Samsung Galaxy S6 edge vs Apple iPhone 6 Plus: first look

Introduction

The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge is a device with a slight, playful curve on both ends of the screen, but that’s enough for it to feel like a device from the future. Many of you will face the choice between the S6 edge and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, so we’ve taken on the task to give you our first look impression when comparing these two premium devices: it’s all about a sci-fi, futuristic gadget versus the more traditional one, Samsung versus Apple, Android against iOS, a true clash of the titans.

The Galaxy S6 edge is a big step up from everything we’ve seen before: the typical plastic design of earlier Samsung phone is gone in favor of a combination of a sturdy, metal frame, and a glass back and front. The S6 edge can definitely stand its ground when it comes to premium looks against the stylish iPhone 6 Plus that many pundits consider a kind of a gold standard for phone design.

Is Samsung’s ‘next big thing’ really better in both the inside and the outside? Let’s find out.

Design

The Galaxy S6 edge brings big improvements in design: it’s slim and lightweight, and it’s made of metal for the frame and glass on both front and back. The iPhone 6 Plus, on the other hand, features an all-aluminum design and it’s a hair thicker than the S6 edge: 7.1mm vs 7mm.

Both feel premium, made with meticulous attention to detail, and picking between the two is a lot about picking your favorite. Interestingly, the Galaxy S6 edge has a protruding camera just like the iPhone 6 Plus (with an even larger hump). It’s not something that bothers us, but it does make the device shaky when you lay it flat on a table.

Since we’re comparing the 5.1” Galaxy S6 edge with the larger, 5.5” iPhone 6 Plus, there’s naturally a sizable difference between the sizes of the two devices. The iPhone 6 Plus is a wide phone, measuring 3.06”, while the Galaxy S6 is narrower and more single-hand-friendly with its 2.76” of width. Apple’s phablet is also taller, at 6.22” vs the 5.59” of height on the S6 edge.

Display

Samsung saved no superlatives for the screen of the Galaxy S6 edge: it just plain put forth the claim that it is the best screen on a smartphone. It’s a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED screen with a 1440 x 2560-pixel (Quad HD) resolution, and Samsung has done some big improvements to the brightness of the S6, saying that it can now go to up 600 nits, and while we couldn’t verify that, we can indeed see it being much brighter than earlier Samsung displays.

The edge here plays a different role than on the Note Edge - it does not interfere with the regular look of the interface (the side part is not permanently visible on top of TouchWiz), but you can bring it up with a swipe to the side to get quick access to contacts, for instance. You can also bring it up for quick info when the phone is lock, so you can save battery by checking notifications without firing the whole screen.

Now, compare this with the 5.5-inch LCD display of the iPhone 6 Plus, coming with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. This works out to a pixel density of 401ppi on the iPhone versus the whopping 577ppi on the Galaxy S6 edge. Samsung has one of the sharpest screens (if not the sharpest) we’ve seen on a phone. Can you really tell the difference between the two? We do notice a slight difference in perception.

What matters more is color accuracy. The Galaxy S6 edge seems to improve color accuracy, and goes on a more level playing field against the fairly good color fidelity on the iPhone 6 Plus.

Interface: TouchWiz with an edge vs iOS 8

Quite honestly, TouchWiz is the single area we’ve hoped the most to see improved, and - at first sight - the new version of Samsung’s interface indeed appears to run faster, which is great news. It’s hard to measure the exact difference, but it does seem to be there. Samsung has also trimmed the fat off TouchWiz making it less visually cluttered, and while the icons for things like dialer and messages are practically the same, others have been streamlined to look better. There’s still this cheerful cartoonish look, but it’s much less visually self-assertive.

The added benefit of the dual edge on the S6 edge is for quicker multitasking, and for quick access to contacts (you can customize the edge to serve your own purpose, which is neat).

Apple’s iOS 8, on its part, is a skin that needs little introduction with its fairly smooth performance, user-friendliness and simplicity.

The most important area where Samsung catches up here is payments. The new Samsung Pay will make a huge debut in the United States and Korea this summer, and it aims to use a more universal system that would grant it compatibility with more retailers. Samsung hinted that its new payment system would actually have a larger scope than Apple Pay, and demonstrated that using it will just require a swipe and tap on the finger reader, very simple. Let’s see how this plays out in the near future.

Processor and Performance

The Galaxy S6 edge features a 14nm octa-core system chip, and it’s the first phone to come with a 14nm chip, according to the company. Samsung did not say that it is using the Exynos 7420, but all indications point in that direction. The CPU cores are four of ARM’s performance-driven Cortex A57s running at up to 2.1GHz and four battery-savvy Cortex A53s clocked at up to 1.5GHz.

The iPhone 6 Plus, on the other hand, ships with Apple’s custom silicon: the Apple A8 chip with two CPU cores, but those CPU cores are much larger, which gives them their single-core-performance prowess. The Galaxy S6 outshines the iPhone 6 Plus hugely in multi-core performance, but the single-core performance of the two (that most apps will depend on) should be fairly similar.

Good news is that with the Galaxy S6, Samsung does away with 16GB of internal storage and finally makes the jump to 32 gigs of internal storage in even the base model, while the iPhone 6 Plus still features a fairly claustrophobic 16GB. Neither device supports expandable storage (no microSD card slot on either). We also have a 64GB and 128GB models for both the S6 and the 6 Plus.