Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge 128GB

For long, Samsung didn’t pay heed to what the consumers or reviewers said about its design philosophy. Right from its budget offerings to the most premium smartphones in the Galaxy portfolio, you’ll find similar ethos – three-row navigation keys with a physical button sandwiched between two capacitive buttons, plastic builds, removable rear panels, et al. In fact, the Korean giant even replicated some so-called premium elements like the faux-leather or dimpled back cover available on its flagships on some mid-range offerings. But all that’s changing with the brand’s latest high-end offerings, the Galaxy S6 duo.

Thanks to its proprietary Super AMOLED technology, the displays on Samsung’s smartphones have always been known for their stunning visuals. The Galaxy S6 edge doesn’t change that either, and if anything, it’s even better and crisper. The phone features a 5.1-inches display panel, just like its predecessor, the Galaxy S5 (review | FAQs), but it bears four times the HD resolution at 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. This results in an eye-popping pixel density of 577 pixels-per-inch which results in an incredibly sharp display along with accurate viewing angles. You can also read it easily under direct sunlight. The colours are also true-to-life and if that doesn’t suit your taste, then you can change the screen mode to AMOLED cinema or photo.

Coming to the calling card of the smartphone (which is apparent from its name as well), you’ll be wondering what all is possible with the edges on its sides. Well, to be honest, the three-sided display on the device seems to be more of a showcase of Samsung’s engineering prowess than offering a practical use. Sure, there are a few features, but they aren’t that helpful even when compared to the capabilities of the cascading display on one side of the Galaxy Note Edge. This is because in the case of the brand’s flagship phablet, the edge is an extension to the display panel and is treated separately, while the edges on Galaxy S6 edge are a part of the display panel itself.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge ships with Android’s latest iteration, i.e. v5.0 Lollipop. While you might think that the brand would have overpowered it with its own TouchWiz layer, that’s not really the case as the custom skin gels well with Google's Material Design language and the amount of customisations have also been toned down.

The Apple iPhone series remains the indisputable king of smartphone cameras thanks to the simplistic interface and quick-shooting capabilities, even though the devices don’t offer high resolution sensors. Samsung is also a venerable option when it comes to Android-based offerings, but it’s still not able to take on its arch rival. However if our experience with the latest offering from the leading manufacturer is anything to go by, then the S6 edge might just change the status quo.

Just like Intel, which dominates the computing space with its chipsets, a vast majority of mobile devices come equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs. Samsung’s flagship offering(s) also utlilised the same till last year. But with the Galaxy S6 duo, the brand has turned to its in-house expertise to power them. Providing muscle to the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge is an Exynos 7420 CPU, which is a combination of two quad-core clusters. While the high-speed quad-core cluster offers four cores clocked at 2.1GHz, the low-power cluster takes care of menial tasks and is tuned at 1.5GHz. The processor is combined with Mali T760 GPU and generous 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM.

While the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge has improved in all aspects from its predecessor, the battery remains an exception. While the Galaxy S5 sipped juice from a 2,800mAh battery, the Galaxy S6 edge draws power from slightly lower battery capacity of 2,600mAh. The embedded battery can help the Galaxy S6 edge last an entire day, but that’s with moderate usage and you’ll end up resorting to a power bank if you push your use. With the use of 3G and GPS, the battery percentage dropped like the proverbial apple from the tree, and so was the case while gaming. In our battery rundown test, the handset was able to run an HD video on loop for eight hours, with the Wi-Fi turned off and both brightness and volume set at 50 percent. This is lower than the Galaxy S5 and other phones of its class.

At a time when a few brands like Xiaomi, Lenovo and OnePlus have rewritten the conventional rules of price vs specs expected from smartphones, it probably won't be fair to put Samsung’s latest flagship through the same lens. Of course, the Galaxy S6 edge is available at a premium, and even with its high-end chart-topping specs, it’ll still seem expensive.