Samsung gains a clear edge on its competitors

Samsung worked hard over the last few years to catch up with design kingpins, Apple. The release of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge shows all their hard work has paid off, says Noel Campion.

To be fair, Samsung have been creating great smartphones but Apple continues to be seen as the innovators, until now. Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge is without doubt, the most innovative, stylish and premium smartphone that I’ve ever reviewed. It’s not without its faults and some might consider the edge screen to be a bit of a gimmick but nonetheless, the Edge is a design leap for Samsung.

The S6 Edge is incredible distinctive thanks to its curvy edges that wrap around the vertical edges of the screen so basically the edges are rounded. The magic is that the image or actual screen beneath the glass actually follows this curve. The edges do have additional features like the ability to store shortcuts for up to five of your favourite contacts, and as a way to check out notifications when the phone is on its front. Each of the five contacts has a colour associated with them and if the phone is face down on say a table and one of them call you, you’ll see their colour reflected on the surface of the table top.

Unique features specific to the edge screen when the main screen is turned off is the ability to see and scroll through news feeds like Yahoo, Flipboard, and Samsung Electronics. This has a cool factor but is far from groundbreaking or essential.

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The curvy edges aside, the S6 Edges screen is 5.1-inch QHD resolution. That means that Samsung packed an incredible 577pixels per inch into this beautiful display. This is impressive when you compare it to the iPhone 6 Plus which is a mere 401ppi or the iPhone 6s 326ppi screen.

Not only can you not see pixels on the screen with the naked eye, the screen image quality is stunning thanks to its Super Amoled panel, that provides excellent contrast and vibrant colours. Out of the box, the screen has over-saturated colours that I don’t like for photography but all this can be toned down via the display settings menu.

The Galaxy S6 Edge is a premium phone that radiates style and sophistication. Gone are all the plastic covers from previous flagship devices. The Edge has a band of aluminium which is sandwiched with both front and back covered Gorilla Glass 4. When you pick up the phone for the first time you are very aware of the quality but also how sharp these edges are.

However, the really annoying thing about the glass back and front is how incredible slippery it makes it to hold the phone. You can’t leave it on your lap or anywhere other than a flat surface for fear it will slide off.

All this premium glass and looks come at the price of no microSD card slot or the ability to remove the battery. This is the norm in Apple land but a big change for Samsung. The S6 Edge comes in three configurations — 32gb, 64gb and 128gb with prices starting at €679.99 for the handset on pre pay or €49.99-€349.99 on contract depending on monthly cost.

I love the convenience of being able to add storage to a phone but with the use of OTG storage and online storage, the lack of a microSD card is becoming less of an issue than before.

The S6 Edge has a greatly improved fingerprint scanner which works much better than the Note 4 or S5. The S6 Edge has to learn your thumb or finger print by you repeatedly placing your digit over the scanner which is located by the home button so that it can build an accurate image of your finger print. Gone is the swiping gesture and now a simple and quick press of your digit on the scanner will immediately unlock your phone, open your PayPal account on your phone or let you into web accounts that support it.

The Galaxy S6 Edge comes with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface and the latest version of Android Lollipop. The UI is smooth and fast thanks to major tweaks to improve overall speed. The overall impressive speed is also thanks to the octa-core Exynos 7420 1.5GHz CPU and 3GB LPDDR4 RAM.

Battery life is better than I expected considering the 2600mAh battery inside. I was able to get two days of light use and had no trouble getting through a day with heavy use. Of course you can future extend these times if you use the power saving or ultra-power saving modes.

Galaxy S6 Edge has a 16-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilisation and a very fast f/1.9 lens. It’s also the fastest Samsung smartphone camera I’ve used to date with better results in lower lighting than the Note 4. There’s no noticeable shutter lag and it will take photos as quickly as you can press the shutter even with HDR turned on.

You can get shallower depth-of-field effects and you can also focus on very close objects making for some great macro shots. A new pro mode allows you to be as creative as you like by giving you manual control over focusing, ISO and exposure.

Overall, the Galaxy S6 Edge looks great but is incredibly powerful and feature-rich as long as you don’t mind paying a premium.

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