Samsung Galaxy S5 vs S6 Comparison, reviews and Features

Samsung’s Galaxy S5 wasn’t exactly a flop, but at the same time could hardly be considered the company’s most successful handset to date. Samsung itself admitted the handset didn’t sell as well as it had hoped, and there was a reasonably sizeable backlash of criticism from fans and press about the S5’s lackluster design and hardware. In short, it did not live up to the hype.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is a plastic handset with a removable rear cover that has a perforated texture, supposedly in order to feel more natural and aid grip in the hand. It's a removable cover, allowing access to the also removable battery and microSDXC slot.

With the Samsung Galaxy S6 we find a more premium-looking design with a metal chassis and mirrored finish to the rear and tougher Gorilla Glass 4 at both front and back. The device is no longer waterproof (for that check out the rumoured Samsung Galaxy S6 Active), and the battery no longer removable. With 32GB of storage as standard, Samsung has also removed the microSD card slot. We thought the design would look more similar to the Samsung Galaxy Alpha, but the Samsung Galaxy S6 reminds us more of the iPhone 6.

Display Comparison

The Galaxy S5 packs a fairly modest display panel compared to a lot of the supersized, Ultra-HD examples strutting around the market at present. It has a 5.1in Super AMOLED at 1920x1080 pixels and 432 pixels-per-inch. It’s still nice and sharp, however, with great color and brightness levels, good viewing angles, and at full HD rather than anything beefier it’s not going to drain your battery like a newly awoken vampire. Samsung did go the whole hog on the Galaxy Note 4 by bumping the resolution up to QHD at 2560x1440 pixels and its gone and done exactly the same thing on the Samsung Galaxy S6, which is a 5.1in QHD Super AMOLED panel with a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution and an eye-bursting pixel density of 577 ppi.

Camera Connectivity

Both Samsung Galaxy S5 and Galaxy S6 are fitted with 16Mp rear cameras, but the S6's version has been improved with smart optical image stabilization (as seen on the Note 4), plus a f1.9 wide-angle lens that allows for better shots in low light. The S6's camera is always on in the background too, so it will spring into action and be ready to shoot in just 0.7 seconds. Plus an IR sensor can automatically detect and adjust white balance. The front camera has been boosted from 2- to 5Mp, and now supports real-time HDR, while 4K video recording is supported at 30fps.

Audio Comparison

Sound quality in the S5 is acceptable, but nothing out of the ordinary. With the S6 Samsung claims the built-in speaker (still a single speaker) offers 1.5 times the volume.

Battery Life Comparison

The Samsung Galaxy has a 2800mAh removable battery and an Ultra Power Saving mode that ekes out every bit of life (up to 24 hours) from the last 10 percent of juice by turning off all unnecessary functions and using a greyscale display. The S6's battery capacity has a reduced capacity of 2550mAh, but has some nice upgrades. Wireless charging is optional, while you can get up to four hours use from a 10-minute charge. Samsung says the S6 charges in half the time of the iPhone 6.

Software 

While the Samsung Galaxy S5 is sold running Android KitKat, the S6 will come with Lollipop. You can read up on the key differences in our Android KitKat vs Android Lollipop review, but keep in mind that Samsung is also rolling out Lollipop to the S5. TouchWiz features on both S5 and S6, but in the S6 Samsung says it is no longer leggy. There's the S Health 4.0 app, which will track your activity thanks to the various sensors including a barometer and is also used in conjunction with the heart rate scanner on the rear of the device.

Samsung's new Samsung Pay is made available thanks to the NFC chip, too, though it isn't set to launch in the US until the second half of 2015 so won't arrive in the UK for a long time. One interesting thing is that the S6 comes with Microsoft Apps pre-installed, and you'll get OneDrive with 115GB of space for two years, as well as Microsoft's OneNote app. Samsung KNOX is present with security features including Find My Mobile.

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Samsung Galaxy S6 features and review

The Galaxy S6 is has been launched at MWC 2015 - and it looks really rather special. It's joined by the Galaxy S6 Edge: a curved screen variant of the phone which won't be sold in at that great a volume. Think Samsung Galaxy Note Edge to the Galaxy Note 4.

But enough about the others - how good is the new Galaxy S6? The short answer is: very good indeed.

We know why you're here though: you want to know everything there is to know about this new phone.

Samsung Galaxy S6 features and review

Design

We've been criticizing Samsung a long time for its uninspiring, all-plastic, cheap-looking devices, and that chant reached a crescendo in the Galaxy S5, where the company ignored all hopes and pleas for a more refined style, and stubbornly released the S5 with the same plastic design. With ailing financials, though, and a series of well-made, metal devices, Samsung might finally make a change and bring an entirely new style for the Galaxy S6. We've seen the leaked images that confirm a metal frame will indeed be present on the Galaxy S6, but the back seems to be made out of glass, with a protruding camera right in the center. Now we have seen multiple leaked schematics and all agree on the actual dimensions of the phone, so we know what the physical footprint of the Galaxy S6 will be like.

Screen

Samsung has stuck stick with the excellent Super AMOLED displays we've seen from the company for quite a while on the Galaxy S6. But this time things have become a lot more awesome: much like the Galaxy Note 4, the Galaxy S6 comes with a 2560 x 1440 pixel QHD resolution. It's a really clear and crisp display - although questions have to be asked over whether it will hurt the battery too much, especially as that power pack is actually a bit lower in capacity than in years gone by.

Battery

Here's what's worrying about the battery in the Samsung Galaxy S6; it's only 2550mAh, compared to the 2800mAh of the phone from last year. This means that either: Samsung was able to make the chipset, screen and operating system more efficient and could therefore get away with a smaller battery, or it realized that it HAD to make an amazingly designed phone, otherwise it would lose more ground in the high end smartphone game.

Camera

Samsung has made the camera one of the key features on this new phone, and has stuck a 16MP sensor on there - but massively overhauled it from last year. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and S6 have identical snappers, with the South Korean brand looking to keep them as similar as possible - it's just the screen that's the differentiator. Let's get into the specs here: the rear camera has a 16MP sensor, with an aperture of f1.9 - this thing is going to be excellent for low light, and an improvement of 34% over the Galaxy S5. It still has the same Auto HDR mode as before, and will show how the pic will look in HDR mode before you take it - plus smart Optical Image Stabilization will keep the shake away.

The front facing camera has been upgraded too, with the same low light performance (which is a big jump from last year's model - plus the ability to balance the white levels using infra-red.

Operating system

While Samsung is cooking up its own Tizen operating system, the Galaxy S6 sticks with Android, and obviously Lollipop since that's the latest version. That's the good news, though the fact that it's still overlaid with Samsung's TouchWiz UI may not be met with much enthusiasm. There's good news there too though, as Samsung has slimmed down the UI quite a lot, taking out a lot of the annoying pop up menus and streamlining the apps to have fewer options littered around everywhere. It does still have the same look and feel though, despite flatter icons, so if you weren't a fan before this 'overhaul' isn't likely to change your mind too much.

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