Samsung Galaxy S6 hands-on

Design
One of the huge improvement that have taken place with the Galaxy S6 can be found in the design department. The Galaxy S6 is the first phone from the series that doesn't utilize materials of questionable quality. You heard that right - this is the end of cheap plastics and colored parts that lose their brilliance after a while (and after a few accidental hits). The new phone's exterior comprises two tempered glass pieces, courtesy of Gorilla Glass 4, fused into a whole with a solid metal frame. The glass panels, as you can imagine, pick up fingerprints really easily, but they do make the phone non-slippery and premium-feeling. The frame itself has been carefully shaped, so that there are no sharp edges to create discomfort while holding the phone.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S6 feels like a solid, well-made piece of machinery, unlike any other Galaxy smartphone so far. It's has a pretty normal size too - by sticking to a reasonable 5.1" screen, and by shedding water resistance, Samsung has managed to create an impressively sleek device that doesn't take too much space in your pocket, and most importantly, makes for possible (and enjoyable) one-handed usage experience. From design standpoint, this is easily the best Galaxy smartphone yet.

Display
As we mentioned, the screen size has been kept the same - the panel measures 5.1 inches in diagonal, resulting in a spacious, yet perfectly reasonable canvass. The resolution, however, has been pumped all the way up to QHD, or 1440 x 2560 pixels. You can imagine that this leads to a staggering pixel density - in the Galaxy S6's case, we're talking about the mind-blowing 577 pixels per inch. Yes, the display is unbelievably sharp. It's very nice, although we can't really say that the difference from 1080 x 1920 is that big, but you know, if the hardware can take the additional load without significant compromise with regards to battery life and performance, we guess it doesn't hurt having those extra pixels packed in there.

Of course, the Galaxy S6 is going to rely on Samsung's traditional screen tech of choice: Super AMOLED. It took a while for the manufacturer to reach a good level of color accuracy with its AMOLED displays, but now that the Galaxy S6 is here, it looks like the company is looking to solidify the good impressions that it made with the Note 4 and Note Edge. We can't fully confirm this yet, but the new display is definitely quite impressive, both in terms of color intensity and truthfulness. The company has also worked on the maximum brightness level of the Galaxy S6's screen, which should be able of reaching the 600-nit mark. It's not certain yet if it's going to be capable of reaching that figure in each and every scenario, like a quality LCD screen, but hopefully it won't be too dependent on the content that's being displayed.

Interface and Functionality
Armed with Android 5 Lollipop, Samsung's Galaxy S6 is going to be well-positioned to showcase the progress of Google's operating system. After all, it's shaping up as a state of the art device - packed with all kinds of features, yet showing care for things like refinement and stability. Having said that, Samsung has once again promised to take the path of 'more is less' with this latest version of TouchWiz UI, and while we can definitely see some of the simplifications and enhancements made by the company, the bulk of the software's previous versions is mostly still going to be present. Don't think that you'll be tapping and swiping your way happily without the phantom presence of air gestures, dual window mode, or some of the other 'extra features' that the manufacturer has generated over the years. Most of those things are going to still be available with the Galaxy S6, but at least the company has tried to hide them even deeper, under a bunch of settings and menu screens.

Enabling one-handed usage has been among the main priorities for Samsung while refining TouchWiz, and we can say that the Galaxy S6 is a top performer in that department. Its compact size, mixed with sizable icons and other user interface elements, make for an experience that facilitates easy and quick usage with just one thumb. Of course, more advanced tasks will still require you to use two hands, but when it comes to simple stuff like checking your email, checking the weather, or calling a contact, using one hand should be sufficient.

Samsung Pay
The Samsung Galaxy S6 will be the first phone to feature Samsung's new Pay service, which, as you might guess, is an alternative to Apple Pay. Right now, Samsung has completed deals with Visa and MasterCard, but it's yet to expand that partnership to other major players, such as American Express, Bank of America, or Chase. However, the company reassures that it's working on it. Easily the most interesting thing about Samsung Pay is the new Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) proprietary technology, which is said to widen Samsung Pay's compatibility with shopping terminals significantly. In addition to NFC for making contactless payments through terminals that support near field communications, Samsung Pay will also be able to communicate with traditional magnetic stripe terminal, thanks to MST.

Users will be able to use Samsung Pay to buy various goods in a quick and secure way, plus the whole process is promised to happen rather quickly. For example, should you wish to pay for something using Samsung Pay, you'd simply need to swipe of from the bottom bezel in order to bring up the Samsung Pay app (or just tap the icon, we guess), choose the desired card for the payment, authenticate using the fingerprint sensor, and from there, everything should be done in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, the bad news is that Samsung Pay will not be available to use with the Samsung Galaxy S6's launch, as the service will be enabled sometime during the summer, first in the Unites States and South Korea, followed by Europe and China a bit later.

Processor and Memory
Quite some effort has been put into the Galaxy S6's chips, too. It's not certain if there's going to be a Snapdragon version yet, but Samsung does talk up its new Exynos SoC pretty heavily. And looking at the specs sheet, there sure is a reason for Samsung to be proud of it. Powered by a total of eight cores, and made using a cutting-edge 14 nm process, the new Exynos is expected to blow most other mobile SoCs out of the water. Did we mention that it's a 64-bit chip, too? Yep, it seems like Samsung isn't willing to make compromises with regards to the internals of its upcoming flagship. However, things get even better, when you factor in stuff like faster internal memory and faster system memory. In terms of capacity, storage space variants will be a bit beefier than before: 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB. That's good, seeing that there's not going to be a microSD card slot present on the device. Meanwhile, the 3 GB of RAM should prove to be just enough to allow for the smooth operation of the system, even when using some of the more demanding features, such as the multi window mode.

So, just how fast is the Galaxy S6? While we can't really make any conclusive claims about the phone's overall system performance, we can say that it feels quite snappy and lag free. There's still some weird jerkiness present with TouchWiz and its movement, but overall it's a very speedy phone that promises to carry out pretty much any kind of task you throw at it with ease.

Camera
Samsung is traditionally very strong in the mobile camera department, and by the looks of it, the Galaxy S6 will attempt to further solidify Samsung's leading position in this regard. Same as before, the camera resolution is 16 MP, but there is a respectable host of new features involved. One of the more intriguing ones is optical image stabilization, in addition to reat-time HDR, infrared white balance (should work more efficiently than standard white balance), and tracking auto-focus for the video camera. Besides the mandatory cleanup work in the camera application, Samsung has made sure to upgrade its camera module a bit - the 16 MP resolution will be accompanied by a wide, F1.9 aperture now, promising to deliver better low-light image quality than that of the Galaxy S5 (its aperture was F2.2). The camera app itself is also extremely fast to launch - you can even call it by double-pressing the home button now. The reason why the camera app is so quick to start is because it never gets cleaned up from the system memory - it's always running in the background. Thankfully, Samsung promises that this isn't supposed to introduce any battery or performance issues, thanks to its software optimizations. One thing we feel is certain - once the Samsung Galaxy S6 launches on the market, it's going to be one of the best, if not the best camera phone around, judging by how easily the Note 4 has managed to win our blind comparison about the iPhone 6 Plus and... a dedicated DSLR camera.

Expectations
Truly impressive and decidedly streamlined - the Galaxy S6 looks to be an attractive phone, but there are still a few things that need to be made clear, like the pricing, for example, in order for us to have the complete picture. However, when it comes to release date, Samsung is willing to share that its current plan is to launch the Galaxy S6 in April, or in just about a month and something from now, which sounds like soon enough to us.

We have to admit, the Galaxy S6 shapes up as a truly impressive handset, just like its predecessors. We can't know yet if it's going to be efficient enough in battling all the Androids and iPhones of the world in its quest for stabilization of a slightly shaken up Samsung, but it does seem like the company has now put some serious effort into improving its top proposition... which had kind of adapted to living in the shadow of its larger sibling, the Note line, for the last couple of generations. The Galaxy S6 may be what it takes for Samsung to restore its influence in the mainstream smartphone market, but as of right now, we can't be perfectly sure. One thing we know for sure? This is going to be the best Galaxy phone ever.

Source: Phonearena

Samsung Galaxy S6 (Project Zero)

Samsung have launched a new product line class and have really changed in all aspects of the design, configuration and features.
And the product is expected to soon be launching Samsung is the Samsung Galaxy S6. S6 is expected to own a completely new design, no longer equipped with Full HD screen anymore, but instead, S6 will have a Quad HD screen with TouchWiz interface.

This is the internal codename of the Galaxy S6, the supposed next Samsung flagship. So far, Samsung has been quietly codenaming its flagships with letters from the alphabet - the S4 was Project J, the S5 -- Project K, but rather than the S6 being ‘Project L’ (which also coincides with Android 5.0 ‘L’ollipop), it decided it is time for a reset.

It’s all back to the basics. After a few prosperous and worry-free years of growth, Samsung has to go to the drawing board to re-think its ‘next big thing’, which no longer looks so big after sales tumbled and the Galaxy S5 sold slower than the S4.

And frankly, a lot of the fairy tale growth for Samsung thus far ONE THING IS CERTAIN: THE GALAXY S6 WILL BE A VASTLY DIFFERENT SMARTPHONEis not least due to the fact that Apple was inexcusably late with its product cycle, taking years to make an adequate, large-sized iPhone. Now that there are two of them, and a mature market with a plethora of strong offerings from China, Samsung is starting to feel the heat and this time it’s serious. Samsung mobile head JK Shin is said to be leaving, replaced by Samsung electronics head BK Yoon.

One thing is certain: the Galaxy S6 will be a vastly different smartphone, aiming to show the best of Samsung in one device.

Design: entirely new vision
We’ve been criticizing Samsung a long time for its uninspiring, all-plastic, cheap-looking devices, and that chant reached a crescendo in the Galaxy S5, where the company ignored all hopes and pleas for a more refined style, and stubbornly released the S5 with the same plastic design.

With ailing financials, though, and a series of well-made, metal devices, Samsung might finally make a change.

Going back to the ‘Project Zero’ codename, it’s very likely that the reset it implies refers to the visual style of the device at most. After all, previous Galaxy S series devices were never criticized for their processors and performance power. All of this leads to one logical conclusion - Samsung is probably developing an entirely new style for the Galaxy S6.

Display: wave goodbye to 1080p, welcome Quad HD
The Samsung Galaxy S5’s other big disappointment was the screen. The 5.1-inch Super AMOLED panel - despite being praised by Samsung loyalists - has one big shortcoming - its green tint that throws it off in terms of color accuracy, making it look unnatural.

The recent advancements in the land of Samsung AMOLED displays that the company showed with Galaxy Note 4 make one thing clear: it can do a good-looking display, if it wants, so we have high hopes that the S6 will finally have a well-calibrated display. As to the size? We do expect it to be slightly larger, going from 5.1” to not more than 5.5”.

The road towards higher-resolution screens has been a one-way street, and despite the little perceived difference of going from 1080p to Quad HD (1440 x 2560-pixel) displays, the Galaxy S6 is said to make that jump.

Interface: an unknown direction for TouchWiz
The Samsung TouchWiz custom user interface on top of Android has been the source of controversy for many years. It’s an extremely feature-rich skin, but it has consistently fallen behind in terms of speed, and despite Samsung flagships boasting state-of-the-art processors, they still stutter and lag in certain moments.

Nonetheless, it will be extremely difficult for Samsung to turn this around so quickly, and while we do expect a small step towards simplicity and speed in the Galaxy S6 TouchWiz version, it will likely take more time until we can enjoy a truly sleek-running version of the skin.

We’ve already seen the TouchWiz version re-imagined for Android 5.0 Lollipop on the Galaxy S5, and you can take a look at it below to get an idea about the direction Samsung is likely to go to when designing the Galaxy S6 interface.

First 64-bit Samsung flagship: Snapdragon 810 and Exynos 7420 models
The Galaxy S6 will be the first truly important, widespread Android phone with a 64-bit chip, but it will still come a year and a half after Apple kickstarted the transition to 64-bit in mobile with the A7 chip in the iPhone 5s.

Android will likely take a couple more years to get NDK apps updated to 64-bit and even then, we do expect it to run with some issues due to the multi-tasking on Android which will conflict older, 32-bit apps with 64-bit ones.

Nonetheless, it’s great to finally be in 64-bit territory and feel future-proof with the Galaxy S6.
The S6 is expected to arrive in two versions for different markets: the United States and other Western markets are said to get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810-powered model, Samsung Galaxy S6 (Project Zero) rumor round-up: specs, features, price, release date and all we know so far while other territories should get the Samsung Exynos 7420-based version.

Qualcomm has a reputation for making its own, custom CPU cores, but it has also been caught off-guard with Apple’s 64-bit announcement, and in order to fit into a more aggressive timeline, the Snapdragon 810 no longer ships with a custom Qualcomm core - instead it uses an ARM-based setup: four Cortex A53 cores and four Cortex A57 cores.

In fact, this makes the Snapdragon 810 version of the Galaxy S6 very similar to the Exynos 7420 model, which also comes with four Cortex A53 cores and four Cortex A57. Both are also expected to feature 3GB of RAM.

Camera: Galaxy Note 4-like excellence
The Galaxy S5 took a hit for its 16-megapixel camera. Samsung’s decision to go with such a large resolution came with the downside of smaller individual pixels, and this is said to be one of the major reasons behind the less than inspiring low-light performance of the S5 main shooter.

The company has improved its technology, though, and in the Note 4 we are seeing a much better performing 16-megapixel camera. Since the Galaxy S6 is not a finished design yet, internal discussions are still going on to decide whether to use a 16-megapixel or 20-megapixel sensor.

Chances, however, are that after a seemingly not very successful run with its own Samsung sensor in the S5, the S6 could feature a sensor like the Sony IMX240 (often said to be in the Note 4), with optical image stabilization (OIS).

Another interesting upgrade on the camera end is a 5-megapixel front camera said to arrive on the S6

Storage: 32GB in the basic model
While processors and cameras have improved at a staggering pace in the last few years, an area that they both depend on has largely stagnated.

We’re talking about internal storage, of course. 16GB of internal storage has been the standard for flagships in the past 5 or so years, and luckily, Samsung is finally planning to pick up the pace and introduce the S6 with a 32GB base model. The handset should also be offered in a 64GB and 128GB storage tiers, all with support for expandable storage via microSD cards of up to 128 gigs.

Connectivity: first with all sensors on one chip, in-house LTE modem
4G LTE connectivity might still be a rarity in the majority of the world, but lucky customers in the U.S. and the Western world in general (let’s count Korea and Japan there as well) are enjoying astonishing download speeds.

4G LTE, however, has so far come with a taxing battery budget. With the Galaxy S6 this might be less so, as the phone is expected to arrive with a Samsung in-house LTE modem, the SS333, or Exynos Modem 333.

Moreover, with Broadcom’s new BCM4773 chip on board that combines GPS and all other sensors on a single die (a first in the industry), we should see some great improvements in battery longevity on the S6.

Samsung Galaxy S6: release date, price, and carriers
Finally, knowing all this about the Samsung Galaxy S6, you might be wondering: when can I get it? Given the history of Samsung announcements, we’d bet on an Unpacked 2015 event for the Galaxy S6 at MWC 2015, or shortly after. The release date of the Galaxy S6 will likely be around a month after the official announcement, so it should arrive in retail stores around the end of March-early April 2015.

So far, we have seen the following codenames leak out, and they do reveal a lot about the S6’s carrier availability (yes, it will naturally be on all four major U.S. carriers, and many more).

Samsung Galaxy S6 codenames:
Zero-F US - VERIZON SM-G920V_NA_VZW
Zero US - AT&T SM-G925A_NA_ATT
Zero EUR - OPEN SM-G925F_EUR_XX
Zero-F CA (Canada) - BELL MOBILITY SM-G920W8_NA_BMC
Zero-F US - SPRINT PCS SM-G920P_NA_SPR
Zero CA - BELL MOBILITY SM-G925W8_NA_BMC
Zero US - VERIZON SM-G925V_NA_VZW
Zero-F - EUR OPEN SM-G920F_EUR_XX
Zero US - T-MOBILE (US) SM-G925T_NA_TMB
Zero US - SPRINT PCS SM-G925P_NA_SPR
Zero US - US CELLULAR SM-G925R4_NA_USC
Zero-F US - AT&T SM-G920A_NA_ATT
Zero-F US - US CELLULAR SM-G920R4_NA_USC
Zero-F US - T-MOBILE (US) SM-G920T_NA_TMB‏
Samsung has never surprised us with price, so we do expect the Galaxy S6 to sell for $199 on a two-year contract, and $649 when you buy at a full retail price. With all this in mind, how do you like the way the Samsung Galaxy S6 shapes up to be?

Source: Phonearena