On the GS6. What's more of a deal breaker for you, no removable battery or no SD card?

[TENYKS]

Already got extended battery cases for the S6.
And morphie is coming out with one.
So the removable battery problems are gone.
Samsung S6 Battery Case | Battery Cases for S6 | 4200 maH Samsung Battery Case

Does that defeat the purpose of making the S6 with metal frame and glass back?

 

[anon(5630457)]

Neither. I have over 100 GB of space on Google Drive so it's not an issue.

Posted via the Android Central App on the Galaxy S6.

 

[craigrn16]

Non removable battery. On my GS4 I always had an extra battery in Mt pocket for an occasion when I'm not near an outlet and I had to switch out. I've used Nexus's since then so I got use to it

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[cardboard60]

So let me get this right.
You can carry a extra battery in your pocket.
But you can't put a extended battery on the phone.
And put a plus in SD card with info on it.

You need to go in the Army for a while.
The extra things you carry, won't bother you as much.

 

[scuba_steve]

For me, the lack of a removable battery is more of an issue annually than day to day. For as long as I have had a smart phone (starting with a first gen Treo), I have swapped the battery with a new one annually. I have done the same for the last 3 years with my wife's and my S3 since it took less than a minute and cost $10 per phone for a decent quality Anker replacement. I could certainly do the same with an S6 by sending it to Samsung, but probably wouldn't since it would be far less convenient and far more expensive.

As I noted dozens of pages ago in this thread, the lack of an SD card in the S6 was a lesser issue for me. I really do enjoy having the option. It allows me to upgrade my phone's memory as SD card prices come down. It also allows me to bring multiple cards on trips so I could bring a large collection of music and movies. Sure, you can use the cloud...if you can reach the cloud, which I cannot at times. Even when you can, that approach sucks up bandwidth and more battery power. Also, it doesn't help when you need more space to shoot video on a trip....and I am guessing 4K video takes up a bit more room than standard video. That said, I could have lived with this issue and paid the cost up front for a 128GB model. Heck, I could have lived with both issues.


What killed the S6 for me was battery performance.


I went to Best Buy the first week they had them. I pulled one off a wireless charger and used it for 30 minutes on wifi, during which time the battery went from 100% to 80%. I bought a Note 4 the next day.

I then waited a couple of weeks to see if the battery issues would get worked out since my wife also needs a new phone. Unfortunately she shattered her screen on Friday, so we had to decide this weekend. The Note 4 was too big for her, so I thought she would go for the S6, but she wanted no part of it after reading about the battery issues. We pulled the trigger on an S5 for her today (free at Costco with a bundled accessory kit).


I really wanted to love the S6. It has so many compelling features. That said, those features mean jack to me when the phone is dead. I cannot be a slave to a charger. I need a phone to last all day after an overnight charge. The S6 is not that phone...at least not yet.

I sincerely hope the battery issues are not hardware issues and they get them worked out. If they do, it will earn the praise of all those reviews.


Best of luck to those who pulled the trigger. Sincerely. It really is a great phone otherwise.

 

[cardboard60]

If you listen to all the Bad reviews on the internet, most things you have you would never buy.

 

[Bradskey]

The battery bit is debatable, especially since they skimped on battery capacity and batteries do wear out. These phones can go 2-4 years easy and may need a battery at some point. As for swapping out a spare, I'd rather carry a high capacity battery pack with USB and Qi charging capabilities, get 2 or 3 charges out of it instead of just one with a spare.

But the loss of the SD card is not such a big deal to me, for many reasons. First, my very first Android phone (2009?) came with something like a measly 40MB of usable app storage, when you could buy gigs of flash on a thumb drive for like $10. It was ridiculous. In my opinion the industry has stuck with 16GB as a baseline for far too long, its just not enough. Now that we actually HAVE decent options like 64GB and 128GB, with 32GB as a minimum baseline, plus so much free cloud storage, SD storage just isn't that important any more. SD is way slower than the built in storage, and all the security changes in recent Android versions have more or less screwed up your ability to use it the way you want to anyway. In my case it was a dumping ground for photos, videos, mp3's and maybe some digital content like audio and ebooks, plus offloaded apps to keep them from clogging up the stingy 16GB phone storage. I virtually NEVER actually removed the card from the phone, once it was inserted the day I bought it. Now with 128GB on my S6 and terabytes of space on Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive I no longer have to deal with it. Granted having an option of SD expansion might be less expensive than paying the premium for 128GB, but it would not be a better experience, or even as good.

 

[Zoostation]

The battery bit is debatable, especially since they skimped on battery capacity and batteries do wear out. These phones can go 2-4 years easy and may need a battery at some point. As for swapping out a spare, I'd rather carry a high capacity battery pack with USB and Qi charging capabilities, get 2 or 3 charges out of it instead of just one with a spare.

But the loss of the SD card is not such a big deal to me, for many reasons. First, my very first Android phone (2009?) came with something like a measly 40MB of usable app storage, when you could buy gigs of flash on a thumb drive for like $10. It was ridiculous. In my opinion the industry has stuck with 16GB as a baseline for far too long, its just not enough. Now that we actually HAVE decent options like 64GB and 128GB, with 32GB as a minimum baseline, plus so much free cloud storage, SD storage just isn't that important any more. SD is way slower than the built in storage, and all the security changes in recent Android versions have more or less screwed up your ability to use it the way you want to anyway. In my case it was a dumping ground for photos, videos, mp3's and maybe some digital content like audio and ebooks, plus offloaded apps to keep them from clogging up the stingy 16GB phone storage. I virtually NEVER actually removed the card from the phone, once it was inserted the day I bought it. Now with 128GB on my S6 and terabytes of space on Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive I no longer have to deal with it. Granted having an option of SD expansion might be less expensive than paying the premium for 128GB, but it would not be a better experience, or even as good.

I'm disappointed that there's no SD slot but I don't think it's the deal breaker I would have said it was a couple months ago. I think it's only a deal breaker if there isn't a readily available 64gb or higher option. Cloud storage doesn't count for anything in my book since I don't use it and prefer not to. I can't count on wifi being everywhere when I'm not home and I don't want to have any data issues.

 

[rgaspary]

Now that 6.0 will allow you to use your SD card to store apps and settings, I would say lack of SD card.

 

[cohoman]

Personally, neither are deal breakers for me. I have plenty of storage on my S6 and I really don't want or need to deal with replaceable batteries. Instead, I usually keep my phone on a wireless charger at my office desk during the day, and use a portable battery to charge my phone when traveling.

 

[Erm10]

S6 Battery is way too small and does not last, plain and simple. No way around it without inconvenience like a battery pack.

At least you can opt for 64GB (or more) and store photos, videos, music etc in the cloud if you are low on storage.

The choice to me is a no brainer.