[Galaxy S6 General] Juvenall:
I've had my S6 for about a week now, and so far I'm happy enough, but I have no idea where the gushing praise of the device is coming from. The hardware does feel premium, but so did my M8, so does the iPhone 6, so do a dozen other devices. Putting it against the iPhone 6 specifically, I personally like the much more rounded feel of that device than the sharper feeling edges of the S6. That's very likely better for grip in the end, but it loses a lot of its "wow factor" for me based on that alone.

The camera is very much praise worthy, however. I've been blown away by it's performance so far and can finally stop being an apologist in regards to virtually every other Android OEMs complacency here. We've been begging for a high quality camera for years and Samsung finally gave in and knocked it out of the park. Is it better than the iPhone 6 camera? Hard to say, but that's a good thing. How each camera deals with different things has become more a matter of personal preference than something obvious.

Does it look like an iPhone? Yes and no. Looking at it from an angle at a slight distance and you may end up taking a second look just to confirm which it is. Head on, the oblong home button and shiny "Samsung" logo shouldn't confuse anyone. I think any similarities are more reflective the general homology across all devices. We've sort of converged on a general device style that unfortunately leaves little room for real innovation. Sure, there are some basic aesthetic tweaks that can be applied and evolved, but we're far away from anything truly revolutionary.

TouchWiz is interesting, but it's still just TouchWiz. It's the same ugly notification shade, it's the same collection of apps that for the most part don't really improve on it's stock AOSP or Play Store counterparts, and it's the same attempt at software differentiation as a brand strategy that I just can't imagine is working. I mean, I don't think people are buying Samsung phones for TouchWiz, but what do I know? That said, I don't exactly feel compelled to flash anything just yet (even if there were roms around). The device finally doesn't feel like its working against itself with regards to performance. Apps open when I want them to, the camera really does launch in under a second, and the stuttering that does happen feels more like it's a problem with the app than the phone.

The battery life is still up in the air for me. There seems to be a general consensus among us T-Mobile users that the recent OTA borked the battery life a bit (cell standby bug), so I'm playing the waiting game. Right now, I'm getting on average something like 18-20 hours, which is on the low side next to my heavily modified non-stock M8 where ~36 hours between charges was normal for me. I feel confident that time and roms will resolve these issues, but as it stands, the battery life isn't exactly a selling point I'd brag about (it usually isn't for most devices this early in their release cycle).

I'm a technical person, worked in IT for 15 years, have built apps, have compiled AOSP with custom changes from source, and consider myself all around nerdy, but in all that time, I've never really felt the need for swappable batteries or external storage. Sure, if they're there, that's a nifty perk, but I've never really taken advantage of. Point being that you can't really generalize the group of people who consider these important. That certainly isn't to suggest no one needs them or should want them, mind you. Thankfully, my favorite thing about the Android ecosystem is that should enough people in the market demand these features, an OEM is likely going to step up and provide them. Hell, given Samsung's history of device variants, an S6+ with these doesn't seem out of the question either. It will be interesting to see which direction they take with the next Note, though.