Even the flaws with Samsung’s older versions of TouchWiz have been cleaned up and dealt with, and now you can change the shortcut dock in Australia out of the box (something you couldn’t do for at least two years straight) and silence the camera, plus images now rotate in the gallery for you, which is something customers have been crying out for.
Samsung has also left in a gesture typing interface, and while it feels improved from last year and allows you to quickly go back to words you meant to type instead of suggested ones, it’s still not perfect, not always adding in that space.
You get used to it, that said, or you do what regular Android users do and switch to a different keyboard, as you’re totally free to do.
Over to the camera, and just like most of the smartphone, this is an area that impresses us greatly.
We’re all taking photos now, usually with our smartphones, as this space has practically killed the basic point and shoot camera, and for many is beginning to encroach upon our time spent using larger and more capable cameras, with the reason continually coming back to convenience.
But the quality is often sacrificed, and while you’ll often get better shots with a larger sensor often from a larger camera, a smartphone is much easier to carry than a larger camera, which tends to make the pocket look big, bulky, and extruded beyond acceptable social conventions, not to mention likely breaking your pants in in a way that doesn’t help you keep them in good condition.
In the Galaxy S6, however, you’ll find a camera that works with you rather than against you, with plenty of detail, fast shutter responses, and a mode that works better in low-light than we’ve seen from Samsung in pretty much ever.
The interface is easy enough, and while Samsung made it possible to change your interface last year, it was a clunky solution that we can’t imagine anyone would have touched.
This year, simple is the word Samsung seems to have remembered, ingraining it into its collective head and bridging that Android overlay simplicity over to the camera, which can be opened via a shortcut on the lock screen, a shortcut on the menu, or just by double tapping the home button.
Once loaded, you’ll find a few options for you, with high-dynamic range (HDR) settings, self-timers, flash choices, and arty effects available including faded colour, grayscale, tint, as well as other downloadable options in the auto mode.
For the most part, the automatic camera setting does a very good job of taking shots, and we found optimal results in places where there was strong light and where there was little light, and many a smartphone camera would have shut up shop and just say no way with the style of photos we were taking.
We even found we could get up close and personal with objects, with decent macro shooting abilities found on the Galaxy S6, something we generally struggle with.
You’ll find a few other modes available to you, with selective focus trying to emulate Lytro’s “after-shot focus”, a panorama mode, slow motion video, fast motion video, a virtual shot, and even a few downloadable options including a very useful “rear-cam selfie” that picks up on your face when you aim the 16 megapixel camera at your head, which in turn results in the a better quality selfie than the front-facing shooter.
That’s not to say that the wide angle lens of the front-facing selfie camera is all that bad, but rather that the 5 megapixel output is weaker than the 16 megapixels from the camera at the back.
Most people won’t be bothered, though, and you can turn down the beauty mode if need be, but it’s more than that, with more of warped portrait due to the wide angle lens being used.
Our point of view is that the rear selfie cam mode (which can be downloaded for free from Samsung’s downloadable camera mode section) produces better selfies, though you don’t get to see yourself on screen at the time of the shot.
You, of course, can be the judge.
We wish the company would have paid more attention to its so-called “pro” camera mode, which offers controls for exposure balance, sensitivity (ISO), white balance, focus, and colours, but nothing else, and the typical assortment of aperture and shutter speed — you know, controls people who are pros generally value — are missing.
Always find the GG phone reviews most enlightening and enjoyable to read. Nevertheless, for those of us that live in rural low signal areas, actual reception abilities are rarely, if ever, addressed. As a consequence, the reviews, while entertaining, are not really helpful. GG (and most other reviewers), seem to forget that the original reason for mobile phones was to make calls!
Always look forward to GG news.
It’s a valid point, but the topic of reception is a complicated one not just based on mobile phone choice alone.
Generally, reception woes come from a lot of factors, such as topography, tower position and reception, with building materials also a part of the equation. Mobile phone design does come into it, but much of the argument on improving reception can also be handed off to telcos rather than phone manufacturers, making this a very complicated topic to deal with.
In Sydney — where GadgetGuy’s phone reviews are handled — reception only rarely gets a mention because it is generally quite good, and that’s probably part of the reason why other reviewers in Australian don’t tackle it, as most publications are based in large cities where reception is fairly consistent across the board.
That being said, there are known black hole areas that no phone, regardless of manufacturer, can really deal with. One of the places this reviewer used to live in was such a place, and it didn’t matter how well made the phone was, or what telco you relied on, you could not get much of a signal to penetrate the home, making reviewing a little difficult.
Options like a femtocell can improve this just a little, but they are fairly technical and generally not cheap, so not ideal for all affected by reception issues. Again, the reception factors from before — topography, towers — can affect how gadgets like these work as well.
There are certainly instances where telcos are doing things to make rural reception a little better, such as the Blue Tick program by Telstra which assigns phones a rating of the “Blue Tick” if the phone meets Telstra’s guidelines for the handset working better in rural Australia, but that’s the only one we’re currently aware of, with no such system that we know of for either Optus, Vodafone, or any of the other telcos.
Unfortunately, we just don’t have the time to test all phones with every telco to find out if there are any major differences with regards to reception because, simply put, there probably won’t be a lot, and it would likely require more phones and time than we have.
In these situations, it’s best to contact your telco and ask the people there if they have any information on handsets made for your area, as well as tower position and likely results.
This should improve with time and technology, mind you, but it’s not always something we can test for reviews.