Samsung Galaxy S6 Announced

Samsung on Sunday launched the new Galaxy S6 smartphone and its cousin, the Galaxy S6 Edge. A unique phone with a curved screen on both sides of the device. The Super AMOLED display measures 5.1 inches across the diagonal and includes 2560 x 1440 pixels (quad HD). Samsung says it has enhanced brightness for better outdoor viewability.

ccording to Samsung, the display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4 and comes in several jewel tones with names like black sapphire, white pearl, blue topaz, and gold platinum. Aside from the display, all specs are shared between the two phones. The GS6 and GS6 Edge measure 6.8mm and 7.0mm thick, respectively. The 16-megapixel main camera boasts optical image stabilization, auto HDR, and a Quick Launch feature that starts the camera app in less than a second. The user-facing camera rates 5-megpaixels; both have an aperture of f/1.9 for better low-light performance.

Samsung is relying on its own technology to power the GS6 and GS6 Edge. It ships with an octa-core processor with a quad-core bank of processors clocked at 2.1GHz and a second quad-core bank clocked at 1.5GHz. The processor is paired with 3GB of LPDDR4 memory and UFS 2.0 flash for faster storage performance. The phone includes a 2,600mAh battery that supports both the WPC and PMA wireless charging standards, in addition to quick charging. Samsung says it has upgraded its KNOX security platform to better protect the device, added a Find My Device tool and remote wipe/remote reactivate tools, and improved the fingerprint scanner. The security tools will help when Samsung launches Samsung Pay, a mobile payment service planned for the second half of the year. 

The curved screen puts Samsung on the cutting edge of new form factors, but the obligatory upgrade in specs is also impressive, including faster processing speeds, quicker battery charging and a super-fast, high-resolution camera.

Ultimately the question is whether that will all be enough to attract consumers in the midst of some other potentially negative tradeoffs. Primarily: Samsung Galaxy fans love the fact that its phones allow you to pop out the battery and also insert a microSD card.

Yet the S6 got rid of both these features.

Samsung executives actually addressed this on stage at Sunday’s launch event, arguing that the battery life of the S6 was so good now, that owners wouldn’t even have to worry about replacing it. Still, the u-turn might drive some Samsung faithful away.

The battery for both phones lasts for up to 12 hours on Wi-Fi and charges “faster than any other smartphone in the industry,” Samsung CEO JK Shin said. It takes 10 minutes to charge the S6 to get four hours of battery life, he claimed. To get to 100%, it takes the S6 roughly half the time of the iPhone 6 to charge.

Now for those curves. It’s unclear at this point if Samsung is releasing an API that will allow third-party developers to create apps that utilize the curved sides of the screen, but bear in the mind that the curves themselves are subtle.

They don’t play that same second-screen role as that of the Galaxy Note Edge. They’re more gentle slopes than clearly-defined, rounded edges.

Yet they can still come in handy with a couple of features that Samsung has pre-installed on the Edge. There’s a feature called Quick Contacts, that allows you to swipe in a column for contacts shaded in various colors on the curved side of the screen.

In addition, when the phone is lying flat on its screen, the color of that contact will glow when they call, so you can know who it is without having to pick up the phone.

Fundamentally though, the curves still seem like more of a statement piece than a practical use case. One of Samsung’s executives practically admitted this on stage: “It’s a more comfortable grip, amazing user experience and above all, your friends will think it’s very cool!” said Young Hee Lee, executive vice president for marketing at Samsung.

An endless display of Galaxy S6 smartphones, on display at a launch event in Barcelona.
An endless display of Galaxy S6 smartphones, on display at a launch event in Barcelona.

Cool begets novel, which potentially begets the-dreaded “gimmick.” If consumers start seeing the curved novelty as more of a gimmick than useful feature that could be a big problem for sales of the S6 Edge.

Analysts I spoke to after the launch event were dubious about whether the Edge had enough of a wow-factor to give Samsung a much needed bump in smartphone sales.

Not helping matters: HTC will be preempting Samsung by shipping its own latest smartphone ahead of the Edge. Typically Samsung new phones ship before HTC, but this time around HTC has said its new M9 smartphone would be released on March 31, a week and a half before the S6 and S6 Edge.

Hands on, the Edge does indeed have a comfortable grip, though the tapered sides may take some getting used to for those who’ve carried rounded or square-edged phone for the last few years.

One of the real standout features though is the camera. At its launch event, Samsung showed low-light photos taken by the iPhone 6 Plus and the Galaxy S6 side by side on the large screen.

The latter won out hands down both for photos and video. In one demo a video showing a couple sitting in front of a fountain at night almost looked like silhouettes on the iPhone 6 video, but they were clearly illuminated in the Galaxy S6 version.

The camera benefits from a 16-megapixel sensor and an F1.9 lens that’s also very quick to load. Just tap the home button twice and it launches almost immediately — in 0.7 seconds, according to Samsung.

The screen’s resolution is also super crisp, packing in an incredible 577 pixels per inch on the phone’s AMOLED screen.

All told the Edge is an impressive effort by Samsung and the curved screen shows a bold attempt to redefine the way smartphones are designed and used.

Still, there’s a sense that Samsung could have taken this a bit further, and given Edge an even more dramatic curvature like the Note Edge to open the door to new kinds of applications, taking it safely beyond the role of novelty.

The built-in battery and lack of a microSD card may also be a tough pill for Samsung fans to swallow. All the more reason to fear the company’s best years of smartphone sales may well be behind it.