Samsung Galaxy S6 Review

PROS / There is no faster, more capable and feature-rich smartphone on the market today.

CONS / It's great to see Samsung integrate metal-and-glass into its design, but the result lacks distinctiveness next to the similarly styled iPhone 6.

 VERDICT / The Galaxy S6 is the best Android device on the market and the most powerful smartphone in the world. It takes a few too many design cues from Apple, but the components under the hood scream Samsung.

Finally.

For years, we've harped on Samsung to stop building its smartphones with creaky plastic and bloated software. The Galaxy series is Android's flagship brand, but Samsung has rarely offered the best Android experience. Now, in the Galaxy S6, change has finally come. Samsung has eased up on TouchWiz, creating a variant of Android 5 that's not as severe a break from Google's stock operating system. Gone are the cheap plastic covers and faux leather stitching of devices past. They've been replaced with Gorilla Glass, curved aluminum and a sturdy, chic hardiness.

The design echoes the iPhone 6, and that echo gives us pause. From a distance, the S6 is indistinguishable from the iPhone; up close, its biggest differentiators are the home button and camera bulge. Samsung has borrowed from Apple in the past, and in an industry already plagued by copycats, we'd like to have seen more innovation in design.

But we can't deny the results. With features like a 577 PPI display and a 64-bit octa-core processor, the Galaxy S6's hardware is definitively Samsung and undeniably impressive. However unoriginal its aesthetics, this is the muscle car of the mobile world.