Following on from my comparison review of the iPhone 6 and the BlackBerry Classic, it is time for another unequal comparison and review. While there is a lot of merit in a direct head-to-head of similar handsets (and I'll refer you to Gordon Kelly's Apple iPhone 6 vs Samsung's Galaxy S6 piece) it's the bullpen handsets that I want to look at today from Cupertino and Seoul - specifically the iPhone 6 Plus and the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.
(The Galaxy S6 Edge was supplied by Samsung for this feature, and the iPhone 6 Plus was supplied by UK network Three).
Both of these handsets are subservient to the main flagship, yet each in their own way illustrate the future for Apple and Samsung. What are the plans going forwards, where is the design going, how competent are the companies in pushing a new vision to customers? And can these ideas that are outside of expectations challenge the consumers and the commentators to think a little differently about the parent companies?
(Which handset would you choose between the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy Note 4?).
Designing The Bullpen Smartphone
The Apple iPhone 6 Plus is the easier design to understand. Apple spent much of the years before the release of the iPhone 6 Plus sticking resolutely to a smaller physical screen on its smartphones, unlike other manufacturers. Whether this was by choice to have a notable separation between the largest iPhone and the smaller iPad Mini, or simply refusing to bow to the market forces showing a demand for phablets, the iPhone 6 Plus was seen as a late arrival in the smartphone world.
The reaction to the iPhone 6 Plus was strong. Even with the perceived issues around the bending chassis (an issue that the S6 Edge has also had to cope with), the public easily accepted the iPhone 6 Plus as a new device with many reviewers deciding to ditch the iPad Mini and travel with just the phablet.
With almost every other manufacturer already offering a phablet, the launch was a relatively easy one. The consumer education that Apple would normally have to go through in the marketing was not required here - everyone knew what a phablet was, everyone knew what they could do, and nobody worried if they needed one.
Dare I say it, but the iPhone 6 Plus was the minimum viable product to bring Apple into the phablet world. It was a gap in the line-up, so a quick application of a theoretical 120% scale on the design, and the handset arrived, was accepted, and started selling well.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is actually an easier handset to pigeon-hole. This is the South Korean company showing that it has a vision, that it can generate new ideas, and that it can implement these on a large scale. Following on from the Galaxy Note Edge which was debuted at the IFA event in September 2014 and then given a limited release in South Korean and a handful of EU countries, the S6 Edge takes the same hardware as the vanilla Galaxy S6, and bends the two long edges of the screen down to the flat rear chassis.
It's not a steep curve, and I'd argue that far from being an edge display it's more of a subtle curve, but it's clear that the marketing of the device has made at least one Samsung Galaxy handset into a desirable and fashionable handset. With the unit purportedly selling out across the world, the tricky nature of manufacturing the screen has limited supply - but when has scarcity and high demand ever been a bad thing for a well-managed PR team?
It also makes the S6 Edge stand out. While the iPhone 6 Plus is simply 'a bigger iPhone', the S6 Edge - while clearly a close relation of the flagship standard smartphone - is its own device with unique quirks and charms. Apple did the bare minimum to its hardware to reach for the phablet, while Samsung did something new and relatively unexplored.
Next page: It's all about the new screens and the software that drives them...
Using The New Screens
How well do the new designs cope with the different screens? The simple answer is that the answer is unclear. I have the feeling that the software for both the 6 Plus and the S6 Edge were put together with a brief to not be that different that the predecessors. That makes the transition to these devices comfortable for users - the only thing that has changed is the size (in the case of the iPhone 6 Plus) and the shape of the screen (for the Galaxy S6 Edge) - but doesn't fully exploit the potential both the Plus and the Edge offer.
I'm hopeful that both devices will continue to gain new features through software updates to make best use of the unique capabilities. Given the six month lead time that the iPhone 6 Plus has had, Apple has had a number of opportunities to do so and hasn't. Beyond the additions in the software to provide an extra column to scroll through elements such as incoming emails or your address book, there's been very little change in software to build on the uniqueness of the iPhone 6 Plus.
The S6 Edge has just stepped up to the plate, so how Samsung will update the software using the curved screen remains to be seen. Because of the quirky nature of the curve, the South Korean developers have been able to add in a number of features that use the edge - the ability to show an on-screen clock during the night, along with RSS feeds, weather, and stock reports comes over from the Note Edge. But with less of an edge on the S6 Edge compared to the earlier model, it's more 'information at the side of the screen' rather than on the 'actual edge'.
Apple focused on tweaking the UI across all of iOS to make best use of the larger screen, while Samsung has looked to add new features to its edge without any changes to the UI. That means that Android applications that have an edge-to-edge display without a gutter of empty pixels will exhibit distortion - YouTube is an obvious example where the edge interferes with the display, but you can spot it on other applications, especially those that rely heavily on text.
Neither company has really pushed the boat out on software. iOS has coped with the changes in this handset with more skill and presentation than Samsung and has far more visual compatibility with the existing application base, but the S6 Edge holds far more promise and I am eager to see what third-party developers can do with the Edge. Once more, the Edge promises a better future, while the 6 Plus promises the best that is on offer today.
Performance And Capabilities
If you look at the raw numbers, there's no doubt that Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge has a performance advantage. It has a faster processor, it has more memory, the larger camera, and more pixels. That all comes with a notable disadvantage... more power is needed. The battery life on the 6 Plus in real-world usage is good for up to three days of general use, while the S6 Edge is going to struggle to reach lunchtime on the second day.
For the traveller or a user who is constantly in motion, the 6 Plus' battery is one of the biggest advantages of these 'tier 2' handsets and the 6 Plus will not be quickly dismissed if endurance is your goal. If you're more of a fixed place worker, say in an office-based environment, then the addition of wireless charging in the S6 Edge is far more useful. Pick up a wireless charging plate, put it on your desk by your keyboard, and whenever you pick up the handset, it has as much charge as possible.
In three weeks of use, the only time that the S6 Edge has dropped below thirty percent and I've felt the need to hook it up to a portable charger was on a weekend trip to Amsterdam - the iPhone 6 Plus, with its cavernous battery, does not have the same issues.
If only the 6 Plus had wireless charging as standard.
Moving back to performance, I feel the S6 Edge better handles its hardware. The 1 GB of RAM in the 6 Plus is limiting in a number of situations, most notably in the Safari web browser with multiple tabs. iOS is incredibly efficient and makes good use of the available hardware - it feels that iOS has maxed out the performance on the hardware.
The opposite seems to be true with the S6 Edge. Running Samsung's Exynos family of chips, there is a lot of spare capacity for Android and TouchWiz to tap into. It's just that TouchWiz (and Android to a certain extent) is not as efficient as iOS. While it is an improvement over the Galaxy S5 software, it still feels clunky. If there's anything likely to change over the next few updates to the S6 Edge, it's the efficiency of the software.
And of course the eternal question of iOS or Android also pops up here and there's no simple way to answer that question. All I will say is this - the extensibility and open nature of Android makes it more likely that the edge on the S6 Edge will be used for some radical ideas from third-party developers, while iOS and the App Store regime will limit the use of the larger screen to the pre-selected UI elements that have already been changed.
Samsung's Camera For The Win
Given the Galaxy S6 Edge is clearly the better camera than the iPhone 6, can the iPhone 6 Plus do any better? The difference in the iPhone 6 Plus is the addition of optical image stabilisation. This improves the low light performance, allowing for a longer shutter speed and more information to be collected by the sensor compared to the iPhone 6.
This helps the iPhone 6 Plus in a comparison with the S6 Edge's weak point... which is low light performance. Indoors and in a small space, the 6 Plus is the better camera. But the wider lens on the S6 Edge, coupled with the larger sensor and improved image processing software means the South Korean handset is still the handset to beat in terms of outdoor photography, both in macro mode, but also in taking landscape pictures and action shots.
The issues with the color tone Samsung has in the low light should be easily tweaked in a software update, and perhaps the low-level issue can also be addressed.
Even before you take into account the difference in physical size of the two handsets that makes the S6 Edge an easier camera to use, Samsung has pulled ahead of Apple in terms of imaging on a smartphone.
(Now read my full review of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge camera).
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Camera with full resolution crop (image: Ewan Spence)
Apple iPhone 6 Plus Camera with full resolution crop (image: Ewan Spence)
Final Thoughts
There's a common refrain here. Apple has taken the available hardware it has on the shelf and made the best phablet it can make, without disrupting the iOS ecosystem or the user base. Cupertino has maximised the available resources and if it wants to build a next-generation phablet, it's going to have to release and sell a new model. That might be great for business, but it leaves consumers looking at the iPhone 6 Plus in an awkward place.
Samsung has taken the opposite approach. The curved screen has been put in place, the basic functionality has been added to the software, but there remains a huge amount of optimization that could be done to make the S6 Edge worthy of the 'edge' moniker. The question for me is when will that optimization will come? The Galaxy S6 Edge has far more promise than the iPhone 6 Plus, but with the iPhone 6 Plus it's clear what you are getting in the package and it's easy to predict what functionality will be available as a two-year contract approaches its end. The same cannot be said of the S6 Edge.
The obvious differentiation points are clear - if you're a size queen it's the 6 Plus; the more fashion- and style-focused consumer will go for the S6 Edge. For me that's not the biggest point of difference. The Apple 6 Plus feels like the culmination of everything in Apple's history. If you are looking for competency and capability, then the 6 Plus is the right choice to make.
But if you want a vision of the future, if you want a handset that has actually energised the smartphone world, if you want the handset that is genuinely exciting and shows promise for the future... get yourself out onto the edge of technological change with the S6 Edge.
(Now read why Samsung has been shocked by the S6 Edge sales numbers).
Disclaimer: The Galaxy S6 Edge was supplied by Samsung for this feature, and the iPhone 6 Plus was supplied by UK network Three.
