Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge review round-up: brilliant, but are they brilliant enough?

The Android phone was unveiled at the beginning of March.

When it was launched, The Independent’s David Phelan said that this was the phone that Samsung had to really get right, given the problems with its predecessor the S5. It did so, he said, calling the phones “the most attractive, premium-feel phones Samsung has made” and that they “are no longer the poor relations in terms of design and can hold their own with the likes of HTC and even Apple”.

The feel of the phone — which was one of the much-complained about problems with the plastic-backed S5 — has been lauded by many reviewers.

“It looks great from all angles,” wrote Eric Limer in Gizmodo. “The glass back feels and looks classy, the buttons feel great, the metal trim is lovely.

“On the one hand the Galaxy S6 design is not particularly unique or exciting, but on the other much more important hand, absolutely nothing about it sucks.”

It was clear that the “Galaxy S6 Edge is a statement that design should lead technology rather than the other way around”, wrote Samuel Gibbs in the Guardian. While Gibbs praised the design of the three-sided screen on the Edge — which Samsung claims — he said that it was more of a design decision than a usability one. “None of the edge features are particularly useful as they stand,” he wrote.

While the look of the S6 has received plaudits, it’s also been criticised for looking a little like the iPhone that it was designed to take on.

In Yahoo Tech, Daniel Howley wrote: “These are easily Samsung’s most attractive devices, though the standard S6 in particular isn’t exactly original, as it looks like an amalgamation of the iPhone 4s and iPhone 6, an opinion shared by the majority of the people I showed the handsets to.”