Samsung have revealed a bold new direction for their popular Galaxy smartphones at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They have finally given in to the critics and the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge will be the first smartphones from Samsung to be designed with a metal and glass frame.
Samsung's Galaxy smartphones have always sold incredibly well and in terms of raw power, they have always been more than a match, if not better than the majority of the competition.
But sales have been in decline and after the poor performing Galaxy S5, Samsung knew they had to do something to keep up with increasing competition of top end phones from the likes of Sony and HTC.
So cheap plastic is out and polished metal is in. It's a bold move because Samsung have been using a plastic frame since the very first Galaxy S all the way through to last year's Galaxy S5.
The shift to a metal frame is actually not that surprising, what is surprising is why it's taken them so long?
Curvy is the new slim
There will be two models available on launch, the regular Galaxy S6 and the gorgeous Galaxy S6 edge.
As the name hints at, the edge has a special trick up its sleeve. The edges are curved giving the screen an almost wrap-around feel.
It's a beautiful design and credit to Samsung for trying to reinvent the rectangle!
Samsung are keen to emphasis the advantages of having curved edges but gimmick or not, boy does it look good and ever so slightly futuristic.
The edges of the screen will be used for ticker-tape style notifications and if the phone is laid face down, the edges will glow different colours depending on who is calling.
The Galaxy S6's design is less successful however and whilst not an ugly phone, looks like pretty much any Samsung Galaxy phone of the last few years.
Apart from the curved screen, the two models are basically identical in every other respect. Same camera, processor, memory and features. So it will be interesting to see what a curved screen costs vs. a standard screen.
Metallic paint
The glass body comes in a choice of textured colours which sounds like something out of a car brochure. You can choose between Black Sapphire, White Pearl, Blue Topaz, Green Emerald and Gold Platinum.
The glass body is made from the toughest glass available right now, Corning Gorilla Glass 4 which will be good news to anyone who is prone to dropping their phones!
This is especially welcome for the Galaxy S6 edge as it's not a phone you'll want to cover up with a cheap £10 plastic case!
Specs & features
With all the hype around the design and curved screen it's easy to forgot some of the other big features.
- 4G ready
- 2x Quad core 64bit processors (Octacore application processor)
- Android 5 (Lollipop)
- 3GB of memory (RAM)
- Choice of storage 32GB/64GB/128GB
The physical size of both the S6 and S6 edge is ever so slightly smaller than the S5 and surprisingly slightly lighter. In day to day use though, you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference.
Screen
Both come equipped with a 5.1 inch Super AMOLED screen with an eye watering resolution of 2560x1440 also known as Quad HD.
What's most impressive is this gives the screen a phenomenal pixel density of 577 pixels per inch (ppi).
The nearest rival for a phone roughly the same size is the HTC One M9 at 441ppi and by comparison the iPhone 6 has a density of just 326ppi.
Now whether the human eye can even see that level of detail is another question!
Camera
The front facing camera has been upgraded to a 5 Megapixel sensor with the rear sporting 16 Megapixels (same as on the S5).
There is a new Quick Launch feature for rapid access to the camera. Simply double tapping the home button from anywhere almost instantly (0.7 seconds to be exact) takes you to the camera.
Great for those times you want to quickly capture something before the moment is lost.
Wireless charging
Wireless charging is fully built in which Samsung claim will work with any charging pad that supports WPC and PMA standards.
The phone will also charge from a wired connection about 1.5 times faster than the Galaxy S5. Samsung are also claiming you can charge the phone for only 10 minutes and get 4 hours use out of it!
Samsung Pay
Announced only for the United States so far, Samsung Pay is unsurprisingly Samsung's answer to Apple Pay and is a way to make secure contactless payments using the NFC chip built into the phone.
It sounds great on paper but it's one of those technologies that really needs to be standardised across all manufacturers and retailers for it to be widely adopted by everyone.
Whether this infrastructure will even come to the UK is not clear either at this stage.
Release date & price
So the big question is when is it out? Well the good news is there's only a month to wait.
The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge has an official release date of the
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Will you be getting a Galaxy S6 or S6 edge? Let us know in the comments below.