Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge Available For Preorder March 27, In Stores April 10
Today, Samsung announced the official shipping dates for its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge flagship devices. Both devices can be pre-ordered beginning April 10 and will be available in U.S. stores then. Pricing hasn't been announced yet, as each carrier and retail store will have its own pricing for the two devices.
The Galaxy S6 represents a major overhaul as to how the company builds its smartphones. The redesign, also codenamed "Project Zero," is arguably the biggest one since the Galaxy S3, a device that sold very well but also represented a bad trend for the company's smartphones.
Samsung started building devices with what many considered less-than-inspired design and using plastic material that didn't convey a premium quality. It made Samsung's flagships feel like $200 phones, even if they cost over $600 unsubsidized.
The company also began cramming as many new features as it possibly could between new generations, as a strategy to impress its customers. However, this mostly backfired, as eventually the phones became filled with software that didn't work quite as intended, had poor performance, and wasted precious storage space.
What was meant to impress customers ending up hurting the user experience. This was later reflected in Samsung's smartphone sales and profits, which started falling rapidly after the Galaxy S5 was launched. The Galaxy S5 could be considered the third and final iteration of the trend the Galaxy S3 started.
Beginning with the Galaxy Alpha, Samsung started experimenting with a classier look for its phones, slimmer bodies, and metal frames, which improved the overall perception of the quality of the devices. The new trend later continued with the Galaxy Note 4 -- and now with the Galaxy S6. The new flagship not only brings the same quality characteristics as the Galaxy Alpha, but it improves upon them, as well.
For starters, Samsung replaced the plastic back with Gorilla Glass 4 glass, which improves the look of the device as well as the in-hand feel. The company also seems more serious about shipping hardware features that actually work as intended, and it has removed the "swipe-based" fingerprint reader with a "touch-based" one, which works much more like Apple's Touch ID.
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The company also added other top notch hardware components in the device such as the Exynos 7420 chip, which is the world's first 14nm FinFET mobile SoC. The Exynos 7420 comes with a heterogeneous big.Little architecture that uses four 2.1 GHz Cortex-A57 CPU cores and four 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 cores, along with the Mali-T760 GPU, which is currently ARM's highest-performance shipping Mali GPU.
The Galaxy S6 also brings a 5.1" 577 PPI 2560 x 1440 resolution Super AMOLED display; a 16 MP rear camera with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) for great low-light performance; a 5 MP front-camera; 3 GB of LPDDR4 RAM; UFS 2.0 storage options of 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB; 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi with speeds up to 620 Mbps and LTE speeds of up to 300 Mbps for downlink and 50 Mbps for uplink; Bluetooth 4.1; and a 2,550 mAh battery.
Unfortunately, Samsung's Galaxy S6 doesn't offer a new USB Type C port, which is a feature many users hoped to see. The company has decided to stay with the USB 2.0 port for this generation of Galaxy S devices.
Samsung's new flagship device also comes with Samsung Pay, made possible by the acquisition of LoopPay, a mobile payment service that utilizes Magnetic Secure Transmission to work with most POS systems in the U.S. The technology replicates a magnetic stripe card when interacting with the POS equipment. It's not clear yet, though, how Samsung plans to transition to chip and PIN technology with a payments service that works more like Apple Pay or Google Wallet than a magnetic stripe card.
Although the Galaxy S6 looks quite impressive in its own right, Samsung also announced the Galaxy S6 edge alongside it. The Galaxy S6 edge is virtually the same as the Galaxy S6 spec-wise, but it comes with the rather aesthetic-more-than-functional curved screen edges. Samsung could have gone with the curved Galaxy S6 edge as its one and only flagship this spring, but it likely decided against that because the curved edges seem to be somewhat polarizing right now -- some like it, while others don't.
The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge models will be available in Black Sapphire, White Pearl and Gold Platinum, and each color will have an option of 32 GB, 64 GB or 128 GB storage. The four large carriers -- Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint -- will carry both devices, while Boost Mobile, Cricket Wireless and MetroPCS will only sell the Galaxy S6. Samsung Experience Shops at Best Buy, as well as Amazon.com, Costco Wholesale, Inc., Sam's Club, Target and Walmart will have both the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge.
Update, 3/26/15, 9:15 AM PST: The Galaxy S6 and S6 edge will be available in Canada on April 10 starting at $250 on a 2-year term from Bell, Eastlink, Fido, Koodo, MTS, Rogers, SaskTel, Telus, Wind Mobile, Videotron and Virgin Mobile.
We will update this article throughout the day as we learn about various pricing options from each mobile carrier.
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Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
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ohim S6, because last year`s S5 can`t make calls or sit on facebook as good as this one, but hell yeah .. it was better than S4 because it could show facebook in fullHD unlike S3 ...Reply
You say less pixels and more battery ? Are you by any chance insane ? And we know we laughed at iPhone for not having an SD card, now the joke`s on us!
When will people understand that they don`t need a new phone every year. -
Kwuarter I hate to say it but I may switch over to Samsung from my HTC one. I've never used the MicroSD slot nor have I ever changed the battery. So that's not really an issue for me. Just how well the phone performs and feels.Reply -
Ragez234 ReplyS6, because last year`s S5 can`t make calls or sit on facebook as good as this one, but hell yeah .. it was better than S4 because it could show facebook in fullHD unlike S3 ...
You say less pixels and more battery ? Are you by any chance insane ? And we know we laughed at iPhone for not having an SD card, now the joke`s on us!
When will people understand that they don`t need a new phone every year.
Switching phones every year may not be ideal, but switching flagship phones every 2 years, is quite economical if you do not care about being in a contract for a cell phone.
The way I look at is, I have purchased a new flagship phone for $199, in 2 years I can still sell my phone for $300+ on ebay or craigslist, I make my 200 dollars back and buy another phone under contract. Now that plans are cheaper when buying a phone outright or not being under contract I have stopped doing this strategy, but if you do not care to be under contract, in theory you can buy a phone without ever spending extra money if you don't count the extra contract fee. -
master9716 Not water proof , Usb2 instead of 3 , no SD card no 256gb version to make up for that fact. Fk this phone.Reply -
sunflier I know this is for S6 but please fix Lollipop. It drains my S5 battery faster than before AND runs slower. I have apps that are sluggish now. I'm having to reboot every-other-day.Reply -
ohim Reply15555264 said:S6, because last year`s S5 can`t make calls or sit on facebook as good as this one, but hell yeah .. it was better than S4 because it could show facebook in fullHD unlike S3 ...
You say less pixels and more battery ? Are you by any chance insane ? And we know we laughed at iPhone for not having an SD card, now the joke`s on us!
When will people understand that they don`t need a new phone every year.
Switching phones every year may not be ideal, but switching flagship phones every 2 years, is quite economical if you do not care about being in a contract for a cell phone.
The way I look at is, I have purchased a new flagship phone for $199, in 2 years I can still sell my phone for $300+ on ebay or craigslist, I make my 200 dollars back and buy another phone under contract. Now that plans are cheaper when buying a phone outright or not being under contract I have stopped doing this strategy, but if you do not care to be under contract, in theory you can buy a phone without ever spending extra money if you don't count the extra contract fee.
Why get a new flagship phone when an S3 can run just fine the usual "facebook/pictures / office" stuff. And don`t tell me gaming .. i see gaming on phones retarded, hooking yourself up on a contract to play crappy games on a 5" display. Not to count some waste money they don`t have on a device that they can`t afford to impress people that don`t give a damn about them.
I pay in my country 4 Euros / month (VAT included) for unlimited calls and a 5GB data... and i run Android 5.0.2 on an S3 just fine (Horaah CyanogenMod). So much better without all the bloatware from Samsung. -
Martell1977 I just upgraded my phone from a Lumia 822 to a Galaxy S5 for a whopping $29.99 w/contract(Verizon) on Amazon. I was surprised to see them that cheap but I figure they are trying to clear out the stock to make room for the S6. Whatever the reason, $29.99 at Amazon or $199.99 for the same new phone at Verizon itself was a no brainer.Reply
It's a shame MS doesn't have a current flagship phone as I would have liked/preferred to stay with Windows Phone. I was basically forced off WP by lack of upgrade options... -
Ragez234 Reply15555977 said:15555264 said:S6, because last year`s S5 can`t make calls or sit on facebook as good as this one, but hell yeah .. it was better than S4 because it could show facebook in fullHD unlike S3 ...
You say less pixels and more battery ? Are you by any chance insane ? And we know we laughed at iPhone for not having an SD card, now the joke`s on us!
When will people understand that they don`t need a new phone every year.
Switching phones every year may not be ideal, but switching flagship phones every 2 years, is quite economical if you do not care about being in a contract for a cell phone.
The way I look at is, I have purchased a new flagship phone for $199, in 2 years I can still sell my phone for $300+ on ebay or craigslist, I make my 200 dollars back and buy another phone under contract. Now that plans are cheaper when buying a phone outright or not being under contract I have stopped doing this strategy, but if you do not care to be under contract, in theory you can buy a phone without ever spending extra money if you don't count the extra contract fee.
Why get a new flagship phone when an S3 can run just fine the usual "facebook/pictures / office" stuff. And don`t tell me gaming .. i see gaming on phones retarded, hooking yourself up on a contract to play crappy games on a 5" display. Not to count some waste money they don`t have on a device that they can`t afford to impress people that don`t give a damn about them.
I pay in my country 4 Euros / month (VAT included) for unlimited calls and a 5GB data... and i run Android 5.0.2 on an S3 just fine (Horaah CyanogenMod). So much better without all the bloatware from Samsung.
I don't disagree. More of the American culture, everyone has to have the newest and shiniest stuff especially brand name products and cars. No one needs a new car every 4 years but once people loans are up, they sell to get a new one. I wish our phone plans were that cheap lol, 2 lines with 6GB of data here is $135 bucks a month.