Samsung launched its latest flagships, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, recently at their press conference. Sporting a new design language and material choice, the new entrant to the premium Galaxy S series managed to impress critics and consumers alike. But as they say, every coin has two sides to it. And this new announcement is no exception, for it comes with a few disappointments as well. Till now, not-so-premium looks and a badly optimized software were the main disappointments with their launches, and Samsung has done a great job by addressing them, but this time the problems arise mainly due to the changes that Samsung has made. So, let’s have a look at what critics and haters will come up with time and again till the next Samsung flagship is released.
(Also Read : Top 10 features of Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge – Part 1)
1. No storage expansion
All Samsung flagships, the S series and Note series, had a microSD card slot which was a huge plus point considering the fact that almost all major OEMs skipped this feature in their flagships. But Samsung for the time, with Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, has left out this feature.
While Samsung has made a 32 GB version as the basic one, and added a 128 GB model to its line-up, making away with this feature might well be a deal breaker for Samsung fanatics. While memory cards can be used to easily swap data between phones and ensures the data is safe even when the phone goes dead, it also was a cheaper option for those who need larger storage capacity. With expandable memory, buying a basic 16 GB model of a flagship made sense in those days, but now you will have to pay a premium price if you wish to have higher storage capacity.
The Reason : Samsung has clearly focused on making the device faster. And that’s evident by the way S6 and S6 Edge has performed, in benchmarks as well as practical usage. Additionally, Samsung has brought forth UFS 2.0, which is currently the fastest flash storage on mobile devices. Memory cards still use the older technology and the difference in read/write speeds of the two technologies might have caused a relative slow down in performance.
2. Non-removable battery
Consumers who are heavy users of smartphone will definitely crave for better battery performance. Having a removable battery provided an option to carry an extra battery with you. Plus there were options to replace the battery with cheaper third party batteries once the original battery starts to show its age, and even the option of inserting a battery pack of higher capacity. But with a unibody glass and metal design, all those have gone out of the window.
The Reason : Let’s be perfectly honest, you can’t really have a glass and metal unibody design with a removable back cover. Samsung had used such a design with the metallic Wave 3, but the slide out technique to remove the back cover was a headache nonetheless which required a lot of care. And with portable power banks becoming a rage nowadays, skipping out on this feature won’t really affect too many people.
3. Durability
Well, how long do you expect a phone with glass on the front and back to survive scratches and falls? Samsung has pointed out that both the glass panels have Gorilla Glass 4 protection, but expecting such a device to look good after a year or so might be too much. Plastic, for all the criticism it has faced, is still a lot more durable than any metal or glass phones. Samsung went fancy this time around, sacrificing an important aspect.
The Reason : A phone that’s high on premium quotient will definitely score less when it comes to durability. To Samsung’s credit, they have included the toughest and one of the most scratch resistant glass panel available. (Sapphire crystal is scratch resistant, but too brittle to be a phone’s outer casing.) And anything except plastic is anyway prone to damage in the long run
4. Battery Capacity
Samsung has constantly upgraded the battery capacity with each new launch of Galaxy S and Note series respectively. And with so many pixels to push each time, a slight increase in capacity was the least one could expect. But Samsung surprised one and all by actually reducing the capacity! Galaxy S5 had a 2,800 mAh battery, but S6 and S6 Edge have 2,550 and 2,600 battery respectively. While battery life was never really a problem with Samsung flagships, and there was only a slight bump in Note 4 even with a QHD display, this move has made us a little skeptical.
The Reason : The new 14 nm Exynos 7420 chip is more efficient, and that has probably given Samsung the confidence to sacrifice battery capacity to make S6 and S6 Edge a bit thinner.
5. No water and dust resistance
If Samsung hadn’t included this feature in Galaxy S5, we wouldn’t have mentioned this. They introduced the feature even with a plastic phone with a removable back cover, but skipped it now with S6 and S6 Edge which have sealed batteries and unibody design. No, we neither want to go swimming with it nor bury it deep under sand, but not having to worry about the phone in case we spill something on it would have been great though.
The Reason : Waterproof phones are not exactly a rage yet, and looking at Sony’s market share, mentioning it as the phone’s USP wouldn’t have worked either. And not including this feature gives Samsung the option to release an “Active” version of S6 soon!
So, that’s been it! A brief look at what we think Samsung missed out. And yeah, we agree that there was nitpicking, especially the last three ones, but these are disappointments anyway. Let’s hope at least some of them get addressed with the Note 5.
Source : Samsung Mobile Press
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