but that's fine. Cheap, swappable storage. Leaving it out is foolish, especially for Samsung where it was one of their selling points. And especially on such expensive phones. At least one of these is quite thick enough to have an external microSD slot. Don't tell me that "xxx GB internal storage is enough" or "everybody should stream their media". Those are fatuous replies that may fit your case but not mine, as I know by experience. These are costly devices beautifully designed to play video, and poorly designed to house it. You want a media selection you carry one of these PLUS a tablet. Even $100 phones do better.
Yeah the speakers suck but I think that Samsung bets like I've seen that everyone uses headphones for calls and music. Vibrate for calls and messages. I like my cheap, durable material not drop and break.
The unibody design is nice but hardly worth the loss of microSD support and replaceable batteries. If Note 5 also has the same issues, my next phone upgrade will not be another Samsung.
I like the emerald color but it on the Edge model. Wish they would have it on the S6! But black looks good too; and I will buy one when Samsung releases an "unlocked" version maybe around Fall.
As the owner of an S4 that only actually works 90% of the time... I find it difficult to be interested in Samsung's products. You're mileage may vary! =P
The lack of a microSD slot and removable battery are deal killers for me. no not everyone can afford a data plan that allows you to stream music as much as you want. The biggest reason i like a micorSD card is this...pictures. If your S6 just up and drops dead all those family photos and videos are gone (unless you have the money and can find someone to pull the data off the phones internal memory). Yes you can back them up with dropbox or such but that is not always practical. I live in an area where some people still cant get cable internet and cant just easily backup gigs of data on wifi. The removable battery was great since you could get on ebay and buy 3x 4800mAh with external wall charger 2x USB 3 cables and a car charger for $20 which is my second point...my daughter's S5 was bought for x-mas and the charging port just quit working...tested my charger with it and her battery in mine both are fine so the port (which shows no visible signs of damage) has failed. Quick easy fix was the batteries i mentions from ebay or wireless charging. Both work and only take a few days to receive whereas if i send the phone back she would be without it for how long? likely weeks and may not get the same phone back which mean all her pictures and such would possibly have been lost. It seems to me Samsung has given in to the critic that complain about plastic back and how a phone "feels". This is also a bunch of garbage to me as i dont hink i know anyone that buys a $600+ phone that don't put a otterbox or other case on it anyway. kinda defeats the whole BS about how the phone "feels" anyway really. I buy a phone based on 3 things...cost...specs..and the removable battery/microSD card. thats about it. sure i could buy the tools to replace the battery but then i have the cost of the tool in addition to the cost of a replacement battery and as someone who has an s3 that was ran over by a car and shattered the front glass i can tell you it will take a lot longer to rip the phone apart and repair it that to pop of the plastic back and swap out a battery. As a note to durability and plasitc phones components...the S3 that was ran over and repaired...thanks to the case the only thing other than the glass that was "broken" was a small crack in the plastic near the volume buttons...phone work fine other than the proximity sensor having a crack directly over it triggering the screen to go black as soon and you called someone...in fact im pretty much positive if it had been laying face down on a pavement surface rather then the gravel it was on that the the screen may have not shattered at all. Hopefully by the time my S5 is needing replaced the S7 will have corrected this stupid "bowing to the critics" issue.
sorry for the typing errors i am a 3rd shifter and have been up way too long and wanted to post this before i went to bed...i usually type a bit better...meaning i correct the massive amount of typos i make :)
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Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Looks great, real buttons too.But I think Samsung engineers must never have HEARD a HTC One.... those speakers on the front are wonderful.
So thanks, but no thanks.
3DoubleD - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
This is one area I hope Anandtech pay special attention to during the reviews. My biggest complaint with my S3 was speaker loudness, it was pretty pathetic. This affects both normal handset calls and speakerphone calls. Same goes for microphone quality. I'm just fed up with struggling to hear or be heard on phone conversations and so knowing a phone had superior abilities in this area would significantly impact my purchasing decision.varg14 - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Apple either especially on the the Ipads from the iPad 2 to now a front facing set of stereo speakers would be nice compared to a single or dual speakers in the bottom side where the charge port is. Makes no sense to me.flyguy29 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Having speaker perforations on the front of an iPad would take a "Moses-like" experience for Ive.Mondozai - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Speakers are overrated. If you need real sound just use portable bluetooth speakers, otherwise headphones are good enough(more than good enough).Otherwise, I'd say that the phone is surprisingly good in terms of spec boost.
DDR4, much, much better camera, much thinner etc.
The only thing that I didn't like was the 1440p idiocy for a 5.1" screen. That's just stupid and there isn't a way around it.
Toss3 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
That's for the Gear VR2 to minimize the SDE.wicketr - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
That's like saying "use a real camera instead of the phone camera if the phone camera stinks". I watch youtube videos and others occasionally on my phone and the fidelity of stereo speakers on a phone is tough to give up at this point. And i don't want to carry around headphones or a bluetooth speaker for watching a random youtube video.B166ER - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
You cant beat physics when it comes to speaker quality. Small speakers might sound slightly better than another pair, but they all sound shit in general. If you truly need better fidelity, bluetooth, headphones, or stop cryin'.FITCamaro - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
I want to be able to hear it ring or hear alerts come through though. I've had phones that with not exactly quiet ringers or text message sounds, I couldn't hear it when it was in my pocket.theduckofdeath - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Which makes the complaint even less relevant, as the speaker on this is on the same edge you have to have facing upwards, towards your ears, as the headphone jack is on that edge. The HTC speakers will almost certainly be muffled by your body as I think we all place phones with the glass facing inwards.robertkoa - Thursday, March 5, 2015 - link
Exactly MANY phones are too quiet on ringtones to hear in a Restaurant, Mall, Office.sonny73n - Friday, March 6, 2015 - link
"If you truly need better fidelity, bluetooth, headphones, or stop cryin'."WHAT!!!??? You're a real jerk accusing someone for crying and telling him to stop.
If I pay a premium price for a flagship device, I want it to have better sound than the previous models. Have you ever played games with with sound thru Bluetooth headphones or Bluetooth speakers? The sound thru Bluetooth would get delayed and there's no way to sync it. And what if I just record a video (say in a party) and want to review it with the people there right after? Are those good enough reasons for better speaker sound? Some people (myself included) doesn't like to wear earphone/headphone especially wired ones. Anyway, it doesn't matter these S6s have good sound or not, I don't care because I'm not interested in these ugly overpriced junks.
BTW if you can't take any constructive criticism which wasn't even meant for you in the first place, move on to the one that you like. Stop being rude.
anubis44 - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
If you want truly decent sound quality in a smart phone, Blackberry can't be beat for that. It'll also run Android apps, too, and has the best messaging/inbox software in the business.jt122333221 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
So, the reason I use a device with a front-facing speaker is so I don't need to carry around a portable Bluetooth speaker or headphones everywhere I go. In the case that I want to show something to friends or want to watch a video and actually hear it, I have a device with front facing speakers that are powerful enough to make sure sound is heard in most settings (currently it's a Nexus 6, previously Xperia Z3 and HTC One M7).Both of your points to refute front-facing speakers are "carry around a speaker", which is why people want front-facing speakers - so they don't have to carry around a speaker/headphones to hear their device.
III-V - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Thanks for pointing that out.I hadn't really understood the value of having a good speaker on a phone -- I mean, there are a million more important things on my laundry list. But when you put it that way -- that it means you don't need a bluetooth speaker (in most cases) -- I definitely see the value in it.
boslink - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
My dear god!!Because of people like you we lost battery and SD card port.
Now you want front speakers
Go buy HTC or Iphone
Its shame Samsung listen to people that never ever buy their phones and with that they lose buyers like I am that actually BUY their hones (1 S4 and 3 S5 i bought unlocked).
I was waiting S6 to replace my S4 but . . . .
No micro SD no buyer in my case. It is a deal breaker for me
So Samsung lost me and he never had you. Smart move i must say
flyingpants1 - Saturday, March 7, 2015 - link
Front speakers are very important and useful. So is wireless charging. Nobody wants to fart around with microSD cards anymore.perpetualdark - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
wireless charging is great... in theory. In practice it is worthless. I tried the S5 just so I could do wireless charging. Thing is, as soon as it finishes, it will turn on and alert you. No way to turn that off without rooting the phone, and I don't buy brand new top of the line equipment so I can hack it and redo what should be done in the first place. So at night, after about 3 hours of charging, the phone comes on, lighting up my room like the sun came up, then beeping at me. So I turn it to vibrate, but then when this happens it vibrates "waa waa". I need my phone on to some extent in case I get an emergency call from my kids. (I tried turning it off, and sure enough, 4 days later, worst case scenario happened, I missed an emergency phone call).You might think one vibrate tone isn't bad, but you see, Samsung decided if it finishes charging to stop charging completely. So a minute passes, and it decides it now needs to charge again, so once again it comes on and beeps or vibrates. This continues, every 60-90 seconds until you take it off the charging pad. Since the phone has to face up, you can't get around the screen lighting up your room either.
As if that weren't enough, you have to have it centered on the pad. I don't mean close, I mean dead center. If it is off by more than about a half centimeter, the whole cycle of turning on and beeping/vibrating will start up, about 30 seconds apart.
So I would say that while wireless is a cool idea, expecting it to be a selling feature that is actually useful is really pushing it.
dawheat - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Why so? AMOLEDs don't necessary draw more power as the resolution goes up - the Note 4 1440p screen drew 14% less power than the Note 3 1080p. It's not like LCDs (e.g. G3).Most people I know don't do 3D games on their phone so none of this matters to them regardless, but really the only issue is load on the GPU when gaming. If the 14nm SOC ends up being able to handle it without too much power draw, then what's the problem? Let technology advance in every area - you get a sharper, brighter, more accurate, and efficient screen. How's that a bad thing?
DERSS - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
With OLED phones power consumption of 1440p versus 1080p is mostly matter of SoC, not screen. A lot more data to process and calculate. Hence bigger power consumption and lower frame rates in graphic applications such as games.However, since OLED screens do not have normal RGB pixels 1440p helps with making picture quality better. 1440p in LCD would be definitely excessive, but in OLED it is debatable.
Solandri - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Right. It's AMOLED, not AMOLED+, so is probably RGBG pentile. That is, each "pixel" is an alternating RG or BG set of just 2 subpixels. The effective layout (of R to R, or B to B subpixels) is diagonal*, so it's not really comparable to RGB. But if you did compare, it'd be:1080p RGB stripe = 5760x1080 = 6.22 million subpixels
1080p RGBG pentile = 3840x2160 = 4.15 million subpixels
1440p RGBG pentile = 5120x1440 = 7.37 million subpixels
So in terms of subpixel density (luminosity resolution), 1440p pentile is only slightly higher than 1080p RGB.
I don't usually like characterize to screens this way because it emphasizes subpixel count, and leads to the misleading conclusion that RGB is superior. It's not. RGB allocates an equal number of subpixels to each color, but your color vision is much better in green than in red or especially blue. So by the time you have enough G subpixels to fool 20/20 vision, you've got way more R and B subpixels than you need. Pentile's RGBG better approximates your eyes' color resolution, so can achieve the same threshold (fooling 20/20 vision) using fewer subpixels.
http://nfggames.com/games/ntsc/visual.shtm
* This diagonal symmetry is actually why pentile RGBG is so attractive for phones and tablets. With the right layout, RGBG is symmetric horizontally and vertically. The same subpixel rendering algorithm can be used in landscape and portrait mode. In contrast, a subpixel rendering algorithm in RGB no longer works if you rotate the screen 90 degrees. Meaning the software needs to be aware of subpixel orientation on the panel. To the best of my knowledge tablets and phones using RGB don't even bother trying to do subpixel rendering, which is a shame since you're leaving potential resolution gains on the table.
Xenonite - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Solandri, I simply cannot understand why you would willingly spread such obvious FUD about the little technological progress that we actually do achieve these days. The absolute last thing that we need is more people pushing for stagnation in the "good-enough" computing age.I do also want to give my opinion regarding this announcement and about the display resolution race in general, but first I would like to take this opportunity to correct, from your post, several points which are quite simply, either factually inaccurate or a grossly misinterpreted account of the truth.
1) Fiction: "So in terms of subpixel density (luminosity resolution), 1440p pentile is only slightly higher than 1080p RGB."
Truth: In the best case scenario this is fairly accurate, however for a display, pentile's "black-and-white" resolution is actually a bit worse than that of 1080p RGB panels (especially when displaying colourless text at 1-pixel line widths).
Explanation: The subpixel density of an additive colour display (i.e. where each subpixel is part of a set of, mostly independent, primary colours) does not equal the density of the resulting image's luma plane. To differentiate between luma and luminance it is necessary to compute the gamma correction values, for the display primaries that your display uses, and then use that corrected values in the calculation of the luminance value of each pixel. To simplify my explination, I am not going to refer to gamma correction's relatively minor (in comparison to the error I am trying to point out) contribution.
The actual "colourless" or "black-and-white" resolution of a display is equal to the amount of pixels for which distinct "brightness" values can be obtained. Since a pixel's luminance is equal to the weighted sum of all of the primary colour values that are associated with that pixel, it would be reasonable to assume that the resulting luma plane would have a resolution equal to the amount of complete 3-subpixel pixels in that display.
While this is generally true for content with a spacial resolution significantly below the Nyquist resolution being sampled at (this is why a Bayer filter works on a high-end, high-resolution camera), it starts breaking down very quickly once your image data approaches the Nyquist limit. The reason for this breakdown is, of course, that each neighbouring pixel is not guaranteed to have approximately the same intensity (or "brightness") anymore; consequently one cannot, for example, use a neighbouring pixel's "red" primary to complete the computation of the current pixel's (having only a "green" and a "blue" primary subpixel) intensity value.
2) Fiction: "your color vision is much better in green than in red"
Truth: "The distributions turned out to be largely random but with the ratios of red to green cones varying by a factor of 40" (image url: http://www.laserfocusworld.com/content/dam/lfw/pri... Reprinted from Vision Research, 51, David R. Williams, "Imaging single cells in the living retina," 1379–1396, 2011
Explanation: On average, a normal, healthy eye (with no colour blindness) has many more (about 3x as much) red than green cones. Image comparing the Beyer distribution with an average retinal mosaic (image url: http://ivrg.epfl.ch/files/content/sites/ivrg/files... Meylan, D. Alleysson and S. Susstrunk, A Model of Retinal Local Adaptation for the Tone Mapping of Color Filter Array Images, Journal of the Optical Society of America A (JOSA A), Vol. 24, Nr. 9, pp. 2807-2816, 2007
This is partly responsible for the horrible colour imagery obtained from such Beyer filters, however it also casts doubt on any compression technique which makes use of the so-called "luminosity function" to separate an image's luma and chroma components. (image url: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0...
The reason why this does not reliably work, for example in image compression, is the fact that the curve's mathematical deviation assumed that there are more green than red cones in the retina, thus assigning green light a higher "brightness" weight than the same "amount" of red light receives. (Although red and green light share a similar absolute spectral sensitivity; image url: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f...
This also explains why some people (most likely individuals that have many more green than red cones) so convincingly defend that colour subsampling techniques, such as pentile and the similar Bayer filter (also "chroma sub-sampling" for film), are visually lossless while others (those with a more normal distribution of more red than green cones) seem to find the images so produced to be severely lacking in quality and detail.
In conclusion, the distribution of and relationship between red and green cones in a normal human retina varies too much for any generalised statement to be made about the visual data thereby rendered redundant. Also, all the mathematical models we use to convert and compress images (such as those referenced above) are based on subjective measurements and do not denote any hard, objective fact about our physiology.
As a side-note: looking at the colour matching functions and going by the exact meaning of your post, "your color vision" seems to be much better (more efficient) in blue than in either red or green. Blue vision is, however, of very low spacial resolution, especially, close to the fovea...
3) Fiction: "So by the time you have enough G subpixels to fool 20/20 vision, you've got way more R and B subpixels than you need"
Truth: Normal, healthy, well developed, young eyes are limited to a general acuity of about 20/8; However, certain tasks can be done with a precision exceeding even the size of an individual cone receptor cell, for example, Vernier acuity that exceeds 20/2.6.
Explanation: This roughly means that normally sighted people will still be able to see certain artifacts of the display process (such as the regular pixel spacing leading to the "screen door" and various other "moire" effects) even when the resolution density meets the 20/8 resolution limit of a normal retinal receptor. A spacial dithering technique (such as random dithering) would eliminate most of these cases without any substantial negative effects, assuming that the display can keep track of where the pixels actually are positioned and interpolates the signal they receive accordingly and that the pixel density exceeds the 20/8 ratio of good vision at the distance you normally view the display.
In Conclusion, I sincerely hope that I could extinguish some lingering FUD about the tangible improvements of increased pixel densities together with proper tri-chromatic subpixel structures. I also want to add, that even though there is still quite a lot of progress to be made by improving the resolution of displays, there are some other areas of display performance that have been so badly neglected that their shortcomings are much more prevalent and annoying (at least to me) than the blurry or aliased images that a display optimized for 20/20 vision produces. If I had to choose only one, I would gladly pick either improved refresh rates (144hz still looks way too discontinuous, jumpy and unnatural), greater colour gamut and bit-depth (how can we approach the spatial resolution limits of the eye and still not be able to display more than half of the colours that our eyes can perceive or even produce a realistically smooth colour transition without gross banding or dithering "grain") or even just an aspect ratio that more closely matches a human's field of vision (like, the "unfashionable" 4:3 ratio) over a further increase in display resolution.
That does not mean that I would simply like all engineers to simply give up on improving display resolutions (no, they should still improve those to the levels of "real" perfect human vision), I still want to see a future where a real-world holodeck is at least closer to reality than it is today.
editorsorgtfo - Thursday, March 5, 2015 - link
Epic comment. There are so many subtleties of human vision that can make a display look like shit even if the conventional wisdom is that you can't see more than 24 fps or if you can't make out a single black pixel on a white background then there's no way that pentile can make your eyes burn.lilmoe - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
That's not accurate at all. Samsung improves power efficiency of their OLED with each iteration in addition to the SoC.But I just think it would have been better if they stuck with 1080p on the GS6. It would still have been the best screen at that size, with the added benefit of even faster rendering and lower power consumption. The benefits go beyond gaming; rendering text, webpages and other assets takes a hit when the SoC has to do 70% more work and wouldn't rush to idle as fast.
Again, the GS6' should be more efficient **overall** compared to last year's GS5, BUT it could have been **even better** if they stuck with 1080p instead **in addition** to the added benefits of the _newer panel_.
JoshHo - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
That isn't quite accurate, Samsung relies upon gains in emitter efficiency to offset decreases from higher pixel density.Morawka - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Most mobile Games are not GPU bound but are Memory Bandwidth bound. this is the case across almost all mobile soc's.ol1bit - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
You are wrong. I use my HTC One with mount on my bicycle for commuting to and from work. Sounds awesome, no extra bulky speakers to mount, and much safer than headphone because I can still hear traffic, people, etc. around me.lilmoe - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Totally agreed on the 1440p madness... A *perfected* 1080p panel (perfect color accuracy, better pixel arrangement, brighter and more power efficient) would have been much better for performance, battery life, and overall user experience.Those who can tell 441ppi and 577ppi apart are superhumans, which most people probably aren't.
Oh, and screw VR........
TrojMacReady - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
The Note 4 1440P screen was already close to perfection in terms of color accuracy, brightness, contrast, viewing angles, etc.To think that a higher resolution automatically means lower gaming performance, is a bit otudated too. There are several free apps available that allow you to set your resolution (if needed per app) at any resolution at or below the screen resolution, to fit your desired balance between quality and framerates. Therefore it adds choice. High (gaming) framerate is still part of that choice.
AnnonymousCoward - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Wrong...no app can change the native res that fills your entire screen. You have to either run non-native res and stretch pixels, or display 1:1 with 4 black bars.TrojMacReady - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
It's not stretching, it's interpolation. No different from using lower resolution on a gaming PC to increase framerates. If you had ever tried it (I use it on the Note 4), you'd know it still looks no worse than gaming on say a 1080p screen and achieves similar framerates (read:higher) too.Tech790 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Why screw VR?theduckofdeath - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
...or else his argument would fall? :DAlexey291 - Sunday, March 15, 2015 - link
Because its the 3d tv of the mobile industry?Chaser - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Yeah! I want my pocket sized mobile phone to have 7.1 Dolby audio quality!theduckofdeath - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Dolby 7.1 is so 2014. We want smartwatches with Dolby Atmos! Now!Scionero - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
I agree. 1080p would have been much better at this screen size.Xenonite - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Oh yea, sure, because EVEN THINNER is right up there with the ddr4 and camera improvements.Seriously, the 1440p resolution helps a lot with the "pentile" dither-like effect by reducing the size of the pixel "grains" on smooth colour gradients.
I will concede that 1440p is not good enough to hide the subpixel detail at a distance of less than about 30cm from your face, but saying its stupid/idiotic is (in my opinion) completely unfounded.
Furthermore, the only results of this stupid quest for ever thinner/weaker phones has been improved cosmetic appearance together with an excessively light and difficult to hold phone body, a decreased heat transfer ability (limiting performance), decreased battery life (smaller/lighter battery) and overall structural weakness (easily damaged by falls due to being difficult to grip). I also really don't get the point of having a sub 10mm thickness, when I am just going to get a protective cover thats thicker than that anyway.
austinsguitar - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
1440p is very noticable(to an extent) on 5.4 inch screens and up.... 5.1 inches with 1440p....kinda really dumb... just make contrast and everything else good on 1080p. the resolution alone for 1440p will drain that battery peopleskavi - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
What's wrong with soft keys?Notmyusualid - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
They take up screen space, and I find it buggy to see them appear / disappear, depending on what you are doing. In a nutshell, I hate 'em.However, to each their own...
barondebxl - Thursday, March 5, 2015 - link
Too sad of a comment. The iPhone 6 speaker is excellent and is located at the bottom. So is the S6 speaker and they are saying it is much louder and clearer than the S5. I'll take that over the overheating S810 and the 20 mp camera that isn't that good after all.flyguy29 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Nice to see that someone cares about audio and have an appreciation for HTC's strong efforts at differentiation and their goal of crafting an Android flagship with premium materials while Samsung focused on gimmicky features. That being said, HTC's efforts to differentiate didn't really pay off and Samsung's S6 will probably not benefit a whole lot from outperforming HTC on integrated speakers.Techno-Giraffe - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Same Samsungy look and feel. It's either you like it or you don't. If you don't, there is no amount of hardware/technical one-upmanship that can make any of there mobile devices desirable.JatkarP - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Agree with you on the looks, but s6 is ahead of their competitors in HW/tech (14nm SOC, UFS 2.0, LPDDR4).JatkarP - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Dual edge display.Techno-Giraffe - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Agreed - the hardware/process node is impressive and ahead of the competition. By look/feel, I was speaking more to the user experience (TouchWhiz) than to the phone's appearance. :)theduckofdeath - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Heve you held one of these? If not, how do you know what it feels like?lilmoe - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Apart from the previous choice of materials (which I didn't mind), I've always thought Samsung's design language was pretty inoffensive.melgross - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
The back is really ugly.sonicmerlin - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Looks better than the iPhone's antenna linesBob Todd - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I'm getting some popcorn ready for the comment war about Samsung dropping microSD storage on their flagship phone(s).3DoubleD - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Ya, it's a shame they didn't include microSD storage this year, but at least they've eliminated 16GB options for good. In the end, if I choose the S6 this year, I'll probably just suck it up and get the 64GB version.Jumangi - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
32GB is plenty for 99% of users. Its about streaming these days. Very few bother with putting video or music files on phones anymore.3DoubleD - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I'd generally agree, I stream a lot more these days than I listen to local music files; however, I find I need a cache of local files on my phone to cover situations where I don't have good connectivity. This arises from the poor state of mobile connectivity where I live (Canada). You can get unlimited data, but coverage is mediocre and reliability due to network congestion leaves lots to be desired. Or, you can get fast, reliable connections, but with low caps and high prices.In either case, you can't rely on streaming in all situations, which is why I prefer the ability to store a sufficient amount of music on the phone. 16GB was completely unacceptable, 32GB is good, and I think 64GB would be my ideal amount of storage.
Also, battery life is substantially better listening to local music files versus streaming music. For those long days without a charger, having local music files to listen to is amazing.
theduckofdeath - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
If you're getting the Edge, you don't have a choice other than "sucking it up" for the 64GB, as that looks like it'll be the base size for that model according to Samsung's UK site. :)Kracer - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Yeah, they traded the nice construction for swappable battery and microSD.It's a shame because it was a point of differentiation from the other smartphones, but the S6 seems that just played the one-upmanship card rather than being different.
Hulk - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I'm one of those people who used to strongly defend the microSD storage. Not anymore. I'm over it. I realize that if the phone has 32GB on board that's enough and I'm good.Mr Perfect - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I'm not entirely sure if the 32GB model would do without the SD card, but the 64gb and 128gb ones certainly would. Flash is cheap these days, lets see more of it phones.ShattaAD - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Well it seems like whatever Samsung implement is ok and justified but when Apple does it, it raises a hell of criticism. People simply grilled Apple for not adding removable storage and battery but now that Samsung does it, their excuse is 'Oh, the on board flash is good enough, more than what I'd ever need' as if Apple hasn't been doing that all along, yet they got heavily judged over it. Bet you those anti-wallhuggers will now say sh*t like 'Oh, the 14nm process should allow the S6 to run longer than the 'other' phones' so it doesn't need a removable battery'. Yes, a process shrink can save battery life but using that to justify Samsung not allowing that option with the S6 is pure hypocrisy.coldpower27 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
So they made it more "iPhone like" Unibody construction. Apple has led the Non removeable battery and No MicroSD card bandwagon since the start of when they made phones.Ironic in a way.
blzd - Saturday, March 7, 2015 - link
What made you change your mind? I'm just curious because I've been trying to tell this to people for a while now but there are many who are adamant that they need a 60 gig music collection on their device at all times and other ridiculous requirements. Just wonder what you feel was the tipping point where your realized massive amounts of local storage is no longer a requirement?Alexey291 - Sunday, March 15, 2015 - link
Oh come on its like the most obvious argument trick. To pretend that you used to support the other side of the argument.He doesn't actually provide any reasons even... Just "I used to but now everything is different"
When ofc it isn't. Nothing has changed, cloud storage is still shit, data charges are still through the nose and extra built in nand is still massively overpriced.
There is still literally no argument for dumping microsd cards.
Pneumothorax - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I hope they don't follow Apple's ridiculous flash memory upgrade prices, but I have a feeling that they will.lesbaer45 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I'm not happy about the loss of either the removable battery or the SD slot.Probably will pass because of this. Just hang onto the S5 until it dies, then try to find something that fits my needs.
melgross - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
I've read that the base S6 price will be $749, and the Edge will bring that to $749. Other sites I've been reading say that pricing hasn't yet been given out, so who knows?But if these prices are real, it's goi g to be a big problem. Will Android users pay that much for a phone? The Notes sell in small numberserk, and they are priced that way.
melgross - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Oops! I meant that the Edge will bring that to $849.Notmyusualid - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Funniest comment here, OK, you got me, I keep my conscience on the matter. :)Laxaa - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
This is the first time I'm considering upgrading to a Samsung phone. I'm still not a fan of the looks, but I'm overall impressed with their showing. Well done, Samsung.jcompagner - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
this is the first time i consider NOT to upgrade anymore to a samsung phone (having had samsung phones for 4 years now)all the unique selling points (that i also really use) like micro sd and swappable battery are gone...
Yongsta - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Well good luck trying to find a phone with these specs that still have swappable battery and micro sd. Don't think you're going to find one.shaolin95 - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
I fully disagree. In fact, I am sure other companies will see the opportunity to capitalize on Samsung stupid mistake and grab a few more % of the market.The fact is, if I wanted a phone without SD card and battery replacement, I may as well go for Google and get the fastest updates instead.
shaolin95 - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Also it seems Samsung has horrible memory...werent they making fun of Wall Huggers not long ago?Stupid decisions....
theduckofdeath - Friday, March 6, 2015 - link
This is one of the reasons Samsung went for non-upgradable storage:http://analogindex.com/news/androbench-comparison-...
The UFS storage Samsung has obliterates anything else in the mobile world. 4-5 times faster! Not just 4-5% faster like we're used to see in upgrades.
With performance like that, I can live with not having an SD reader.
Alexey291 - Sunday, March 15, 2015 - link
I don't care about nand performance for a few movies, music, some backups and all my photos (symlinked from nand storage).The real question is - why do you?
solipsism - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I couldn't help but chuckle at two comments during the live steam:1) "We didn't want to have a built-in battery until we felt absolutely sure about users feeling comfortable about recharging their device."
So the whole user replaceable battery thing is going away. There goes another anti-Apple argument.
2) "My first language may not be engineering, but I do know that this stuff will not bend."
OK, so Apple made no such claims and we had countless videos of people forcibly bending them well beyond what is reasonable or a pocketable device. Are we going to get another #bendgate for the S6 as people try to prove Samsung wrong? I'm guess it won't ever be a thing.
PS: Yes, I mentioned in Apple in post about the new S6 series of phones, but their entire presentation clearly focused on Apple.
SantaAna12 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Dissapointed.I will not be.looking to samsung for my next phone: no sd slot, lousy speaker placement and no swappable battery.
HTC here I come?
jjj - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
They actually went taller lol, the back cam sticks too much, the cyranoesque home button is unreal (looks like a fake).The curved screen implementation is so much better than in the Note and encouraging but the curvature is not ideal and they failed to mask the side bezels well enough. The lower bezel looks even weirder on the Edge.
The worst is that there is no microSD, guess Samsung is in panic mode and they just lost their minds.
Oh and if the DRMed accessories rumors are true ......
If the Edge was reasonably priced and they had enough supply it would sell but reasonable pricing is not something to be expected.
On the vanilla S6 they still have the fast SoC and NAND but is that enough to offset the bulky bezels and the lack of microSD at a price that is 50% too high?
J.W.M. - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Just for clarification:1) No mico-SD slot, but a nano-SD slot?
2) Non user removable battery?
Johnmcl7 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
No sd expansion and no user replaceable battery which is really disappointing as both of those are the main reasons I chose a note 4 and I think it's one of the few features that separate them from the other mainstream android devices.If I'd wanted an android unibody phone, I'd have bought an HTC so I don't see the point in a me too effort from Samsung when it comes at significant cost to functionality. With huge power hungry screens and power hungry 4g I'm finding a user replaceable battery is all the more important as it allows you to quickly switch to full power when you run out rather than the clumsy and slow solution of attaching a charger pack.
boredsysadmin - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Downgrade to USB 2.0 ? Hope it's a typo. Combined with Internal only memory (not very happy about that one) - filling up 128gb would take a bit less than forever.gsmarena also mentions usb 2.0 - damn, but says MHL is support - small consolation
So No removable battery nor storage, usb 2.0, smaller battery (isn't that the who point of unibody - make room for bigger battery??!!!) and prices are still unknown but typically higher storage models demand heavy markup - all this together makes me think - NO THANKS
solipsism - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
It's not. Adding USB 3.0 was a mistake with the S5.KPOM - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
USB 3.1 would have been nice, particularly since the internal NAND is as fast as an SSD now.solipsism - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
If that's the case (or at least faster than USB 2.0's speeds) and if the Type-C connector is available for their April launch I would be shocked that they didn't use it. I'd guess the Type-C connector simply wasn't an option for the S6.boredsysadmin - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
I am very curios to know why do you consider usb 3.0 on S5 was mistake? Also Do have experience of copying large files over usb 2.0 ? How about filling these ultra-fast 128Gb flash internal storage?Even if C-type connector wasn't available, I'd take 10 faster "semi-proprietary" cable over plain old and slow usb2
blzd - Saturday, March 7, 2015 - link
Probably for the same reasons Samsung considers it a failure and has abandoned it.Mondozai - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
The biggest deal here is seeing how their UFS solution works out in comparison to the aging eMMC standard. Also, DDR4 actual real-life performance.Looking forward to Anandtech review on this one even if I'd never buy this phone.
Alexey291 - Sunday, March 15, 2015 - link
Odds are you'll see the review by the end of summer...Mr Perfect - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Wait, they regressed from USB3 in the S5 to USB2 in the S6? Why? Isn't that going to give up all of the high-amp charging you could get off a PC?name99 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
They "regressed" because USB3 generates RF noise in the 2.4GHz that appears to ineradicable. (Intel tells you how you can mitigate it, but the combined experience of a bunch of phone manufacturers is not promising, suggesting Intel was overly optimistic...)We have no idea what the ultimate specs of Lightning are, but it's possible, IMHO, that Apple was aware of this as a likely problem, and designed Lightning so as to avoid it (even if that, perhaps, means that a lower ultimate performance level).
I've no idea how this plays out with USB C connector. Maybe there is something in the USB 3.1 spec that really does avoid the problem (OR maybe the problem is eve worse there because the power null that, in USB3, is at 5GHz moves to 10GHz and 5GHz picks up the same level of RF noise that 2.4GHz is seeing today?)
The C connector does seem to be a nice improvement, and presumably will work well on laptops/desktops; but it would be a shame if lack of concern for the realities of phone design meant that it's not feasible for phones (unless, perhaps, we move to a USB3.2 where the signal is specifically shaped to force nulls at both 2.4 and 5GHz).
Mr Perfect - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Hmm, that's interesting. I hadn't heard that USB3 was creating interference before. USB2 sounds like a necessary concession then.xkiller213 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
No waterproofing?edzieba - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
"Samsung has included wireless charging support for both WPC1.1 and PMA 1.0 standards"For those unaware, QPC is the Wireless Power Consortium, which manages the 'Qi Charging' technology and trademark.
edzieba - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
WPC, I mean.Mr Perfect - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
So... What's the difference between the S6 and the S6 Edge? The only difference I can see from what's in the article, is literally the rounded edges on the S6 Edge. Is there something else? Do rounded screen edges really make for a new SKU?solipsism - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
It's a completely different product so there has to be a new SKU. There would be a different SKU if the color was changed, too.Mr Perfect - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Fair enough, I'm just wondering if that's literally the only difference. A rounded edge just doesn't sound like a compelling reason to have two production lines.Tech790 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Were you not aware of the Note 4 and the Note 4 Edge? They introduced a single curved display side last fall. This is the next logical step.. having both sides be curved. It looks pretty impressive.Alexey291 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Next logical step from that would then be having a screen all around the device?So that you can't pick it up at all without launching something u don't want launched? :D
Seriously it looks cool and all but its a terrible "feature" really.
theduckofdeath - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
It's a terrible feature if you're not open minded enough to figure out how to configure the software that detects touch, which Samsung has had for quite some years with the Note series and its S Pen.theduckofdeath - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
A pen wasn't compelling either, still they made it popular. Rounded edges and eventually flat edge displays will be commonplace in a few years.skavi - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
A small increase in battery and some extra software features.adityarjun - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Is the camera lens protected by sapphire glass? It seems that the camera sticks out a bit and both htc one and iphone 6 use sapphireHulk - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
How much is it gonna cost to replace the battery? I generally get a little more than a year out of a battery.ws3 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Why does your phone have crappy batteries that only last a year in the first place?Alexey291 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Not the guy above but...I don't know why android OEMs put "crappy" batteries into their phones.
And I don't trust for them to change this practice. Thus I opt for phones with replaceable batteries.
On that topic. My devices see a lot of use. And by a lot I mean a lot. Not a lot of batteries do well after 500+ recharge cycles to be honest.
Tech790 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
The batteries in phones like this tend to be Lithium-Polymer vs Lithium-Ion, the former being a 'long term battery' that is meant to endure better than Lithium-ion.blanarahul - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
All I need is a much smaller 4.6" 1080p version of this thing, running Touchwiz-less, rooted Android and I'll be all set.blanarahul - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
On second thought HTC M9 with 4.6-4.7" AMOLED 1080p display without the hideous bottom bar with stock rooted Android will do nicely as well. I don't mind the thickness as long as I get great battery life.It would be interesting to see how Samsung's pseudo 14 NM process+ARM software combination holds up against Qualcomm's 20 NM+Qualcomm software combination.
Mithan - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I will probably purchase it, it looks good.Only area of concern so far is the battery, but if it handles as well as my S4, I will be "ok" with it.
Alexey291 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
I'm really not ok with how my S4's original battery was. Bloated itself after 2 months. Followed by a free-ish replacement from sammy. Which bloated again.I'm currently using a 3rd party one which has lasted about a year give or take but will need replacement soon too.
Really not what I'd call smooth sailing.
Cod3rror - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Disappointed with the lack of microSD and 4GB of RAM. Was also hoping for USB Type-C connector, but I guess it was a bit unrealistic to expect it this early.Anybody know if BCM4773 GNSS chip has been confinrimed in Exynos 7420? It apparently supports all four major GNSS constellations (GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo) and reduces power consumption by 80% compared to current solutions.
nerd1 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
So no micro SD slot, no swappable battery, no 4K video, no waterproof, no USB 3.0.Form over function in every ways compared to GS5. It's a sad day.
KPOM - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
This definitely looks like the phone that the Galaxy S5 should have been. Samsung focused on what mattered, rather than filling a spec sheet or loading it up with bloatware. I'm not sure what the real world usage case is for the Edge yet, but the base model is impressive.Magichands8 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I hope the improved display doesn't have the same burn-in issues as the Note 3. I've been pretty disappointed with Samsung's OLED screen and will be waiting for confirmation of that before taking the plunge on another Samsung. At least an OLED version.abufrejoval - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
What does that look like for you? Where do you notice? How many hours per day is the screen on in your case?I used to be a little worried about the limited life time of OLED screens and the burn in effects I've seen on plasma and even some old LCD screens. My very first Galaxy S started to have the lower 80% of the screen at a lower brightness after I had passed it on to a son of mine, who knocked it around quite a bit, but my Note 1 and my Note 3 never seem to have suffered any noticible change.
But then I rarely ever use them with the display turned on hour after hour, except when I use them for navigation on long trips.
Do you see ghosting on screen tests or something similar?
kmmatney - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
We still have 2 Galaxy S2 phones with noticeable dimming of the screen. Maybe they've improved this. I prefer IPS screens simply because I think colors look better. (maybe they've imporved this as well, but the Galazy S2 was pretty bad in that respect).lilmoe - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
The GS2 is a 4 year old phone... I suggest you look at Samsung's last year offering of AMOLED. Beats all IPS displays in all aspects (including color accuracy).Klug4Pres - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Samsung has followed the unibody idea, but contrived a design that isn't waterproof, doesn't have either a user-replaceable battery or a microSD card slot, has a smaller battery than its previous phone, ignores Android design guidelines by retaining hardware buttons, and still looks cheap and tacky.On the plus side, it's good to see Exynos on an improved process, and SAMOLED may not drain the battery as much as LCD screens at 1440p.
Overall, not tempted.
Klug4Pres - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Oh, and the camera seems like it might be a decent improvement.nerd1 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I absolutely hate on-screen button which eats up screen estate, less tactile and possibly leave a burn-in mark on screen.Also 1440p AMOLED have been used for Cat.6 varient of galaxy s5 with good battery life.
hlovatt - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
"Although the design seems to be somewhat inspired by other devices on the market", beautifully understated comment :)PC Perv - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Yah. Devices such as this.http://cdn.gsmarena.com/vv/reviewsimg/samsung-mwc-...
hlovatt - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
@PC Perv, From the very site that you referenced above :)"The looks of the two new Galaxy flagships are certainly an improvement Samsung's previous efforts."
markdowd84 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Any idea on the DAC being used in the S6? I really appreciated the article comparing the One M8 and S5 audio quality. Any improvement in audio quality for headphone use in the S6 would be greatly appreciated, considering the M7 sounded much better during my limited use with that phone.mirjamh - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I just unpacked the phone here and I really like the edges. its something different. http://www.samsung.com/ch/microsite/next-is-now/de...ShattaAD - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
This article failed to mention that due to this new unibody design, Samsung can no longer implement removable batteries, expandable storage(i.e. microSD cards) and water-proofing. So much for mocking Apple about wall hugging, LOOOL, seems like they're the ones late to the wall hugger's party XD And no expandable storage? Well I guess there's a reason Apple didn't implement that in the first place, now Samsung finally realized the advantage of hardwired NAND over slow@ss removable storage not to mention integrated flash memory generally uses less power and are more efficient.lilo777 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
You must be an iPhone owner. That would explain how wall-hugger commercial hurt you. But the problem with iPhone goes way beyond the battery being not replaceable. iPhone has the smallest battery out there: 1810mAh for iPhone 6 vs 2550mAh for Galaxy S6. And GS6 has the first SOC manufactured with 14nm FinFET process. So keep hugging the wall. Do not worry about GS6 owners.kmmatney - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Battery size doesn't matter - it's how long it lasts in real life. I've had an LG phone for the last 1.5 years, but before that I had 4 years of iPhones. The real-life battery time was much better with my old iPhones. If I wasn't too cheap to upgrade early, I'd have switched back to iPhone by now, but as I'm cheap, I'm waiting for my contract to end. Work pays for my phone service, I just buy the phone. I do like the microSD card, but can easily live more memory on the phone itself.Mithan - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Yes I just realized the cable is USB2.0.WTF is that about! How damn stupid can you be... WOW!
You want me to copy up to 128GB of data off the card via USB 2.0? lol ok. Whatever.
lilo777 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Not more stupid than any other phone manufacturer out there, right?abufrejoval - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Stupid or not we expect Samsung to try and do better than the others, go forward not backward. There is a bandwidth constraint with USB 2, which does affect *some* use cases and that I've long wished to be eliminated.But I'll be the first to admit, that having a USB 3 connect which doesn't deliver any advantage whatsover in terms of bandwidth (like the one on my Note 3) only makes for a bigger hole, right where I often have a finger while holding it one-handed.
I've been very disappointed at the unavailablilty of a USB 3 docking station for the Notes.
jwcalla - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
I was interested in buying this but now that I see the design I'm out. lol. Glass on the back? For real?lilo777 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
This does sound fishy. But at least it's a new Gorilla Glass 4. We'll see if this one fares any better than whatever Apple used for iPhone 4.bleh0 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Let's see.No MicroSD and expecting me to transfer loads of files over USB 2.0? Ha ha ha. No
Glass back? So my screen and the back can crack at the same time when I drop it.
Don't really want the M9 so I guess I'll wait for whatever the G4 has to offer.
lilo777 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
You can knock down GS6. Alternatively you can look at it this way: Samsung is the only company that used USB 3.0 in their phone (I might have overlooked something but I have never heard of any other phones using USB 3.0). So enjoy your Samsung phone. Even without USB 3 it is still by far the most advanced phone on the market.ws3 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Or you can knock down lilo the Samsung shill... After years of knocking the iPhone for lack of SD slot and lack of removable battery, now none of that matters on the Galaxy S6. LOL.lilo777 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Samsung's flagship phone (Note 4) still has both. Regardless, my post was about USB 3.0 not the decision to get rid of SD slot and replaceable battery but apparently me pointing out iPhone deficiencies hurt you too much to pass this one out. Even without memory card (which I use) and replaceable battery (which I don't) GS6 is still way more of the phone than iPhone 6: 3x RAM, 2x camera resolution, 4x screen resolution, 2x video recording resolution, 2x simultaneous on screen applications. It's rather surprising that these phones are even being compared sometimes. There is no comparison there. They are in completely different categories.ws3 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
You forgot to mention that the Note also has more widzkits and twice the fizbils.That's a lot more stuff than the iPhone.
solipsism - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
That would be fine if the inclusion of USB 3.0 had been a good one for the S5. As it turns out, it wasn't, which is why it's not unexpected that Samsung has dumped it for saner features and specs. They still aren't there, but they are getting better. Hopefully this isn't a one-time trend for them.Alexey291 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
What are those saner features?Did waterproofing get dropped for saner features too?
Alexey291 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
P.S. S6 is literally a downgrade in everything bar HW specs compared to the S5.And in 2015 I'm struggling really hard to give a damn about hardware specs on phones... Since the general performance has been "good enough" for the last 2 years or so.
serendip - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
So they came up with a unibody design that leaves out water- and dust proofing, a removable battery and microSD slot for what exactly? Perceived durability? That stupid glass back will shatter instantly when the phone hits pavement.Here's hoping sane Samsung engineers won't change the Note 5 as drastically.
lilo777 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Unfortunately engineering departments have to do what marketing departments tell them to. And when most publications (including AT, unfortunately) year after year publish in my opinion ridiculous reviews praising "premium" materials in other phones (despite them having all sorts of issues: antennagates, bendgates etc. with zero advantages) Samsung had to respond. Being a diverse company let's hope that they will still have a model with real premium materials (i.e. plastic back)Hairs_ - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
QHD screen for extra battery drain, smaller battery, pointless aping of iphone 6's side curves and 5's shatterable glass back, loss of sd card and removable battery... what am I supposed to like about this new phone?lilo777 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
You do not know anything about "extra battery drain" yet. We'll see. iPhone 6 side curves were nothing new. Tons of phones (including ones from Samsung) used similar shape before. Those are fine. I agree about SD card and removable battery. I do not replace battery myself but with phone features reaching maturity in general people will keep their phones longer (including the resale path) and replaceable battery is a good thing. The glass back... Well Samsung had to go with so called "premium" materials which for uneducated crowd means either aluminum or glass. It looks like Samsung chose the lesser of two evils - at least this one allowed them to implement wireless charging.Kvaern2 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Entertain the thought that maybe most people in the premium segment prefer the look and feel of metal/glass over plastic regardless of whatever chemical, or other, superiorities it possesses.Wade_Jensen - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
So will or won't this support A4WP's Rezence standard coming this year? I'm confused... I'd rather not buy a phone until its supported.lilo777 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Why would you want A4WP. IKEA furniture and lams only support Qi :-)Wade_Jensen - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Because Qi doesnt support multiple devices at once on the same pad.abufrejoval - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
The good thing about Samsung is that they typically offer choices: One single device cannot make everyone happy!So I am urgently hoping, that for the Note variant (which I'm typically using, because I like the bigger size), they will stick with plastic, removable batteries, potentially an SDcard slot, real USB 3 and ideally DP or HDMI on a real USB 3 docking station and full open source driver support for that external display.
For me these devices are PCs, that's personal computers with a big emphasis on *personal* meaning choice and full authority to the owner not the manufacturer.
At 64-Bit, >2GHz, 128GB of SSD class storage and 4-8GB of RAM, they certainly even qualify as a personal workstation, so please Samsung (or anyone) start offering such a device.
I don't need the S6 to be that device, I just hope Samsung sells so many of them to those who cherish "unibody" and glass over "survives minor mishaps and plain works" that they can also produce that personal workstation out of very much the same ingredients they have in stock.
I'm still missing the type of USB3 or "wireless PCIe" class connectivity to a charging docking pad which I keep dreaming about, which offers external screens, gigabit networking, CIFS/NFS/iSCSI or even USB 3 storage and potentially some noiseless cooling so the phablet form factor PC can clock to 3 GHz for a moment, when doing some really strenuous work.
There is probably very few phone applications out there, which can keep a 2GHz high performance quad core CPU with a matching GPU busy, except 3D games, but quite a few desktop ones, who might get a lot closer.
So since the hardware capabilities are finally there: Why not simply allow using these personal workstations as such by enabling a full Linux desktop inside a container launching and operating much like a game under Android with switching forth and back?
And while you're at it why not even more than one to segregate enterprise and private or other use cases? The tech, the hardware, hypervisor support even and the software are all there!
I want a personal workstation, that fits into my pocket, can be operated like a smartphone or phablet, but switches to full workstation mode, when put on a magic pad, which is really a docking station that doesn't require docking but uses ultra-short distance (millimeters) and ultra high bandwidth (gigabtes/sec) communications to display, storage and network.
It should "dock" in the office, in meeting rooms or lounges, at home wherever I sit down to do 5, 15 or 50 minutes of 'whatever' and connet to screens and networks in a manner appropriate to the context.
What's so difficult about that, that you haven't gotten it done for the last five years?
Get it done, please Samsung (or anyone!)!
sharath.naik - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Am I wrong in seeing that the back is not all metal, if it is not all metal then what is the exact logic of dropping removable battery? And I did not see waterproofing so what was the point of losing external sdcard? All this achieved is1. Sub par look.
2 Smaller battery capacity
3. Lack of expandability.
4. Slower USB
Only positives
1. Better camera.
2. Better finger print reader.
.. I would have preferred Samsung just add the processor, camera, USB type c and finger print scanner to s5 and released it as s5+. This should not be difficult for Samsung as it already release multiple models, so why loose a large section of customers who stuck with galaxy line for the expandability.
Maxpower2727 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
The back is Gorilla Glass 4. Did you read the article? Or any of the other comments?sharath.naik - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Did i say the back is plastic or not glass? I donot think you read my comment.ruzveh - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
There are few doubts and improvements which samsung made and obv many areas where they dint cope or did badly..1. Smaller Battery - not good
2. Removable battery option - v bad
3. Why no HiFi DAC? - too bad.. i m still carying my mp3 player for this
4. DDR4 vs DDR3 - i think major improvement comes in the form of 128gb DDR4 and not DD3 option. And not because of some processor or graphics..
5. No FM - why?
6. No mention of IR Blaster? - is it there?
7. No mention of Water & Dust resistance - is it there?
8. Same old design language - m bored...
9. No microsd - no matter what this is a must
10. Sony camera - i thought s5 samsung inhouse camera is better , wish it cud hav OIS with it
factual - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
The history of modern smartphones:Apple invents the original iphone which revolutionizes the electronics industry and creates a whole new category of devices.
Samsung creates a cheap plastic copy of the iphone!
Samsung gains a significant amount of market share in the smartphone industry by offering a cheaper imitation of the iphone.
Apple introduces touch id, a fingerprint sensor that works extremely well and is very easy to use.
Samsung copies Apple by adding a fingerprint sensor to their smartphones! but it’s a swipe type sensor and doesn’t work well at all!
Apple introduces Apple Pay, a revolutionary mobile payment system that works in conjunction with touch id.
A lot of customers who had purchased Samsung phones for being more affordable, switch back to iphone in flocks after experiencing the horror that’s Samsung’s cheap design and laggy touchwiz bloatware! Samsung starts losing marketshare to Apple in the high-end of the market and its profits decline by over 60%!
Samsung resorts to copying material design of iphone 4 and shape of iphone 6 to try to offer a more premium looking copy of the iphone. it shamelessly copies the touch id and Apple Pay, calling it "Samsung Pay" !!!
The saga continues …
lilo777 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
I understand how the history might look this way from Cupertino but this is not how this all transpired in reality. The first smartphones were invented by NTT Docomo (Japan). Later Nokia, HTC, Blackberry and Samsung joined the trend and contributed a lot. Almost a decade later Apple released their first smartphone. The only big difference there was the use of a capacitive screen (although LG released first smart phone with capacitive screen a few weeks before Apple) Apple did not invent capacitive screen.All "cheap" Samsung" phones (speaking about Galaxy S series) were more expensive to make and used more expensive components than contemporary iPhones (iPhone's Bill Of Materials has always been the lowest among the flagship smart phones). First iPhones were plastic too.
It was not Apple that introduced fingerprint sensor. It was Motorola. Apple bought a company that made he sensors that worked "extremely well". Before that many companies used the same sensors.
Google introduced Google Wallet (available on Samsung phones). Apple copied it.
Samsung introduced a lot of things later copied by Apple. Here are a few examples: smart phone, 3G phone, LTE phone, phablet, barometer, sensor hub (to look different Apple called their differently - motion coprocessor but it's the same thing that was introduced first by Samsung), full HD screen, QHD screen (well Samsung might not have been the first among Android phone manufacturers but definitely way ahead of Apple which still does not have a QHD phone), Samsung popularized 8MP camera and Apple followed suit, fist phone with USB 3.0 etc. The list is too long. Apple rarely invents anything. They do popularize some things (thanks in part to rabid following) but that's about it.
factual - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
My account of the history of the modern smartphone was precise and factual while your version mostly looks like fantasies of a fanboi!The first smartphone was actually introduced by IBM not NTT Docomo! but there is no doubt that the modern smartphone, i.e. the multitouch rectangular slab we call a smartphone today, was invented by Apple.
Anyone who understands technology knows that modern smartphones are not called "smartphones" because they have capacitive touch screens or round corners! The full featured mobile OS and its multi-touch UI, e.g. slide to unlock, pinch to zoom, double tap to zoom, rubber-band feature, swipe to scroll, mobile browser, concept of an app store, etc. are what constitute modern smartphones and they were invented through the original iphone and its subsequent iterations.
Apple introduced the first touch-based fingerprint scanner (the only kind that works well) in phones and Samsung is now copying it (business as usual). It's really ignorant to claim that the failure called Google Wallet has anything to do with Apple Pay! Apple Pay introduced local encrypted storage of credit card info, payment through secure tokenization and Touch-based sensors and that's what made it hugely successful and that's why Samsung is copying the exact same methods for "Samsung Pay" (they even shamelessly copied the name!!!)
The problem is that people who defend Samsung are usually ignorant and don't understand the underlying technology behind smartphones yet they think they know a lot and loudly comment about it! it's laughable to claim that chip technologies such as 3G, LTE, sensor hub, etc. that are developed by companies such as Qualcomm and Infineon and sold to device makers are somehow innovations by the device makers ... I mean you gotta be pretty clueless to claim that!
medi03 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Pitch to zoom was there back in 90th, on multi-touch tablets,It is basically an obvious thing to do once you have a multi touch screen.
AnnonymousCoward - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
So....can anyone explain what the fundamental point of the Edge model is?lilo777 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Sleek design.PC Perv - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Dear AnandTech:Please, please, please do not let this guy write Galaxy S6 review. Or any other important Android device review. This dude is a twisted individual with truly bad judgments (and obvious biases), lacks competence (e.g. Nexus 9 review), and unable to write. I don't care how deep his technical knowledge is (if he has one) - he just cannot write coherently. This dude should be limited to writing obscure stuff or Apple stuff, together with Brandon Chester.
If you fee like I am attacking him unfairly, ask other AT editors in confidence. Ask what they think of his writing. (and Brandon Chester as well) By letting him writing important reviews, you not only lose readership but you lose opportunities to leave those landmark reviews that AnandTech is known for.
Maxpower2727 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Your own comment is filled with incorrect punctuation and grammatical errors. I hope the irony isn't lost on you.PC Perv - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
There is no irony. I wrote in a comment section, from a mobile device. And I am not talking about grammatical errors when I talk about flaws of Joshua Ho's writing.arsjum - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
While I do not have anything against other writers here, Andrei should be the one reviewing it.texasti89 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
I do not get why people are still complaining about MicroSD and Removable battery. It is been years since the last time I used these two outdated features. It is 2015 people; modern batteries lifetime and charging time have considerably improved. We can almost have a day-long of intensive use without charging. I admire Samsung for all the technologies they develop, build, and offer to the industry. The use of 14nm is a huge announcement. I did not expect they would get this one right before the end of the year, but somehow they did. Besides DDR4, SSD, QHD S-AMOLED display, UFS2, and out of the box wireless charging. I think the new device is great. I hope they price it right.lilo777 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Removable battery: smart phones nowadays can easily last 4 years. Battery life starts degrading after two years. Being able to replace a battery for a dozen bucks is a nice feature.You can buy 128GB MicroSD card and then transfer it from your current phone to the next one. This way, not only do you save money by buying models with smaller memory, you also transfer all your music/pictures to a new phones in 2 minutes (as opposed to 2 weeks via USB/Lighting cable - slight exaggeration but yo got the point)
So, maybe not such a big deal but still a bonus. Also, consider the fact that the argument against these features has to do with the benefits of unibody design which as has been proved by antennagate and bendgate are just a fiction. Add the wireless charging to this list too (plastic back helps)
danbi - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Batteries are easily replaceable by opening the device and replacing the device. No battery is ever soldered on those devices, they just don't waste space on 'hotswap' hardware. The replaceable battery kit, including all the required tools for an iPhone costs around $10. It is trivial job to replace it, in few minutes.Considering, that you need to do this according to you every two years (my iPhone 4S still runs off it's original battery, with very heavy use) -- this is not a big deal at all. Even if you need to ask someone else to do it for you.
JohnUSA - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
I will NOT upgrade my S5 to this new S6.No microSD card and no replaceable battery.
These 2 very important missing features are the kiss of death.
Bye bye Samsung, you lost me as a customer.
sonicmerlin - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Why can't the iPhone have green and blue colors? I've gotten tired of the same old white and black. And the gold doesn't even extend to the sides or the bezels, so from the front it looks white.Peichen - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
The most iPhone Galaxy S yet.True Tone flash, Touch ID, NanoSIM, ApplePay, physical home button, sealed battery, no MicroSD, audio jack at bottom, 2 rows drilled speaker grills, all rounded corners, no bloat and UI copied from iOS. Move the Samsung logo to the back and no one can tell it is a knockoff.
lilo777 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
All valid points. But then look at how much iPhone borrowed from Galaxy S phones:* dual core CPU (aka Galaxy S2, circa 2011)
* [almost] Full HD screen
* barometer
* co-processor
* LTE
* NFC
* Google Play
* Notification center
* Widgets
* Gorilla Glass 3 (a year after Samsung started using it)
* All rounded corners (borrowing from the design language of ATIV S Neo, 2013)
darklight69 - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Sorry buddy, but Samsung didn't invent most of the items on your list. LTE, NFC, all come from Industry consortiums. And when the first LTE phones came out, their battery life was unacceptably short.And Gorilla glass was originally used by the first iPhone from which everyone else then copied. Google Play came a year after the iOS App Store so don't even know why you're mentioning it (its a Google feature comparable to the App store/iTunes, nothing more), guess you're desperate to expand your feature list!
Fanbois like you lack engineering knowledge (electronic or software) and so think the longer the spec sheet, the better the device. This is demonstrably false. Eg: The first phone with fingerprint sensor was the Motorola Atrix. Worked like crap with an extremely low success rate and usually failed completely after a mere 6 months due to grime and oil polluting the sensor. No review of the fingerprint sensor in the S5 rated it much better since it was still a flaky swipe sensor, Samsung was just desperate to match Apple as quickly as possible.
You mention being first with dual core, yet don't mention those cores were ARMv7 ISA and Android apps at the time did not make use of it since few were multi-threaded. Pointless! All Samsung's processors are generic ARM reference designs upon which it runs a generic OS (Android) and then adds a layer bloat on top called Touchwiz. Hence, they're not optimised to the maximum extent possible (unlike say A8/iOS8 where for example camera control via the Image signal processor is directly in silicon rather than software, enabling the iPhone to focus faster than its competitors). To make up for the non-optimisation, they bump up the clock speed and stick a bigger battery in to compensate.
The things that interest me are not worthless specs but how the device functions. And whether those functions are useful to me.
Death - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Wait, so the colors of the S6 are white, gold, blue and black? :)Vehe - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
I could point more than ten flaws but I'll just mention thee:1: no microSD?? Yeah, let me just fill the phone up with important data to lose it all when the phone dies or breaks, just like it happened with my Galaxy s2. Way to go Sammy! Where do I apply for a job? It looks like whoever is running Samsung is actually working for the opposition.
3: No Hi-Fi DAC. Buy a phone worth an arm and a leg just to find out it sounds like a cheap $5 Chinese MP3 player. ***Cough***Galaxy s2***
2: Samsung has been in bed with the NSA since the Galaxy s4. Well Sammy, no more Samsung ever for me or anyone remotely awake I hope. Stick your Smartphones and Spying TVs were the Sun doesn't shine.
SydneyBlue120d - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Hi, I have some questions because I'd like to preorder the phone:- What about HEVC encoding? Does the rear camera support at least 1080p60 o 2160p30 mode in HEVC format (and maybe using IOS)?
- What about modem? Is it Samsung made? What are it's specs and differences against Qualcomm X12 LTE?
- Display accuracy seems to be bad again based on François Simond anlysis https://plus.google.com/+supercurioFran%C3%A7oisSi... , can You do a deeper test?
- Same for audio reproduction, so that even a S4 seems to be better:
https://plus.google.com/109625418534467664286/post...
Thanks a lot.
TrojMacReady - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
He says he measured at 100% brightness, but shouldn't he of all people know that the latest AMOLED panels adjust gamma curves at 100% brightness to give a better outdoor viewing experience? Not at all representative for indoor/normal usage where 100% is way too bright anyway. I'd be more interested in the gamma curve at say 50% brightness...SilthDraeth - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Does this mean that Samsung is done using Qualcom Snapdragons, and sticking to Exynos here on out?Bigryan - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Went from a Galaxy S3 to an iPhone 5s. Looks like Ill be going back to Samsung with the S6 Edge. Beautiful phone and the screen will be the best, you just know it.ws3 - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Oh stop!You're so shilly!
hussain92 - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
What i don't like is the glass on the back. I mean whats the point of that.....the glass will have fingerprints every time we would use the phone and afterwards cleaning it every time (same as Nexus 4)danbi - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
The point is to sell you scratch protectors. When those wear, you put a new one :)boslink - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
I cant believe. I read a ton of pre-reviews and nobody is saying its WRONG not to include support for Micro SD card.I just dont buy phones that dont have it and i know a ton of people like I am.
And please - dont even think of offering me could as "solution"
We all know what happened with iCould and personal pictures of all those lovely ladies experimenting with phone and mirror.
darklight69 - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
The so-called iCloud 'hacks' were phishing attacks which apparently a lot of those celebrities fell for.Apple was remiss in allowing unlimited login attempts and not implementing 2 factor authentication, both of which are now rectified. We can thank the naughty celebs for bringing these deficiencies to Apple's attention :-)
jmunjr - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Did I miss it or did you really just write an article about a smart phone and not find out if the battery can be replaced. This is an important to a lot of users. I hope Samsung has not abandoned this critical feature for so many.jmunjr - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
I did a search and CNET gave me the info. No replaceable battery or media slot in the S6. I hate this so much.SeloWhey - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
people are saying that they're not going to buy a s6 is literally nothing for samsung, for me it's ok to not to have a removable battery and micro sd since 32gb is enough and galaxy line flagships offering Brutal battery life, peoples in here whose not going to buy these phones are like drop in a bucket a very big bucket actually, it means nothing for Samsung, most people not going to complain about lack of sd or removable battery they'll look at design and speed of it cuz not everyone is a techmania like us in here, the real goal of this products are the mainstream users so go buy an htc or stupid lg phone if you like sdws3 - Thursday, March 5, 2015 - link
And if you don't need an SD card or a removable battery, then you can buy an iPhone right?Jyocemirth - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
terrific looks, but I'm don't like its theme.Snippermanden - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
With any luck this will be the death of their smartphone venture. I just received my Oneplus One a couple of days ago and I have really hard time understanding why anyone would buy this device for the price asked. I do understand why people buy I-devices, they do have a brand and a unique system, but a Samsung Android device??? What will this phone do that my One+ or a MOTO X couldn't do equally good - at half the price?flyingpants1 - Sunday, March 8, 2015 - link
If only OnePlus One weren't so big. 5.5" is just past some people's limits.I like the Nexus 5, I want a refresh. 5.2" in the same size body.
darkener - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
The article mentions PDAF being improved. No other sites talk about PDAF, even Samsung's own spec sheet does not mention it. Can the author provide a reference for the statement? Thanks.Gunbuster - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Yuck, I'm not with the style consensus I guess. The chrome and clinical design is not for me, looks like what GE would envision for an ultrasound device of the "future"Arbie - Thursday, March 5, 2015 - link
SD police here. I agree with boslink: no microSD, no buy. Because this is Android it might need to be a read-only media tank to avoid security issues, but that's fine. Cheap, swappable storage. Leaving it out is foolish, especially for Samsung where it was one of their selling points. And especially on such expensive phones. At least one of these is quite thick enough to have an external microSD slot. Don't tell me that "xxx GB internal storage is enough" or "everybody should stream their media". Those are fatuous replies that may fit your case but not mine, as I know by experience. These are costly devices beautifully designed to play video, and poorly designed to house it. You want a media selection you carry one of these PLUS a tablet. Even $100 phones do better.flyingpants1 - Sunday, March 8, 2015 - link
It was never one of their selling points, because almost nobody used it.Alexey291 - Sunday, March 15, 2015 - link
Sure sure "almost nobody" is literally everybody I know who owns one...SJdead - Saturday, March 7, 2015 - link
Yeah the speakers suck but I think that Samsung bets like I've seen that everyone uses headphones for calls and music. Vibrate for calls and messages. I like my cheap, durable material not drop and break.blzd - Saturday, March 7, 2015 - link
Samsung has moved from gimmicky software features to gimmicky hardware features.Koenig168 - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
The unibody design is nice but hardly worth the loss of microSD support and replaceable batteries. If Note 5 also has the same issues, my next phone upgrade will not be another Samsung.Harry_Wild - Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - link
I like the emerald color but it on the Edge model. Wish they would have it on the S6! But black looks good too; and I will buy one when Samsung releases an "unlocked" version maybe around Fall.Cannyone - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
As the owner of an S4 that only actually works 90% of the time... I find it difficult to be interested in Samsung's products. You're mileage may vary! =Poranos - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link
HTC rules this generation 100%. Samsung is falling behind.theobituary - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
The lack of a microSD slot and removable battery are deal killers for me. no not everyone can afford a data plan that allows you to stream music as much as you want. The biggest reason i like a micorSD card is this...pictures. If your S6 just up and drops dead all those family photos and videos are gone (unless you have the money and can find someone to pull the data off the phones internal memory). Yes you can back them up with dropbox or such but that is not always practical. I live in an area where some people still cant get cable internet and cant just easily backup gigs of data on wifi. The removable battery was great since you could get on ebay and buy 3x 4800mAh with external wall charger 2x USB 3 cables and a car charger for $20 which is my second point...my daughter's S5 was bought for x-mas and the charging port just quit working...tested my charger with it and her battery in mine both are fine so the port (which shows no visible signs of damage) has failed. Quick easy fix was the batteries i mentions from ebay or wireless charging. Both work and only take a few days to receive whereas if i send the phone back she would be without it for how long? likely weeks and may not get the same phone back which mean all her pictures and such would possibly have been lost. It seems to me Samsung has given in to the critic that complain about plastic back and how a phone "feels". This is also a bunch of garbage to me as i dont hink i know anyone that buys a $600+ phone that don't put a otterbox or other case on it anyway. kinda defeats the whole BS about how the phone "feels" anyway really. I buy a phone based on 3 things...cost...specs..and the removable battery/microSD card. thats about it. sure i could buy the tools to replace the battery but then i have the cost of the tool in addition to the cost of a replacement battery and as someone who has an s3 that was ran over by a car and shattered the front glass i can tell you it will take a lot longer to rip the phone apart and repair it that to pop of the plastic back and swap out a battery. As a note to durability and plasitc phones components...the S3 that was ran over and repaired...thanks to the case the only thing other than the glass that was "broken" was a small crack in the plastic near the volume buttons...phone work fine other than the proximity sensor having a crack directly over it triggering the screen to go black as soon and you called someone...in fact im pretty much positive if it had been laying face down on a pavement surface rather then the gravel it was on that the the screen may have not shattered at all. Hopefully by the time my S5 is needing replaced the S7 will have corrected this stupid "bowing to the critics" issue.theobituary - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
sorry for the typing errors i am a 3rd shifter and have been up way too long and wanted to post this before i went to bed...i usually type a bit better...meaning i correct the massive amount of typos i make :)lexluthermiester - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
No MicroSD? No user replaceable battery? No Thank You! Samsung, this is NOT the direction you want to go!.: Guyver :. - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
what is difference between T-760 MP6 and T-760 MP8 ? ( except Number of cores and Maximum Frequency )what is T-760 MP8 lithography ? is it 14nm or 28nm