Got my Edge - Quick Impressions...

Techno-guy

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Got my T-Mobile 128GB Edge this afternoon. Thanks T-Mobile!!! Have only had it for a few hours but here are my quick impressions:

1. Build quality - WOW! Very high quality build and materials. Feels amazing in my hand. The back is just stellar. Needs a case to improve grip. I find it a bit slippery. Slippery (but way cool) back and smaller bezel on the side due to the Edge reduce grippabilty.

2. Screen - Another WOW! I've never seen a screen so beautiful. It smokes my iPhone 6 Plus. Bright, vibrant and amazing definition/clarity from the high PPI. Apple is really falling behind here.

3. Fingerprint sensor - Amazing, but it's actually noticeably faster than the iPhone 6 Plus fingerprint sensor. The iPhone has a slight (but not annoying) delay in the recognition. The Galaxy S6 Edge is nearly instantaneous. So impressive! Very well done Samsung!

4. Battery - Potential issue here. I know it's early (so please don't jump on me yet) and I spent a while downloading all my Apps and updates (all while plugged in) but the device gets extremely hot when charging and being used. I also had it off the charger for a while (maybe 2 hours or so) just doing general setup things (but not downloading) and the battery was going down at a surprisingly fast rate and the device was surprisingly hot.

I'm not used to devices that get hot any longer (when not gaming). The 6 Plus is always cool (which is probably why such stellar battery life). I know it's really early but the heat and quick battery decreases may be a potential issue. Something to watch for sure and I'm sure I'll know in a few days for sure.

Honestly, battery life doesn't even seem close to my iPhone 6 Plus, which is nothing short of stellar in the battery life department. I was burning 15%-20% per hour just using the S6 Edge (not gaming, not downloading anything, just doing set-up/browsing/reading news). For comparison, the 6 Plus burns about 10% per hour in heavy (always on) use and a meager 1-2% per hour in standby, but often even less than that.

5. Speed - I'm noticing much more lag/stutter than I thought I would from such beefy specs. Again, early in the lifecycle due to initial set-up things which may be slowing things down, but something to watch. I only have that iPhone 6 Plus for reference (sorry) but if you touch the iPhone, things happen. The screen is instantly responsive. With the Edge there was a slight delay in doing normal things - pulling up menus, moving between screens, browsing. Again, not overly worried since it's early and maybe things were going on in the background and hopefully that shakes out but want to at least note it.

6. Edge - Well, here's my one potential problem that is not a set-up issue...I'm missing a lot of keyboard typing with letters/numbers on the left edge. (Right is not as bad for some reason, maybe because I'm right handed so my right thumb sits more flat on the screen and has a better angle). Anyway, the curve zone just doesn't seem to register well.

That said, there doesn't appear to be any dead zones along the edges like initial reports had but if a tap zone is on the apex of the curve itself there seems to be reduced recognition of finger presses. I found myself having to hit letters/numbers that were directly on the curve two or three times when typing. Wondering if this is going to be a long term issue that drives me nuts or if I learn to tap in a better recognition spot or if it's something that's fixable by a software update. I guess this is the price of an early adopter.

7. Edge apps - The Edge notifications are far more useless than I hoped. I'm hoping developers will be able to program some cool alerts, etc. for the Edge but right now, all you can do is have a color show if one of 5 select people sends you a text, emails, etc. but ONLY if the phone is upside down where you can't really see anything since the phone is upside down!!!! Huh? It should just light up the Edge with the phone up with a special color plus their name so you aren't memorizing colors. And, why limit things to 5 people. Let all notifications show on the Edge if you want.

Clock and lame updates (only if you swipe the edge back and forth) are the only other things the Edge does. Samsung could have easily let updates stream across the Edge with the face up (at your option) showing time/recent texts/emails, etc. with very little battery depletion. There is so much potential for the Edge notifications, I really hope Samsung or some developers make something of this or it's relegated to not much more than a gimmick.

Still, all in all, LOVING the phone. Super impressed with Touchwiz and Android 5.0 improvements. Even liking the default Samsung keyboard. Haven't been in the Android world in a bit (moved between Blackberry, Windows Phone (Lumia 1520) and my iPhone 6 Plus). That said, I have pretty good exposure to all the major platforms and am super impressed with what Samsung and Google are doing here.

With a few of these things shaking out (hopefully), Samsung will have a winner on its hands with the S6 and the S6 Edge. Even with the things I noticed early on here, I am still VERY glad I got the Edge. It's just a beyond cool device.
 
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ray sital

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Thanks for the honest first impression. Some of things you mentioned were known before the phone was released,such as the 5 contacts only and the phone needing to be faced down for the color notification glow thingy.

Android authority did mention something about battery life,like you said it's still early,but likely most will brush it off as the screen being the culprit.

With that said, prepare to be pounced on. Hope all those issues are worked out though. Seems like a really cool device.

Posted via the Android Central App
 

I Can Be Your Hero

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Nice impressions. Thanks for that.

You comments about battery life and lag/stutter are also being mentioned by other people, and it's starting to concern me.

Also, do you think the Edge is worth it over the regular model?
 

Techno-guy

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Nice impressions. Thanks for that.

You comments about battery life and lag/stutter are also being mentioned by other people, and it's starting to concern me.

Also, do you think the Edge is worth it over the regular model?

It's really personal preference (obviously) of the S6 Edge over the S6. I personally LOVE the style and the unique factor of the Edge. I've never seen a smartphone that looks and feels this good. Some people are clearly more utilitarian and while I've seen many enamored reviews of the Edge, I've also seen some pretty critical reviews that it is style over substance.

Style makes a difference for me but it won't for others. And, of course, that style comes with a $100 price premium. It definitely needs a case as I said - it's just too thin (as if that's possible!) and too slippery without one. As for features, the Edge really doesn't have anything substantive over the S6 (unless you're wowed by a night clock) so that's not much of a factor, at least for me.

I saw that Samsung is manufacturing 20 million S6's to start, of which 5 million will be the Edge variant so they are assuming that the Edge will be outsold 3 to 1.
 

STEVESKI07

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Thanks for the initial impressions. Please update when you have come to any more conclusions. Battery is the main thing I'm concerned about.

Also, where are you on brightness? Do you have it on auto or on full? That could make a big difference in battery life on this phone. Also, I think some color optimizations over time can help too. This is OLED technology which means the color black requires no power. I'm hoping Samsung adds some nice black/dark themes available to aid in this. Also dark backgrounds and lighter foregrounds are my personal preference anyways regardless of power consumption.

This may just me pulling things out of my ***, but if you don't have all these crazy color popping colors and over half of the screen is black at one time, wouldn't your screen be using half the power as usual and since the screen usually uses the most power out of everything on the phone, you could increase battery life by 20-50%?

Edit: Found this person who did a test which is a few years old but it still applies: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1882467 Battery life can be SIGNIFICANTLY improved by optimizing colors. Unfortunately you're a little limited to what and where you can make these optimizations currently, but I'm really hoping Samsung comes out with a dark theme.
 
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erasat

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Related to your points 4 and 5, battery and lag/stutter, remember that your first days will be very different, once you set your phone as you want and the phone gets a couple of Charge cycles it gets to what will be your normal battery life.

I've always kept my brightness, in all my phones below 25% of brightness and no Auto Bright, I can tell you that I've always had great battery life in all of them, in the Moto X 2014 that I had for a couple of weeks, I was getting better battery life than most, I have Sync On with 3 or 4 accounts, key for me is having the Toggles that I want to turn on/off location, Bluetooth, wifi and most of the usual stuff.

Normal stuff on Android is Location Settings on your Google Map App, set accordingly to your needs, bluetooth just turn on to use it with my Android Wear and Car, GPS turn on only when needed, brightness in all my Samsung have been around 20% and for me is bright enough, Dark themes to use the Amoled power saving with Black screens. For last, keep monitoring your Battery Stats as you will clearly detect any abnormal situation, like Google Play or/and services eating a lot of your power and keeping awake your device.

About the Lag/Stutter, I think it was simply background processes running, like Google Play Apps installations and the normal First Time use stuff, according to what I've seen in all reviews and experiences from other users, the S6 and Edges are beasts and run like one, activate the Developer options and reduce all animations to .5x or 0 and you will notice an immediate difference, just like in any other Samsung and LG devices, animations doesn't help on your appreciation of a lag free device.
 

Wildo6882

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The only thing I really worry about is typing with the keyboard and those outermost letters. I'm hoping this isn't an issue for me. I otherwise love everything about the Edge. Thanks for the review.
 

Techno-guy

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Also, where are you on brightness? Do you have it on auto or on full? That could make a big difference in battery life on this phone. .

I turned off auto brightness because it was actually too dark for me, not too bright. I am running probably around 50% brightness, maybe just a tad less. 25% is just too low for me, especially on sunny days outdoors. That said, it's a super bright panel. Never seen anything this bright before.

I've left the phone off the charger all morning and been running for 4 hours on WiFi and I burned 20% in standby the entire time. It just seems very excessive to me. My iPhone during the same time would probably burn 1% (on WiFi). The iPhone only burns 2-3% per hour on standby off WiFi and on LTE.

Jury is still out on S6 battery life, though it's looking (at least at this admittedly early stage) like the S6 may need some serious battery optimization. I'm still hopeful it settles down after a few days as a number of you noted it should.

Thanks all for the good thoughts and feedback! This is a great community! Glad I am able to share my early impressions of the S6 with you all!
 
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STEVESKI07

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I turned off auto brightness because it was actually too dark for me, not too bright. I am running probably around 50% brightness, maybe just a tad less. 25% is just too low for me, especially on sunny days outdoors. That said, it's a super bright panel. Never seen anything this bright before.

I've left the phone off the charger all morning and been running for 4 hours on WiFi and I burned 20%. It just seems very excessive to me. My iPhone during the same time would probably burn 1% (on WiFi). The iPhone only burns 2-3% per hour on standby off WiFi and on LTE.

Jury is still out on S6 battery life, though it's looking (at least at this admittedly early stage) like the S6 may need some serious battery optimization. I'm still hopeful it settles down after a few days as a number of you noted it should.

Thanks all for the good thoughts and feedback! This is a great community! Glad I am able to share my early impressions of the S6 with you all!

It dropped 20% when in standby? If so, something is definitely not right with the software. Another person reported the battery drained 30% while they were sleeping so it sounds like you may have a similar issue.
 

Stanley Kubrick

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Not too concerned about the battery life because of my style of use...however, the stuttering and lag are quite possibly there to stay. My bet is it has to do with the screen PPI more than anything else. I just sold my HTC One M8 and I will tell you that there was absolutely NO stuttering, or lag of any kind ever! The CPU was not as fast, but the screen PPI was not as large either.

Getting hot sounds to me like we have reached the thermal limits of CPU's inside a small cell phone! The only way to stop the overheating is to never use the phone, :confused: or throttle the CPU down to a point where it doesn't overheat which completely defeats the purpose of having multiple cores running at high cycle rates in the first place.

My other concern which will probably not go away, (though the other issues may be resolved over time), is the fact of the screen not registering touches when icons or whatever are close to, or right over the curved edge. So even though I really want the edge (GREEN ONE) I may have to reconsider this decision based on further reviews in the coming days.
 

karmamule

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My personal view that crystallized a few years ago is that I don't want to spend all this money on very capable devices and then turn off large chunks of functionality in the name of battery life. I leave wifi, nfc, gps, bluetooth and all the rest enabled all the time. I will KO the occasional misbehaving app, but other than that use it all out.

I make sure charging is always available and as convenient as possible, which is why I love phones with wireless charging built in. I have a tylt charging stand at work, and a wireless charging pad at home. I leave a USB cable always attached to my car's USB port ready to go for charging. With very rare exception as long as I don't go beyond 12 hours or so w/o charging I'm fine. (And, I will say one thing for my iPhone 6+, it is very frugal with charge even with everything turned on, which is fortunate because it does NOT have wireless charging built in.)

I'd rather leave my phone fully capable and not worry about battery life, and this strategy has worked well for me in the past, and from initial experience my S6 Edge will be fine as well. I get to keep all my phone's systems running and I don't give it a second thought.

I know some people's work/travel and such may make that more impractical for them, but I encourage others to at least think about using this approach. It's really freeing to just not worry about it, and also not worry if I need to toggle bluetooth or nfc or whatever on before trying to do something. Establishing new habits has worked really well for me and has eliminated battery worries.

On a side note for Techno-guy, my edge isn't losing charge like that when off the charger (and everything enabled), so I'm guessing/hoping you just have a rogue app or something similar?
 

Stanley Kubrick

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My personal view that crystallized a few years ago is that I don't want to spend all this money on very capable devices and then turn off large chunks of functionality in the name of battery life. I leave wifi, nfc, gps, bluetooth and all the rest enabled all the time. I will KO the occasional misbehaving app, but other than that use it all out.


I make sure charging is always available and as convenient as possible, which is why I love phones with wireless charging built in. I have a tylt charging stand at work, and a wireless charging pad at home. I leave a USB cable always attached to my car's USB port ready to go for charging. With very rare exception as long as I don't go beyond 12 hours or so w/o charging I'm fine. (And, I will say one thing for my iPhone 6+, it is very frugal with charge even with everything turned on, which is fortunate because it does NOT have wireless charging built in.)

I'd rather leave my phone fully capable and not worry about battery life, and this strategy has worked well for me in the past, and from initial experience my S6 Edge will be fine as well. I get to keep all my phone's systems running and I don't give it a second thought.

I know some people's work/travel and such may make that more impractical for them, but I encourage others to at least think about using this approach. It's really freeing to just not worry about it, and also not worry if I need to toggle bluetooth or nfc or whatever on before trying to do something. Establishing new habits has worked really well for me and has eliminated battery worries.

On a side note for Techno-guy, my edge isn't losing charge like that when off the charger (and everything enabled), so I'm guessing/hoping you just have a rogue app or something similar?

Appreciate the view on battery! Though I may not leave everything on all the time, because I don't use some of the things, I do like the idea of not worrying about battery! Now on to the question: Since you too have the edge in hand, what are your observations when it comes to stutter, lag, and touch on the curves?
 

karmamule

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Appreciate the view on battery! Though I may not leave everything on all the time, because I don't use some of the things, I do like the idea of not worrying about battery! Now on to the question: Since you too have the edge in hand, what are your observations when it comes to stutter, lag, and touch on the curves?

Stutter/lag: almost non-existent. I do see it when transitioning to/from the flipboard magazine to left of home, but interestingly flipboard the app is super smooth! Transitioning back to home screen after viewing a really memory-intensive app or web page e.g. the verge's review of the galaxy s6 ;-) can take a bit longer than expected. But, overall, the impression is one of speed and fluidity. Not perfect yet, but in the vast majority of cases it runs great so I'm optimistic any exceptions are due to optimization, and not lack of basic capability. Everyone who sees the phone so far has commented on its responsiveness.

As far as touch on curves: ZERO issues for me. Keyboard is working fine touch-wise (prediction wise it's still a bit stupid), and I love the feel swiping between homescreens and or within an app. I have noticed when I hand it to work friends they can do a couple "whoops" mis-touches in the first half a minute or so of holding/using it, but then are fine. If debating edge or not, be sure to give yourself a few minutes of using the edge before making up your mind. Any issues/awkwardness may resolve after a bit more use. If not there's an S6 eagerly waiting for you! :)
 

erasat

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Brightness % is very subjective, in my case and in most people I've suggested to use lower brightness, every time is shocking at first, but once your eyes get used to that brightness (in most cases a day) you will notice that when you increase the brightness it will bother your sight.

Believe me, try 20-25% brightness, obviously if you are indoors, and try to get use to it even if at first is too dark for you, after a while you will see that it won't be an issue anymore. For Outdoors, what I always do is that once I know I will step outside I immediately select the Auto option, in case I need to use my phone it will be ready for me, once I go indoors again, I immediately turn it off.

Sounds like a hassle but believe me, that's the way I'll always used all my phones, I use the Brightness bar, and the Location and bluetooth toggles depending on my needs, it came as a natural thing shortly after I began this practice and you can do a search for my Posts here and over XDA and you can see how good my Battery Life for all my devices have been, I have posted stats from my S4, S5 (I created a thread with hints and stats for it), my Xperia Z3, Note 4, Moto X 2014 and Oneplus One.

As you can see I've had 6 phones for the past year and even when the Z3 is universally claimed as the best battery life phone, followed by Note 4 and OnePlus One, my S4, S5 and Moto X, always gave me excellent battery life, Moto X was the lesser one and I always managed to get around 4.5 hours of Screen on Time.
 

erasat

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OK, as you can see in the following thread I created last year, when most users where getting 5 hours SoT at most, I was managing to get 6.5 and some days up to 7 hours, using a Samsung Gear 2 Neo basically all day. It was reducing little by little and by the time I got my Moto 360 and sold my Gear 2 Neo I was getting about 6 hours at most, but even then it was great compared to the others.

I don't have an S6 or S6 Edge yet as I'm waiting for the T-mobile to have them, but you can take a look at the things I did with the S5 and see if you can try to do similar stuff on the S6 and see if it helps in General with the Battery Life.

http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s5/385465-adjustments-tricks-get-amazing-battery-life-i-m-getting.html
 

DoyouFanBoyBro

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I too have an iPhone 6 plus on T-Mobile and ordered an S6 Edge, mine arrives tomorrow :)

One of the FIRST things i'm going to do is get rid of all the bloat, i can promise you guys (especially lookout security) those apps are the culprits for battery drain.
 

ray sital

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My personal view that crystallized a few years ago is that I don't want to spend all this money on very capable devices and then turn off large chunks of functionality in the name of battery life. I leave wifi, nfc, gps, bluetooth and all the rest enabled all the time. I will KO the occasional misbehaving app, but other than that use it all out.

I make sure charging is always available and as convenient as possible, which is why I love phones with wireless charging built in. I have a tylt charging stand at work, and a wireless charging pad at home. I leave a USB cable always attached to my car's USB port ready to go for charging. With very rare exception as long as I don't go beyond 12 hours or so w/o charging I'm fine. (And, I will say one thing for my iPhone 6+, it is very frugal with charge even with everything turned on, which is fortunate because it does NOT have wireless charging built in.)

I'd rather leave my phone fully capable and not worry about battery life, and this strategy has worked well for me in the past, and from initial experience my S6 Edge will be fine as well. I get to keep all my phone's systems running and I don't give it a second thought.

I know some people's work/travel and such may make that more impractical for them, but I encourage others to at least think about using this approach. It's really freeing to just not worry about it, and also not worry if I need to toggle bluetooth or nfc or whatever on before trying to do something. Establishing new habits has worked really well for me and has eliminated battery worries.

On a side note for Techno-guy, my edge isn't losing charge like that when off the charger (and everything enabled), so I'm guessing/hoping you just have a rogue app or something similar?

Based on what you've said,you're choosing one evil over the other, having chargers on hand everywhere are versus disabling services.

If I had to pick one though, it'd be your version. The screen not recognizing the touch on the edges concern me.

Posted via the Android Central App
 

Techno-guy

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It dropped 20% when in standby? If so, something is definitely not right with the software. Another person reported the battery drained 30% while they were sleeping so it sounds like you may have a similar issue.

Yes...it was in standby the entire 4 hours with 20% battery drain. No rogue apps are showing up in the battery report. It's all Cell Standby and Android System taking the lions share of the battery drain.

I have GSAM Pro installed and the biggest battery App offenders are: Android System, Kernel (Android OS), & TouchWiz home. Will know more in a day or two once GSAM can really dig into this but so far, it's all system overhead things draining the battery and the Cell Standby is really weird considering I'm on WiFi.
 
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karmamule

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Yes...it was in standby the entire 4 hours with 20% battery drain. No rogue apps are showing up in the battery report. It's all Cell Standby and Android System taking the lions share of the battery drain.

I'm thinking cell standby is looking a bit high for mine, so I'm wondering if there's something they'll have to address via update?
 

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