Samsung unveil Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, Gear VR and Samsung Pay

Samsung have announced the release of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, and at the same time the Gear VR (Virtual Reality) headset and Samsung Pay.

The Galaxy S6 Edge uses a curved glass screen feature to provide a quick way to stay in touch with select contacts, similar to the Note 4 Edge. How soon the S6 Edge will be readily available in the UK may however be in doubt, it’s still pretty hard to lay your hands on a Note 4 Edge and that’s been out for 6 months.

Plastic is out, the new S6 sports a metal frame and glass back, the old plastic backs of previous handset are out but that’s at the sacrifice of a removable (replaceable!) battery. The trade off is a larger battery which should last longer plus inbuilt wireless charging and a fast-charging feature which should give you four hours of battery from just ten minutes of being plugged into an electricity socket.

Whilst you can still get S-View covers, the premium cover is a full screen transparent cover showing battery charging, weather and important notifications.

Thankfully Samsung have decided to clamp down on the number of pre-installed apps and instead focus on core functionality and making what you need work better. However performance is hard to gauge as it appears that they’ve opted for their own chip so there’s nothing to compare it against until the phones are lab tested.

For the time being, anyone in the UK can forget Samsung Pay, which will be NFC and Mag stripe enabled. It’ll be rolled out in the US first and it’ll be months before we ever see it in the UK. What you may be interested in is the Gear VR.

The Gear VR which aims to give a 96 degree cinema experience by attaching your Galaxy S6 to the headset. Mind you the use you’ll get out of it will likely be limited – using it on your daily commute would not only make you like like a pretentious plonker but you’d probably also miss your train stop unless you ran out of battery first, this is one best restricted to home use only.

I only have one issue with the Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge, and that’s the Galaxy Note 4. In fact it’s not even the Note 4, it’s the Note 3 that I currently use. The Note 3 is just too good a smartphone, I’d miss the stylus and I can’t even justify an upgrade to a Note 4.

If I was on a Samsung Galaxy S5 or earlier, the upgrade on the April the 10th release date would be a no brainer. As it is as a Note 3 user I’m not going to upgrade to a Note 4, I love the look of the S6, but I’m probably going to hold out for the Note 5 or whatever the next iteration of Samsung’s phablet ends up being.