Update: The Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge have launched to the world, with better specs, a superior camera in low light and long-sought-after features like a micro SD card slot and water resistance. Here's what we think of its now cheaper predecessor.
It's no secret that Samsung needed to do something big with its new phone, to unleash something to stop the rot that the Galaxy S4 began two years ago.
I just didn't expect the Samsung Galaxy S6 to be this good.
Yes, there are still some elements that prevent it from being the perfect phone (this is Samsung after all, a brand that likes to cram as much into the phone as it can get away with) but to leap to this point from the plastic-clad nonsense of theGalaxy S5 is a really, really impressive feat.
Samsung didn't take this task lightly, beginning almost completely from scratch and replacing key members of its design team to make sure it created a standout phone.
Perhaps the S6 is a little too similar to the rest of the competition (it looks stunningly like an iPhone at the bottom) but at least there's the Galaxy S6 Edgefor those that want a really unique-looking device.
The big issues are price and battery life: the former initialy being wincingly high. It's dropped in price a fair bit now though, with Samsung offering the 32GB variant for £379 ($599, AU$899), the 64GB for £539 ($700, around AU$999) and the huge 128GB variant for £599 ($800, around AU$1,149).
The iPhone 6S has a different pricing structure in the UK, in that the 16GB option is £539 (with obviously less storage), the 64GB model is £619 and the 128GB model is £699. In the US, it's always $50 cheaper. Samsung could alter this match-up at any moment with an expected Galaxy S6 price drop.
Why the comparison? The main reason is that Samsung was finally starting to charge a higher premium than the iPhone, where traditionally the undercut has been one of its key selling points in the Apple vs Samsung debate consumers go through.
Thankfully, as you can see above, the price of the S6 has now dropped considerably, especially if you shop around, giving it back that edge. Though it will still set you back as much as the iPhone 6, it's cheaper than the Galaxy S7.
And there's a smaller battery on board than last year, which instantly makes me worry when the screen resolution has been bumped up to give us the sharpest display on the market.
But Samsung's been at this smartphone game for a while now, so can it justify that high price tag by cramming in loads of amazing technology… and make the battery last more than a day?
It certainly has its work cut out with the Galaxy S6 joined by the iPhone 6S, LG G4 and HTC One M9 at the top of the smartphone tree.
Design
Samsung's gone bold on the design of the Galaxy S6, taking away the usual plastic covering that festooned previous models and finally stepping into the world of metal for its flagships.
It's dallied with a more premium design ever since the Galaxy Alpha was brought out in the middle of last year. But with a higher price and lower spec, that model didn't really catch on, despite feeling really premium in the hand.
So this time Samsung's gone one step further, adding an all-metal band to a strong glass case and, really, making a phone that couldn't be much further from the Galaxy S5.
That's not to say the brand hasn't kept some of the design heritage in there - after all, Samsung is a company that's big on tradition. The front of the phone harks back to the Galaxy S4 days, with a rounded and bland fascia combined with the lozenge home button.
The biggest shame is that I didn't get to fully review one of the colored variants rather than 'White Pearl' that you can see above.
The other colors have a jewel-like sheen, reflecting the light in a luxury way. The white is just rather boring, and looks like older devices again.
The reason for sending reviewers the white version first is pretty clear though: this thing is a fingerprint magnet. I know I've said that before about other devices, but it's never been truer than on the Galaxy S6.
The rear of the phone will just become marked and smudged within seconds of handling it, so like a silver car the white chassis on the S6 serves to hide those ugly blemishes.
In the hand the Galaxy S6 is a very nice device to hold, with the 5.1-inch screen taking up most of the front. It's compact yet elegant, with a clear feel of premium quality when you're holding it.
That said, it doesn't feel like the most expensive on the market - whatever reason Samsung is giving for charging this high premium, it's not coming through in the design - but it does feel like a device that can be mentioned in the same breath as the HTC One M9 and iPhone 6S in terms of build quality.
The metal band around the side is split by strips of plastic to allow the antenna and other radios to make their connections - and if it looks familiar, well, it's a very similar design to that used on the iPhone 6S.
These strips are needed as metal is very inefficient at letting phone signal pass through, and Samsung isn't alone in including them. However, with the glass front and rear I was surprised to see them make an appearance.
Combined with the fact the bottom of the phone, where the speaker and headphone jack live, looks almost identical to what Apple is doing, this seems to be a risky line Samsung is treading.
The general layout of the phone is well designed though. The volume buttons on the left-hand side and the power button on the right are perfectly positioned, and the home button has been massively upgraded to deliver a very solid click.
That might not sound important, but it's not been the case with previous Galaxy phones so I'm pleased to see Samsung finally step up.
The back of the phone yields one of the less aesthetically pleasing elements though, with the camera protruding quite significantly from the rear of the Galaxy S6.
The reason is obvious: to allow for a higher power optical system and you'll see in the camera section that this was very, very much worth it.
But again, I'm left wondering what Samsung is doing here. In the desperation for a flat phone, the battery capacity is reduced and the camera left sticking out, exposing it to possible scratching.
Why not slightly round the rear, make it sit more nicely in the hand and improve the space for a battery? HTC does it to terrific effect on the One series, but it seems other brands are obsessed with a flat phone. As a result the S6 doesn't even rest comfortably on the desk, with a little wobble when tapping it at work.
But don't let the above make you think this is anything other than a great phone design. It's not up there with the very best - the HTC One M9's craftsmanship puts this head and shoulders ahead of the Galaxy S6 in terms of feel in the hand - but Samsung has finally offered what we've been hankering after for years, and it's done it well.
Screen
Samsung has always had brilliant screen technology, and once again, that's the case on the Samsung Galaxy S6. The Super AMOLED display offers clear, crisp whites against pure blacks, meaning even dark scenes are shown off perfectly.
The 5.1-inch display now packs more pixels than ever before - 1440 x 2560 in fact, which matches the Galaxy Note 4 but with a higher PPI of 577 - which means you're looking at one of the sharpest displays on the market. Though it's now been beaten by the ludicrous 806ppi Sony Xperia Z5 Premium.
The QHD level of screen was started by LG in 2014 with the G3, but as that was based on LCD technology it left the screen a little dark and power hungry, as each pixel caused a heavier strain on the battery.
Then the Google Nexus 6 came along, and that really impressed with its larger screen. Despite the wider display it still looked great, and when the aforementioned Note 4 came along with the same resolution, the bar was set.
So combining the pixel count of the Note 4 with a smaller display should yield an exquisite display, right? Sadly, no. That's not to say the screen on the Samsung Galaxy S6 doesn't look brilliant - it really, really does - but I'm not sure the QHD resolution really adds that much to the mix, especially given the higher power drain it commands.
Watching some optimized video does look nicer, and held side by side the screen is clearly sharper than a normal Full HD display.
But we've gone way past the point of needing any more sharpness in our phones, and even 720p resolutions don't look terrible (a point well made by Matthew Hanson in his piece on the myths of screen resolution) so I'm wondering why Samsung bothered here.
The Super AMOLED technology can make 1080p screens look phenomenal, and has been for years. And with bigger screens, the improved pixel count helps make them look next generation. But at 5.1-inch, this seems more gimmick than anything else as Samsung looks for anything it can throw into a new flagship to grab headlines.
(Admittedly the improved resolution is needed for the Gear VR headset, where the phone is the screen and so more pixels are better. But that's not going to be a real world use for this phone for many).
The screen on the Galaxy S6 is superb. It does still have all the real benefits of Super AMOLED, as I've mentioned, with outdoor visibility particularly strong.
There's nothing that doesn't look amazing on it - but it does come at the cost of battery life and, well, actual cost, and I'm not sure it adds enough to warrant those sacrifices.
There's something perverse in being happy that Samsung has fewer amazing things to talk about on its new phone, but for years I've been forced to talk about nonsensical ideas on the latest Galaxy flagship phone - we'll not go into the Smart Scroll debacle.
This time around, it's all about refinement, making it really easy to do the things you need without having to slap around a thousand menus. And the fancy stuff is kept to a minimum as Samsung finally takes note of what people like and focuses on the basics.
It might sound odd, given I was just saying the gimmickry was reduced, but I'm going to start with the heart rate monitor. It's still as unnecessary as ever, but it's now less prone to failing at least.
I've used it at the end of runs to see my heart rate, but that's not really giving me much useful information unless I can use it at the exact same moment after each workout. When charting your resting pulse it works a lot better, allowing you to see how much fitter you're getting by how hard your heart is working when you wake up.
To that end, it would be great if the S6 could prompt you to take a reading the second you wake up - without that data it all becomes a little moot.
If you do remember though, it's a much more accurate system, and you get to see the heart rate displayed visually too, which is really cool.
Even the oxygen and stress tests work better now - on the Note 4 this was just a car crash of inaccuracy, so while I still have no idea why Samsung is sticking with the heart rate monitor, at least it works well.
The S Health app which eats up all this data is improved too. The interface is so much cleaner, with special place given to heart rate, stress, running etc.
The cleanliness of the interface extends to being able to see the graph of heart rate over time, for instance, with an easy slide across showing the important information.
There's still not a lot of point to this app, of course - and now it's shorn of the life coaching ability, which would give handy hints on how to improve your wellbeing through eating, life goals and more.
It's now just a hub of slightly inaccurate information (a 100 minute run was logged as only 70 minutes according to the app, despite being in motion for the full period).
Fingerprint scanner
The fingerprint on the Samsung Galaxy S6 is one of the best on the market - and I didn't think I'd be saying that after the sliding option we had on the Galaxy S5. I was under the impression that Apple had the monopoly on decent scanners, but this changes things.
Like Apple, Samsung employs the single touch way of verifying your print, but after the simple set up the scanner here is amazingly accurate. A light touch will be enough to open the phone, and it rarely fails.
The other benefit is for Samsung Pay as well as using PayPal. The payment system from Samsung, which is promises will fill in all the gaps left by Apple Pay, has yet to fully launch (and won't be in the UK for a while, it seems) and the idea of paying for stuff through PayPal is rather hard to actually use unless you've managed to find anywhere that will actually let you pay using the app.
But it seems like the security side of things here, a situation created by Samsung's retooling of its fingerprint tech, is massively improved, and is a great way to get into your phone.
Smart Manager
Samsung's refined a well-worn app well on the Galaxy S6, allowing you to see all the important stuff in one place. The Smart Manager lets you track security on the phone, the battery life, storage and RAM usage. A quick tap will 'clean' all of these, but it doesn't do a huge amount.
For instance, you're only going to need to clean up storage once in a while, with unused app info being deleted, and the RAM usage is still something that I'm not sure how it works.
If you clear the RAM, the phone doesn't speed up or slow down much, and it seems that it could be affecting apps with opening and shutting. Battery usage is easy to work out, but I've not seen anything happening from asking the phone to 'clean up' this area.
It's a nice app to have in one place, and when you do need to have a look through stuff it's a very good option to have, but I was hoping for more for this idea from Samsung.
Double wireless
This could be a big one: Samsung's packed both versions of wireless charging into the thin frame of the Galaxy S6. When you see how much heft that usually adds to a phone to have ONE standard on there, having both the PMA and QI on the phone is amazing.
It shouldn't be this way, with a brand having to pack two competing technologies in one place. We need a single, unified, standard for wireless charging, but whatever the landscape Samsung is ready to service it.
I tested the S6 on the Tylt stand, which promises to let you chuck the phone down any which way and get it charging wirelessly, and for the most part it's right. I also tried the Fonesalesman's QiStone+ Wireless charger, which is a battery pack as well for wireless charging on the go - it's good, but unless you're in a very still area it's very easy to make it slide off the pad.
Even the official wireless puck from Samsung, with a rubber ring to hold the phone in place, doesn't quite grip it well enough thanks to the protruding camera on the back. Were this phone flat, it wouldn't be as much of an issue, but it's a slider.
The wireless charging on the Tylt stand was very quick, similar to what I'd expect on a normal charger. This was impressive given the input was only 0.75 amps, which is much less than the phone can handle. However, the phone does heat up rather significantly on all the wireless pads, so it's worth keeping an eye on that if you're keeping in your bag near some sandwiches.
Microsoft's on board
A lot's been made of the fact that Samsung has bundled the Microsoft suite of apps onto its phones this year, but in reality it's not something to get that bothered about.
The only really cool addition is OneNote, which is a good alternative to Evernote (which was previously placed on Samsung phones). It allows you to create notes, lists and mini documents on the fly in an easy to use interface, and is a good addition.
The other Microsoft apps added in are Skype and OneDrive - not really the full suite I was expecting. The former is on many new phones now - including theOne M9 - and is easily downloaded anyway.
What's more annoying is that the app pops up every so often on the battery screen, sipping a little bit of power, even when not used. OneDrive is cool in that it gives you 100GB of storage space, but I'd rather Samsung had partnered with Google in the same way as HTC to give that space on Google Drive.
You can see that Samsung knows Google Drive is the bigger hitter, as you can link your phone's file manager system to Drive with one tap, with the same option nowhere to be seen for Microsoft.
Apps disabled
That said about Microsoft, you can get rid of most of it if you fancy anyway. While Samsung's not chucked as much bloatware onto the Galaxy S6 as normal, there are still a fair few apps that come out of the box.
The good news is these can now be uninstalled with a simple tap - even the Google Play Store for some reason. Don't get rid of that though, as it will make getting new apps on there really rather difficult.
It doesn't seem that these apps are really uninstalled, merely disabled and hidden from view, but given the capacious storage on offer from 32GB to 128GB, it's essentially the same thing for most users.
The TouchWiz UI on top of Android 5.0.2 is impressive in that it's been upgraded well from last year, which in itself was a big step forward.
Android 5.1.1 is available now on the handset, bringing with it better volume management (although Samsung has already fixed the 'no silent mode' bug) and improved menus too.
It will almost certainly be upgraded to Android Marshmallow soon too, bringing with it new Google Now features, full permission control for apps, battery life improvements and more, so it should be worth the wait.
Even on the current version though the look is more refined than before, with larger and flatter icons festooning the home screen, and the amount of menus reduced too. Samsung made a big deal of the amount of clutter it removed, and while it is reduced, there are still myriad pop ups and options to play around with.
I don't mind that too much though, as it's a clear and clean interface to wander through. A tap on the settings icon will take you to all the options in one place, with your favorite settings on the top of the screen - it would have been great if this was auto-populated with most used, but being able to customize it is good enough.
Things like the camera, which prefers to take options off the screen rather than instantly give every single setting within one tap, show that Samsung is trying to clean things up, and for the most part it shows.
