[Galaxy S6 General] DjSkreem:
My honest review / comparison to past devices

Good day all

DRAFT will be updated later today or tomorrow

Well I have had my S6 for a little over week now and this is my honest views on it.

I have owned blackberries bold / torch (9700, 9780, 9810) and yes I still love physical keys, I have owned Samsung Galaxy S2 , S4, HTC one M7 / played with an M8 for a week as well as I had an LG G2 for some month. I do like my S6 although I think the dimensions of the LG are perfect and the HTC's speakers were the best the S6 still trumps them in terms of design and feel while I must admit HTC’s speakers are a blessing and the LG’s shape made it better to handle … I just love the S6’s design and feel akin to a well-designed watch or sports car it’s just sleek

Design----------------------------

The S6’s build quality is exceptional on par with devices like the iPhone 6 or better and trust me apple had me ready to go to the iPhone but I can’t live with IOS maybe next new iterations of the IOS i may like it enough to switch but Samsung have made a truly beautiful phone. I love the effects the different colors have and that 3D like effect in the paint. While I do think the S6 did copy a lot from apple they still did it in the typical Samsung fashion and it works for them, heck I think they took the IPhone 4’s design as well as Sony's glass and metal design and made it 10x more sleek while still being strong. All buttons are click and feel great although tapping on the home button lightly I do get a slight clack sound, no screak sounds everything just fits seamlessly. All Samsung need to do design wise was to use liqipel’s technology to make the phone water proof without the added bulk the S5 had and perfect, this is not a big deal as I don’t mix phoned with water so Design gets a 10 from me

NB the front glass does have a subtle curve just before it meets the metal frame nice touch….

Every Day use-----------------

Handling of the S6 for me is a mixed bag I do love it the sides are nice and grippy but the back is too slippery and that depends on if your hand is greasy / sweaty or not.

The S6 is around the same size as the LG G2 but a tad bit taller so LG wins for compactness, in my view if Samsung had made the device a bit thicker with even if the back glass was curved might have made holding it easier and helped battery life.

Overall it’s a nice phone to hold and handle even if I do have some issues reaching the top of the screen at times but that’s most phones in this 5” and larger category so this gets a 9.

Software--------------------

Samsung Samsung Samsung you have learned some but you’re still not @ HTC's level of refinement / UI Design. While this is the best iteration of touch-wiz yet its clean, its smooth I do like the themes options there is less clutter I think Samsung still needs more refinement in the @ the coding level and the icons need to grow up a bit. I'm getting used to the labels instead of icons which I think is a good move for the non tech savvy people among us but this should be an option that we could change after. Touch-wiz should steal some things from LG and HTC like the ability to move the apps button and to make themes change a lot more of the system UI like HTC does as well as offer a bit more customization in the apps screen I would like to change maybe the grid size, remove the brightness slider from the notification panel and I think they should have stuck to the quick toggles area not being full width of the screen but these are minor things and maybe Samsung will add or change some stuff later. Others things I miss form past versions of touch-wiz are in the task view screen all we have now is close all and multi window I do miss the app manager link in there as well as the option to adjust my touch keys back-light. I also think that software wise the OS is not as refined as it should be and it does reflect in battery life a bit compared to LG and HTC I used in the past I’ll explain this under performance / battery life later down.

Software things I really don’t like

1)	With fingerprint lock on I can’t turn on and off anything in the quick toggle pull down (Wi-Fi – Bluetooth, location etc. this needs to fix.

2)	No album art on my lock screen (why Samsung Why)???? (minor but I liked it)

3)	When using Bluetooth audio streaming when I get a message or notification the phone stops my music plays the notification sound then resumes music this is highly annoying and I would rather have my music volume lowered and the notification sound playing over it rather than a complete stop.

4)	Turning off data should not bring up a pop up window all the time telling me to turn on Wi-Fi if I’m taking off data or what other information Samsung sees fit to put in that box once or twice is good after that just don’t come up. PS it also happens for other things just can’t remember now.

5)	No way to turn off camera shutter sound at least in the G920I

6)	Lack of refinement (especially in power management) will explain later.

7)	The amount of storage used by the system (I was expecting 27 GB out the box Samsung shrink that OS size.

Camera---------------------

The camera in this phone is awesome, no issues what so ever other than I can’t turn off the camera shutter sound. It loads quickly, images are clear and balanced, the front facing camera is clear and bright, the different modes are cool still testing it out but I’m beyond happy with it.

Performance / Better consumption----------------

This is where optimization comes in but for the most part the S6 runs great 3GB of ram and Samsung’s processor does a great job. Realistically the S6 does stutter and apps do crash and this is an issue with the Software’s ram management more so with Googles buggy OS that they need to Refine. Samsung has done well with performance but we really need a ram issue fix and my phone tends to use a lot of ram about 500 to 300 MB or less free with system using 1.5 GB compared to the HTC I had the systems on that phone was between 800MB to 1GB consistently so Samsung needs to refine touch wiz some more.

But normally I don’t have an issue with speed like others have and I find apps open fast I have also speed up the animation speed so the phone feels even zippier now.

Battery life is good I get about 11 - 13hrs usually I leave home at 6 in the morning with data HSPDA+ and Bluetooth streaming so data and Bluetooth are usually on for an hour and a half then data remains on for the rest of the day until I commute home which is about another hour and a half of Bluetooth audio with data. On work I try to use Wi-Fi as data eats battery so that helped the battery situation. So what I noticed is that even when idle battery still drains a little more than I would like 1% or a little more it depends also data / BT kills battery fast on this phone. Idle at night I lose 2% on average it’s always 2% that’s with data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and location off. This is where I believe that the LG G2 wins even HTC with software optimizations and possibly better drivers idk but both phones idle at night perform better in the sense that the LG G2 stays @ 100% for around 5 to 6 hours while I sleep with location on and would stay @ 100% for around 5 minutes after I turn on data and Bluetooth as I leave the house. So I would say some heavy radio and OS optimization went on. The HTC would lose 1% at night but generally I got like 14hrs or more on that 2300 mah battery and the LG gave me 17+ hrs but it could be because of the larger battery but the HTC still gave me good battery life on lollipop with a 2300 mah battery so Samsung maybe you need to optimize more or check your services in the background.

Overall I can survive a day with no issues but I still find % of battery drain varies too much and goes down fast … I don’t think this is the best Samsung can offer for this processor being efficient yet powerful.

General improvements for GS7 ----------------

1)	Thicker device or one that is less slippery

2)	Software optimization and Samsung kill the bloat

3)	UX refinement / customization

4)	Work on battery life

Overall I like my S6 maybe even love it especially out of the case but Samsung has some fixes to do which I hope will come in an update or with android M which I hope google does most of the heavy work / fixing and optimization on cuz 5.0 was a fail IMO.

PS Samsung if you read these things I’m sure most of us won’t mind waiting long for software updates if you take your time and refine and optimize them as well as work on bugs + meaningful features.

another thing to note Hardware wise the S6 to me is the best what really needs improvement is software and i hope Samsung pulls an HTC and make a S6 for windows that's essentially and the same phone with windows on it i might be tempted to try that if they go that route