Samsung Officially Unpacks Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge At MWC 235
MojoKid writes Today, at Mobile World Congress, Samsung took the veil off of its much-anticipated Galaxy S6, and also the Galaxy S6 edge. As has been heavily rumored, the S6 foregoes the plastic shell of its predecessor and integrates metal and glass instead, resulting in a far more premium feel, a thickness of 6.8mm, and a weight of 138g on the normal S6 and 132g on the edge. Samsung made it a point to mention that the metal it uses in the S6 is 50% stronger than other smartphones- a Apple bendgate jab, perhaps? Both the S6 and S6 edge share the same hardware, which includes a 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display. That gives us a resolution of 2560x1440, and a high pixel density of 577 ppi. The new phones also include an octa-core processor (2.1GHz quad + 1.5GHz quad), 3GB of DDR4 memory, and LTE cat 6 (300/50Mbps) support. Also of note is the phone's rear 16 megapixel f/1.9 camera, which Samsung says will launch in less than a second (0.6 seconds, to be exact). The front camera is no slouch either, also boasting an aperture of f/1.9, and coming in at 5 megapixels. The company says that the phone can add 4 hours of battery-life after a mere 10 minutes of charging, and when compared to the iPhone, it charges up to full in half the time. The S6 also has built-in wireless charging as well.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-user-replaceable battery, and no SD expansion.
Stick it up your backside, Samsung, and stop emulating the WORST features of your competitors.
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Non-user-replaceable battery, and no SD expansion.
A replaceable battery costs more upfront and is incompatible with thinness. Most people get a new phone long before the battery dies.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
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Most people get their mobile replaced as part of their contract every 2 years. I don't know many person for which it is not the case: they tends to either do not care at all and have a non-smart phone, or they come from a country where getting a mobile with your contract is not legal (which btw does not mean they don't replace their phone every 2 years regardless).
Samsung is going to sell thousands of its smartphone to contracts for each one they sell to somebody like you and me ( I'm using my second sma
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Another SG2 here. I love the SD card, the plastic body, the replaceable battery. Plastic and the replaceable battery help the phone surviving drops because they discharge the kinetic energy (google bent corner iphone or mac). Because of that I won't buy the SG6 when my SG2 dies but hopefully that will happen many years in the future so Samsung have plenty of time to rethink their design.
Other things that I love: the relatively small size, which let me fit it inside my front pockets if I have to, the light w
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5 years ago that was true. Im still using my GS3 which works fine to this day. it gets a little hot, but after replacing the battery i could see me getting a good 2 more years out of it (longer if i wasnt using a bunch of apps)
You can replace the battery on most "sealed phones" too. Its just more of a process; and depending on your comfort level you might prefer to take it to a shop to do it for $20+price-of-battery for you. But you can still do that. And you only need to do it once, after 3-4 years.
Who car
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So.. yeah. No user replaceable battery in the S6? Even though I wouldn't
Re:Nope (Score:5, Informative)
The only reason to remove SD slots is to force people to buy higher level storage phones. On a business level, i get it if i can make someone buy the 64 instead of the 32 gig model, its more money in my pocket. Me on the other hand, I use multiple SD cards depending on what im doing (blank if going to a concert, a few with different genres of music, a few with movies for long trips etc) i dont have ton constantly move things around, i just pop in the card.
keyboards. how I long for a slider like my droid 3
Re:Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
The only reason to remove SD slots is to force people to buy higher level storage phones. On a business level, i get it if i can make someone buy the 64 instead of the 32 gig model, its more money in my pocket.
There are many ways to look at this, including a conspiracy theory I heard summer of 2013 that Samsung was sitting on a stockpile or memory chips and just wanted to milk selling 16gb models for as long as possible by not offering the higher storage models. That one seemed really plausible when you consider the Galaxy S5 32gb never arrived in the US and signs pointed to Samsung themselves completely withholding it from US carriers.
In this case I think you're looking at the wrong end of the sales chain. If Samsung and the carriers were really intent on selling higher storage capacities you'd think they would do a better job marketing them and get employees at all levels better training. I talked to a Samsung sales rep that happened to be in Costco one time and he only seemed to be interested in getting me to just buy the 16gb model, even though he himself had a 64gb.
The carriers stand to make far more money than the manufacturer by getting their customers to use cloud services so they have to sign up for larger, overpriced data plans. So I'm far more inclined to believe that Samsung's previous attempt at selling the S3 32gb in the US failed because of the carriers who largely only sold them online. When asked why they weren't sold in-store they sited inventory logistics as the reason, meanwhile carriers had no problem stocking higher capacity iphones in-store. Don't forget to factor in that the in-store employees are all on commission so why would bother trying to up-sell the device with higher storage when they can't get commission from an online sale.
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I would say my HTC M8 is a combination of the two. Replaceable batteries are useful, and my last Motorola phone, the Atrix 2, had one and wasn't considered a porker by any means.
The SD card is more important. Sandisk has 200GB MicroSD cards out. This doesn't give just storage, but the ability to do backups, either with nandroid or with Titanium Backup. Since Titanium Backup uses a very good encryption system for backups (you set a password which encrypts the private key stored with the backup files, and
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Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
SD expansion is only an issue if you don't get enough memory in the first place.
Maybe most people don't care, but there are many very very good reasons to have this feature.
My personal favorite is that, with recent android builds, you can no longer plug your phone in and have it show up as a mass storage device (without rooting/etc). If you want to actually access the filesystem where your data is stored, then you have to take out the SD card and use a reader - at least that workaround is available.
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Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like AppleCare+ is $99, and only covers out to 2 years (and another $79 if the phone is replaced due to damage). Are iPhones really so unreliable that that presents value?
$12 battery shipped to my home which I can easily replace in less than a minute myself, or $99 and a trip to the store. I'd say I have a better level of service than you - less expensive, too.
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I assumed nothing. These are your own words:
"You paid for, and trust a counterfeit battery?!... At best, a Samsung S4 battery will use a generic 1500mAh cell with filter material to fake a real one that's rated for 1800mAh."
I purchased the battery from AnkerDirect, fulfilled by Amazon. Not much opportunity for a counterfeit to get into
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Isn't that a goal of Google's Project Ara?
Re:Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
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as for thinness, I dont want that! Gimme a phone 2x as thick as current top tier phones (or about 1/2 as thick as old nokia candy bar phones) and give me 4X the battery life. I want some heft in my phone. not zach morris phone thick, but old candy bar phone thick
Yup. Thinness is a terrible tradeoff.
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Gimme a phone 2x as thick as current top tier phones and give me 4X the battery life.
Simple solution: Get a USB power brick and tape it to the back of your phone.
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liquid metal? (Score:2)
Speaking of style over function, I take it the new phone is not using LiquidMetal for it's metal. They teased a liquid metal ad last week. But it looks like just polished metal to me. Or is it? Apple's exclusive rights purchase for liquid Metal technology I beleive ran out a week ago, making it possible this could be a liquid metal phone case.
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as for thinness, I dont want that! Gimme a phone 2x as thick as current top tier phones (or about 1/2 as thick as old nokia candy bar phones) and give me 4X the battery life. I want some heft in my phone. not zach morris phone thick, but old candy bar phone thick
Just get a battery boost pack. Mophie [mophie.com] (and others im sure) are already announcing their products for these new samsung phones.
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the point is i shouldnt have to rely on a 3rd party to do the job of my product.
But that product doesn't do what you want it to do but you can buy an accessory that does make it do what you want it to do. So either buy something different or buy this product and the accessory.
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Or buy a competing product that does do what you want. Like one of the gadzillion other android devices out there.
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Never mind that your battery is too weak or that you have a broken leg, crutches FTW!
When the choice is crutches or nothing I'd go crutches...until I get to a charger.
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Having used both removable batteries and external battery bricks, the external battery brick is FAR more useful.
First of all - how do you charge a removable battery? Very, very, very few phones come with an external battery charger, so if you want to charge your batteries, you have to charge the battery
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You might need to download the eBay app from Playstore. External battery charger and two batteries is £10 ($15) for most phones. Sure 1/2 the batteries only last about 6 months, and some of the chargers explode, but the rest last for years. At that price, you can't lose. Just buy more!
£ is GBP, not Australian. Something is badly wrong with Slashdot (and not just Beta)
Re:Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
Non-user-replaceable battery, and no SD expansion.
A replaceable battery costs more upfront and is incompatible with thinness. Most people get a new phone long before the battery dies.
1)
You do not speak for anyone but yourself, despite the fantasies you so obviously entertain.
2)
Some of us want a battery which can be removed so the phone can be powered off without
any question. A non-removable battery is a deal-breaker for those who want this.
/
Re: Nope (Score:2)
Jesus, NSA contractor - at least register a damn account and build some cred so *somebody* will fall for your propaganda. Do they actually pay you for such phone-it-in worksmanship?
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No, we want a quick way to do a 100% reboot if the phone is in a bad state.Without that your only option is to wait 1 day until the battery is dead. Or longer if the radio is off in that state.
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A replaceable battery costs more upfront
Amazing the el-cheapo feature and smartphones are able to afford replaceable batteries while these things tend to go missing in higher end versions costing >5x more.
and is incompatible with thinness.
Why do you say that?
My phone has a replaceable battery, if it were any thinner I wouldn't want it.. hard enough as it is trying to hold without sides of your fingers touching the edge of the digitizer. I've seen back covers of LG and Samsung models and don't see any wasted space.
Most people get a new phone long before the battery dies.
Funny there seems to be a healthy market for replacement and a
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I always have 1-2 spare batteries with me. If i'm away from being able to charge it then I can swap the battery with a fully charged one. I would rather do this than carry an external charger as well.
No difference in effect from external battery (Score:2)
How is that any different from someone that carries an external battery pack for a phone? Most are smaller in form factor than second batteries for a phone would be... and they have the same result as having that second battery (only they are even slightly more useful since they don't need to be in the phone to charge).
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As for removable SD car - I want to be able to instantly swap content OUT as much as in. I do not want to take one client's data onto another's premises ever. And I may have recreational content I do not want in the work pl
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Anyway, many people want function over fashion, and would prefer a few mm thicker in exchange for a bigger battery.
Which is why there are battery booster packs. See the problem is solved for both groups of people with one phone design.
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Uh, no. Those things are inefficient. They have to convert the voltage of their own battery to 5V, output to USB, then the phone has to convert that to the battery charging voltage. So, for the same increase in functional capacity, the battery in them has to be much bigger. Plus, they add more than "just a few mm" in thickness, there's even more casing surrounding a separate battery. Then there's the USB plug getting in the way. Plus dealing with disconnecting/removing all that befo
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Uh, no. Those things are inefficient.
But they are efficient enough for most people.
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In my experience, most people don't have/use them, and most people rely on the battery in their phone. It's not clear where your claim comes from - do most people you know have them?
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In my experience, most people don't have/use them, and most people rely on the battery in their phone. It's not clear where your claim comes from - do most people you know have them?
Most people who use them. In my experience yes indeed most people rely on the battery in their phone and don't need additional batteries, much less to the point at which they are worried about the efficiency of their additional power source.
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Need vs. want. The OP said he'd trade a bit more thickness for more battery life. Nothing you've said is an argument against that.
I know what he said, I'm not "arguing against" his assertion that he would happily have more thickness if it meant more battery life, I don't think he was lying when he said that.
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Very handy when travelling and using a phone for photos instead of a fancy $1000 standalone camera.
Oops, my phone's battery is at 2%, I guess I won't be taking a selfie of the Taj Mahal this evening. :)
That means you have to now charge 2 devices overnight but with the high capacity ones having 10000 mAh or more, you can camp for a weekend without power.
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Blackberry's Z10 has a replaceable battery and few complained that it's a thick phone. It's certainly not razor thin either, but you can easily allow the user to replace the battery and have a very useably thin phone.
The z10 is actually thinner than an iPhone 4 or 4s, neither of which had removable batteries.
The iPhone 5 is only 0.3mm thinner than the Samsung Galaxy S4, which had a removable batter.
I was curious of the general size comparisons regarding thickness, so I looked these up:
Samsung Galaxy S6 edge : 7 mm
Samsung Galaxy S6 : 6.8 mm
Samsung Galaxy S5 : 8.1 mm
Samsung Galaxy S4 : 7.9 mm
Samsung Galaxy S3 : 7.6 mm (CDMA for verizon or sprint)
Samsung Galaxy S3 : 8.6 mm (GSM/others)
iPhone 6 Plus : 7.1 mm
iPhone 6 : 6.9 m
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone talking about how "premium" it feels and is... well a premium phone IMO has expandable storage. It has a removable battery. It can take a fall from a few feet up (glass back???? really??? all my friends who had iphone 4s had cracked backs
to top it all off i dont want to spend money on a "premium feel" when all im gonna do is wrap it in an otterbox anyway!
does anyone make a top tier phone, with an SD slot and a removable battery anymore? because that is who will be getting my business when i buy my next phone (it sucks too because I was putting off buying a new phone for a few months waiting on this one)
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Last year's LG G3 was the only other flagship to have an SD and removable battery, but it is phablet sized at 5.5".
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The Lg G3 is a brilliant phone and while it is a large screen it doesn't actually feel like that big of a phone. I am still running the lg g2, but the wife got the g3 and never looked back.
Only think I would change is I wouldn't have the crazy high resolution screen. I believe that it eats way more power than it is worth and a 1920x1080 screen would have been a better choice. At that resolution and small size its hard to tell the difference.
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Maybe it's just that what you think "premium" means isn't what everyone else thinks it means? Though, I'm still rocking a Nexus 4 with a glass back, no expandable storage, and no removable battery. It's a pretty nice phone and I don't care about those things.
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As soon as I read the words, "has a more premium feel", I knew this review had been written by a mouth-breathing marketing moron. WTF is that even supposed to be, other than words strung together in attempt to make idiots feel smug about their cluelessness?
As for mine--no removable battery, no removable storage, no desire whatsoever to buy.
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The vast majority of customers don't remove the battery anyways, so it was probably a move in the right direction on that front. The 128GB internal storage negates the no removable storage issue.
The thing that bugs me is they've given up on making it waterproof which is a cool feature in previous models.
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But plastics used nowadays are clearly superior to metal for a phone body. Less denting, less slippery, more flexible at the stress levels typically endured by phones so protects phone innards better.
So metal necessarily is less well made than plastics typically used for phones.
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Some people have a knack of cracking their screen. Pockets, people!
I'm a clumsy oaf but the only time I've dropped a phone on pavement was texting-while-dogwalking, itself a dangerous activity when fido yanked at the lead.
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Yet another phone without a full QWERTY hardware keyboard, so I'll be keeping my Epic 4G even longer.
Thinness is an anti-feature. If people really wanted their phones to be paper thin, there wouldn't be a market for phone cases.
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You'll be waiting a long time I'm afraid. QWERTY phones aren't coming back.
I'm hanging on to mine (Desire Z). After replacing the battery (ahem) it looks like there are years more life left in it. Sure, I also have a slab-only phone and these days I carry it most of the time, but when I travel the Desire Z with full keyboard is generally more useful by being much faster at communcating.
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Porting the android userland, if that's your thing, ought to be simple enough, given Firefox 2.1 is Kitkat underneath.
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I was thinking about upgrading and figured I'd wait until the S6 was available, but those two flaws make it a deal breaker.
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Non-user-replaceable battery, and no SD expansion.
Stick it up your backside, Samsung, and stop emulating the WORST features of your competitors.
Non replaceable battery, meh. Non expandable memory, now that is a show stopper right there.
A few departures from the S3/S4/S5 (Score:4, Interesting)
In all seriousness, it does look like a very nice phone. And Samsung has gotten better about pre-loading less bloatware on their more recent releases. We'll have to see how the general public receives it though.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
what about this rarely-considered feature? (Score:5, Interesting)
megapixels, GHz, bus speed, blah blah blah...I may be the only person on the planet who actually cares about this esoteric feature, but I'll ask anyway: How well does it function as a telephone? Are calls clear & loud? How much does the microphone collect sound? Is it sensitive to wind (noise)? etc. etc. etc. I ask because most cell phones sound dreadful -- like a 3rd generation mp3 played through an AM radio.
In these days of feature checklist pissing contests over most pixels and CPU power, it'd be good to know if a $700 phone can make a decent phone call.
Re:what about this rarely-considered feature? (Score:5, Informative)
Mod anon up, important question.
Also often overlooked
Audio quality from headphone port
Speakerphone quality
Mic quality
Time to charge (addressed in this case)
Shock resistance
Warranty period
Quality of service from provider (hate to tip the hat to Apple but holy crap good service)
Screen brightness in the sun
etc.
Re: what about this rarely-considered feature? (Score:2)
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Blame that on your stingy provider, skimping on bandwidth by packing you all in a few channels. Full-rate GSM is quite clear.
No SD card = major weakness (Score:5, Insightful)
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Anyone have any suggestions for a good new model phone that still comes with one, since Samsung is apparently out?
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The LG G3 has replaceable battery and sd-card.
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Oh, and
Fast charge is nice, but isn't 500+ ppi (Score:3)
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just flagpole-sitting at this point?
Yes. Also, 1080p is more pratical as it allows 1:1 clone to TV.
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I wonder what the power drain is on these things - GPU wise.
I'm mean if the inbuilt camera shoots video at 1080 and the screen is 1440, then the system is upscaling during playback.
Samsung (Score:2, Flamebait)
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You think wrong. "Without" = "Does not have".
Only 8 processors? (Score:3)
The new phones also include an octa-core processor...
The first blade grabs at the whisker, tugging it away from your face to protect it from the second blade.
Blade number two catches and digs into the stubble before it has the chance to snap back and injure you, pulling it farther out so that it is now ready for shearing.
Triple-Trac's third blade, a finely-honed bonded platinum instrument, cuts cleanly through the whisker at its base, leaving your face as smooth as a billiard ball.
The Triple Trac [jt.org]
Going overboard while falling short (Score:5, Informative)
Oh come on 2560x1440 AMOLED is just insane and pointless. 1080 is ridiculous as-is nobody is ever going to benefit from or notice any difference.
More importantly I won't buy a phone with an AMOLED display. IPS is more reliable, lasts longer, no burn-in issues and easier to see in daylight.
Also no SD card? WTF were they thinking?
No replaceable battery in a device that costs hundreds of dollars... Don't think so - not that rich/stupid.
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1080 is the Full HD video format that these phones can now record.
Displaying the video you just shot makes sense - at the same pixel count without scaling.
The good news is (Score:5, Insightful)
The older S5 with a removable battery and a SD card will see the price down.
Samsung has lost its way (Score:3)
No MicroSD slot and no removable battery means no sale for me. And from the posts on this forum, I'm far from alone.
When my S2 died a couple weeks ago I had already read the rumors that the S6 would lack these critical, basic features. So I went ahead and bought an S5. So glad I didn't wait for the anti-consumer S6.
Removable batteries are both about getting through a full day of hardcore usage without ever being tethered to a charging wire, as well as increasing the overal longevity of the phone by being able to replace it 2-3 years in when it no longer holds a decent charge.
Expandable storage isn't just about having more storage in the device. It's about being able to have safe storage independent of the device that can survive the device failing. Every night my phone does an automatic backup of all my apps and data to my MicroSD card. I can't tell you how many times this has saved me over the years, on multiple phones. More than once on my Samsung Captivate (original Galaxy S). More than once on my S2... including this most-recent time 2 weeks ago. I moved my MicroSD card over to my new S5, restored my data and I was right back where I left off.
And don't give me that crap about backing up to the "cloud". The "cloud" is a joke, and those of us in the Real World don't have data, let alone wifi access 24/7. Just because I don't have wireless signal doesn't mean I don't want my data backed up that night.
Every cell phone I've ever owned has had a removable battery, and every smartphone I've ever had has had a MicroSD card... including some non-smartphones from back when they were called TransFlash. There's no way in hell I'm going to start giving up these basic, core features of owning a phone. If Samsung doesn't get its head out of its ass, stop being stupid and stop being anti-consumer then the S5 could easily be the last Samsung phone I ever buy. I'll miss the OLED screen but they won't deserve my money at that point. I'll vote with my money and give it to a company that isn't into the business of screwing the user and forced-obsolescence.
Alternatives ? (Score:2)
It looks like the Galaxy line is dead for me (no SD, no battery change).
What phones with both of these features are still out there ?
Re: they have to compare it to the iphone 6, (Score:5, Insightful)
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This. Dropping IP67 was the worst decision they made.
"Took some design cues" (Score:2)
Look at the bottom edge. EXACT SAME placement of headphone, charging port, speaker grill...
Come on. Man up and at least admit that part alone is a direct copy.
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Welcome to the 90s.
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
US Top 1% average household income is $383k. Top 5% $118k. Top 10% $140k. Top 25% $89k.
Depending where you leave I would say that 1 in 4 can easily afford two of these phones every 3 years without a dent in their bank account.
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Typo. Top 5% is 188k according to your link.
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Can't disagree!
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The Galaxy S5 and LG G3 are probably the best fit options.
I carry an S4 and I seldom need to replace the battery, but a few times a year I go to events where I hundreds photos or videos over four or five hours. I probably wind up swapping the battery at least twice on those days. Even if the need is irregular, not having the ability would be a deal breaker for me, too.
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Second the Lg G3. Wife has one and it has been flawless. Despite her doing through a phase of dropping it on the tiles every single day for a month before she finally bought a case.
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For a twice a year event an external battery pack is a much better fit than the compromises that come with removable internal batteries. This is the same debate where people were hating on Apple for eliminating the slots that almost nobody ever used on. There is a vocal but tiny minority that claims that they MUST have them or the product will be a failure but most people eventually come to the realization that internal is not the only or best way to go.
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There's a considerable difference in the bulk of a phone with an external battery pack and a replaceable battery. I'd definitely rather have one than the other.
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Again, for a twice yearly need, an external battery pack would serve better, but you go ahead & buy the phone compromised by a replaceable battery for the 1% of the time where it would be sleeker.