This year, Samsung has learned a few things, and has made a double tap of the home button do the exact same thing, which is an excellent and easy way to launch the camera, which is also excellent for many reasons.
For starters, the camera has some impressive sensor technology applied to it, and the engineering team at Samsung has really outdone themselves here.
Overall, it’s a relatively sharp shooter, with great exposure in daylight and solid results when the lights go low and you don’t want to use the flash, either.
You can, mind you, and one is included, but we prefer it flash-less, native light and all, and Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge performs very well under these circumstances, and certainly better than most of the phones we’ve tested.
Likewise, macro photographers will enjoy a phone that actually allows you to get up close to things, with a shorter focus distance and the ability to pick up on small details. This is one camera we’d be happy to switch to.
Mobile performance is also quite good, hardly surprising since, again, this is the same technology that made the Galaxy S6 tick, meaning you can connect to 4G networks using Category 6 network tech, while use at home supports pretty much every networking spectrum used by consumers, ranging from the original 802.11b to the 802.11n we’re all mostly using, and even the 802.11ac that is the latest and greatest.
4G networks will get more performance, and depending on where you are in Australia and what telco you’re using, you could see speeds as high as the Cat6 limit of 300Mbps down. In Sydney on Telstra’s CBD, we didn’t see quite that, topping out at 67Mbps in our tests, which was perfectly fine for us.
And there are other things, too, such as the smart manager, offering you an easy way to switch off apps, manage battery, and secure your phone, while Samsung’s S-Health will seek to bring your health monitoring to one screen.
All of this practically makes it the same as the Galaxy S6, which it is, if it weren’t for that screen.
So, what is it about that screen that works so well?
It’s slick, special, sharp, and stunning, but it’s also something else…
Simply put, it’s a gimmick.
It’s a very cool gimmick, don’t get us wrong, but a gimmick none the less, and one that does less than the edge did on the Galaxy Note Edge, the first edge-based phone Australia received and the second curved screen phone Samsung has made, the first being the Galaxy Round that was never released locally.
That makes the Galaxy S6 Edge the third curved phone the company has worked on, and despite how cool the gimmick is of the screen curving with the phone, it just doesn’t do a whole lot, or not enough to justify the price tag jumping as far as it does.
For instance, you can now swipe in your five favourite friends and call them from a simple touch to their face, even assigning them a colour (out of a preset block of colours) and when they call and your phone is lying down, it will glow with that colour. Hopefully, you’ll even remember what colour they’re assigned to.
You can also give yourself a clock to look at when you’re in bed, with the time and date in a more ambient glowing setup staring at you from the edge of the screen, on whatever edge you setup.
That last bit is something that makes the S6 Edge special: rather than force you to use the curved screen on the right side, like the Galaxy Note Edge, both sides of the S6 Edge are curved, and so you can have this sit on the left — for lefties — or on the right — for everyone else.
And that means the clock can pick a position, too, which is handy if you leave your phone on the desk one way over another, which some of us certainly do.
Thank you for this review