Samsung has put a lot of work into the Galaxy S6 and a few concerns aside it’s bound to impress people, but the Galaxy S6 Edge is certainly the more striking handset.
With a screen that curves down both edges it looks different to any other phone on the market. The edges aren’t quite as curved as the screen on the Galaxy Note Edge, but they’re curved enough to look different, look good and more importantly serve a purpose, covering much of the same ground as the Note Edge’s curved display, by placing things like music and video controls on the edges so they don’t obstruct the main display.
Their uses are certainly limited but they’re far from pointless and the overall screen on the Galaxy S6 Edge is hugely impressive as just like the Galaxy S6 it has a 5.1-inch 1440 x 2560 QHD Super AMOLED display with a pixel density of 577 pixels per inch. So it’s impeccably sharp, as well as being bright enough to use outside on a sunny day and displaying rich and vibrant colours.
Beyond the screen it’s almost identical to the Galaxy S6. The design is similar with a metal edge and glass back, though that edge is thinner in a way as part of it is taken up by the screen. The overall dimensions and weight are slightly different too, coming in at 142.1 x 70.1 x 7.0mm and 132g. The S6 by comparison is 143.4 x 70.5 x 6.8mm and 138g. So the S6 Edge is ever so slightly shorter, lighter and thicker than the S6, but not enough that you’d notice.
It’s a great looking phone too and while the curved edges perhaps make it slightly less comfortable to hold than the Galaxy S6, the S6 Edge is probably a slightly better looking handset overall.
Most of the specs are identical, with an octa-core Exynos 7420 processor, where four cores are clocked at 2.1Ghz and the other four are clocked at 1.5Ghz. There’s also 3GB of RAM, so the S6 Edge should be a powerful phone.
At 2600 mAh the battery is 50 mAh bigger than the one in the Galaxy S6, but it’s still on the small side. However with an efficient processor, fast charging and wireless charging that hopefully won’t be a problem.
Like the S6 the Galaxy S6 Edge doesn’t have a microSD card slot or a removable battery and it’s not dust or water resistant, but it is packed full of other features, like an improved fingerprint scanner which just requires you to place your finger on the home key.
Samsung is also launching Samsung Pay, which will allow you to make contactless payments and authorise those payments using the fingerprint scanner and it’s got a heart rate monitor on the back.
The lack of expandable storage is a shame but it comes with a choice of 32, 64 or 128GB built in, so it’s not stingy there.
The camera should be impressive too, as the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge has a 16 megapixel snapper with optical image stabilisation, which should counteract camera shake. It can also shoot video in up to 2160p at 30fps and there’s a 5 megapixel camera on the front, ideal for selfies.
The Galaxy S6 Edge runs Android 5.0.2 Lollipop overlaid with TouchWiz, but it’s not quite TouchWiz as you might know it, as Samsung has tweaked the look a little to give it a flatter design and more importantly it’s cut out some of the menu layers to make it more intuitive to navigate.
All in all the Galaxy S6 Edge looks like an impressive phone, but for better or worse it’s pretty much just a Galaxy S6 with a curved screen. Samsung hasn’t confirmed the exact price or UK release date yet, but expect it within the next few months and expect it to be very expensive.
