Samsung’s S6 Decisions – WHY?

Recently the details of the upcoming Samsung smartphone, the S6 have been released with it’s new look and primarily the use of metal instead of plastic for the casing, but I have to ask why?

I love my S5 smartphone and my S3 before that, Samsung surely makes some of the best phones available, but their latest decision to use metal instead of their almost patented use of plastic has confused me somewhat. Sure, metal would appear stronger and actually is in most cases but this depends on how and where they use it in the design, I don’t want to end up with a bendy smartphone (Unless it’s designed that way) such as the iphone 6 catastrophe which occasionally bent when seated. I like the feel of the plastic textured backing to my S5 as well, it adds a degree of extra grip and has prevented it slipping out of my hands on occasion, not to mention that plastic has a greater chance of saving the phone if you do accidentally drop it. I recently dropped my phone face-down onto my cement floor the other day and I was sure that the screen would have broken as the back cover and battery came out. To my amazement however it was perfectly fine and it powered back on perfectly when I popped the battery and cover back on, this is the power of plastic and to a lesser degree a removable battery.

The other decision I hated on the S6 was the removal of the SD card slot and the user-removable battery, these were basically the only reasons I bought an Android over the iPhone in the first place and now that they’re gone there’s a lot less of a reason to stick with Samsung other then the app store. Don’t get me confused though i’m definitely sticking with Android but I might try out another brand in the future that does still support these features. I’m so disappointed with the removal of the SD card in particular because it was the only way I could store my music, movies and videos which I could easily transfer to another device and watch them instantly such as my tablet. I understand that they want to move people to cloud storage which i’m all for by the way, however in Australia the internet is still in it’s medieval days and you either have the choice of a fast home connection for a modest $60/mo or a fast mobile connection for a ridiculous price. Currently both my mobile data and my 4G modem costs $120/mo AU for 10GB data. With that pack I still have to conserve my video watching greatly and try not to download anything or i’ll use it up instantly. I believe that data sharing from your own devices such as your home media center to your mobile should be free – wherever you are. Once this happens then sure, i’d dump those SD cards in exchange for my entire media library on demand. I understand that Samsung will also be increasing the size of the mobile’s storage but the ability to transfer my data to any other device is one I sought after, and considering i’ve already bought those 128GB micro SD cards I don’t want to spend that money again.

On to the battery which i’m still annoyed about but it’s less of an issue. The main concern I have here is that android still ‘breaks’ for me occasionally which often requires me to replace the battery when the the buttons and GUI become non-responsive. Sure, you could wait a couple of hours or days till the battery has depleted completely but why wait that long when the previous generations could do it instantly. I hope the new Lollipop OS will fix any major flaws that plagued the phones previously which will handle crashes more elegantly and not involve waiting around for it to die. The only positive thing I have to say about the new Samsung S6 will be the increased screen resolution to 1440p or QHD and the new lollipop OS, not to mention that wireless charging will be built-in finally.

Why Samsung? Why did you remove the IP67 rating from the S6? Sure you want to make the phone as thin as possible but at what cost? I love my waterproof and dustproof S5, I can wash it easily and not worry about it in the rain and even accidentally leave it in the wash! Will you really take out all these features we love so much just to say ‘We have the thinnest phone’ and go down the path of the macbook which if you haven’t heard already the latest one will be THE THINNEST EVER! Oh and it’s so thin they had to remove the USB ports from it… I’m sorry to say i’ll be skipping the S6 in favor of other brands with the features I love, or wait till you see the error of your ways and buy the S7 which would also suit my purchase pattern of S3, S5.. S7.

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