Galaxy S6 review: spectacular camera, Exynos beats Snapdragon 810, but TouchWiz and Material Design do not mesh, S-Voice ruins always-on voice support
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Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung's 2015 flagship lands amid a rare consensus across reviewers: The Verge's early April review praised the build quality, fingerprint sensor, and display, while AnandTech crowned the in-house chip the one to beat — the S6 ships without Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 entirely, an Exynos-only break from prior Galaxys.
The catch, per this Ars Technica review, is the same old fault line: TouchWiz sits awkwardly against Google's Material Design and legacy S-Voice undermines the always-on voice pitch. That hardware-up/software-down split is the thread running through the S7 and S8 coverage that follows.
First-order effects
- Qualcomm loses the entire Galaxy S6 flagship socket to Exynos, which AnandTech rates as the SoC to beat in Android for the next six months — a direct reversal of the usual Snapdragon-default order.
- Buyers choosing between models face a pricing verdict: reviewers judge the curved S6 edge not worth its extra $100 over the flat S6.
Second-order effects
- The S6 falling short of market expectations feeds into Samsung's profit decline, putting pressure on the software experience — TouchWiz bloat and voice-assistant missteps — as the identifiable drag on otherwise class-leading hardware.
- Snapdragon's absence from Samsung's flagship pushes Qualcomm to defend its Android position among second-tier OEMs while Exynos carries the halo.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Samsung's software layer stays the recurring critique through the S7's flagged bloat and into the S8, where the in-house assistant successor arrives to reviews calling Bixby useless — hardware parity with iPhone cameras achieved, software credibility still unbuilt.
- An Exynos-led flagship establishes in-house silicon as Samsung's competitive edge, decoupling its phone roadmap from Snapdragon cadence.
The trend: Samsung's flagships are converging on iPhone-class hardware while its own software stack — TouchWiz, S-Voice, later Bixby — remains the persistent differentiator-in-reverse across generations.