Introduction and key features
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is undoubtedly the best phone in the S range, but the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 represents the best of a premium line that runs parallel to it.
Released at a different time of the year, and marketed to a slightly different "power" user crowd, the Galaxy Note series has always been able to avoid treading on Galaxy S toes by keeping its distance.
But with the Galaxy S screen size seemingly hitting a Note-shaped glass ceiling (the Galaxy S6 is the first in the range not to get a bigger display), and the high-end components used steadily converging, there’s more reason than ever to compare the two current models.
While it might seem as if the Samsung Galaxy S6’s premium design came out of nowhere upon its April 10 2015 launch, it was actually the culmination of a rapid iterative process started with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha and continued through the Galaxy Note 4.
With only six months separating these two phones, it’s a fascinating comparison to make – particularly now that the Galaxy S6 is arguably encroaching on the Galaxy Note 4’s slightly more businessy target market.
Key features
It would be a mistake to say that the Samsung Galaxy S6 is all about the design – it’s got far more substance than that. But the way it looks and feels is undoubtedly the biggest talking point here.
A large part of that is down to what went before. Samsung used to make solid, well built, functional but deeply unlovable handsets. They were built to survive everyday knocks and spills rather than to wow with their good looks.
In the Galaxy S6, here was an Android phone that instantly strutted to the top of the Android design table, ready to mix it with the iPhone 6.
The Galaxy Note 4, as befits its ‘tweener status on the release schedule, is a much better looking and feeling device than the Galaxy S5, but isn’t up to the standard of the Galaxy S6. It’s, well, a bit of a mix of the two.
It’s got the metal frame of the Galaxy S6 (albeit a squarer, less attractive version), but the slightly cheap faux leather plastic back of the Galaxy S5 (minus the plaster-like dimples). It’s also –- and there’s really no getting away from this – a bit of a chunky monkey. This one will sit uncomfortably in any trouser or light jacket pocket.
Of course, I’d back the Galaxy Note 4 in a drop despite its heftier body. It must be something to do with the Galaxy S6’s twin glass surfaces (Gorilla Glass 4), as well as its aggressively jutty-outy camera.
Both phones make a virtue of their incredible QHD Super AMOLED displays. The Galaxy S6’s is the smaller yet more pixel-packed at 5.1-inches, while the Galaxy Note 4’s 5.7-inch unit gets to stretch its legs more. Indeed, I’d argue that the Galaxy Note 4 is a better showcase for true 2K content.
However, the brightness and colour accuracy of the Galaxy S6 reflect its next-gen status.
Another shared key feature is the camera. When the Galaxy Note 4 launched last year, it one-upped the Galaxy S5 by adding OIS (optical image stabilisation) to an already robust 16-megapixel shooter.
But the Galaxy S6 is another level on from that. It too is a 16-megapixel camera with OIS, but it throws in a whole bunch of other improvements, including an f/1.9 aperture, to push image quality to the next level.
Another ostensibly shared feature that’s actually far better on the Galaxy S6 is the fingerprint sensor, which can be used to unlock both phones. While both are mounted under the home button, the Galaxy Note 4 system requires a fiddly and unreliable touch-and-swipe to activate.
The S6, meanwhile, has an iPhone-like press-to-activate system that works much better than before. Having said that, I’ve noticed more failures as time goes on and I’m less conscientious about placing by thumb just-so on the sensor.
The Galaxy Note 4’s biggest distinction from the Galaxy S6 – and most other phones for that matter – is its S Pen stylus.
Opinion remains divided as to its true usefulness, but the S Pen is undoubtedly the best integrated and most sophisticated stylus in the business. It makes the kind of virtual pens you pick up for the iPad look as dumb and unoptimised as they are.
It also provides the one major design difference between these two great phones apart from their size.
Design and display
Design
It’s fascinating to compare the designs of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
The Galaxy S6 feels like the start of something special from Samsung. I’ve been willing the Korean company to match its evident manufacturing nous with some design smarts for years now, and the Galaxy S6 finally achieves that mix.
You might not think that when you first open the box, though. Samsung isn’t ripping up its old design playbook here, and the S6 is a very familiar looking device from the front.
At the top of the phone there’s a familiar Samsung symbol below a metallic earphone grill, both of which look very much like previous Samsung phones – including the Note 4. At the opposite end of the phone you get that lozenge-shaped home button, which is flanked by capacitive multitasking and back keys, just like every other Android-powered Samsung phone I’ve used over the past five or so years.
You might start wondering what all that initial review buzz was about, but fish that bad boy out of the box and the differences will become apparent before you’ve even flipped it over.
That surrounding material you’re feeling against the creases of your fingers? That’s aluminium alloy rather than shiny plastic. This premium material has a lovely matte finish to it, and a curious shape that renders it at once round and angular. I like.
The pleasing tactile sensations continue on the back, where the textured removable plastic covers of old have been replaced with a fixed, smooth expanse of Gorilla Glass 4. And check out that glimmery finish, which reveals its true colour when held at an angle under light. You’ll notice this is present on the front, too, once you’ve stopped gawping at the display.
It’s quirky little touches like this, as well as that front-on look that you probably didn’t even realise was distinctively Samsung until now, that ensure the Galaxy S6 can withstand allegations of plagiarism (it looks a bit like an iPhone 6 from the bottom, y’see).
Which is good, because I get the impression that the Galaxy S6 won’t withstand much else – not without a case, at least. It’s very well built, but the shiny glass back is positively asking to be scuffed and scratched through normal daily use.
The Galaxy S6 I’ve been using has evidently been carefully wielded by a couple of people now, and it clearly hasn’t been dropped at any point – the metal surround has no notable dings to it. Yet, held against the light, I can already see lots of little micro-scratches congregating around the bottom edges of the back, seemingly from where it’s been laid down repeatedly on a variety of mildly abrasive surfaces.
It’s also lost the IP67 rating of its predecessor, the Galaxy S5, which means that the S6 is neither dust nor water resistant. That’s a shame.
Of course, the Galaxy Note 4 doesn’t have that IP67 rating either, but it does feel like it’s far more resistant to cosmetic scuffs and scrapes. Say what you like about that faux-plastic back cover, but it’s not going to mark up when you lay it down on a wooden bench.
If the Galaxy S5 marked the death knell of the old Samsung design approach, and the Galaxy S6 was the start of something new, then the Galaxy Note 4 will go down in history as the half way point.
It mixes elements of both to create a device that’s tough and functional, but relatively easy on the eye and pleasant to hold. It’s achieved this through an aluminium rim that makes it feel distinctly more upmarket than previous Note phones. The rim on the white model I’ve been using has been given a curious white finish, which I’m not wholly sold on, but it’s still a marked improvement.
It’s altogether a much squarer phone than the Galaxy S6, from its more severely angled corners to its dead-straight, flat edges. This has the unfortunate side effect of making it feel bigger and chunkier than it is – and make no mistake, it is both big and chunky.
At 8.5mm it’s hardly chubby, but that’s enough to make it 1.7mm thicker than the S6. It’s also 8mm wider and 10mm longer, as well as almost 40g heavier. Practically speaking, I was always acutely aware of the Note 4 whenever I had it on my person, whether in the inside pocket of a light jacket or quickly stuffed into a trouser pocket. The term "lug around" has rarely seemed so appropriate.
Otherwise, button and port placement is very similar between the two phones. Samsung continues its policy of putting the volume keys on the opposite edge to the power key (left and right respectively), which seems to make its slightly more awkward to operate one-handed on the Note 4 – but then that’s the case in general.
One key difference is the 3.5mm headphone port. It’s on the bottom of the Galaxy S6, while on the Note 4 it’s on the top. Personally, I prefer the Galaxy S6’s approach, because it keeps the headphone cable out of the way when you’re actually using the phone, but I’m aware that opinion varies on this.
It’s possible that Samsung simply didn’t want people attempting to dock the S Pen, which is housed on the bottom edge, in the wrong opening. That’s perfectly understandable.
Display
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 4 are the titans of AMOLED screens – no one else in this particular league really gets a look-in.
Just like the design of the two phones, there are sufficient differences between the two screens to make a straight-up judgement tough to make.
Both are superficially similar – Super AMOLED displays with QHD (2,560 x 1,440) resolutions. However, the Galaxy Note 4’s is much bigger at 5.7 inches versus the Galaxy S6’s 5.1 inches.
Technically, this means that the Galaxy S6 display is the sharper of the two, with the same pixels packed into a significantly smaller space – 577ppi against 515ppi, to be precise.
But I would actually suggest that this is practically unnoticeable in real world usage. Indeed, I reckon that the Galaxy Note 4 is a better showcase for the QHD resolution than the Galaxy S6, making better use of those extra pixels across a wider canvass.
That’s not to say that the Galaxy Note 4’s is the better screen, though. The Galaxy S6 arguably has the best smartphone display on the market – it’s just that its QHD resolution has less to do with that fact than you might think.
The Galaxy S6 display is around 100 nits brighter than the Galaxy Note 4’s – and I wouldn’t call that dim in any sense. Similarly, the Galaxy S6 produces even more accurate colours, with a colour temperature that gets admirably close to the 6,500K ideal.
Both are great displays, but the S6 is better at displaying general smartphone tasks, while the Note 4 really makes high resolution media sing.
Interface and performance
Interface
Samsung has updated the Galaxy Note 4 to Android 5.0 Lollipop, which means that it’s running on the same basic OS as the Galaxy S6. While the bigger phone is running on Android 5.0.1, the newer phone is running Android 5.0.2.
The two phones are also running slightly different versions of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. All of which means that while their software handles very similarly, the experience isn’t identical.
The Galaxy Note 4’s interface has more of the S6’s classier, more subtle interface touches than the Galaxy S5. It’s got an equally restrained clock widget, as well as a similar notification menu and a settings menu that presents the main options in a grid and the rest in an easy-to-scan list.
However, the lock screen has the same childish bloopy effects as last year’s flagship, whereas the Galaxy S6 has a pleasant ripple effect. The S6 also uses squarer, flatter app icons more in keeping with Google’s own Lollipop efforts.
I’m talking about fairly minor, nit-picky differences here. When it comes down to it, both run modern TouchWiz, which means that both are pleasant and easy to use and far from the bloated mess that the custom UI used to be.
However, neither is as slick or attractive as stock Android 5.0. Samsung may have stripped things back, but this is still an obfuscation of the Android experience rather than an enhancement.
Take the shonky incorporation of Flipboard, for example. It’s accessible via a swipe left from the first homescreen, right where you’d want Google Now to be, and it isn’t as quick or useful as simply booting up the Flipboard app itself. I quickly opted to steer clear of it on both phones, I’m glad it can be deactivated altogether.
Of course, it’s not just the older version of TouchWiz that makes the Galaxy Note 4 the busier of the two. Samsung has also equipped the bigger phone with tools for using that S Pen stylus.
You get an additional S Note widget on the second screen, enabling you to quickly enter various types of notes, including basic scribbles and image annotation.
Whip out the S Pen itself and you get the Air command menu, which provides shortcuts to core functions like Action memos (scribble a number and it’ll convert it digitally) and Screen write (take a screenshot and scrawl on it).
This is the most accurate implementation of the S Pen stylus yet – it really is easy to write naturally with it. However, it won’t prove useful to everyone.
I had to force myself to use it as part of the critical evaluation process. Not once did I reach for it automatically to take a quick note or navigate more precisely, indicating that it still isn’t the quickest or easiest way to carry out essential tasks on a smartphone.
Still, I’m well aware that there are productivity hounds out there who swear by the Galaxy Note series and its S Pen implementation. If you’re looking for that extra layer of control over your phone, it’s got a clear advantage over the Galaxy S6.
Performance
The different-but-similar vibe continues with performance. The Samsung Galaxy S6 runs on a custom 64-bit Exynos 7420 CPU, while the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 runs on a Snapdragon 805 processor.
Neither chip is what you’d call common. The Exynos made its debut in the S6, while the 2.7GHz Snapdragon 805 was a kind of curious in-betweener chip that bridged the gap between last year’s main chip the Snapdragon 801 (which powers the Galaxy S5) and this year’s flawed upgrade the Snapdragon 810 (which powers the HTC One M9).
Besides the Galaxy Note 4, the Nexus 6 is perhaps the most notable device to run on the Snapdragon 805.
Both chips are very fast, but the Galaxy S6’s Exynos chip is capable of much more. In my GeekBench 3 tests, the Note 4 scored 1,099 on single core and 3,355 on multicore – an impressive set of scores that’s well ahead of last year’s flagship Android phones. The Galaxy S6, though, blasts ahead with 1,495 and 5,155 respectively.
In real world terms, however, the difference doesn’t feel so pronounced. Both phones run their operating systems and general tasks extremely silkily, with nary a stutter. It really is difficult to detect a difference in practical terms, and the fact that both run on 3GB of RAM likely has something to do with this smoothness – though even here the Galaxy S6 has the edge by using faster DDR4 RAM.
Both run advanced games impeccably, too. Playing Dead Trigger 2 with the settings bumped right up (a good way to put any phone through its paces) didn’t pose a problem for either.
There are signs that the Galaxy S6 is operating on another level of performance, however. Hit the camera app and, while neither hangs about, the newer phone snaps to it a couple of beats quicker.
The gap is even smaller when it comes to the speed of apps booting up, but there does tend to be the slightest of advantages to the Galaxy S6. But I’m really talking slight.
Battery life and media
Battery life
So far we’ve been dealing with two phones that do things in sufficiently different ways to make an unequivocal judgement hard to come by, but with the Samsung Galaxy S6 edging it.
Not so with the battery life. The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 storms this category.
It’s not that the Samsung Galaxy S6’s battery life is bad, as such. It’s just not particularly great.
The issue largely revolves around Samsung’s decision to pack its fastest and most cutting edge phone yet with a relatively meagre 2,550mAh battery. That represents a drop from the Galaxy S5 (2,800mAh), and it doesn’t even get close to the 3,220mAh Galaxy Note 4 in sheer capacity terms.
It doesn’t get too close in real world usage either. The Galaxy Note 4 will last deep into a second day with light to moderate usage, while I found that the Galaxy S6 would consistently be left with 20% or so after a similarly undemanding day. Admittedly this varied, but such inconsistency is a worry in itself.
Use both phones heavily, with some gaming and extended music listening thrown in, and while the Galaxy Note 4 will last through until bedtime, the Galaxy S6 will need topping up well before then.
It’s a shame, because Samsung has done some good work optimising its newest phone. For example, our regular video test rendered very similar results on the two phones. The test involves playing a 90-minute 720p video with the screen brightness turned right up. The Galaxy Note 4 dropped 11% on average, while the Galaxy S6 dropped 13% – hardly any difference at all.
Aside from battery life, there’s also the small matter of being able to removed the battery in the Galaxy Note 4 versus having it fixed in the Galaxy S6. To me this really is a small matter, but some Samsung fans and power users will be put out that they can’t carry a spare power unit around with them for the new phone.
While we’re talking about nice features that most people don’t use, the Galaxy S6 has in-built wireless charging support for the top two standards in the field. Great, if you have a wireless charging dock, but we suspect that this won’t fully take off in phones until they start getting bundled in with them, and when they work their way into more public spaces.
Overall, battery life is one area that sees a resounding victory for the Galaxy Note 4.
Media
When it comes to viewing and experiencing media, you can’t ask for two better smartphones than the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 4.
You can put that down to those peerless QHD Super AMOLED displays, as well as the snappy processors that run whatever you throw at them without breaking a sweat.
As mentioned when discussing the displays above, while the Galaxy S6 holds the advantage in terms of vibrancy and colour accuracy, the larger canvas provided by the Note 4 arguably makes it better suited to playing video content – particularly of the 2K or 4K variety.
It simply affords those extra pixels more room to breath. Watching a video on any mobile phone is something of a compromise regardless of size, but the Galaxy Note 4 feels the least like one out of all the smartphones I’ve ever used.
Provided you plug in a set of headphones of course. Neither phone’s piddly speaker compares particularly well with the high-end hardware found elsewhere.
Aside from their singular nature, both disappoint in different ways. The Galaxy Note 4’s is mounted on the back, so lacks clarity unless you crank the volume right up.
Meanwhile the Galaxy S6’s is mounted on the bottom edge of the phone, which is better for low volume clarity, but prone to being covered when held in landscape view.
Samsung’s media standard support is typically excellent with both phones. You even get high-res audio support, so you can play those 24-bit/192-kHz music tracks in full ear-bathing glory. Just be sure to do them justice with non-standard headphones, OK?
Add in the fact that the Galaxy Note 4 supports microSD memory expansion while the the Galaxy S6 does not, as well as its superior battery life, and I’d give the media playing nod to the older, bigger phone here.
Camera
It doesn’t always get the credit it deserves for this, but Samsung phones consistently take some of the best pictures on a smartphone. The actual experience of using those smartphone cameras, however, has rarely been massively enjoyable, thanks (as ever) to Samsung’s clunky software.
That’s changed with the Samsung Galaxy S6, so comparing it with the Galaxy Note 4 proves very instructive as to the scale of its progress.
Both cameras are 16-megapixel with OIS (optical image stabilisation), and combined with Samsung’s fine image processing software they both take great snaps in decent and even sub-optimal light. However, the Galaxy S6 has a brighter f/1.9 lens compared to the Galaxy Note 4’s f/2.2 equivalent, and the resulting difference in indoors and night time shots is noticeable.
The newer phone undoubtedly produces the better images in most situations. In my comparison tests, taking a variety of identical (or as near as possible) snaps with both phones, the Galaxy S6 images were generally better exposed in good lighting and brighter and more accurate in bad lighting.
Another brilliantly intuitive improvement with the S6 is its default auto HDR capabilities, which automatically make small adjustments when it detects a scene with high variation in dark and light.
It’s not as aggressive as a full-on HDR mode, which smooshes two contrasting images into one, and which you have to manually switch to on both phones in the appropriate situation. However, I found that this usually resulted in more natural-looking shots as a result. And not having to fiddle around with an extra setting is always a plus in a smartphone.
Arguably more important than the image quality boost, however, is how pleasant and easy it is to use the Galaxy S6 for photography.
This is evident right from the simple process of starting up the camera app. By tying this to a simple double-tap of the physical home key, Samsung has opened up a world of convenient, quick, no-look camera access. I guarantee you’ll capture far more of those incidental, fleeting moments than you will with any smartphone that doesn’t have a physical shutter button.
Even then, as discussed in the performance section, the Galaxy S6’s camera app boots up extremely fast.
By contrast, a double tap of the Note 4’s home key brings up S Voice, Samsung’s sub-Siri/Google Now/Cortana voice assistant. It’s not massively useful in most situations, and I hope that Samsung makes the most of the Note 4’s great hardware and gives it a camera shortcut option in a future update.
Back to the camera experience, and the sense of speed and ease of use permeates throughout the Galaxy S6 app, too. While the initial viewfinder screen looks very similar to the Galaxy Note 4’s, dive into the Mode menu and the difference is dramatic.
Where the Note 4, like previous Samsung phones, presents a gaudy assortment of mode thumbnails, the Galaxy S6 displays a restrained grid of simple icons that are identifiable at a glance.
This also includes the unique Pro mode, which lets you tweak manual focus, white balance, ISO, exposure, and more in a thoroughly intuitive manner.
Not that you’ll feel the need to most of the time. Unlike, say, Sony’s latest phones, I found that I could rely on the S6’s default auto mode to capture moments as they happened in a variety of settings. That’s something it shares with Note 4, which also turned out consistently accurate auto shots during my tests.
The essentials
For all of their fancy, frequently overstuffed feature sets, Samsung phones are always just great phones. That is, they make and receive calls really well, and typing out messages is rarely a chore.
All of that is true of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 4. I haven’t experienced any dropped calls on either during my time with them, and call quality and volume was decent across the two.
I did find calls to be generally crisper and clearer on the Galaxy S6, even when both phones were showing the same signal strength. I should supply the caveat that they were operating on different networks, however.
One advantage of the Galaxy Note 4 here is that aforementioned S Voice shortcut. If nothing else, double tapping the home button to say "call home" is pretty handy when you’re busy with something else, and the call in these circumstances defaults to speakerphone, which is a nice touch.
As for messaging, the default Samsung Messages app is almost identical on both phones. It’s an improvement on previous efforts simply by virtue of the fact that it adopts more of Google’s Material design language.
It’s all solid blocks of bright colour, tasteful circular image thumbnails, and floating message initiation prompts. I like Samsung’s favourite contacts bar permanently positioned along the top, too.
Actually typing out a message on both phones isn’t quite as slick as it should be by default. That’s thanks to Samsung’s own keyboard, which simply isn’t up to the standard of third party efforts (or Google’s own, for that matter).
Its drab grey style appears to belong to an older, pre-Lollipop version of Android, while there’s no built-in swype-to-type system. I also found it irritating that there was no comma button readily to hand – it’s stashed behind the symbol key.
Still, every mobile OS worth its salt lets you download your own third party keyboard these days, and Android’s selection has been the best for some time. I quickly downloaded Google’s keyboard and set it as the default having struggled to click with Samsung’s effort.
In terms of the ease of typing on each phone, both have their strengths. The Galaxy S6 is easier to tap out a quick message single handed, though I didn’t find such a task impossible on the Note 4 by any means. I was at the limited of my thumb’s reach, however, so those with smaller hands will struggle.
On the plus side, the keyboard on the Note 4 is obviously bigger, and I found that mistakes and typos were rarer as a result.
The other bonus messaging feature with the Note 4 is the ability to write your message using the S Pen. Just hover the stylus near the message input box and tap the "T" command that appears, and you’ll be able to scrawl your message using Samsung’s impressively accurate handwriting recognition software to convert your scribbles to digital text.
In practice I didn’t utilise this feature too much, but for those who never really learned to text quickly it could be a killer feature. And it works.
These are two of the finest smartphones to browse the web on – again, thanks to those class-leading QHD displays and snappy performance. You get Chrome and a generic internet browser as standard, which (as always) is irritating, but Samsung is far from the only manufacturer to double up like this.
Once you’ve pushed Chrome front and centre, as you should, your experience will be great in both cases.
Despite the Galaxy S6’s crisper display, though, I’m going to say that the Note 4 offers the better web browsing experience simply because of the size of its display. An extra 0.6 inches might not sound like a significant difference in screen space, but it really is.
Coupled with that QHD resolution, even full, non-mobile-optimised web pages become a doddle to read. You’ll still want to zoom in on text, but much can be gleaned from an initial zoomed-out scan of such websites, and it won’t cause you a headache either.
Of course, 5.1 inches still isn’t small for smartphone display, regardless of how commonplace it’s becoming, and surfing the web on the Galaxy S6 is a fantastic experience. In particular, its super-snappy performance renders media-rich websites very swiftly.
Price and verdict
Price
Perhaps the biggest drawback of the Samsung Galaxy S6 is its price. SIM-free prices start from £559.99 (US$ 750, AU$ 999) for the 32GB model, which is iPhone 6 money.
It is actually possible to get the phone for around £500 (US$ 650) if you shop around online, but I’m not talking about anything approaching bargain territory here, regardless of how good the phone is.
Of course, similar accusations of priciness were levelled at the Galaxy Note 4 upon its release. Even now that it’s no longer the fresh-faced darling of the Samsung range, it still isn’t cheap through official channels.
At the time of writing, Samsung lists the Note 4 as being available for £569 (roughly US$ 880, AUS$ 1,138) – and that’s a "special Offer" apparently, with a claimed £40 knocked off.
This being a slightly older phone, of course, it doesn’t take too much shopping around online to get a large discount on that price. Amazon currently offers a phone-only Note 4 for £440 (US$ 550, around AU$ 750). That’s a huge saving (when it’s in stock), and suddenly makes it look like quite a bargain.
I’d give the value for money nod to the Galaxy Note 4 here, then. While many would understandably argue that the Galaxy S6 is priced like an iPhone 6 because it’s built and performs to that standard, a wider look at the market will tell you that Android phones simply don’t hold their price like Apple’s do.
While you’ll pay the full amount for the latest iPhone right up until it’s replaced after a full 12 months, I can almost guarantee that you’ll be able to get a sizeable saving on the Galaxy S6 within six months of its release.
Unless money really is no object and you want the very best Android phone right now, we’d urge patience when buying a Galaxy S6, if not quite caution. Let’s not be too stingy here – this is arguably the best Android phone out there, after all.
Verdict
It’s clear to see that Samsung has taken some massive strides forward in the six months between the release of the Galaxy Note 4 and the Galaxy S6, but that doesn’t mean the S6 is the best choice for everyone.
The Galaxy S6 is clearly the prettier, more premium looking and feeling phone. Its smooth glass back and sculpted edges are a big step up form the plastic back of the era culminating in the Note 4.
Of course, the Note 4 has metal edges of its own, and its plastic back and functional design make you less paranoid about picking up little nicks and scratches from looking at it the wrong way.
Samsung Galaxy S6 review
Similarly, while the Galaxy S6 has the better quality display with superior brightness and colour accuracy, the Note 4 wears its QHD resolution better. It feels far better suited to a 5.7-inch panel than the S6’s 5.1-inch equivalent.
Of course, 5.7 inches will be too big for most normal smartphone users. The Note 4 is a big phone, no doubt about it, and it’s simply not comfortable to carry around in most regular pockets. The S6, by contrast, slips into a trouser pocket without issue.
The trade-off for this impracticality is greater productivity potential, and the Note 4’s S Pen stylus remains a uniquely essential tool for a certain, small subset of power users.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 review
Both phones are powerful enough to make differences in performance largely a matter of benchmark comparisons and stat obsessives, but the Galaxy S6 is undoubtedly the more future-proof on this front
So, chic style and range-topping power, or raw, rugged productivity? That’s the choice put before you with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 4. The Galaxy S6 will be the better phone for more people, we suspect, but then the Note 4’s lower price (if you shop around) redresses the balance significantly.
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