So how does the slimmed-down interface translate into performance? Well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Samsung seems to have addressed long-standing issues with performance around the interface, including speeding up the multitasking view and dramatically reducing the time it takes to launch and switch apps. Animations are also smooth for transitions and hopping between different parts of the interface, and the processor seems more than capable of handling multitasking, 3D games and high-resolution media playback. Unfortunately the speed isn't ubiquitous on the Galaxy S6 — there are some slowdowns still.
Samsung's new processor is designed to intelligently hand tasks between four high-powered and four lower-powered cores for the right balance of performance and efficiency. For the most part that seems to work just fine, but I still found the phone to inexplicably slow down on occasion with mundane tasks like typing a message or scrolling through my Twitter app. That's frustrating, but it's even more frustrating when the experience is usually fast and smooth throughout the phone.
I couldn't narrow down any root cause to the slowdowns, even through factory resets and troubleshooting — but I do have to say these are things that just shouldn't be happening at this point on a flagship phone that'll cost you $650 to $1,100 outright. Samsung may have smoothed out its interface and trimmed back on years of feature creep, but after spending time with the GS6 I can tell there's still some work to do.
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