Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge review round-up: brilliant, but are they enough?

A beautiful design, stunning displays, sharp cameras and innovative technology gets Samsung ready to take on the iPhone

Samsung Electronics President and CEO JK Shin presents the Samsung Galaxy S6 during the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (AFP/Getty)

Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and the Edge are released next week, and early reviews indicate that it could be enough for Samsung to challenge the iPhone 6 as the flagship phone of choice.

The Android phone was unveiled at the beginning of March.

When it was launched, The Independent’s David Phelan said that this was the phone that Samsung had to really get right, given the problems with its predecessor the S5. It did so, he said, calling the phones “the most attractive, premium-feel phones Samsung has made” and that they “are no longer the poor relations in terms of design and can hold their own with the likes of HTC and even Apple”.

The feel of the phone — which was one of the much-complained about problems with the plastic-backed S5 — has been lauded by many reviewers.

“It looks great from all angles,” wrote Eric Limer in Gizmodo. “The glass back feels and looks classy, the buttons feel great, the metal trim is lovely.

While the look of the S6 has received plaudits, it’s also been criticised for looking a little like the iPhone that it was designed to take on.

In Yahoo Tech, Daniel Howley wrote: “These are easily Samsung’s most attractive devices, though the standard S6 in particular isn’t exactly original, as it looks like an amalgamation of the iPhone 4s and iPhone 6, an opinion shared by the majority of the people I showed the handsets to.”

That steel box contains a screen that according the Mirror “is the star”. The 5.1-inch screen has a resolution four times greater than a 720p HD screen — not all that useful yet, as Jeff Parsons notes, but which looks set to take advantage of YouTube and Netflix’s work to bring 2K and 4K videos to consumers.

Though the curved screen on the Edge might not be all that useful, it helps video content and other visuals shine through since the bezel around the screen is non-existent, Parsons wrote.

And the camera means that you can shoot the kind of video that you need to show off that screen, according to Forbes. Both video and photos come out well, with the phone’s software working hard to ensure that pictures look as good as possible.

But all of those features are no good if the battery runs out — and it’s no longer removable, so you can’t do anything about it if it does. The battery life is less good than the S5 — though slightly better in the S6 Edge than it is in the normal S6 — though “you should still get a full working day’s use out of the S6 regardless of how much you use it,” according to Expert Reviews.

The phone is good enough to recommend, for once, according to Computer World.

“For the first time, I can recommend Samsung's flagship phone without all the usual asterisks that accompany such a statement,” writes JR Raphael. “Samsung is finally growing up, and the resulting effort is going to make a lot of people happy.”

Samsung’s new flagship has won over reviewers, and the company looks set to take on Apple, HTC and its other rivals. The phone is released to the public on April 10.