Upgraded from Sprint S5 to S6 Edge

atishc

Well-known member
Mar 4, 2011
204
1
0
Visit site
I haven't seen any Sprint specific posts here yet, so I thought I would post my observations about the changes from the S5 to S6 Edge for me:

1. There is no question that it is harder to grip naked than the S5 - the metal is so smooth that it slides down my hand when holding it upright. However, in a case, it is very comfortable to hold, and I love the fact that it is narrower than the S5 with the "infinity pool" illusion of being bezel-less (my quibble with the S5 was large side bezels and chintzy faux chrome edges). Overall I love the look and feel, but I guess it is not as striking as I imagined because I showed several people pictures and videos on it today and they didn't even notice that I had a new phone!
2. There is some image distortion at the edges (but apparently not even noticeable to my colleagues), but there are less issues with glare than I imagined, and no issues with typing or accidental taps.
3. The Edge panel for contacts is cool, but I turned off the ticker stuff because it is totally stupid. I thought I would love the night clock, but for some reason it was turning on my whole screen to a very dim glow - I thought AMOLED screens were able to be pitch black except for the pixels that needed to light up?
4. The fingerprint scanner is awesome, and what is even better is that my company's Exchange server is allowing me to use it for authentication, which they did not allow for the S5.
5. Transferring data from my S5 SD card to the S6 was much easier than I thought it would be - I thought I would need to use a computer or cloud service as an intermediary (which is part of the reason that I was annoyed about losing the SD card slot in the S6). I used the Samsung Smart Switch app and it transferred all my media files (~37GB) over WiFi direct in around 6 hours.
6. Things that I used on my S5 that I did not realize would be missing here: a very old (but quick) app I used is no longer available - maybe because of no legacy menu button? No 4x2 calendar widget. No pre-installed Swype keyboard, though the Swiftkey flow used on the Samsung keyboard is working well for me so far. The Gallery app no longer has the interface with the albums on the left and the content of the albums in the main window. (The default album view is a 2x3 grid, pinch to zoom to make it 3x4)
7. Camera and Gallery are much quicker to launch, which was another annoyance with the S5. Nothing I would say here would contribute to everything that has been said previously about the camera.
8. I like the fact that in the TouchWiz launcher, you can now do a 4x5 or 5x5 icon layout instead of just 4x4 (which I think makes the icons look cartoonishly big on a >5 inch screen)
9. I took some vacation pictures in a swimming pool with my S5 a couple days ago, which I guess I will no longer be doing.

I may update this post as more things come up, but I thought it might be helpful for people making a similar switch.
 
Last edited:

bdmridgeback

Well-known member
Jun 16, 2010
80
0
0
Visit site
I'll add one if i can....

Some people complain about lag in the S6...I really dont see it, way faster and smoother than my S5 ever was, especially after the last update.
 

atishc

Well-known member
Mar 4, 2011
204
1
0
Visit site
Well from overnight, I hammered it yesterday with getting it set up, personalization and constant downloading, and I only charged it again late morning to 80% and it lasted me until bedtime again. I would imagine with normal use that it should be fine getting me through my work days. Where my S5 would die quickly was using the phone outside (bright screen) in an area with weak data signal. I am very curious to see if the S6 will work better there. I did read in several places that even with the larger battery, the Edge seemed to last for shorter periods of time than the regular S6, so even before knowing what the battery life will be I turned off a lot of things: the Edge functions, most haptic feedback, most gestures, S Voice, GPS, Sprint Connections Optimizer (I will toggle WiFi manually), constant scanning for WiFi, Google+, and limiting syncing on all my accounts to what is important (contacts and calendar through work and gmail; turning off syncing on Facebook and Samsung accounts after initial setup). I will report back in a couple days what my experience is with this.
 

mmark27

Active member
May 14, 2010
38
1
0
Visit site
If you still have your S5, can you please compare how will your receive signals (RF) between phones? You can use the SignalCheck Pro app to compare signal intensities? It will tell to what band you are connected for LTE. I've read that many are seeing worse performance than the S5, which is already pretty poor (I have a S5 and am pondering this switch as well). Thanks!
 

atishc

Well-known member
Mar 4, 2011
204
1
0
Visit site
If you still have your S5, can you please compare how will your receive signals (RF) between phones? You can use the SignalCheck Pro app to compare signal intensities? It will tell to what band you are connected for LTE. I've read that many are seeing worse performance than the S5, which is already pretty poor (I have a S5 and am pondering this switch as well). Thanks!

I ran SignalCheck Lite and the LTE signal strength seems very similar with the colored bar reading slightly higher for the S5. I am not sure what all the letters and numbers mean, but side by side it looks like for RSRP the S5 has on average ~3 units higher in dBm (-88 dBm to -91 dBm for the S6) and ~2 units higher in asu (24 to 22); for RSRQ, on average the S5 is -9 dB and S6 is -7 dB and the SNR fluctuates quite a bit from 8-17 dB on the S5 and 15-25 dB on the S6, though these numbers overlap exactly at certain points. (If you could help me figure out what this means, I would appreciate it.) In real usage I have not noted any differences.
 

Trending Posts

Forum statistics

Threads
942,404
Messages
6,913,921
Members
3,158,396
Latest member
Chelrie