Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ Preview – The new ‘Galaxy Note’
Since 2011, Samsung has released a Galaxy Note every September and the device seems to become more popular every year. Was the first Note a bit chuckled because of the huge 5.3″ screen at the time. Last September, Samsung managed to get a lot of attention with the Note 4, which was praised for its beautiful 5.7″ quad-HD screen. the powerful hardware and the good camera.
In September, the company will release the Note5; again a 5.7″ phone with qhd screen, but with faster soc, improved camera, more memory and an improved S-Pen. The well-known micro-sd slot has been omitted this time and the back is no longer removable, just like it happened before with the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.
All this is actually completely irrelevant to people in Europe, because the Note5 will not appear here. The phone will only be released in North America and a select number of Asian countries; the rest of the world can get started with the Galaxy S6 Edge+ this fall. This is, as the name says, a larger version of the Galaxy S6 Edge, with a 5.7″ screen instead of 5.1″. Also new are the extra gigabyte of memory, new accessories and some adjustments in the software.
The S6 Edge + was announced together with the Note5 on August 13 in New York, but we were able to get started with the Edge + earlier to see if Samsung’s strategy for this fall is a good one.
A large S6 Edge
You can’t describe the S6 Edge+ more aptly than as ‘a bigger S6 Edge’. Just like the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the two Edge phones look identical, with the same use of materials, the same finish and the same type of curved AMOLED screen. The edge is made of metal, the back of glass and below the screen is the fingerprint scanner that we know from the other S6 models. The S6 Edge+ is therefore intended for people who like an S6 Edge, but prefer a larger phone. It is Samsung’s hope that the people who would normally buy a Note will go for the Edge+ this year. For a phone of 5.7 “, the S6 Edge + is quite compact; in width it measures only 75.8 mm, while the Note 4 was still 78.6 mm wide.
Apart from the size, there are some differences with the S6 Edge. For example, instead of 3GB lpddr4 memory, 4GB lpddr4 memory is now available. The soc that it connects to is the same as the other S6 phones: the Exynos 7420, an octacore chip with a cluster of Cortex A53 and a cluster of Cortex A57 cores. There is also 32GB of storage memory available again, just like the well-known combination of a 16-megapixel camera on the back and a 5-megapixel model on the front on the phone. The battery has a capacity of 3000mAh, 400mAh more than the S6 Edge.
More memory
That extra gigabyte of memory is not a luxury, because one of the criticisms of the Galaxy S6 is that users run into the memory limit after some time. Samsung has fine-tuned the memory management of the S6 phones quite tightly, so you can’t have many apps open in the background. In addition, Samsung’s own software consumes a considerable part of the memory, leaving less for apps.
It is difficult to test the speed and responsiveness on a ‘fresh’ device, because there are hardly any third-party apps on it. We were able to see how much memory the firmware of the S6 Edge + reserves as standard, and that is quite a bit. On a Galaxy S6, it’s normal for the system to use up about 1.2 to 1.4GB of ram; with the S6 Edge+ we saw a peak of no less than 2.2GB, which almost negated the extra gigabyte of memory.
It should be noted that the phones were running test software that most likely had debugging and logging tools baked in, which also take up part of the memory. Samsung hinted that it’s working hard to improve performance and memory usage with each update to the S6, so we’ll have to wait until early September when the S6 Edge+ launches for a real verdict.
Software
Along with the Edge+, Samsung introduces a number of new software features that it has added to its TouchWiz shell. The most interesting is the extension of the People Edge, the vertical menu that you see when you swipe in from the right side on the touchscreen. With the S6 Edge you could place shortcuts of contacts here, but nothing more. With the Edge+ it is also possible to include apps in this list, so that you can quickly get to your favorites.
The rest of the adjustments are not very shocking, just like the expansion of the People Edge actually. For example, it is now possible to set up a live video stream from the camera and broadcast it directly via YouTube. We got a short demo of this and although it took some time to set up the connection, the quality was ultimately fine. However, there is a considerable delay in the stream – Samsung itself said about twenty seconds – which means that it is all less real-time than, for example, Periscope. That service has also gained quite a following in recent months and it is therefore questionable whether Samsung can compete.
On the audio side, the S6 Edge+ features a new Bluetooth audio codec from Samsung, which should deliver better sound quality when used with one of Samsung’s own Level wireless headphones or speakers. In addition, Samsung claims that the ultra high quality audio upscaler it has built-in can take compressed sound to the level of 192KHz audio. That is of course not possible; information that is not there cannot be retrieved. It probably comes down to an equalizer that fills in the high and low a bit more.
In the camera app, Samsung has finally added support for raw shooting. A recent update to the S6 and S6 Edge already built in raw support under the hood, but still required a third-party app to actually use it. After the release of the S6 Edge+, raw support should also be available for the normal S6 and S6 Edge. This also applies to the improved People Edge, the new icons used in the interface of the S6 Edge+.
accessories
Samsung also comes with some new things in the accessory area. For example, the wireless charging technology has been improved, which should result in a charging time that is 27 percent shorter than before. You will need the new wireless charger for that. The S6 Edge+ also charges faster when wired, so that it is almost as fast as its little brother, despite its larger battery.
The most surprising accessory is undoubtedly the keyboard cover. Just when the smartphone with a physical keyboard really seems to be extinct, Samsung comes with an accessory to turn your S6 Edge+ into a kind of BlackBerry. The cover consists of a back cover for the phone with a small keyboard that you place over the screen at the front and click into the back cover. The interface detects this and shifts the screen content upwards, leaving you with a reasonably square part.
It has been ingeniously conceived, but the question is who is still waiting for this. Apart from the fact that we didn’t like typing the keys very much, the construction makes the phone considerably thicker and you hand in a large part of the screen.
Conclusion
Anyone who wants a large high-end phone from Samsung this fall will automatically end up with the S6 Edge + and that is not a bad thing. The phone looks nice, has a good screen, contains fast hardware, has a handy fingerprint scanner and an excellent camera. If Samsung manages to optimize memory usage, there is little to criticize in terms of software. The sloping screen edges are still primarily for looks and less for functionality, but it is good to see that Samsung is working on new functions.
Apart from the size, there is little in which the S6 Edge + really differs from the smaller S6 Edge, especially since most software changes will also come to the S6 Edge. This raises the question of how much money that extra 0.6″ screen is worth. Samsung’s answer is clear: 100 euros. The suggested retail price of the Galaxy S6 Edge is being reduced from 849 to 699 euros, so that space is freed up in the portfolio for the S6 Edge+ for EUR 799. That’s a lot of money for a phone, but you get a large, unique phone with good hardware in return.