New Samsung Galaxy range top class but battery life a problem

Samsung’s answer to the iPhone 6 has magnificent resolution and stylishly curved sides. Battery life aside, it’s a classy phone.

It’s a brave new era for Samsung. Its 5.1-inch Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are a huge departure from its previous five premium smartphones.

While most will welcome the axing of the not-so-fantastic plastic casing for a new glass body and aluminium alloy sides, there is collateral damage: the battery is no longer removable and there’s no slot for a microSD card, until now articles of faith for the Galaxy S range.

Unlike the S5, the S6 and S6 Edge are not waterproof either. It is testament to the adage “Looks sell”.

One consequence of no micro­SD is that the S6 and S6 Edge are being sold in 32 gigabyte, 64GB and 128GB storage variants with a price ­structure similar to the iPhone.

I’ve been test-driving the S6 Edge, which mostly has identical specs to the standard S6, so most of this review applies to both.

The Edge has curved glass at the left and right-hand edges. I’ll come to that later.

There’s one feature that stands out, namely the magnificent quad HD, 577 pixel per inch display. It’s one of a kind and a reason many will pick up an S6 and immediately want it. Whether it’s the home screen, apps, photos or videos, the screen brings it to life.

The S6 models have better and faster fingerprint recognition. Instead of swiping across the home button, you rest your finger on it, as you would a recent iPhone.

Samsung’s rendition of Google Android — TouchWiz — tended to slow down previous models. To be blunt, it was bloatware. The new TouchWiz layered over Android Lollipop 5.0 is less problematic and you get a faster, nearer to vanilla Android, experience.

The one big issue I have is battery life, a potential worry on any phone with a power-thirsty quad HD screen. The battery performed extremely well, playing video at 75 per cent brightness, dropping about 10.5 per cent per hour. Yet the S6 Edge, which has the bigger battery of the two, struggled to get through each day I used it, mainly for basic functions: calls, texts, emails and surfing the web.

This may be due to the eight-core Exynos processor, which is actually four cores at a fast 2.1 giga­hertz and four at a more energy-friendly 1.5GHz. Exactly which cores are used for what tasks will affect ­battery life. (This chip set brings 64-bit processing to the Galaxy S range.)

Samsung includes two power-saving modes in its software, but I’d hate to be continually monitoring battery life with this phone. No removable battery means you can’t simply slot in another.

There’s fast charging if you use the proprietary plug packed with the phone. I was able to restore 32 per cent of battery life in 20 minutes, and 50 per cent in 30 minutes. S6 handsets can also be charged wirelessly.

The 16-megapixel camera is one of the S6’s great positives. Colours are slightly less saturated than on, say, iPhone 6, but they are lively and there’s great detail. You can double press the home button to quickly access the camera even from the lock screen.

The camera menu is feature rich without being cluttered with options. Apart from auto mode, there’s “pro” mode where you manually set focus, white balance, ISO and light variations, and a ­“selective focus” mode.

After the shot you can choose a foreground object in focus with the background blurred or visa versa. It’s rudimentary depth of field control that you’d set up using aperture priority on a specialist camera.

Both phones have an HDR auto mode where the phone chooses whether HDR will improve the shot. It will depend on whether there’s motion. You can leave auto mode on indefinitely if you trust the camera’s judgment. And both feature optical image stabilisation.

The camera performs well in lower light conditions and shoots 4K ultra-high-definition movies that look great on the quad HD screen. But each minute you shoot takes up 345 megabytes of your now-­finite phone storage, so be careful.

In selfies mode you can select a timer for a more natural shot, or display the palm of your hand to trigger a shot. It seems almost a rip-off the selfies gesture on the LG G3.

There’s one feature of Android Lollipop that important to point out: lock screen alerts or notifications which hadn’t been built into Android with any pizzazz. Now you can choose which apps display alerts when the screen is locked.

And you have some control. You can tell Android not to show sensitive information, if you trust Android to know what that is. You can control alerts for each app too. You can block or hide app content on the lock screen or set certain app alerts as priority to display at the top of the panel.

(Memo to Google: Fix your Gmail app in Lollipop so that users can view email in a combined mailbox if they wish. The fact you have to look through each mailbox inbox separately is a pain.)

The Edge is 6g lighter and 0.2mm thicker than the flat S6, which is nothing of note. As for the curved glass screen edges on the S6 Edge: design-wise, it’s a ­triumph and the S6 Edge looks a cut above other phones.

The previous Note 4 Edge ­displayed menu items. Here the functionality of the Edge isn’t so useful.

The curved section of the S6 Edge can glow various colours depending on who is contacting you, and can show the time at night although it’s faint and hard to read.

Frankly, the curved design doesn’t need any functionality to be impressive, ­although you pay substantially more for it.

The S6 and S6 Edge have a host of other features such as an IR blaster and a heart-rate monitor that requires you place your finger on a sensor on the back.

There’s provision for Samsung and Google payments, and Samsung’s new music offering, Milk Music. Both the S6 and S6 Edge will drive a new version of the Gear VR virtual reality headset.

It’s main competitors will be iPhone 6, HTC’s new One M9 and handsets that are yet to be refreshed this year such as LG’s G3 and Sony’s Xperia Z3.

Smartphone vendors face a saturated market

In all, the sixth generation of the Galaxy S range is a class act, although I’m a little uncomfortable about battery life and the hefty price, accentuated by the falling Australian dollar.

Price: From $999
Rating: 8.5/10