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
NAND Performance: The First UFS Phone
Storage performance is often a critical area for user performance, as applications cannot be cached in RAM at every possible moment. Camera performance is also often limited by storage performance as RAM buffers can only do so much to maintain performance before it’s necessary to commit photos to non-volatile storage.
However due to the memory hierarchy to some extent, storage performance is often hard to notice once it’s at a point where things are “good enough”. Unfortunately, in some cases we can see OEMs failing to include sufficiently performant solid-state storage, which can be a major pain point in the user experience when random read/write performance is low enough that there are noticeable IO pauses as the system has to wait for data to be loaded from storage.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 family is the first shipping implementation of UFS (Universal Flash Storage) 2.0 standard, which makes the internal storage model less like an SD card in nature. When comparing the eMMC 5.1 standard to the UFS 2.0 standard, we see a move from a the 400 MB/s maximum of the eMMC 5.1 standard with HS400 physical link interface to MIPI M-PHY, which allows for a theoretical maximum of around 720 MB/s and should be more efficient in transmitting data than the current eMMC standard. In addition, UFS makes it possible to do full duplex communication, which means that reads and writes can happen simultaneously. There's also a command queue, which helps to avoid inefficiencies that could arise from waiting for commands once a command has been processed by the storage controller, and utilizes the SCSI protocol to facilitate these new features at the interface level.
As for the Galaxy S6 itself, the UFS implementation Samsung is using is Samsung developed. Samsung's current implementation only supports up to 300 MB/s (or 2.4 Gbps) transfer rates as a theoretical maximum, so from an interface perspective it's still not reaching the full capabilities of the standard. Though even at a cap of 300MB/sec, it still stands to be a significant improvement over typical eMMC solutions.
Finally, on a technical note, the 32GB models are of the model KLUBG4G1BD-E0B1 with a maximum queue depth of 16.
In order to test storage performance, we use Androbench with some custom settings to get a reasonable idea of performance in this area, although this test isn’t an exhaustive examination of storage performance by any means.
The Galaxy S6 performs rather impressively in our standard storage test, but not as fast as one might have hoped. This is due to the nature of the Androbench 3.6 test, which only tests a single IO thread, which won’t use the UFS storage of the Galaxy S6 to its full extent. In order to see the kind of difference that UFS really makes, I ran the same test again on Androbench 4.x, which does support multiple IO threads. However, as our iOS storage test and Androbench 3.6 don’t support more than a single IO thread we will continue to present both results for now.
Overall, there are some immense benefits in storage performance here, especially in random IO performance. The Galaxy S6 has some of the fastest storage available in a phone today as far as I can tell given that this is basically a pure MLC solution, and shouldn’t have any real issue with storage performance holding back the rest of the phone over the course of 1-3 years as long as a reasonable amount of free space is kept to allow efficient storage management.
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akdj - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
I'll re-read, but I could've sworn that was mentioned a couple times. Maybe it was ARS, but I'll check, as you're right. SVoice is the 'front end' to access GVoice and therefore allows Sammy to 'remember' your search information, etc. I've been able to work around, I believe, on my Note 4 now with the 5.0.1 updateUse Google Laincher. Disable Samsung account and sync and mine flies! Much faster than Nova, Go or vanilla TouchWiz and 'possibly' part of Google's Launch code, while using its only syncing data through Google (possibly SVoice or SRememberEverything in the background). I'll have to recheck and time but the update to LP has certainly sped all facets of the UI, updates, app launching and all around perceived 'speed'. I use a dark wallpaper, Nova Launcher 70% of the time and GLauncher the other portion.
Possibly Google's new 5.0.1 code is more specific to usage of its own services overriding those of carrier or the OEM. Again, unsure but damn it flies!
I'm going to spend this week with Google's camera to see if the Note 4 fan shoot the new raw still formats. As a decent camera with Lightroom on board and a CC subscription, I'm excited for the raw output of these hamdsets.
Are you speaking from experience? (Do you own one) or what you've read in reviews? I've certainly seen that mentioned and thought it was here ...pertaining to your suggestion it was forgotten. When I read it, I checked it in the Note 4 and using TW straight, indeed it runs through SVoice first with a significant delay (regardless of bandwidth). It seems quicker in Nova, slower in Go, fastest using Google Launch
pSupaNova - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Reading this review I can't help thinking Intel is in trouble if Samsung manages to ship lots of this handset.it will show that they are getting their SOC manufacturing into gear.
Schickenipple - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
It's a little comical that a good portion of the 'pluses' of android phones have now gone the way of the iPhone. I fear there will be very little for Samsung lovers to hold over iOS soon.... How will you reboot when the OS freezes every day? Can't add an SD card??!! Blasphemy!Seriously though, they look pretty nice. Almost like an iPhone.
FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
oh but if feels so industrial designed and so well built in my hand its so ergonomic my money impression is very, very high as my brain has been fried to a crisp from my desire to be somebody important and wealthy...FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
excuse me but i have too go visit steve jobs grave for my monthly pilgrimage, and check my stock portfolio for my apple daily increase, an apple a day keeps retirement at bay !!!holmberg - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Could we get a measurement of the audio quality (i.e. the DAC and amplifiers, NOT the speakers), similar to what you did for the S5 here:;http://anandtech.com/show/8078/smartphone-audio-te...
FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
oHHMMM ah I have recieved a premonition:When the time comes, metal industrial apple clone design won't be the glossy cocktail party rave it is now for all the reviewers... the new "nano carbon" hardshell and totally black design will be the inherently desired feel it up in the hand "win" the reviewers and crybabies all claim we want.
So, soon enough, when it's as cheap as a popcan is now, carbon fiber phone rage will storm the gates.... oh it's so light and so stiff, it feels so strong in my hand (like a fem commenting) ...
YEP - that's coming next - then after the reviewers convince the whole industry to trend toward carbon fiber and leave the metalheads in the dust (their newly created idiots wake) we will have another brain fart of gigantic proportion to deal with...
Warnings about carbon fiber slivers will go unheeded - there may be a whole section on how to reduce scratches and nano crackings and splittings of the fiber along with sales kits and superglue derivatives to rebond the nano cracks...
Next some of the more fervent feeler uppers will wind up in the hospital witth carbon paw poisoning or necessary eye cleansings since they sneezed up the raw carbon tubes into their own faces...
In the mean time they will have alzheimers from feeling up their aluminum metalized wonder industrial builds....
Yep, coming soon to a raw brain fart industry of elite 1% self love.
Forget that plastic if flexible, moldable, much more comfortable in the hand, lighter, and easily snapped apart and together - we must now have metal with apple 5star hex screws - and soon only carbon fiber probably with glass reinforced or ceramic fastener holes... and the elite will rave at the sensational high quality super high $$$$$ feel in their paws...
Yeah man, it's coming - if they charged ten grand for solidified rice paper the elite and feely nerd ego wackos would praise it to the moon and sky...
FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Where the heck is the scree resolution comparison and the pixels per inch chart putting the apple fans to shame ?I just read elsewhere the ppi which was always fanfare here when apple had the lead is 557 ppi ...
That's way above the 200-300+ I'm used to seeing...
So it's 4k resoluion and 557 pixels per inch - doesn't that deserve a whole page of glorious praise comparing to the other losers, which is everyone is it not ?
ubcjack - Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - link
Can Anandtech write an article to explain how Samsung implement PDAF over Sony's IM240 sensor? I'm really interested in the implementation.DIYEyal - Thursday, April 30, 2015 - link
If this phone was thicker with a bigger battery, dual sim, micro SD and waterproof it would have been the perfect phone for me.Rumors suggest that samsung is about to release a dualsim version, so I'll probably buy that.