GALAXY6 vs IPHONE 6:WHICH SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?

Galaxy S6 vs. iPhone 6: Which Should You Choose?

TOM'S GUIDE
MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015 8:15 PM GMT

Samsung has taken the wraps off the latest iteration of its Galaxy S smartphone, and you can be forgiven if the new phone makes you do a double-take. The Galaxy S6, unveiled at a Mobile World Congress Event today (March 1) in Barcelona, does away with its traditional plastic form to adopt a glass-and-metal design. It's a move that will certainly invite comparisons to Apple's iPhone 6 -- comparisons that Samsung itself will be happy to make, as you move past the look and feel of the phones and drill down into their respective feature sets.

Here's how the Galaxy S6 stacks up with the specs of Apple's iPhone 6.

Samsung Galaxy S6

iPhone 6

Starting Price

Currently unknown

Starting at $199

CPU/GPU

64-bit Exynos processor (Quad 2.1-GHz + Quad 1.5-Ghz)64-bit Apple A8 processor/M8 motion co-processor

OS

Android 5.0 Lollipop

iOS 8

Screen Size

5.1 inches Super AMOLED

4.7 inches LCD

Resolution

2560 x 1440 pixels

1334 x 750 pixels

RAM

3GB

N/A

Internal Storage

up to 128 GB

up to 128 GB

Expandable Storage

None

None

Front Camera

5MP

1.2MP

Rear Camera

16MP

8MP iSight

Battery Life

Estimated at 11 hours for LTE

7:42

Connectivity

802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 (MIMO)

802.11ac

Special Features

Samsung Pay, Wireless charging, Find My Mobile

Apple Pay, Wi-Fi Calling, Optical Image Stabilization (for Plus), Fingerprint scanner

Notable Accessories

Gear VR, Gear Watches

Apple Watch

Ports & Slots

Charging port, headphones

Lightning port, headphones

Design

Samsung's Galaxy lineup has traditionally boasted greater flexibility than the iPhone, which offered no way to expand storage capacity beyond what shipped with the device or swap out the battery. That changes with the Galaxy S6, which adopts a unibody design. Gone as well is the plastic outside of past Galaxy S models: Samsung has gone with glass and metal for the Galaxy S6 in a move aimed at keeping up with the look and feel of other premium smartphones.

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You can rest easy that your Galaxy S6 has a good chance of surviving an accidental drop. Its glass body is made out of Corning Gorilla Glass 4, billed by Samsung executives as the toughest glass in the market. As for the metal portion of the Galaxy S5 design, Samsung says it's 50 percent stronger than other smartphone metals. "This phone will not bend," Younghee Lee, Samsung's mobile marketing head, said in a not-so-subtle jab at last year's mini-controversy over reports that the iPhone 6 Plus was susceptible to bending.

Display

A 2560 x 1440 Quad HD Super AMOLED display served Samsung well with the Galaxy Note 4, so it's coming to the Galaxy S6 now. (In contrast, the Super AMOLED display on the Galaxy S5 had a resolution of 1920 x 1080.) The Galaxy S6's display offers 577 pixels per inch, adding up to 77 percent more pixels than the S5.

That far outpaces what Apple's iPhone 6 models offer. The standard iPhone 6 has a resolution of 1334 x 750 and 326 ppi on its 4.7-inch screen, while the larger iPhone 6 Plus features a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and 401 ppi on a 5.5-inch display.

Camera

The camera on the Galaxy S5 had been one of that phone's better-regarded features, and that figures to continue with the Galaxy S6. The new phone boasts a 16-megapixel camera on the rear and a 5-MP camera up front, compared to the 16-MP and 2.1-MP cameras on the Galaxy S5. More importantly, the Galaxy S6 uses f/1.9 lenses for both cameras, letting in more light than the f/2.2 lens used by the Galaxy S5 -- and the iPhone 6.

The result should be sharper, better-lit images, especially in low light situations. And that could pose a significant challenge to the iPhone's reputation as the best camera phone on the market. The iPhone's camera has struggled with white balance in our tests, and Samsung's use of an infrared scanner to further improve the colors on your photos could make those struggles even more apparent.

Not surprisingly, Samsung was more than eager to show how much brighter photos and videos shot with a Galaxy S6 will look when compared to those same shots with an iPhone 6.

If there was one area of disappointment with the Galaxy S5's camera features, it was how slowly the camera launched, especially when compared to the iPhone 6. Samsung addressed that in the Galaxy S6, adding a Quick Launch feature that promises to let users access the camera from any screen in 0.7 seconds by double-clicking the home button.

Features

After limiting mobile payments to PayPal with the Galaxy S5, Samsung took a page out of Apple's book by adding more capable mobile payment features to the Galaxy S6. Samsung Pay, like Apple Pay, will tap into near-field communication (NFC) technology to let you pay from your smartphone. But Samsung's mobile payment system also incorporates Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) to let you pay at any merchant that accepts credit or debit cards, potentially opening up Samsung Pay to far more retailers than Apple Pay when Samsung's service launches this summer.

MORE: Samsung Galaxy S6: Top Features

The Galaxy S6 also offers a wireless charging feature compatible with both the WPC and PMA standards, aimed at saving you from fumbling with cables or worrying about whether a charging station is compatible. You'll also spend less time at that charging station. Justin Denison, Samsung's vice president of product and strategy, says the battery in the Galaxy S6 "charges faster than any in the industry." Ten minutes of charging should give you four hours of battery life. And the Galaxy S6 can be fully charged in half the time it takes an iPhone 6, Samsung says.

The clean, polished look of the iPhone's iOS interface has been the calling card for Apple's smartphone, especially when compared to the occasionally bloated feel of the TouchWiz interface Samsung layers over Android on its phones. Samsung appears to have taken that criticism to heart with the Galaxy S6, which streamlines TouchWiz to remove a lot of the clutter.

You'll have fewer menu items to sort through on the Galaxy S6, and Samsung includes labels on icons for greater useability. In fact, Samsung says it's reduced built-in features and required steps by 40 percent in the Galaxy S6's version of TouchWiz. Will that be enough to take some of the shine off iOS 8? Probably not, but Samsung thinks it will make the differences a little less stark.

Outlook

In a market where Apple says it sold 34,000 every hour of every day from October through December 2014, it's understandable why Samsung would decide a radical overhaul was in order for the Galaxy S6. Samsung's game plan appears to be to continue enhancing the areas where the Galaxy lineup has performed well -- the display and camera, most notably -- while trying to beat Apple at its own game in areas like mobile payments and design.

Can Samsung pull it off? We'll get a better sense of that come April 10, when the Galaxy S6 goes on sale in 20 countries around the world.