Galaxy S6, S6 edge review: Exynos is SoC to beat in Android space for the next 6 months, battery life effectively the same as S5, camera comparable to iPhone
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge Review — As recently as the Galaxy S5, Samsung had a fundamentally different strategy from companies like HTC and Apple.
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung's March preview framed the Galaxy S6 as a clean break: as recently as the Galaxy S5, Samsung ran a fundamentally different strategy from HTC and Apple, and this generation is where that gap closes. The review lands alongside Ars Technica's verdict that the Exynos beats the Snapdragon 810 while the software remains the weak link.
The finding matters because it is time-boxed — AnandTech calls the Exynos the Android SoC to beat for roughly six months — and the corpus bears that out: by October Samsung had extended the design into the Note5 and S6 edge+, but by November Apple's A9 in the iPhone 6s was rated the best SoC in any phone.
First-order effects
- Samsung enters the spring flagship season with silicon superiority over every other Android vendor, since the Exynos outclasses the Snapdragon 810 its rivals ship.
- Camera comparability with the iPhone removes Apple's most-cited hardware differentiator at the moment buyers choose between the two platforms.
Second-order effects
- Android OEMs built on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 are forced to compete against the Galaxy S6 with a slower chip, pressuring Qualcomm's flagship position for the rest of the cycle.
- Battery life effectively unchanged from the S5 means Samsung's gains came from build and silicon rather than endurance, keeping efficiency on the agenda for the Note5 generation that followed in October.
Third-order effects
- In-house SoC design emerges as the axis of Android competition: the vendor that designs its own chip sets the performance bar, and merchant suppliers chase it.
- If the six-month cadence holds, flagship silicon leadership alternates between Samsung and Apple — the A9 reclaiming the crown by November — leaving other Android OEMs structurally a half-step behind on performance.
The trend: Flagship phone competition is consolidating around vertically integrated silicon, with Samsung's Exynos and Apple's A-series trading the performance lead in roughly six-month windows while merchant chip vendors fall behind.