The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge Review
by Joshua Ho on April 17, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy S6
- Galaxy S6 Edge
WiFi Performance
As WiFi is still quite important on a smartphone for anyone on a relatively limited data plan, it's also important to test how well a device behaves when using WiFi. In order to do this, we use our standard iperf test to see how fast the device can send UDP packets. In the case of the Galaxy S6, we see that it shares the same BCM4358 WiFi/Bluetooth combo chipset that we first saw in the Galaxy Note 4. As always, in order to ensure maximum possible performance we're using an Asus RT-AC68U router to avoid issues with the router bottlenecking the phone.
As we can see, the Galaxy S6 manages to do better than anything else we've been able to test in recent memory. I'm not sure what's causing the difference in performance when comparing against the Note 4, but it's definitely possible that the antenna configuration has been improved to increase coherence and therefore the performance benefit that comes from MIMO.
GNSS Performance
In most of the Galaxy S6 variants, as there is no Gobi modem that could be used to provide GNSS location services it seems that Samsung has turned to Broadcom to provide satellite location services. In the case of the Galaxy S6, we see a Broadcom BCM4773 location chipset. This includes support for all of the major constellations including GPS, Beidou, and GLONASS in addition to SBAS, which helps to improve accuracy beyond what conventional GPS satellites can provide. To get a good idea for how good this system is I tried testing how long it took for a lock to happen on a clear night with airplane mode on. The Galaxy S6 managed to acquire a lock in 20 seconds which is likely to be a warm lock but a cold lock will likely take a minute without assistance data. After an additional 20 seconds I saw a peak accuracy of 20 feet, so there shouldn't be any notable issues with the GPS system. For the Galaxy S6 CDMA variants it's likely that location will be done using the MDM9x35 Gobi modem rather than the Broadcom solution used in the GSM Galaxy S6.
Misc
For the Galaxy S6, Samsung has fundamentally uprooted how they traditionally design their phones, and in the case of the entire radio architecture this is especially true. Instead of the standard Qualcomm modem, we see that Samsung has moved to the Shannon 333 GSM/LTE modem for the Galaxy S6 GSM variants. Given that this is likely to be the same modem that is in the Note 4 LTE-A it’s likely that this modem will ship as category 6, while we have reason to believe it's ultimately capable of UE category 9. However, whether the RF front-end is capable of handling 3x carrier aggregation of up to 450 Mbps on the downlink is a different question and is likely to be one that we won’t know the answer to unless support is added in an OTA update.
The transceiver, envelope tracker, antenna tuner, and most of the components that would traditionally be Qualcomm parts in a Snapdragon-equipped phone have also been replaced with Samsung Shannon components based upon the Chipworks teardown. In general though, I didn’t notice any issues with this choice of RF components although judging by the use of Qualcomm modems in the CDMA variants it’s likely that such a move was necessary in order to ensure good RF performance on CDMA networks but not GSM networks due to Qualcomm’s experience with CDMA2000. It's likely that anyone that has had previous experience with the CDMA Galaxy Nexus would be able to attest to this.
Unlike some other variants, we’ve noticed that the Galaxy S6 T-Mobile variant uses an Audience eS804 voice processor to enable hot word detection and S-Voice launching and is likely also active in phone calls and in any other scenario where noise cancellation and voice processing would be beneficial. The T-Mobile variant that we received also uses an NXP PN547 NFC module rather than a Samsung NFC module, but we did confirm that there is an ST-M digitizer used for the touchscreen and a Cypress CapSense PSoC for the capacitive keys.
Although I still don’t have the equipment to test speakers properly, subjectively the audio quality of the Galaxy S6’s single downward-firing speaker is good. The volume gets high enough that I never really used it on maximum volume for videos, but it’s still annoying to have to cup my hand to ensure that sound is going towards my face rather than traveling away. Overall the M9 still has much better speakers for a good media experience, but there’s nothing wrong with the speaker on the Galaxy S6 for casual use. I definitely found myself using it less than the front-facing speakers on the M9 though.
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stbutt - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link
Wow. What an amazing review that was. I am astonished at how in depth and impartial it is. Congratulations to Mr Joshua Ho and ANANDTECH.watersb - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Excellent detail. No way to exhaustively evaluate this decice in a single review, but this is the best I've seen. I read every word. Thanks!jasonjason - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
s6 edge is not in-cellUser.Name - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Am I the only person that holds onto a smart phone for more than 18-24 months?I really dislike the trend of smart phones becoming more and more "disposable" items.
For my own requirements, they're honestly at the point now that they're fast enough, the screens are good enough, and I don't use the camera enough (I carry around a Sony NEX) that I could buy any of the high-end phones like this or an iPhone 6 and stick with it for the next five years. Storage is the only thing which I am constantly limited by.
Yes, you now have the option of a 128GB phone - well my music library alone is more than a terabyte in size. Now I don't *need* to carry my entire music library on my person at all times, but it would be nice if I could.
When you consider that a phone is also storing apps, games, photos, videos and other data, even 128GB is not a lot of storage. I may only have 30GB or so left over that I can dedicate to music after all that - which means that I'm better off still carrying around an old 160GB iPod. What I want more than anything is a phone which can finally replace that.
With a MicroSD slot, you can dedicate all of that storage to media. 64GB MicroSDXC cards are dirt-cheap right now, 128GB are a bit more expensive, and they currently top out at 200GB.
Well several years from now there may be 256GB, 384GB and 512GB cards available at the same prices 64/128/200GB cards are today.
The SDXC standard supports up to 2TB, so theoretically you could have that much storage in any phone with a MicroSDXC slot if such a card were ever released.
It just seems short-sighted to remove the MicroSD slot.
sevin7 - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Your battery will likely need replacing before 5 years... having to ship you're phone off for a replacement battery is just as bad as the storage problemUser.Name - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I actually mentioned a replaceable battery in my initial draft, intending to shuffle it to the end of the post, but I must have removed it instead.I completely agree, a replaceable standard battery is an important thing to have.
While I have done it, I don't want to have to disassemble a phone to replace the battery, and swap it out with a third-party one of questionable quality/safety standards.
Gorgenapper - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Micro SD cards are not as reliable as the internal flash memory (and obviously not as fast). I experienced this first hand when I went on vacation last summer and used my Samsung GS4 Active to take pics and videos. On the second night, I powered the phone off and swapped the batteries, and found that all the pics / videos I took for that day were gone, even though they had been showing in QuickPic when I got back to the hotel before powering the phone off.The micro SD card (Sandisk UHS-10 64gb) had gone into failsafe read-only mode due to failure. I had to connect to the WiFi every night and back my stuff up to Google Drive.
User.Name - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Perhaps I have been fortunate, but as long as I have paid for quality cards and checked that they are genuine (there are a lot of fake SanDisk cards out there) I have yet to have one fail on me. And moving to a read-only state is a pretty good failure mode if you ask me.But I don't think that MicroSD should *replace* the internal storage. That's why I want a phone with 128GB—or more—internal storage in addition to a MicroSD slot, so that the MicroSD is only used to store media.
I just want the option of having my phone replace the need for carrying around an old iPod. I don't plan on using MicroSD for running apps, or making up for the fact that the phone itself only has 8GB of storage.
der - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
I missed this review. Are you KIDDING ME Anandtech!sonicmerlin - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
You failed to mention there's a maddening delay when you use Samsung's replacement for "Ok, Google" voice activation features. They disabled the standard Google activation and replaced it with their inferior version.