So I've owned the S6 Edge for a few days and here are my impressions:
- Feels a bit sharp in the hand, can be annoying sometimes when holding it in portrait and landscape. It's more comfortable if you left your fingers anchor onto the edge rather than wrapping the phone tightly in your hand. I've gotten used to it, it's not too bad. On the plus side, the thin edges make the phone feel more secure in the hand, you've got something for your fingers to anchor on to.
- It's still a stunning phone to look at, easily the best looking and built phone I've owned.
- Edge swipes are smooth like butter, touch targets are on the edges are a bit tricky sometimes and other times it's not an issue. Weird.
- Some glare on the edges based on some lighting conditions, can be annoying but most content have margins so it usually doesn't interfere too much. Colour shifting at the edges is really slight on a white background, complete non issue unless you're looking for it.
- I don't know if it's how I registered my fingerprints, but the fingerprint scanner is a quite picky. Sometimes I can get in with a single touch, sometimes it takes several attempts or I have to shift my finger to a different position to get it to work. Partially covering the sensor usually gives you a fail too. I've gone through the registering process 3 times, the first two times didn't work well (lots of errors), the third time was better due to me focusing on how I orient my thumb during the process. Definitely not as slick as TouchID, but it's still good. Hopefully software updates make it better.
- The screen is amazing, full stop. I didn't realize how okish the OPO screen was till I compared the two. The colors, contrast, pixel density, viewing angles are unbelievably good.
- Can't really comment on battery life yet as I've mostly been using it indoors near a charger/wireless charging pad. It seems to drain at an average pace from what I've seen. It does charge unbelievably fast though, like a bit over 1 hour for a full charge and from low percentages it seems to charge like 1.5% per minute. I've never seen a phone charge this fast, the OPO charged quickly but this is even quicker. Wireless charging takes about double the time, works well for charging over night where a quick charge isn't important.
- Touchwiz is pretty nice on the S6, it looks a lot better than previous iterations of the software (more material design and flatness), many apps have been updated to this aesthetic like the dailer and messaging app but other apps haven't (calculator, music), hopefully they update every app over time. It runs very smoothly but can still hiccup sometimes and have to redraw, Flipboard briefing causes some of those but sometimes it can happen randomly with the app drawer. Overall it's good but there's room for improvement, it's not as smooth and bulletproof as stock Android or some other light OEM skins. Even though Touchwiz is scaled back and cleaned up visually, if you look in the ram usage, it still takes up a lot of ram.
- Haven't had a chance to use the camera extensively, tried some low light shots without flash and they came out a lot better than most phone cameras i've used in the past. Very little digital noise, nice colours and sharpness.
- Edge software is kinda useless. I keep forgetting that people edge is there. The night clock lights up the whole screen so it's useless too (I'm guessing this is a bug since the info stream doesn't do this, if they fix this then it'll be useful). Information stream for notifications and headlines has to be activated rubbing on the edge, why would I bother when I can just hit the home button and see notifications that way? The headlines are truncated, better to just unlock the phone and use a news reading app. Edge lighting is also useless, who's going to lay their phone facing down on a table?
- One minor thing for anti-case people like me, this phone sits very stable on a table due to the fact that the camera is mounted in the middle and it's large. Unless you push hard on the side of the screen, it doesn't rock back and forth like the iPhone 6 did.
Overall it's an amazing phone, if you're on the fence it would probably be wise to save the $100 and get the regular S6 IMO. The Edge is one super cool looking phone, but the Edges are double edged swords (lol), the introduce some more glare, color shifting and trickier handling. If you get the Edge, do it for the aesthetic appeal, not for any functional reason. Me personally, I'm going to stick with it. I like it, even with the downsides.
Edit: This post is way longer than I expected it to be, hopefully someone finds it useful.
