Samsung loves an awkward launch event. Poorly timed jokes and feeble attempts at audience participation make up one hour of cringe. Sometimes, the tech is overshadowed by efforts to put on an offensive theatre production, or other non-important razzmatazz. But not this time. Whilst the launch-event still had some cheesy one-liners, the tech took centre stage and Samsung presented two well-received smartphones.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge? Should you? Think long and hard, dig deep into your psyche and ask yourself – do you I really want it? Still no answers? Fortunately I have answers. Well, reasons. Five of them to be exact. And if you’re still not swayed, wait for my near identical upcoming post about the Galaxy S6, or, perhaps check out my other “5 reasons” summaries of every 2014 flagship here.
If you’re thinking about upgrading, it’s a pretty good time to do so. Multiple manufacturers have recently launched new phones that they’ll happily exchange for a slice of your hard-earned, blood, sweat and tear-soaked cash. None more so than the forever embattled, multi-billion dollar underdog Samsung, which is looking to regain some credibility after the Galaxy S5 failed so spectacularly last year.
The devices it’s presenting? The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. The latter being the focus of this article and, potentially, your next smartphone.
Samsung Pay
Samsung’s mobile payments system – brazenly named “Samsung Pay” – has a bit of a head start over Apple AAPL +0.85%’s competitor. Samsung Pay uses a similar NFC payments system to Apple Pay with the addition of one extra feature, magnetic-secure transmission (MST). Where Apple Pay requires the point-of-sale till to accept NFC, Samsung Pay can use existing magnetic-stripe technology that’s widely-used in the US and worldwide (Samsung says 30 million vendors use magnetic-stripe worldwide).
This gives Samsung Pay an immediate advantage in that US and Korean customers will be able to use it pretty much anywhere they wish the day they boot the Edge up.
The Countries With The Best Mobile Broadband
1 of 29
1. South Korea
1. South Korea
Time on LTE: 95% Mobile network speed: 17 Mbps
Speed
Samsung and Qualcomm QCOM -2.12%’s acrimonious split has resulted in its own Exynos 7420 chipset-line taking the driving seat. The results? Pretty damn impressive. According to some extensive benchmarking, multi-core performance is 56% faster than Apple’s A8 chip in the iPhone 6 and 15% faster than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chip (which is included in the HTC One M9, LG G Flex 2 and most other 2015 flagships).
Samsung also sent TouchWiz off to The Biggest Loser for the winter and it has returned 40% less tubby, which apparently adds some extra zap to the phone’s overall speed. But we won’t know until we get to do our own extensive testing.
Display
It’s bent. Not in a rogue cop way, but in a good way. The S6 Edge has a dual-curved screen that adds some extra functionality over its non-bent sibling the S6. Edge owners will be able to see notifications, a clock and recent contacts that run along the curve without waking up the entire screen. There’s also “Edge Lighting” that, when the device is face down, illuminates the surface with a colour that’s assigned to a particular contact. The benefit is that you’ll know who’s calling without going through the arduous process of picking your phone up and looking at it. You can also reject the call by placing your finger on the heart rate monitor, which is located next to the rear camera. Valuable seconds saved.
Camera
The iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Note 4 were the best smartphone cameras of 2014, with Apple’s handsets just edging out the Note 4. Few Android manufacturers have been able to challenge the quality of the iPhone snapper. But Samsung is looking to change that with its Sony IMX240 16MP (same as Note 4) and improved f1.9 lens that makes the S6 Edge’s camera super quick. Take a look at me unscientifically testing the camera launch speed of both the S6 Edge and iPhone 6 below.
Where the Note 4’s camera struggled in low-light conditions, the iPhone 6 prevailed. So, in typical Samsung fashion, it dedicated an entire segment of the S6 Edge launch event to showing how much better it can handle low-light conditions in comparison to the iPhone 6. It’s impossible to properly know how true that is until I put it through the Review Machine, but initial signs are encouraging.
Fingerprint scanner
Samsung’s confusing, time-wasting, swipe-based fingerprint scanner is gone. Consigned to the history books as a briefly infuriating mistake. In its stead is a touch-based fingerprint scanner that can actually do as its supposed to do – record a fingerprint. The more accurate scanner also has additional, useful functions such as combining with Samsung Pay for mobile payments, and quickly launching the camera via double tap. It’s a much, much better initial point of contact for the S6 Edge than the fingerprint scanner on the Galaxy S5.
The cons…
There’s always a catch. The design of the S6 Edge is quite a radical change from previous Galaxy smartphones. Stalwarts like the micro-SD slot, removable battery and waterproof casing have been sacrificed to the design philosophy gods. So if you were a fan of any of those features, then you’ll have to decide if the updated aesthetics are worth the omissions.
The slimmer design also means that the battery is smaller than last year’s flagship. The S6 Edge sports a 2600mAh battery, whereas the Galaxy S5 had a 2800mAh power pack. Samsung argues that the more efficient chipset and less bloated TouchWiz makes up for the smaller battery, but we’ll have to wait for the full review before we can fully investigate.
There’s also the issue of price. It’s not completely clear how much either the S6 or S6 Edge will cost, but expect there to be a premium for the Edge. Some reports have it at $100 more for the Edge variant, with rumours suggesting that the 32GB Edge could cost upwards of $750.
SOURCE-Forbes
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge? Should you? Think long and hard, dig deep into your psyche and ask yourself – do you I really want it? Still no answers? Fortunately I have answers. Well, reasons. Five of them to be exact. And if you’re still not swayed, wait for my near identical upcoming post about the Galaxy S6, or, perhaps check out my other “5 reasons” summaries of every 2014 flagship here.
If you’re thinking about upgrading, it’s a pretty good time to do so. Multiple manufacturers have recently launched new phones that they’ll happily exchange for a slice of your hard-earned, blood, sweat and tear-soaked cash. None more so than the forever embattled, multi-billion dollar underdog Samsung, which is looking to regain some credibility after the Galaxy S5 failed so spectacularly last year.
The devices it’s presenting? The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. The latter being the focus of this article and, potentially, your next smartphone.
Samsung Pay
Samsung’s mobile payments system – brazenly named “Samsung Pay” – has a bit of a head start over Apple AAPL +0.85%’s competitor. Samsung Pay uses a similar NFC payments system to Apple Pay with the addition of one extra feature, magnetic-secure transmission (MST). Where Apple Pay requires the point-of-sale till to accept NFC, Samsung Pay can use existing magnetic-stripe technology that’s widely-used in the US and worldwide (Samsung says 30 million vendors use magnetic-stripe worldwide).
This gives Samsung Pay an immediate advantage in that US and Korean customers will be able to use it pretty much anywhere they wish the day they boot the Edge up.
The Countries With The Best Mobile Broadband
1 of 29
1. South Korea
1. South Korea
Time on LTE: 95% Mobile network speed: 17 Mbps
Speed
Samsung and Qualcomm QCOM -2.12%’s acrimonious split has resulted in its own Exynos 7420 chipset-line taking the driving seat. The results? Pretty damn impressive. According to some extensive benchmarking, multi-core performance is 56% faster than Apple’s A8 chip in the iPhone 6 and 15% faster than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chip (which is included in the HTC One M9, LG G Flex 2 and most other 2015 flagships).
Samsung also sent TouchWiz off to The Biggest Loser for the winter and it has returned 40% less tubby, which apparently adds some extra zap to the phone’s overall speed. But we won’t know until we get to do our own extensive testing.
Display
It’s bent. Not in a rogue cop way, but in a good way. The S6 Edge has a dual-curved screen that adds some extra functionality over its non-bent sibling the S6. Edge owners will be able to see notifications, a clock and recent contacts that run along the curve without waking up the entire screen. There’s also “Edge Lighting” that, when the device is face down, illuminates the surface with a colour that’s assigned to a particular contact. The benefit is that you’ll know who’s calling without going through the arduous process of picking your phone up and looking at it. You can also reject the call by placing your finger on the heart rate monitor, which is located next to the rear camera. Valuable seconds saved.
Camera
The iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Note 4 were the best smartphone cameras of 2014, with Apple’s handsets just edging out the Note 4. Few Android manufacturers have been able to challenge the quality of the iPhone snapper. But Samsung is looking to change that with its Sony IMX240 16MP (same as Note 4) and improved f1.9 lens that makes the S6 Edge’s camera super quick. Take a look at me unscientifically testing the camera launch speed of both the S6 Edge and iPhone 6 below.
Where the Note 4’s camera struggled in low-light conditions, the iPhone 6 prevailed. So, in typical Samsung fashion, it dedicated an entire segment of the S6 Edge launch event to showing how much better it can handle low-light conditions in comparison to the iPhone 6. It’s impossible to properly know how true that is until I put it through the Review Machine, but initial signs are encouraging.
Fingerprint scanner
Samsung’s confusing, time-wasting, swipe-based fingerprint scanner is gone. Consigned to the history books as a briefly infuriating mistake. In its stead is a touch-based fingerprint scanner that can actually do as its supposed to do – record a fingerprint. The more accurate scanner also has additional, useful functions such as combining with Samsung Pay for mobile payments, and quickly launching the camera via double tap. It’s a much, much better initial point of contact for the S6 Edge than the fingerprint scanner on the Galaxy S5.
The cons…
There’s always a catch. The design of the S6 Edge is quite a radical change from previous Galaxy smartphones. Stalwarts like the micro-SD slot, removable battery and waterproof casing have been sacrificed to the design philosophy gods. So if you were a fan of any of those features, then you’ll have to decide if the updated aesthetics are worth the omissions.
The slimmer design also means that the battery is smaller than last year’s flagship. The S6 Edge sports a 2600mAh battery, whereas the Galaxy S5 had a 2800mAh power pack. Samsung argues that the more efficient chipset and less bloated TouchWiz makes up for the smaller battery, but we’ll have to wait for the full review before we can fully investigate.
There’s also the issue of price. It’s not completely clear how much either the S6 or S6 Edge will cost, but expect there to be a premium for the Edge. Some reports have it at $100 more for the Edge variant, with rumours suggesting that the 32GB Edge could cost upwards of $750.
SOURCE-Forbes
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