We go hands-on, again, with Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge!

A few weeks ago we had the privelage of getting some hands-on time with an engineering version of the Galaxy S6 Edge during the official launch of the device in MWC. We came away very impressed with what we saw, and we eagerly anticipated getting the retail device for review from Samsung to put through its paces. Our wait ended a few days ago when the S6 Edge landed on our lap, and today we’ll be telling you what we’ve observed so far from the Edge from the few days we’ve been using it.

(Read our initial announcement post of the Galaxy S6 Edge, our first hands-on of the S6 and the S6 Edge plus what our EIC, Carlo Ople thought of the device in MWC!)

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge specs:

• Exynos 7420 octa-core processor
• 3GB of RAM
• 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED dual-edge display, 2560 x 1440 resolution
• 32/64/128GB of storage
• 16-megapixel rear camera with OIS
• 5-megapixel front camera
• 3G, LTE Cat. 6
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, NFC
• 2600mAh battery
• Android 5.1 Lollipop, TouchWiz UI
• 142.1 x 70.1 x 7.0mm

Initial Impressions: pretty much blows away every flagship in the market, the iPhone 6 included

When Samsung said they were going back to the drawing board for the Galaxy S6, they weren’t kidding. The S6 Edge is a beautiful amalgamation of plastic, metal and glass and is quite unlike what the company has made in years. The phone is sandwiched between Gorilla Glass 4 and in the middle lies the metal frame that protects the inside of the phone.

Everything simply screams premium, and you’d be hard pressed to see the seam where the glass ends and the metal begins. Samsung’s also chamfered the aluminum sides of the S6 Edge much like the Note 4 and the Alpha. Overall the build quality is flawless – this is Samsung at their finest.

 

Of course the designers of the S6 Edge are still people, and people aren’t infallible. There are some design choices that make us cringe, like the overly large bump on the back that houses the phone’s 16-megapixel camera. While we applaud Samsung for relocating the speakers to the bottom of the device, we’re questioning its resemblance to the bottom of the iPhone 6. In fact, there are some very iPhone 6-esque design choices in the S6, but those choices feel more like an homage to Apple’s current flagship rather an outright copy of the design.

Unlike the Note 4 and the Note Edge, there’s very little difference from the S6 and the S6 Edge. The S6 Edge obviously has the nicer dual edge display and a 50mAh bump in battery life, but that’s about it. Both devices are identical in terms of specs and hardware, but make no mistake – the S6 Edge feels and looks nicer than the plain old S6. Unlike the Note Edge, the Edge display doesn’t give a lot of additional functionality – there’s Edge lighting that gives you a clue who just contacted you via a custom color that you assign, Information Stream that gives you information on feeds related to your interests while the screen is off and the night clock that displays the time on the Edge displays when your screen is off. There’s not enough real estate on the Edge displays to mimic the Note Edge’s custom widgets on the side. Truth be told, the only reason why you’ll get the S6 Edge variant over the regular Edge is how nice it looks.

Samsung received a lot of flak for going with its own Exynos 7420 octa-core processor instead of the expected Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, and many feared that the S6 wouldn’t be able to stand up to the flagships of other companies that has the same processor. Well, Samsung is happy to prove its critics wrong yet again, with the S6 Edge scoring 64,197 points in AnTuTu leaving its opponents (including Qualcomm’s 810 processor) in the dust. While synthetic benchmark scores aren’t a good measure of what a phones’ true performance is, it’s a good indicator of what the phone can do and our time with it proves it: the phone is fast. Really, really fast. Apps open quickly and gaming on the S6 Edge is a dream. It’s safe to say Samsung has a winner with the 7420.

While we usually don’t include photo samples in our hands-on, we feel we need to share the photos we took of the Huawei Talkband B2 yesterday. The photos in the full review were all taken with the S6 Edge, and all of them were taken indoors, at 6:28 in the evening, with only artificial lighting. Not only did the S6 Edge take good photos, its autofocus time was extremely quick, and responded almost instantaneously even with poor lighting. Color us impressed.

Of course there’s still a lot to do before we can give you our full verdict for the S6 Edge, and aside from the obvious battery concern (just 2600mAh of juice is inside this monster) things are very positive so far. We’ll be using the S6 Edge as our primary phone for the next two weeks so stand by for our full review then.