Samsung Galaxy S6 edge vs Google Nexus 6

Design

In terms of aesthetics and appeal, we’d give the Samsung Galaxy S6 the nods on achieving more glances and looks from bystanders, mainly because it has the luxurious qualities that cater to a wider audience.

Brandishing one sharp design, thanks in part to its Corning Gorilla Glass 4 surfaces and metal trim bezel, the entire package is enhanced even further by the way light reflects off the glass, producing this cool shimmering and dazzling effect. Add to that, it’s incredibly skinny, super lightweight, and far more compact, it all translates to an unprecedented change we’re happy to experience from a company that wasn’t all that notable that long ago for its smartphone designs. Lastly, the dual-curved display is a neat touch that gives the phone a cool-looking, unique aesthetic.

he Google Nexus 6 is pretty much on the other side of the spectrum with its gargantuan size. That alone, will probably keep some folks at bay, but then again, others favor its phablet-esque dimensions. Yes, it’s obnoxiously large, which surprisingly enough, can catch the attention of some people. However, it’s just a handful to operate – requiring two-handed operation more than anything else. Visually speaking, it’s a bit more contemporary with its design language, comprised out of mostly durable plastic.

Display

two handsets tip the scales with their quad-HD resolution displays – something we feel that’s necessary to stand head-above-water over the rest of the high-end crop. For the Galaxy S6 edge, it’s fashioned with an incredibly sharp 5.1-inch 1440 x 2560 Super AMOLED dual-curved display, which achieves a higher pixel density count of 577 ppi. The figures alone paint something exquisite with the Galaxy S6 edge, but we can’t neglect the same level of attention paid to the Nexus 6’s 6-inch 1440 x 2560 AMOLED display – one that still pulls in a respectable 493 ppi pixel density.

Seriously, the two panels cram a ton of pixels, giving plenty of detail in everything that’s being displayed. Whether it’s viewing them up close and personal, or from a normal distance, we can’t argue that they deliver sharp visuals that make it easy on eyes to decipher the most miniscule of things. All told, it purely boils down to size preference – where the Nexus 6 carries more real estate, which some can find useful for specific occasions.

Interface and Functionality

Samsung's Galaxy S devices have always shipped with nothing less than the best available at the time in terms of hardware, we've often found ourselves wishing it did more on the software side. Its proprietary TouchWiz layout has often proved sluggish and less responsive than what some competitors had to offer – a sight that the Samsung faithful only tolerated because of the smorgasbord of extra features the platform gave them access to. With the Galaxy S6, however, the company has finally come to sense, and has carried out a number of software optimizations that make the Galaxy S6's software both easier to understand and faster than ever before.

Visuals have never been a strong point for TouchWiz, but with this new version, however, Samsung has added support for third-party themes – allowing users to alter its looks, should they find a more fitting theme.Despite the overhaul of TouchWiz, it still can’t beat out the Nexus 6’s vanilla Android 5.0 Lollipop experience. Who doesn’t like stock Android? From a visually standpoint, Material Design was born from Google’s vision, adding bright and poppy colors through various layers of the platform. At the same time, the pure nature of the experience extends into the minimalist look it’s sporting.

Processor and Memory

Nexus 6 rarely shows any signs of slowdown or lag with its performance. Under the hood, it’s endowed with a last-generation quad-core 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 SoC, coupled with an equally beefy 3GB or RAM and the Adreno 420 GPU.

Samsung on the other hand, decided to ditch Qualcomm altogether with its flagship, choosing instead to go all in-house for the Galaxy S6 edge. Rather, the S6 edge relies on a home-grown Exynos 7420. The 7420 is an octa-core processor, built on a 14nm node, with two clusters made up by four cores arranged in a big.LITTLE configuration and Mali-T760 graphics. We have one group of power-efficient ARM Cortex-A53 CPUs, and another with powerful Cortex-A57 ones. The idea behind the arrangement is simple to understand – the efficient team of cores takes care of most trivial tasks, while the speedy A57 cores kick in when power is required. If maximum performance is what you need, the Exynos 7420 can switch all eight cores on and work them simultaneously.

Internet and Connectivity

Both devices offer support for a wide array of LTE bands, 5GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, and DLNA. Still, the Galaxy S6 edge pulls ahead because of its infrared blaster for control over home electronics, and Samsung Pay – the company's new mobile payments solution that works hand-in-hand with the handset's NFC chip.

Camera

The 13 MP camera on the Nexus 6 features an f/2.0 aperture lens, optical image stabilization, dual-LED flash ring, 2-megapixel front camera, and up to UHD 4K video recording. The Galaxy S6 edge answers back with an equally impressive 1/2.6”, 16-megapixel rear camera, which comes with a wider-than-before f/1.9 aperture lens and an optical stabilization gizmo attached to it – with the same UHD 4K recording as its rival.

The snapping app on the Nexus 6 is Google's Camera – one that’s been available for quite some time as a downloadable app in the Play Store. Yet again, we can see Lollipop’s favor of offering a cleaner and simpler UI, since the Camera app’s interface is predominantly reserved for the viewfinder. In terms of shooting modes, we’re given photo sphere, panorama, HDR+ and lens blur. In comparison, the Galaxy S6 edge camera is more akin to those who want finer controls and a handful of cool modes. One of them in particular, the Pro mode, allows us to adjust relevant parameters such as ISO, white balance, exposure adjustment, and even focus.

Multimedia

Video playback is excellent on both handset, too, as they support quite a handful of video codecs out of the box. Watching videos isn’t an issue with either of them, thanks in part to their sharp displays, but we have an extra layer of multi-tasking with the S6 edge’s experience – videos can essentially be played in their own windows, which can be placed on top of whatever we’re doing. Then again, some folks will find the Nexus 6 to be more ideal for the situation, thanks in part to its larger screen and dual front-firing speakers.

When it comes to the music players, they come preloaded with the usual Google Play Music app – though, Samsung offers its own TouchWiz music player as well. Yes, we’ll certainly say that the TouchWiz music player is a good alternative, but it’s pretty reserved looking. For only a single speaker, the Galaxy S6 edge is able to muster up 75.4 dB of audio power, which is a miniscule difference from the Nexus 6’s tally of 75 dB. Between them, we prefer the audio coming out of the Nexus 6, as the Galaxy S6 edge’s quality is thin and subdued.

Battery

Nexus 6 to carry a beefy 3220 mAh one inside of its body – whereas with the smaller sized Galaxy S6 edge, it’s only packing along a 2600 mAh battery. In running our custom script for our battery benchmark test, it reveals that the Galaxy S6 edge is slightly longer-lasting. It puts up a mark of 8 hours and 11 minutes, which is marginally better than the Nexus 6’s respectable tally of 7 hours and 53 minutes. However, we have to note that we tested the Galaxy S6 edge has run the test with its display set at 180 nits of brightness, as opposed to the usual 200 nits, since it’s unable to reach that mark when its brightness is manually set, even to the highest setting.

What’s nice, though, is that both handsets are pretty efficient at charging. The Galaxy S6 edge needs only 83 minutes to get back to full strength, while the Nexus 6 isn’t too far off at 98 minutes. Even better, they both offer the convenience of wireless charging.