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  • cknobman - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Higher resolution screen.
    More RAM
    Smaller non removable battery

    I'm scared to see the battery life benchmarks.

    For me the performance does not seem that great. Its OK but not class leading necessarily.

    Battery degradation is my main concern. My wifes S5 battery was so bad after 1.5 years it would not last 3 hours. At least with the S5 we could easily buy a replacement and get her phone back to lasting a day without a charge.

    This new S6 means users will be screwed when the battery goes bad.
  • cknobman - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I meantt S4 for my wifes phone, sorry typo.
  • blanarahul - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Impressed so far. But like you said I am worried about battery life. Samsung has usually done well in this regard but I am still quite skeptical. After all, the best SoC and display are useless if the phone doesn't last even 1 day of moderate use 1 year down the line. We really need more companies to follow THL, Motorola's lead and put very large batteries in phones.
  • lilmoe - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    People need to put into account that Android 5.0.x is significantly worst in battery life than 4.4.x. It's only being fixed in 5.1.
    They'll have to do another battery test for the GS5 with the Lollipop update then compare it to the GS6.

    That said, I'm hearing that Nexus devices are getting anywhere between 20-50% more battery life with 5.1 with different use cases. So I believe it's save to assume that the GS6 will get better in a couple of months when it gets the update.
  • robertkoa - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Honestly I doubt if the Physics and heat created ( wasted energy) by all the Pixels will be overcome by Software.
    And we haven't seen the real world on a Network usage reports from users yet which are always lower SOTs than web scripts and Tests.
    It's thin and beautiful and a little underpowered like Alpha was...
    Some of us need thicker Note-like 8mm thick devices but in various screen sizes like Note 5 and Note 5 Compact.

    To me 8mm can still be beautiful especially with a 4.7" screen and 3000 Mah Battery.
    No miracles at 6.7mm or 6.8mm thin AND the Camera is protruding too far IMO ...fragile.
    Still Samsung did extremely well on these and will sell huge and if the Camera is great I may even get one lol.
  • lilmoe - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    I'm not one of the supporters of unnecessarily huge resolutions on screens that small. The GS6's hardware as a whole is faster and more power efficient than the GS5, but yes, i believe it would have been even faster, more fluid and more power efficient if they stuck with 1080p on that higher quality, more power efficient panel.

    That said, it's undeniable that software plays a huge role in battery life. That's a fact. So, i believe we need to be fair in our comparisons.
  • blue_urban_sky - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    It just struck me and I'm probably wrong but if you have a brightness level / area then the power requirement is separate to the number of pixels you have. The difference then would be the power to drive the computing needed put things on the display and that would be effected by software.
  • gyrocoptic - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    You are not wrong. For some reason people seem to believe that 100 x 10W light bulbs use more power than 10 x 100W light bulbs. The S6 display is actually more energy efficient than the S5 display at the same brightness. The only battery concern would be that the GPU has to render a higher resolution image if, and only if, a game supports 2k resolution AND at the same frame rate. This is a highly unlikely scenario. In normal use the S6 will provide the best display ever seen on a smartphone at a power consumption equal to or less than that of the S5.
  • lilmoe - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    This perception that only games rendered at 1440p affect performance and battery life is very far from the truth. Even the simplest things as text and UI rendering at unnecessarily high resolutions have a dramatic effect, not to mention Web browsing.
    To make it short, take a look at the Dell XPS 13 review and look at the dramatic difference in battery life between both SKUs. Smartphones are basically computers with GSM modems. I don't see how the same won't apply.
    The GPU is NOT the only part doing extra work, the platform as a whole takes quite a significant hit.
  • jospoortvliet - Sunday, March 29, 2015 - link

    With LCD higher resolutions make it harder to reach the same brightness due to more circuitry blocking light. This harms the DELL XPS 13. I am not sure if this is the case with amoled - it has no backlight but pixels give light by themselves. It might very well not Make a difference so the battery impact will be far less than on LCD.
  • Bluetooth - Sunday, March 29, 2015 - link

    Actually the battery and memory leaks have not been fixed in 5.1 (http://www.androidstandard.com/android-5-1_r3-chan... Hopefully they will be fixed soon or before the one year release birthday of Lollipop.
  • Kidster3001 - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link

    I got 4 to 5 days of battery life on Nexus 6 with 5.0.1. It dropped to 1 day if I left wifi on all the time. With 5.1 I don't see much difference.
  • Frenetic Pony - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Impressed? The CPU benchmarks aren't any big thing over the S5, the screen (as has been stated many times) has a useless resolution upgrade, the phone has lost the removable battery and SD card slot, and if you wanted a unibody design odds are you bought a G3/M8/Iphone a while ago and are happy with it.

    This phone seems like a step sideways with no new features to speak of, then again so does the HTC M9.
  • robertkoa - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    You have a point in terms of raw specs...
    If you took an S5 with 3 Gigs of faster RAM and streamlined Touchwiz- you might be here i Benchmarks but....
    In the Future I' d like to see scaleable screen Res. So you could go from 1080p to 2 HD in Settings depending on needs....
  • josephnero - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    and also it isn't waterproof anymore.check these battery resaults
    http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s6-review-1...

    http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z3-review-1140...
  • wolrah - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    How in the world is it that bad? My S4 is closing in on two years old and still easily gets me through an entire day most days. I'm not running any silly battery life hacks, all radios are fully enabled all the time and the only "Battery Saver" functionality I use is the Lollipop standard one that prompts at 15% charge. I unplug at around 9 AM when I head down to my office and my phone generally doesn't see power again until I go to bed unless I need to drive to a customer site, in which case it gets a mere 500mA "USB" charge from my car that isn't even enough to maintain charge while using GPS.

    As much as I theoretically love the idea of a replaceable battery, I've had it on my last three phones and never actually used the capability. Expandable memory on the other hand I've used on every single phone I've ever had, so that's my big problem with the S6. Until we see phones where 128GB is the small storage option I won't give up on the MicroSD slot.
  • bernstein - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    easy. battery wear fluctuates wildly, at least when measuring after >600 rechcharge cycles. his obviously is eol, while you got lucky... fyi i have not seen many smartphone batteries last more than three years, since people tend to sell/hand-down older flagship phones battery replacements on those are fairly common. a bit more expensive with non-removal batteries but even at $90 its still a bargain to freshen up a two year old flagship...
  • theduckofdeath - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    When I sold my 1½ year old S4 I couldn't tell the difference in battery life from when it was new. You're one of those typical trolls by any chance, who's actually never held a Samsung phone? The fact that you clearly had were so eager to get firsties with this comment makes me pretty suspicious. Prepared FUD?
  • theduckofdeath - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Sorry, not "you", the OP... :D
  • cknobman - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    LOL "mine works fine therefore you're a liar!!"

    Love that line of immature rationality. Yes we actually own Samsung devices (GS3, GS4) and yes the batteries do go bad.

    Apparently you have no clue how Lithium-ion battery technology works. Go look it up and do some research before you blindly call people trolls.
  • makxon - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Bullshit! lying troll bastard, 600 cycles is more like 3 years of use and typically only drop at 90%. even my sister's acer midrange phone from 2013 battery still work normaly no noticable battery drop and never once managed at service center.
  • sonny73n - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Anandtech please ban this foul mouth (possible a Samsung fanboy/paid shill too)

    By the way, Li-ion battery has about 300 to 500 charge/discharge cycles. If you play graphic intense games like Need For Speed or CoD Zombies 3-4 hours a day like I do, the battery will only last for about a year. So when he said his battery died after a year and a half could be very possible.

    Some people don't use their phones much. Others completely drain their batteries at least once a day, even leave phones in their cars in hot summer. More usage -> more charging + heat = shorten battery life. It's completely understandable.
  • Jedi2155 - Sunday, March 29, 2015 - link

    600 cycles can be done easily in a year as sonny73n said. My Note 4 regularly goes through 2 cycles a day (streaming twitch at work) or playing games if you use your device intensively.

    600 cycles isn't so bad though if you keep in between 20-80% SOC as I do. Its only if you keep it close to 100% SOC that it really only last 300-500 cycles. If you keep it away from being fully charge it can last a very long time.

    My Note 2 is still on its original battery with no perceptible loss of capacity even after 2.5 years. I probably put well over a 1000 cycles on it. Of course if I measured it I'd bet I loss no more than 20-30%.
  • Gigaplex - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    My S4 battery needed replacing after 3 months of usage as it had short battery life, bulged a lot and got very warm. The S4 has a pretty bad reputation for a bad batch of batteries.
  • josephnero - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Check Z3 and you will see how is that bad
  • Flunk - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I'm sure you can still get a new battery, it just means that you'll need a technician to install it (assuming you can't do it yourself).
  • III-V - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I fix phones for a living, and I can say that pretty much all batteries are removable in phones. Most of them are fairly easy if you know what you're doing, although a heat gun can help, as long as you don't cook anything (which is really easy to do if you're inexperienced).

    I think I've only seen soldered connectors on tablets. However, there's a few dumb designs where you have to remove the LCD to get to the battery (which in most cases means you'll need to replace the LCD as well).

    My concern is that if the S6 is built like the "water-resistant" S5 is, in that you cannot access the internal components (other than the battery) without taking off the LCD, then you're in for a very expensive battery replacement. Samsung likes to adhere their LCDs like crazy, and they're very difficult to remove without damaging them. They're also 2-3x the price of everyone else's LCDs. You'd be looking at basically $200 to replace a battery yourself, and although that cost will probably come down to around $150 after things settle a bit, it's still not a pretty picture. Oh, and that's the cost to do it yourself. Most other phones have batteries available for $10-20.
  • III-V - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Just checked a teardown -- it doesn't look like you have to go through the LCD to change the battery. You do need a hairdryer or heat gun, though.
  • hrrmph - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    It used to be with Samsung that you could "pop the back off and pop a new battery in."

    With this debacle of a phone, Samsung has just given away one of it's main distinguishing features. All to emulate Apple's "jewelry first, functionality later" approach.

    We already have enough manufacturers making jewelry. The last thing we needed was to lose a good hardware feature oriented manufacturer like Samsung to the vagaries of fashion.
  • SirMaster - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    How are they screwed?

    According to this people with iPhones are screwed too. But it's not that hard to remove 3 screws to change out the battery...
  • JeffFlanagan - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Having to unscrew something isn't a problem for most of us, but it's more likely to be a situation where you have to heat the phone and pry it apart, which I'd be hesitant to do. Of course upgrading phones every year solves this problem, and all I really need is three hours of battery life since I have power at home, at my office, and in my car.
  • sleepeeg3 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    You have to heat the phone to pry it apart and several other things. It's a major ordeal.
    http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/03/galaxy-s6-teardow...
  • Poik - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    You haven't seen the S6 teardowns have you? There's no screws just hidden fasteners and a shit ton of glue. I don't know about the new iPhone6 and 6+ but by comparison an older iPhone is very simple with those 3 screws.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Non-removable battery and lack of SD are deal-killers, unfortunately. The integrated wireless charging is wonderful, but being forced into a service contract just so I can get a new battery in a year is not happening. My S3 has seen two battery replacements in its lifetime. If not for the option to install a Qi charger, my buggy USB charging port would have killed it as well. As for the missing SD slot... just no.

    Oh well, a used S5 will be a decent upgrade when it comes time.
  • hrrmph - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    My thinking exactly. This S6 is so bad that when it comes time to upgrade, the S5 might be the logical choice.
  • Novacius - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Displaymate already tested the display of the S6. It needs 20% LESS power at the same brightness than the S5's display, despite it's higher resolution. I think it's awesome.
  • Novacius - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    The SoC should also be much more efficient (14nm) and they use LPDDR4 now, which uses lower voltages. I'm not very concernced with battery life.
  • Thermogenic - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    My understanding is that Samsung's 14nm is not comparable to Intel's 14nm. It should still be better than what they were doing, but not quite as impressive as Broadwell's gains were/are on the PC side of the house.
  • Novacius - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    You're right, but it's still better than every other ARM chip at the moment in terms of production process. And it's also pretty close to Intel I guess. Compared to Samsung's 20nm Exynos 5433, the GPU now needs up to 300mV less. That's HUGE.
  • Azurael - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Maybe, but every past Samsung SoC has run far hotter than comparables from other manufacturers, so I'll believe it when I see it.
  • Novacius - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    At the moment Qualcomm seems to have much bigger problems with S805 and S810. The S810 is throttling so much that it's GPU is just 15% faster than S801 (!) when running for a long time period.
  • Guest8 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    No Samsung 14nm is more like 20nm with fins. Same with TSM 16nm.
  • Novacius - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    It's not that easy. They didn't just added FinFets and called it 14/16nm, there are other improvements, too. The density is higher for example, which wouldn't be the case if they only added fins. In my honest opinion, Samsung's 14nm process isn't too far away from Intel's.
  • Guest8 - Monday, March 30, 2015 - link

    Actually it is. It's denser because it is meant for a lower TDP. You will never see a 4 ghz version of this AP. If you do some searching you will see the characteristics for Samsung 14nm is very similar to 22nm Intel. Samsung only beat Intel to market in terms of naming convention ;-)
  • theduckofdeath - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    It has the power efficiency advantages of 14nm, just not the density.
  • FlyBri - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Yea, the removal of a user replaceable battery has definitely been disappointing, but I'm going to wager a guess and say that Samsung will keep that feature in it's Note line and push users to a Note if they want/need a user replaceable battery.
  • hrrmph - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    That's fine for the phablet market, but this S6 marks Samsung exiting the true high-end market and bringing themselves down to the upper-middle of the market, which is where the iPhone has lived its entire life. I guess Samsung is giving up on the premium high-end phone market just like they gave up on the premium high-end mini-phone market.

    A lot of people still want premium high-end 5" phones and 4.5" mini-phones. So who will make flagships in those size ranges with removable batteries, Micro-SD slots, and Dual-SIMs?

    The S5 DUOS may have been the last of its breed. If the manufacturers keep going cheap like they have lately and removing important features, then there may not be a premium high-end manufacturer to serve that market.
  • Morawka - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    no they wont be screwed, they'll just have to take it into a service center and pay $99 and get it replaced. Just like any other sealed phone.
  • Morawka - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    regarding battery life.. yeah they added more screen and ram but you guys seem to be forgetting this uses 14nm.. leaps and bounds ahead of last years model when it comes to power consumption efficiency.
  • ASEdouardD - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    GPU performance would be class leading if Samsung didn't insist on 1440p displays, which are performance eaters. That's why the iPhone 6 and the M9 beat it in GPU tests. And CPU benchmaks are pretty much always dominated by Apple (for the last few generations anyway). For an Android phone, the cpu results are great too.
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    For most things, like games, they'll be running on a reduced resolution. You can expect high performance, then.
  • makxon - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    this! ya, a lot people just don't understand
  • melgross - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    A major problem with OLEDs which wasn't mentioned in the article, is that because of brightness issues, and yes, this display has them as well, they need that Pentile array to raise the brightness. But the Pentile display lowers resolution by about 30%. So they then need to raise resolution to make up for it. So a 1440 display isn't much sharper, in real world use, than a 1080 display.

    As far as why they don't allow that super brightness in manual use is not just because of battery use, but because of display heat. If they allow that to be used all the time, the display life, which is directly dependent on the heat generated, will be considerably shortened. It's also likely that the different colors have differing maximum brightness levels, so it can't be balanced at that high a level.

    This are problems OLED manufacturers have been having from the beginning.

    I would say that this is one of the best smartphone displays out there, but not THE best.
  • makxon - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    no need to get humble, super amoled is the best display on any smartphone period.
  • superflex - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Paid shill warning.
  • TrojMacReady - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Lots of assumptions. Yes, LED life shortens with higher temperatures, but we don't know the temperatures, nor the current life expectancy (which has improved several times over the past years). And even without auto boost, visibility is great, not in the least thanks to a relatively low reflectivity. *Without* the boost, it's still much easier to read in high ambient lighting than the HTC M9 and no worse than an iPhone 6 (Plus), if not slightly better.

    Meaning, auto boost is actually a bonus beyond that.
  • TrojMacReady - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    The GPU performance is great (class leading for phones) if you set it to your desired resolution (balance quality vs framerates) for the applications used.
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    This just requires better customer support from Samsung. They need to replace batteries that have lost significant health in less than two years.

    The other thing would be to post reminders that reducing the battery below 20% can damage it (conservatively speaking, of course.) I'd like to see them shut down the phone at 10%.
  • jbm - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Yes, especially since on my two Android phones so far (S4 / S4 mini), I had nothing but a horrible experience with battery life. By that, I mean that the battery life is WILDLY INCONSISTENT even when doing the EXACT SAME things. I do not use my phone much. I do not play games on it, I do not watch videos or listen to music. I just use it as a phone (not many calls per day, mainly SMS and checking of mails). I always have the "power saving" mode active. Still, when doing the exact same things (leaving for work at 7am, putting the phone on the desk at work, going home at 5pm), on one day the phone is still at 90% battery when I leave work (about 1% per hour), on the next day it is only at 60%. When I got my S4 mini, I tried out the battery life and got nearly 3 days out of it. Then I charged it up, and the next day it went from full to 40% in one day. How can this be possible? What madness is this? All I can guess it that some system processes just go bonkers at random (the main battery usage according to the list always is "phone in standby"). I got a second battery together with a separate battery charger, and one thing I noticed is that when I power off the phone in the morning, take out the battery and replace it with the charged one (as opposed to actually charging the phone itself via USB cable and leaving the battery in), I never get the "mega battery drain".

    Oh, and on the S4 which I had before the S4 mini, the battery went dead within one year (the phone would turn itself off within 1-2 minutes after powering on).

    Well, now enter the S6 without a replaceable battery. No, thanks. No Samsung for me anymore, and also no Android by anybody else.
  • Darkito - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    If your phone is rooted, download the BetterBatteryStats app. Some process is causing a wakelock and most of the time you just need to get rid of some offending app. I had an app that simulated Moto's Active Display and it was destroying battery life and not showing up in the regular battery stats screen.
  • Darkito - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I should say I have an almost four year old SGSII and I still get a full day's charge now that I've gotten rid of wakelocks.
  • steven75 - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    So all he needs to do is basically root his phone and fix it himself. That sounds like a great experience worth paying a premium for! /s
  • khha4113 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Your wife's S4 lasts for only 3hrs? Either the battery is bad or something wrong with the phone. My wife's can go almost a day (10hrs) for the same as yours (almost 2 tears).
  • robertkoa - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I think the biggest advantages are Touchwiz will have much less lag and the Camera is on par and in some ways superior to Note 4 ( low light only and manual control) with same sensor.

    I have heard ( unconfirmed) that Battery is Tech Replaceable and I agree that degradation after 200 to 500 charges is a concern.
    I am surprised that Benchmarks are not higher though not a big concern to me.
    Samsung COULD have made these 1 millimeter thicker and had about 25% more battery capacity!
    Do you really need it this thin ?
    I need the Camera but hope for a Note 5 Compact with about 4.7" or 4.8" screen and about 8mm thick strictly business same features Camera and price as Note 5 for pocket power.

    Still the S6 is functional stylish , speedy and fluid despite Benchmarks here- amazed that Iphone6 smokes it mostly...don't care too much but those Apple Guys know their stuff.
    The Hype was S6 was going to beat eveything by a mile...what happened ?
  • danbi - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link

    Of course, Samsung could have installed a bigger battery. But this could have resulted in:

    - more heavy device;
    - thicker device;
    - slower charge;
    - need for more durable charge/discharge circuitry (cost);
    - more expensive;

    Samsung competes for each of those parameters with others. We don't know their design goals, but likely these are "make a device that has comparable feel in the hand to the iPhone" -- so it can't be much more thicker and heavier.. Things like that.

    Do not worry. Samsung makes a plethoria of mobile devices. They will also make a thicker and with larger battery device. It will just not be the Galaxy S6.

    Perhaps a solution is an "built to order" model.. who knows.
  • jospoortvliet - Sunday, March 29, 2015 - link

    Add one item to that list:
    - thicker than the iPhone 6
    it is the only reason that counts. The 10 grams and 1 mm extra a larger battery would take would not bother any user...
  • Walkop - Sunday, March 29, 2015 - link

    Don't forget that higher resolution does NOT necessarily mean worse display power consumption with AMOLED. You don't need a more powerful backlight to punch through the pixels because the pixels ARE the backlight. Much more suited to high-density panels than LCD.
  • DaBruinz - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link

    Displaymate measured this display at 20% better than the S5 and 23% better than the iPhone. SAMOLD is very efficient and hey seem to be improving it constantly.
  • 1805 - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link

    I wouldn't worry about battery life

    http://www.phonearena.com/news/Our-Samsung-Galaxy-...
  • SmartPhones Watch - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link

    The battery seems not to be much good in S6 Edge and using of an secondary external battery has been avoided due to the non-removable battery in S6 Edge :( Samsung will have to really put more work on their battery efficiency

    http://smartphoneswatch.com/samsung-galaxy-s6-edge...
  • nyonya - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    What display mode were the display tests done in?
  • JoshHo - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    This was done using Basic mode.
  • lilmoe - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    It would be nice if you'd also post tests for AMOLED Photo in your final review.

    Some other things I'd love to see in the final review (if possible please):
    - Your personal thoughts about battery life and not just your standard tests, especially for standby and how much % the phone consumes overnight while not charging. I feel that Anandtech reviews are too dependent on numbers and leave out a lot of subjectivity. A balance of both would be nice.
    - Did Samsung include an option to set the resolution at 720p in dev options?
    - We need a more professional look at the camera and its various modes under various conditions. One issue from my observation of online videos and smaples, it seems that the lens (though with great aperture) tends to "bleed" light in some *video* samples from bright sources (if that's the right term, like light rays from sunsets and direct car lamps), or is this issue mitigated with HDR? Most videos on youtube are done by amateurs who refuse to know the difference. I've actually thought it might be that some forgot to take off the plastic cover on the protective glass. These issues are only present in video, but not in still images.
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    "We subjectively feel that the battery drains in 6 hours at 2 watts."

    There's really not much to talk about, subjectively. The battery drains at a certain rate when it's sleeping, and a certain rate while reading webpages, and a certain rate while playing games. That's what they seek to measure. They could possibly rethink their testing methodology for web browsing to stay in line with the ways people today use their phones, but historically they have updated their benchmarks like that.
  • lilmoe - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Battery life is one of the aspects of mobile devices that's impossible to accurately measure with absolute certainty, because your mileage differs by each and every use case. Total number of apps installed, signal strength, preferred screen brightness and user habits among various other things are never the same for each and every user. There's a LOT to be said.

    One could have better understanding of what to expect with more input. A Combination of synthetic tests, use case, standby time, and user opinion are great. It would also be nice to see the effect of installed apps on battery life (IE: with lots installed VS minimum amount of apps).

    It's well known that low signal strength and having too many apps installed on Android devices affects standby time dramatically. This issue isn't as bad in iOS and Windows Phone because apps aren't as free to do background tasks compared to Android. "Project Volta" is Google's answer of sorts to this problem, but most apps (if any of the top 100) aren't taking advantage of that just yet, so one would assume it would only get better with time.
  • HaB1971 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I'll pass on Samsung this time.. styling change and a slightly better screen... not worth upgrading from an S5
  • danbob999 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Why people keep saying that.
    It's never worth it to upgrade every year. These days even 3 year old smart phones run just fine for more people.
  • Refuge - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Still running my One M7. I love the screen and the speakers are really great too.

    Batter lasts me a day of heavy use still, but it isn't quite as fast as my girlfriends LG G2, but hers is three gens ahead of mine, and the differences are barely noticeable. That and I run 8 different widgets, compared to her one (clock).
  • kspirit - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I know right? I'm still using my 925, and it works good as day 1. As long as they keep getting software updates, why upgrade every year?
  • XororovX - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    The one m7 and the lg g2 are both from the 2013 crop.
  • Azurael - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Yeah, but the G2 was released late 2013 and uses a Snapdragon 800 SoC, whereas the other 2013 flagships were 600s, so it's not really a fair comparison.
  • jospoortvliet - Sunday, March 29, 2015 - link

    Also sticking to my M7. A new phone has to beat it in every regard - including screen and speakers. And not be wider, as I find the M7 the max I can deal with in that regard. Too bad HTC screwed up the M9...
  • JeffFlanagan - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    That depends on what your needs or wants are. Upgrading my HTC One (M8) to the M9 would be a waste of cash since it's a tiny upgrade. Upgrading my M8 to a Galaxy S6 and Gear VR does make sense, since it brings in VR capability that's much better than the M8 and Google Cardboard.
  • Chaser - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I agree with everything you say. Yes it looks somewhat nicer but it still is not the eye catching level it needs to be to compete against the "tech darling" iPhone. Stupid as it is, smartphones are now like fashion statements or even large jewelry. Samsung needs to do more in that regard to compete the iPhone gadget fashionistas. The M9 is a better looker. But it's battery life seems to suck. WHY WHY do we need quad HD on a 5 inch device people!?
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Because it looks better when rendering certain things (especially text).
  • lilmoe - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Meh. 1080p looks just as good. Samsung's answer to that question is VR, which doesn't excite me one bit...
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I can tell you this looks a lot better than the Note II.
  • callmesissi - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    "There is no removable battery, no microSD slot, or even a removable back cover. "

    The iphone has never had any of those, whats your point then?
  • Jamalsid - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    His point is that these are major deviations from all previous Galaxy flagships.
  • Gich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    It's not a new iPhone, but a Galaxy S... that used to have those features.
  • Zizy - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Samsung used to have all that, that's the point :)
    Similar to Windows RT and ChromeOS for example. Similar stuff, but RT is hated for being limited, while ChromeOS is praised for that.
  • NEDM64 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    So if the iPhone doesn't have, then it's not needed?

    That's not how to make a superior product.
  • Chaser - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    The first large sized smartphone was invented a few months ago.
  • hrrmph - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Exactly correct.

    As I have tried to get folks to understand repeatedly: the iPhone always was an upper-middle level offering, never a premium high-end flagship phone.

    Samsung made the premium high-end hardware. They provided many of the extra features that Apple refused to support...

    ... and now Samsung is effectively abandoning the premium high-end flagship market by downgrading their offering to the S6. The S6 is, just like the iPhone, an upper-middle market machine.

    So who will inherit Samsung's former position at the top of the premium high-end flagship market? HTC, Huawei, LG, Motorola, Sony? Somebody else?
  • steven75 - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    The reason you've "tried to get folks to understand repeatedly" is because no one else believes that nonsense.
  • Lonyo - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Well, for me, I could buy a Galaxy S6 to replace my S3, except I got a 128GB MicroSD card for my S3, so why would I want to have to buy the most expensive S6 in order to get less storage (as the S3 also has built in storage), when I could get a competitor's phone which has a MicroSD slot? Samsung removed an upgrade path for me to their newest phone by removing the MicroSD slot. The result? I ordered a different phone to upgrade to (although I've gone the whole hog with a Lumia 640 to try Windows Phone).
    Existing Galaxy users may have MicroSD cards like I do, and they would then be rendered mostly useless. iPhone users don't have MicroSD cards, so it makes zero difference to them.
  • makxon - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Right dude you can get a midrange phone with micro SD i'm sure its enough of big upgrade from your S3, now "premium" flagship is not all about bang per buck okay, flagship and "premium" phone is arguably only for show. and i'm sure rich people who buy it is not that stingy to decide their next phone just because they already have 128GB microSD ready to use, lol
  • hrrmph - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Premium high-end flagships aren't just for show. Samsung was winning because their hardware did more, even though it was wrapped in plastic. I never had a problem with plastic - the best that I've seen is the Blackberry Z10, but Samsung's was never terrible.

    What Samsung didn't do here was maintain their superiority. If they had put 128GB storage on the inside, and a Micro-SD slot, then then the phone would hold 328GB of storage (SanDisk now has a 200GB Micro-SD chip to fit in the slot).

    Today's Micro-SD slots meet the SDXC standard which means that just like hard drives, they are upgradeable to larger sizes as soon as newer chips are made. SDXC supports up to 2TB, even though 200GB is currently the largest.

    For folks who need local storage, Samsung was usually double or more the capacity of the iPhone. For example, Apple can't touch 328GB of storage. But, Samsung let the premium high-end flagship market down by not letting us have 328GB of storage.
  • steven75 - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Samsungs sales took a dive and they panicked. Have you not been paying attention?
  • danbob999 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    "This level of progress is amazing from Samsung, given just how bad things were with the Galaxy S' AMOLED display"

    Am I the only one to find it ironic that the Galaxy S display was considered one of the best by this web site?

    "I’d say Samsung’s Super AMOLED is in the running for best display on a smartphone up there with the iPhone 4’s Retina Display. Apple has the resolution advantage, but Samsung has a huge contrast advantage. The former is nicer for reading text, while the latter is better for just about everything else."
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/3891/samsung-epic-4g...
  • Zizy - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Yup, it is ironic, but understandable. Back then Anandtech only looked at brightness, contrast and number of pixels. No "advanced" stuff such as power draw, color accuracy, shift with angles and so on. Those OLED screens were competitive in those 3 tested areas but junk in everything else.
    According to displaymate, first OLEDs they tested finished in the last spot, behind every LCD. Current OLEDs are above any LCD out there.
    The only thing current OLEDs might have troubles with is lifetime. But this is hard to test, buyers don't spot it and as phones get replaced every 2 years, not really an issue.
  • danbob999 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    AMOLED historically had much lower brightness and still, this web site and many others considered them to be good.
    Which leads to the real question: do these numbers really matters? I believe not all of them do. Color accuracy is not important to the average user. It won't change how you text or use GPS navigation.
  • danbob999 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Also where is the display power draw test?
  • phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Guess you missed the "Preview" in the title, or the explanations at the beginning that they'll be posting a full review with all the gory details in the near future?
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    No, they went on and on about how they hated Pentile. Also, they say it's probably the best display for the current smartphones, which doesn't really speak on the objective qualities. Since then we've finally gotten a massive push for higher resolution and proper colour rendering across the whole industry. Their tune changed from "Well, I guess it's the best out there," to "This display is great!"
  • danbob999 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    This web site gave very favorable reviews to the AMOLED displays of the Nexus One and Galaxy S1. Then Samsung continued to improve AMOLED with Galaxy S2, Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S3 while LCD pretty much stalled since the iPhone 4 (iPhone 4S used the exact same display, 5 is only slightly larger). It's only during those year that they started bitching against Pentile. Somehow, even if they classed the Galaxy S1 display as equal in quality to the iPhone 4, the Galaxy S2 had a slighly worse display than the iPhone 4 (and 4S), even if it was a solid improvement over the Galaxy S1. They changed their minds over the years, there is no other excuse.
  • jospoortvliet - Sunday, March 29, 2015 - link

    Standards changed. Color accuracy went up for other displays - what was good back then against standards of that time is not today.
  • casteve - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Does the S6 allow you to plug it into your PC and directly add/delete files or are we still stuck with using the dreadful KIES app or a third party workaround like webDAV?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    It works as any other Android device nowadays, it connects via MTP to access the device's files.
  • rd_nest - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Will you be doing any movie playback battery test for S6? Many of us watch a lot of movies in phones, and would like to see if there is any benefit of AMOLED in movie playback.
  • danbob999 - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    What I'd like is an idle power consumption test. How long it can run with screen off, but sync and network on.
  • Arbie - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    No microSD = no sale. And I certainly would appreciate an "eventually replaceable" battery.

    Why vendors make high-$$ devices with processing power and displays perfect for media consumption, and then cripple that aspect by omitting microSD, is beyond me. I carry something like this for all purposes, not just to be a phone. And if you want it only as a phone, why pay even half this price?
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Part of the irony is how replaceable batteries really only work for thicker, low-quality devices. Notice how this dropped another mm in thickness?
    "Free market" and all that. This is where the forces are pushing. Thinness also ruins the camera prospects and battery life.
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Hi guys

    Why are you throwing in the iPad Air - a tablet - with a phone review? Comparing apples and oranges?

    Thank you
    Andrew
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    (Edit button?)

    Why are you throwing in the iPad Air and the NVidia SHIELD- tablets - with a phone review?
  • BillyONeal - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    1. Because at 5+ inches many customers may end up deciding to get a phone to replace an older phone and an older tablet.
    2. Because the iPad and Shield models are "tablets are big phones" in that they use mobile SoCs and mobile operating systems. They're a fair comparison point.
  • lilmoe - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Except that tablets have MUCH larger thermal headroom... No, the comparison isn't "fair".
  • will54 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I'm assuming that its not a direct comparison but just to show you where the phone stacks up to a full sized tablet.Remember the snapdragon 810 MDP/T is in a tablet as well so its just to get a good idea to how well the 7433 compares against a tablet.
  • lilmoe - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    I initially assumed the same as well, it's nice to see how smartphone SoCs compare to other SoCs (or the same) with larger thermal headroom, shows how much progress has been made.

    But my comment was in direct response to BillyONeal who claims that the comparison is "fair" on a one to one basis. 5" smartphones are not the same device category as tablets, and both don't target the same demographic. Normally, those looking for a smartphone aren't going to change their mind into buying a tablet. That said, it IS normal for people to prefer buying a laptop over a desktop, but it's STILL not OK to compare laptop and desktop parts.
  • Deelron - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Actually it was useful for me when I was (late last year) deciding to get either a new phone or tablet. I actually ended up with the tablet as the performance increase for the cost was (for me) well worth keeping the slower phone for basic calling and messaging.
  • Refuge - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    No, like comparing apples, and bigger apples.
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    But those apples are bigger! You can't compare them, because they're more like oranges now.

    ...I wonder what the differences are between apples, big apples, and oranges.
  • SunnyNW - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Is the Exynos 7420 fully 64-bit enabled unlike the 5433?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Yes.
  • phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Read the specs table. It lists it as shipping with the 64-bit version of Android 5.0 installed.
  • lilmoe - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I've had this on my mind for quite a while, but ever since the Snapdragon throttling fiasco, I've took further notice in throttling and its effects on usability and benchmarks of smartphones, and lots of past thoughts have become clearer to me.
    In that regard, I believe some cross-platform benchmarks are worth investigating since some (geekbench particularly) do NOT have the same running times for each platform. When the A7 was released with better single thread performance, I thought the running time of Geekbench on iOS was too short compared with that on Android, but I sort-of dismissed that thinking that maybe the benchmark was stressing AES and other ARMv8 enhanced instructions more than others, thus finishing faster since they were much faster on ARMv8. But when Android was getting powered by ARMv8 processors AND scoring higher than the A8, things have become alarming to me.

    Thus my conclusion; Geekbench, among other benchmarks, are NOT calculating their scores fairly across platforms. For iOS in particular, the running time of the benchmark is noticeably shorter thus not stressing the SoC enough for thermal throttling to kick in. I'm therefor debunking ALL cross-platform benchmarks as not being consistent/reliable for cross platform measure of performance.

    It would really be helpful if Anandtech spare some time in either proving or disproving this theory, just like they did with the benchmark "cheating" fiasco. Also, it would also be wise to fully throw Chrome out of the picture and ONLY use the stock browser (if present) and not only give that piece of info a mention deep in the article if you're going to insist on using a "Browser benchmark" for testing cross-platform CPU performance (which shouldn't be the case in the first place).

    Thanks.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    You're demanding that benchmarks use fixed run-time instead of fixed workload. Fixed workload is still a much better representation of performance.
  • MrCommunistGen - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I think what lilmoe is trying to say is that based on his observations, benchmarks like Geekbench might *not* be using the same fixed workloads across platforms.

    Disclaimer: I'm not supporting either side of the argument, just attempting to clarify.
  • lilmoe - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    +1
    If they were running the same workload, how can a device score higher and finish the test much later... Every passively cooled performance processor throttles under constant stress conditions, and the difference in performance is significant.
  • MrCommunistGen - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I think they're using Chrome so that all Android devices are tested on an even footing (the same browser). It may not be well optimized, especially on newer platforms, but at least the devices are using the same rendering engine, etc. I'm sure there's tons of arguments here, but that's my 10-second thought process.

    Also, I'm not sure if I'm alone in this, but I ditched the stock browser years ago during the Gingerbread days when I actually started heavily using my devices. I worked at a cellphone store at the time and switched phones often. The inconsistency between stock browsers (speed, page rendering, and UX differences) caused me to pick a common browser across devices - I think at the time I was mostly using Dolphin.

    These days, for better or worse, I almost exclusively use Chrome - Some of that might be because my last device was a Nexus 5. I'll hop over to Firefox if something renders strangely in Chrome or sometimes just to see how the browser is doing, but I don't think I've ever launched the "Internet" app on my Note 4 (Snapdragon).
  • lilmoe - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Using the same browser for different devices of the same platform is fine to test cpu performance. My argument, however, is the same isn't true for cross platform, and a different browser at that. It's flawed by definition.
  • darkich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Well, do you need any more proof that web benchmarks are saying next to nothing about the chip potential?
    You'll get greater difference between two different browsers on the same chip than two different chips on the same browser!

    The greatest technological breakthrough of the Galaxy S is in its flash memory.
    The performance gains are epic
  • hakime - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    "Overall, this is probably the best display anyone will be able to get in a smartphone right now."

    What a weird statement. From your own results, the iphone 6 screen is better in majority of tests. So how can this thing has the best display in a smartphone? Or are you making some PR for Samsung here?
  • danbob999 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Because not all test should have the same weight. You can't just take the average of the results and call a winner.
  • danbob999 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    For example there is no contrast test even tough the Galaxy S6 gets a much better contrast ratio than any LCD.
  • kspirit - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Because if you're getting a display with infinite contrast ratio AND near to perfect accurate colours, along with more resolution,, why pick one with worse contrast and lower res when everything else, even the brightness level, is the same?
  • mkozakewich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Also, people only barely notice a delta of 6, and generally don't notice a delta of 3. You'd have to be really sharp to make out a delta of 1.
  • hakime - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    "Samsung’s design team has been given unprecedented control throughout the process of making this phone and the result of this is a Galaxy phone that looks unlike anything else they’ve ever released."

    Yes sure it doesn't look like the flood of crap Samsung created after they stopped copying Apple. Now they are back at it and there it is. They decided to rip off the iPhone 6 in both design and features (totally copied Touch ID and Apple pay. They are not doing something better, they are doing something only similar).

    Why don't you just say the things as they are?
  • TechTrolls - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Samsung Pay is miles better than Apple pay because it can use both nfc and magnetic strips, meanjng that any place that accepts credit card support samsunf pay.
  • A5 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Time will tell how well the magnetic stuff actually works. I'm not holding my breath.

    Both solutions are still much slower than just swiping a card, though.
  • steven75 - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Apple Pay uses NFC too. ;)

    Most of the world is already on chip and PIN and the US is moving to that this year. Magnetic strips is targeting the past.
  • hrrmph - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    "...They decided to rip off the iPhone 6 in both design and features..."

    Exactly. Samsung had a superior functionality product - even it it was wrapped in high-quality plastic. Now they have downgraded themselves to making an iPhone.

    Just like Apple, Samsung is now killing off functionality. All in a quest to make jewelry instead of computing machines.

    Instead of getting 128GB hardwired and 200GB expandable = 328GB storage (plus future upgrades beyond 512GB) we are stuck at 32, 64, or 128... just like iPhone.

    Instead of being able to justify buying at the high-end of the market and then keeping a device in great condition for the long-term by occasionally popping in a fresh new battery, we are stuck tossing the device away... or sending it off to a hack shop for a dodgy "service center" battery replacement... just like an iPhone.

    Samsung is being unusually quiet about how many and which LTE bands they will support. So I'm guessing that out of the 44 LTE bands available worldwide, Samsung is in no position to give us a world-phone that will work on every continent... just like an iPhone...

    (but watch out next year though when Apple implements the new 29 LTE band Intel modem chip that *should* be enough to cover all bands currently in use on all continents)

    So let's face it... Samsung shat themselves here. There is no long term investment to be made in an S6. Samsung has downgraded us to buying an iPhone knock-off.

    And the iPhone is gradually improving. Maybe in another generation or two, the iPhone could surpass the S5 Duos in functionality. Apple only needs to add a removable battery, a Micro-SD slot, and a 2nd SIM slot.

    With Samsung hellbent on making iPhones, the only upgrade path from the Galaxy S4 now *IS* to the Galaxy S5. Forget the S6.
  • ama3654 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Please use Stock browsers next time, OEM's don't have optimization on chrome. Or use chrome for iOS devices as well. Thanks
  • Azurael - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Stock browsers give another venue for OEMs to cheat, not the best idea... And Chrome has hamstrung Javascript performance on iOS, so no good there. You'll have to live with it!
  • Drumsticks - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    So far the S6 seems to have come through with everything we figured it would.

    Better performance than the 810, Great display, better materials. To me, The MicroSD and the removable battery aren't huge, but I AM worried about the smaller battery size overall. Battery will be the most important test for this device, so we'll have to see just how well it does. Presumably, it could make or break it just like the Camera (in a way) makes or breaks the One M9.

    If I can get a solid day and then some (to handle battery decaying later on to get a full day in a year), with the rapid charge and all that it all brings, I think I'll be happy. Samsung Pay as well seems pretty interesting.

    Overall, Android has gotten interesting enough to make me think about coming back. I had a Lumia for the last two years and was actually perfectly happy with it, but I like bouncing back and forth between Android and WP. I've used an iPhone 5 the last 3 months or so because of switching to AT&T (928 doesn't work there), but I haven't been very impressed. At this point, I'm just waiting on some reviews of the S6 that I trust (namely Anandtech and Ars), and possibly waiting to see what the G4 has to bring to the table. Unfortunately, unless something huge changes, I think I'm skipping the One M9; there are just too many side steps to consider to me.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I do not understand. For what purpose or for what app is a 1080p display not adequate? Even if using multi-window multitasking, is it really that important? Multi-window multitasking will drain a battery twice as fast, so do you really want the added drain of such a ridiculous display?
  • darkich - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Well, Samsung’s virtual reality headset is the only good reason I can think of
  • lilmoe - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I really wished they stuck with 1080p... But Samsung is a business; they're trying to compete in the spec sheet AND they're trying to create a new market with VR.

    At least give the non-resolution-happy crowd like me an option to lower the res back to 720p (1:1 vs 1440p). 8-12 subpixels per pixel would be nice on that display (and the Note 4's).
  • SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    In the final review I ask You to dig as deep as possible about the Samsung (or Intel?) modem used especially against HTC One M9 (e.g. take a look at this article http://goo.gl/TwDMkm ), audio quality and HEVC encoding/decoding support (if it will be added in the future or if the SOC doesn't support it). Thanks a lot.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    The SoC has HEVC encoder and decoders but Samsung again doesn't expose it to the OS.
  • SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Thanks a lot for the quick reply :) Do you think this could change with future software updates? Why not exposing if it is supported? Maybe the software driver is not ready?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    No idea yet. The hardware block's firmware is on the phone but the decoders don't seem to be made available to the Media API of Android.
  • Azurael - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    This looks like a nice phone - finally OIS (which was keeping me with LG) and the display on this (and the S5, for that matter) looks really good - I was put off AMOLEDs in the past since nobody seemed to be able to make one colour accurate, and at the time when I had an HTC Desire (and later a RAZR i, for that matter) the PenTile layout was horrible. Now the subpixels are too small to make out, that issue is gone. My one remaining worry regarding the screen is what it will look like a couple of years down the line, screen burn is a big issue and neither of the AMOLED devices I have here can display anything like continuous tone any more, plus their white points have shifted significantly (though they were far from great when new...)

    The other question I have is whether Samsung have got their act together regarding kernel support for their own SoCs? Their stock ROMs tend to be buggy as hell, and at one point a few years back, a large proportion of the CM team managing Exynos devices walked away due to Samsung's incomplete source drops. There are still outstanding power management bugs affecting the old Exynos 4210 (crashes during deep sleep, mainly) in the Galaxy S2 and the Nexus 10 is by far the buggiest, least stable of the Nexus devices (I speak from experience, between myself and my girlfriend we've had/have every one bar the N6/N9....)
  • Impulses - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    As someone who's already living sans micro SD and a removable battery, I'm not terribly concerned about either (my N5's battery seems to be holding up well a year and a half later...).

    This is probably the first Galaxy S I'd buy, just because SAMOLED is finally on par with the better displays and having OIS + a better build is appealing. Now if only they'd make a smaller flagship...

    Physical home button is still a turn off for me personally. Are they still clinging to that because it's part of their design or because it better masks space taken up by the internals?

    I'm thinking it started off as the former but has ended up as the latter... Still, I'd take a larger display with on screen buttons whenever possible, I think LG has made the best compromises in that regard.
  • Azurael - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Personally, I'd much prefer to have off-screen keys than a fugly waste of actual display area. Until Android developers get their act together with using the full screen mode, anyway. But since even Google's own YouTube app has a mini-fit and refuses to hide the softkeys & status bar on a regular basis, what hope has anybody else got?

    Sadly, the last chance I had at 'real' buttons was my One X. It's amazing that app developers haven't got the hang of softkeys in 3 years.
  • Impulses - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Ehh, developers are more likely to put an effort if a majority of phones are using soft keys, and guess who moves a good majority of phone stock... :p

    I've got several handy apps that make good use of full screen mode tho, and on screen buttons aren't an uglier than capacitive ones, specially capacitive ones with white LEDs on a white phone.

    I've seen more than one use unfamiliar with Android either struggling to use or outright ignoring the back/menu/app-switcher buttons because they were either invisible in daylight or kept switching off.

    I never really got why Samsung had them switch off so quickly by default... I don't think they even switched off at all while the phone was in use on the three HTC phones I had with capacitive.
  • Drovan - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    I'm wondering if the Exynos 7420 has an integrated LTE modem. That would really close the gap with Qualcomm.
  • Fallen Kell - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Wow... really no removable battery and NO SD SLOT! That is a no go for me. I was really hoping this phone would be nice. The display numbers look extremely impressive, but without a removable battery or SD card it doesn't matter how good the display is because the phone is unusable.
  • hrrmph - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Exactly. Unusable and not improving in the areas where it most needs to.

    Where is the increased storage? My Blackberry Z10 has 144GB. My Samsung ATIV-S WinPhone has 144GB, my Samsung Note 2 has 144GB.

    Any day now, the new 200GB Micro-SD chips will be in stock and I'll start upgrading those devices to 216GB. So again, where is the increased storage with the S6?

    There is none. It's a downgrade.
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  • acastle5 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Thank you danbob999, that's why these one year 'trade in/up' models are so over priced and bogus through ATT. If I had a Samsung s5, I wouldn't even be considering an upgrade at this point. Maybe in a year or two when the Nex-Gen comes around... I happen to have the s3, which is why it makes sense for me to go ahead and upgrade at this point, buy the phone on the two year plan at a discounted rate and go from there with the new s6 edge... I wont need another phone for about 4 years or so...
  • rocketbuddha - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Josh,
    Since your unit says TMobile,

    a) What is the Cat 6 LTE Modem?
    b) Is it a Samsung part or a Intel/ST Micro/Marvell part
    c) How good is the Samsung LTE modem at the T Mobile bands including the Band 12

    IIRC this is the first time a Samsung is using a non-QCOM Modem chip in the US is with its Galaxy Nexus on Verizon using a Via Telekom CDMA/EVDO + LTE chip.

    I will be interested to know if the second time is a charm :D
  • SydneyBlue120d - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    I'd like to know also if LTE-A, VoiceOverLTE and HD Voice is officially supported and if such support is available also in European version of the phones.
  • ama3654 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Would it make any difference if the benchmark apps are 64bit as well? Just like on iOS devices.
  • chizow - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Tired of Qualcomm's lack of innovation the last few years, and don't trust Samsung's Exynos enough to go with S6, so I broke down and got myself an iPhone 6 Plus. Figure if Samsung is going to get rid of most of the stuff I liked about their phones (removable battery, expandable storage via microSD), I would just go with the best non-Nvidia SoC on the market. And don't even start on battery life. Galaxy/Android starts off great but then you start getting random processes that loop and cause a fire in your pocket and you need to charge multiple times during the day.

    So yes, Apple gets my business now that they've finally caved and gone with a real screen. We'll see if it bends.
  • Darkito - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    If you have an issue with wakelocks on Android, there are ways to fix it. I realize it's suboptimal to have to do it yourself (and it requires root) but BetterBatteryStats shows you exactly what app is responsible for the wakelock.

    The best SoC as of now is the A8X. The best phone SoC is clearly the Exynos in the S6 though.
  • kmmatney - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    I also switched back to iPhone for similar reasons. I rooted my phone, tried different ROMS (bricked my phone once, which required factory software tools to get it back) but never had consistent battery life, and the UI speed was never consistent. I switched to Android as I wanted a larger phone, and I loved the 5.5" 1080p IPS screen. I never used the replaceable battery feature - it's not worth the hassle to keep a second battery around (and keep it charged). I downgraded to a 64GB iPhone 5 for $200 to hold me off until I can upgrade again in September. Battery life is much better with my new 3 year old iPhone. I can replace the battery easily enough if needed, but Apple batteries tend to last a long time. I don't trust Samsung with a non-replaceable battery - I've had several Samsung phones in the past and plenty of dead batteries.
  • chizow - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link

    Yeah maybe on paper the Exynos looks great but again, I don't trust Samsung's SoCs after that whole crossbar issue they had with their S4 big.Little design and the various SoC bench cheat scandals.

    I just know every iOS device I pick up even months later that has an A7 or better SoC performs great and gives consistent battery life and screen experience, all despite the fact these phones are operating on just 1GB of RAM.

    Android is just a hodge podge of bloated, hacked/stolen code. If you have to resort to root and strip half the crap/bloat out of it, just tear it down and start anew.
  • MercuryHero - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link

    If someone complains about a flaw in Android as the reason they went to iPhone, it's less than helpful to start talking about root-only tools that you can use to troubleshoot and diagnose the problem; that just makes Android look worse. You should not have to root, learn technical terms like "wakelock" or diagnose the cause of an issue when simply using a phone.

    That said, it's always the fault of the misbehaving app, not Samsung, or Android - who are designed to implicitly trust that when an app says it needs to keep the phone awake while the screen's off, that the app knows what it's talking about.

    I'd personally like to see some more in-built smarts in Android relating to knowing when an app has been permitted to keep the phone awake, but it shouldn't be happening *constantly* - some sort of rate limiter that can be tuned to each app so that, for example, an app that only needs to sync occasionally should be prevented from operating a wakelock once it's apparent that the wakelock is not being released as quickly as it would be expected to.

    But that's all stuff for Android internals, and consumers basically just have to put up with the current state of affairs, and just (hopefully) learn that the cause of problems is the misbehaving app.
  • klagermkii - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Could you please test the minimum white brightness of the AMOLED display? One of the problems I've had with switching to an AMOLED phone is that even at its lowest brightness it's still too bright to read against a white background at night compared to other LCD phones.
  • SoC-IT2ME - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Use an app called LUX DASH, goes below 0% brightness for any device. Use it on my S3.

    Though from what I've seen, the S6 goes very dim as standard.
  • MercuryHero - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link

    I've looked at the S6 in a store and at minimum brightness the screen is too dark to see, it just looks black making it hard to find the brightness controls again to turn it back up.

    That said, it was a brightly lit store in daytime, as all phone stores are.
  • JoshHo - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    The minimum brightness is around 2 nits.
  • robertkoa - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    On my Alpha there's an Auto mode so with dim light the settings get very low and in Sun they get very bright...so browsing in the Dark is very nice...screen can be very dim I assume they have this on S6 ...
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Will an unlocked S6 work on all carriers, like the Nexus 6 and iPhone 6? From a technology standpoint, all "premium" phones should be able to do this now.
  • robertkoa - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Will work if you have the Frequency Bands BUT you lose features like VoLTE on a factory unlocked phone ...which are still Carrier Specific Software...
  • MercuryHero - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link

    Confirm frequency bands at http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s6-6849.php - there are 3 different variants supporting different frequency bands (press Expand to see them).

    But all of them will work with most networks world-wide because all of them support a huge range of bands. The G920A (AT&T) and G920T (T-mobile) appear support the widest range of frequency bands and only differ from each other in a couple of rare LTE bands.
  • TrojMacReady - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    Hmm, stock browser gives a low 4300's score in Kraken. Not sure how representative these tests are when Samsung is known not to pay more attention to its stock browser optimizations than Chrome and others.
  • shadarlo - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    REALLY sick of these ultra high resolution displays that add no benefits but destroy battery life.

    1920x1080p is the max I want on a phone... but I don't want to back-track to a lower processor to get it. Why won't a company realize that consumers will love 2 days battery life more than they love a resolution bump they won't even be able to notice?
  • AnnonymousCoward - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Seriously. Marketing people are probably driving the specs. I'd rather have 4.7", 1080p max, and a thicker dimension with a bigger battery.
  • hp79 - Sunday, March 29, 2015 - link

    I understand that the screen does use more CPU power, but how do you know if going with 1080p will give you 2 days battery life instead of 1? I don't think the screen resolution will make that much difference on battery life. What really makes the difference is the battery capacity (they went smaller so this is bad), and newer process (power efficiency gone up).

    I haven't tried a 1440p on a phone yet, but I've noticed immediately how different a 720p vs 1080p on a 4.5" screen is, while a lot of people were claiming human eye can't detect any difference. I think it's the same thing happening here. I'm pretty sure the photos will look much better on a 1440p screen compared to 1080p. I want my screen to be real life-like sharp and clear, and I think 1440p will bring that.

    The 1440p screen is also needed for virtual reality application where you split the screen for left and right eye, then the resolution really matters and we might want even more higher resolution. Of course, VR will have to take off before that but still, I think VR is much easier to take off than gimmicky smart watch or the not-so-popular 3D TVs.
  • MercuryHero - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link

    Their AMOLED screens are way more efficient than they used to be in terms of light output per energy used, so they're essentially offsetting their efficiency gains with a higher resolution.

    It's a balance that they have to maintain between actually benefiting from the improved efficiency versus offsetting against it to boost specs without losing much efficiency, and in this case I am on your side, because I don't have any reason for anything more than 1080p in Pentile, and I'd rather they balanced a little more in favour of actually giving us some battery savings rather than creeping the specs arguably beyond where they would be useful. I'd hate to look like an idiot in 4 years when everyone has 4k Ultra HD screens on their phones but I just don't see any point to going beyond about 300ppi for RGB stripe or a little higher for Pentile.
  • 1announcer - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Why not just buy an IPhone? When you don't have an SD card or replaceable battery you just have an IPhone running android. I'll stick with my S5 until Samsung wakes up and gives me something to be happy about. Those cheep Chinese phones with SD cards and replaceable batteries are looking better and better.
  • chizow - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link

    Basically, that's what I ended up doing after Samsung stripped the only 2 things I actually bought their phones for. If it comes down to Android vs. iOS experience, iOS wins, although I do prefer Google Play for the random/obscure apps you'll find there.
  • MercuryHero - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link

    The cheap Chinese phones typically run older versions of Android, never offer any upgrades and often there are no developers making third party ROMs either. So you may be on Android 4.3 even in 2 years' time. And what's more the firmware is a lot buggier than what you'd come to expect from HTC or Samsung, coupled with the fact few app developers will test on such devices, uncovering weird bugs in lots of apps.

    I speak from experience and I've gone back to high end Samsung phones, albeit I still save money by not buying the latest model. For instance I have a Galaxy Note II that's almost 3 years old and it has Kitkat and works better than modern mid-range phones even things like the Galaxy S5 mini.

    Apple is very good at keeping software updated on their phones too, traditionally even better than Samsung's flagship phones. There are other reasons people may prefer Android over Apple than removable storage or batteries though.
  • Mrduder11 - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link

    I don't meant to start an Apple vs Samsung war but seriously for a premium handset that comes out 6 months later then the iPhone 6 I feel like these results are very overwhelming. Overall performance is underwhelming compared to the iPhone 6. I understand benchmarks don't tell the whole story but I am surprised to see lower performance from the S6. Also why has the iPhone 6 Plus results been removed from the performance and display charts?
  • halcyonmax - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link

    How so? In CPU performance S6 more or less comes at the top.Where it seems to be lacking is the GPU department but thats basically because of the insane resolution.Still in the off-screen tests the GPU has good scores.The browser based CPU benchmarks do seem to paint another picture but such benchmarks are greatly affected by the browser optimization.Check out the htc m9 review..there anandtech has listed the stock browser scores of s6 and they seem to be pretty impressive.Other than these the missing sd slot and battery seem to be the let down. IF phonearena's battery tests are to be believed s6 is far better than the iphone in the battery department and gives similar performance as its predecessor despite the smaller battery..however it has faster charging speed.
  • MercuryHero - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link

    You cannot meaningfully compare performance between two completely different platforms with a software benchmark; they are measuring different things on the different platforms because everything - right down to low level instructions - that the respective benchmark apps do is different.

    I can understand how easy it is to infer equivalency when they are shown in the same chart like that; I'd disagree with the practice of combining them into a single chart.
  • Ahnilated - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link

    Well I was all excited to get the new S6 Edge until I read that you couldn't remove the battery and it didn't have removable storage. That makes it a no go for me period.
  • AnnonymousCoward - Monday, March 30, 2015 - link

    Your sentence already ended with a period. There's no point in saying that word.
  • tommo123 - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link

    no removable storage - stopped reading.
    maybe the next note will be worth a look
  • MercuryHero - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link

    The benefit is that the in-built storage would be faster and more efficient than MicroSD would be, however it's disappointing how much the price premium is for the larger 64GB/128GB models.
  • csavage - Monday, March 30, 2015 - link

    Bought the sector 5 element case for a friend's birthday, about 2 months later he asked me for the reciept because the corner piece broke. I gave it to him and he contacted the company, they were not helpful at all and told him he would need to order a new piece to fix the case. He was then able to fix on his own and broke again within the first year. $140 dollars for a case should be under warranty for life, lets be honest most people have a phone for 2 years and would need a new case.

    very dissapointing cheap product waste of money...........
  • AnnonymousCoward - Monday, March 30, 2015 - link

    Go whine somewhere else.

    very disappointing post waste of time..........
  • nathan119 - Monday, March 30, 2015 - link

    Obviously those of you coming from an S5 or other galaxy phone with replaceable battery and microsd are miffed, but there are a lot of us that have been living without those features for a while. I haven't had those features since my Galaxy Nexus, but since then it's been the Nexus 4 and 5, and it honestly hasn't been a problem for me.

    I stream pretty much all my music, so even a 16gb nexus device has been fine. A 32gb Galaxy S6 would be plenty.

    But as a loyal Nexus user, I find myself drawn to the S6 for a couple reasons. The Nexus 6 is just flat out too big, and with nothing in the 5" range on the horizon, what is a loyal Nexus user to do?

    Couple things about the S6 have me interested. Awesome display. Awesome camera. In fact, as a Nexus faithful...having an awesome camera would be amazing, and by all accounts, this is one of the best around. Battery life also looks better than my Nexus 4 or 5, so even if it is smaller than last year, it's still a big upgrade for me.

    And really, there aren't a lot of phones to consider. HTC is out, because the camera sucks. Note 4 and Nexus 6 are too big. One plus one...bad support, bad screen. So for everyone complaining about the lack of removable battery and microsd....what exactly are you moving to?
  • Kidster3001 - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link

    Why, oh why, do you still use browsers to test CPU performance???? You are just testing the efficiency and optimization of the browser. Put an old version of Chrome on your Nexus 9 and see how well it does.... and comparing any browser on an Apple device against any browser on an Android device is just plain misleading.
  • MercuryHero - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link

    Obviously it doesn't make sense as a general measure of device performance or hardware performance, but browser speed is still an interesting comparison to make, as long as it's never claimed or inferred that it measures hardware or general device performance.
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  • dummyaccount12345 - Saturday, April 11, 2015 - link

    When is the full review coming out?!?!? Can't wait!
  • anubis44 - Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - link

    "and the result of this is a Galaxy phone that looks unlike anything else they’ve ever released."

    I beg to differ. The S6 looks exactly like the S4 to me. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference if my life depended on it. This is not a bad thing, however. Once a form factor is sufficiently refined, there shouldn't be any radical changes to the essential design. After all, human anatomy is the target, and human anatomy doesn't change over years or decades, so why should the product's essential egonomics, once they're pretty well perfect? Our ears, hands, and eyes aren't going to get bigger or smaller, so once the product is optimized for most people's ears, hands and eyes, radical changes to dimensions would be stupid, especially if you hope to be able to use the device in the same way, i.e. to be able to show others what you're looking at, to use as a telephone without a wireless earpiece, have a type-able keyboard, so you don't have to shout at the phone to try to do voice recognition, etc.

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