Hands On:Samsung Galaxy S6 Screen and Interface Review

HandsOn:Samsung Galaxy S6 Screen And Interface Review

The display on the Galaxy S6 warrants its own section, simply because it's so crystal clear and sharp, while offering the high contrast ratio for brilliant whites and dark blacks.


It's also the sharpest on the market at the moment, according to Samsung, with 577ppi and a super bright mode that fires when outside - and it'll even do so automatically, rather than needing to be activated manually.

The QHD resolution is almost diminished by the size of the screen - at 5.1-inch, it's going to be hard to see the greater amount of pixels compared to last year, but web browsing and video watching (especially those encoded at the right resolution) are a real joy to watch.

In terms of output, I suspect Samsung could have stuck with a 1080p screen on this phone and still have a brilliant display, but the brand knows what a baying mob the media and early adopters can be when the best spec isn't present on a flagship phone, so decided to aim for the headlines,

That's not to say this isn't a brilliant screen - it's better than the Note 4's, which was already industry leading - but that smaller battery pack is still worries me slightly, so here's hoping the display isn't going to harm that.

TouchWiz

TouchWiz, Samsung's Android overlay, was never going to go anywhere, but at least it's been cleaned up a little bit. It's still got the same cartoony look about it, with the colours garish and the amount of options slightly complicated, but it's a far cry from that seen on the Samsung Galaxy S4.

The main changes are to the menus: Samsung tells me that the extra dialogue boxes it deemed unnecessary are gone, so if you activate flight mode then you'll get just that - no double checking from the phone.

Other apps have been polished as well. As you can see the Contacts screen has been scrubbed of options and tabs, instead offering you the chance to just interact with the people you want to. I think this means that it's been uncoupled from the phone dialler, which is annoying as having the two apps together made sense to me, but at least things are simpler.

The icons have been flattened as well, with Google's Material design from Lollipop stretching further through the phone - it's certainly more attractive, if not quite all the way there.

But one of the big pats on the back has to be for the loss of S Voice from the home button. Instead you'll be taken to the camera in, according to Samsung, 0.7 seconds.

Given this is a brand that takes a few seconds to open up the 'Running Tasks' pane after pressing, I'm not convinced this will remain so speedy, but I'll reserve judgement until I check out what Samsung's done with the upgraded memory and RAM.

Specs

The specs on the Samsung Galaxy S6 are out of this world, with very little left to want for. I've already covered the QHD screen and improved design, but that's joined by a 64-bit octacore processor (clearly Samsung's own Exynos offering as it declined to name the chipset) 3GB of RAM and upgraded storage of between 32GB and 128GB.

The RAM and storage used has also been improved, which Samsung reckons is worth at least 40% performance improvement in some areas.

Given this was one of the poorest parts of the Samsung Galaxy S5, it's a bold claim. In my early tests, it held up really well despite constantly opening and shutting of apps. This bodes well for something that's probably early build software, so should only get better.

I didn't get a chance to check out the keyboard, but I hope that's been given a lick of paint as the inbuilt version on the S5 was truly awful.

This thing is an absolute fingerprint magnet

The fingerprint sensor is present as well, and it's (likely - Samsung wanted to confirm this before launch) a touch option, in the same vein as the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6. This is great news as the swipe was just too inaccurate, so hopefully this new technology will allow you to be more accurate and stay secure as well.

Speaking of fingerprints, you can see with this picture just how much this phone hoovers them up - it's the epitome of a fingerprint magnet (unless someone invents a magnet that attaches to the ends of fingers. That will supersede it).

Payment options have been increased massive to include magnetic strip payment (somehow, the phone will mimic the stripe on your credit card, but the Galaxy S6 isn't THAT thin) and NFC payment too - with barcodes chucked into the mix as well for good measure it seems.

Overall, this is a very, very well specified phone, and one that even the most hardy of Android fans won't be able to resist at least looking at, despite their attitude towards Samsung.

The loss of microSD and removable battery will sting a little, but the reasoning over their removal at least makes sense.