Both announced today. Suprisingly the Galaxy S6 looks more sexy to me, especially the edge version.

The new features and design of the m9 were kind of underwhelming this year, and the galaxy is definitely a step up from previous models. I like how customizable sense 7 is, and I still think the m9 overall looks better and will be the phone to go with.

One thing that had me thinking about the iPhone for my next phone was the Apple pay with the virtual account numbers. The Samsung pay should be useable in more locations and has the tokenization. From the little research that I've done, it's either the same protection as virtual account numbers or at least as secure.

Samsung lost three huge positives from the S5. Removable battery, water resistivity, and expandable storage were three things that separated it from the field. The S6 is basically just an android iphone now. I've owned galaxies since the S2 but likely leaning towards the HTC this time around. Dissapointed to say the least. They did make it gorgeous though...

Didn't realize they took all three of these away. That is definitely a turn off for me.

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The S6 is basically just an android iphone now...

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It wishes it were in more ways than just visually.

I was expecting you to pipe up, and no, it does not wish that at all. Hth.

S6 bottom frame looks too much like an iPhone to me. The s6 edge looks pretty sleek, but may be too gimmicky.

I too was surprised the S6 got rid of water resistance.

Any word on Google Play Editions for either of these?

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Removable battery, water resistivity, and expandable storage were three things that separated it from the field.

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Samsung just lost my business. I'm up for an upgrade in six months and the above items are the only reason I'd be looking at another samsung.

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Samsung lost three huge positives from the S5. Removable battery, water resistivity, and expandable storage were three things that separated it from the field.

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Oh thank god. Now Galaxy owners will shut up now.

^ Yes because being stuck with the same battery for 2+ years and paying $100/16gb of unrecoverable storage is such a great thing.

I have an S3 and never replaced the battery. Don't really like that I can't and don't like the storage. Don't really care about the water resistance and if it is a big deal to you, I read that one version will be released later that is resistant.

Then again, I didn't read great things about the HTC either. Haven't checked out the LG yet and I'll wait until more hands on reviews come out.

The HTC was the best phone that came out last year.

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The HTC was the best phone that came out last year.

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Which would matter if I was buying a phone last year.

It'll be the same with the m9.

None of these seem particularly .... impressive. I was looking to switch from apple to one of these and these don't give me any particular reason to make the move.

Maybe I'm just reading negative reviews, but I don't see any interesting new features on any of the Samsung/HTC/LG new phones.

The Samsung has got a ton of good press today. I'm waiting to hear how the battery lasts with a screen with that resolution. The camera is supposed to be really good

Impatientlyrics awaiting the release of S6 hoping for water resistant upgrade from my S4. Been on month to month for a while waiting on the S6. Guess it's on to the S5.

As an avid outdoors guy have had many dunkings of my S4 and it never failed.

I would expect an S6 active soon

With the charging speeds of the s6 and wireless charging built in the lack of a removable battery just doesn't seem to be an issue. I also don't have a problem with dropping the micro SD card with 128 GB built in storage, especially at the speeds they just announced.

Overall neither of the phones announced today had enough appeal for me to upgrade. I'll probably wait to see what the one plus two will be like, at which time the lg g4 and new moto x should be announced, and decide between the three.

Its the features they don't talk about like more software freedom and the fact that the phones are just overall faster and more efficient that make it worth the switch. These are both excellent phones.

Battery life.....

Is it worse than before? Ease of charging doesn't help much.

I think the Edge is interesting. I'm in no hurry to replace my LG G2. Anxious to see what else comes out this year, including Sony.

Still have my S4 and it's going strong. The one thing that has gotten annoying is I have to occasionally close all the apps to stop a battery drain by "Android OS". Still haven't figured out what causes it.

I'm due for an upgrade in April, so I'm trying to figure out if I should go with S5, S6, or S6 Edge. I have to admit the water resistance was a big reason I wanted to go with S5, but the Edge does look kind of cool. I just don't want to regret getting it in a year or so and realize it was just a gimmick.

The new fast charging that has been been on new phones makes a big difference

Does it piss off anyone else they these new iterations keep changing their charging plugs?

• No removable battery
  
• No SD
  
• Different Charger from S5
• No thanks

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Does it piss off anyone else they these new iterations keep changing their charging plugs?

• No removable battery
  
• No SD
  
• Different Charger from S5
• No thanks

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Looks like you'll still be able to use the micro USB for charging.

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Still have my S4 and it's going strong. The one thing that has gotten annoying is I have to occasionally close all the apps to stop a battery drain by "Android OS". Still haven't figured out what causes it.

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Yes. Me too. Ever since the last OS update late last year I've been having the same issue. Factory reset did not help. Tech told me to do a factory reset again and load one app at a time and evaluate to see which app is causing the drain. Yeah, no thanks. Don't have time for **** like that. One thing Android needs is better onboard diagnostics for things like that.

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Battery life.....

Is it worse than before? Ease of charging doesn't help much.

I think the Edge is interesting. I'm in no hurry to replace my LG G2. Anxious to see what else comes out this year, including Sony.

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Battery Life should be improved on both the S6 and M9.

Samsung is using a 14nm SOC which will improve efficiency, they claim ~33%, and per XDA:

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Samsung has stated that with the new S6 and S6 Edge you will "not have to worry about battery life again" with their new faster charging. Just ten minutes of charging will allow for four hours of basic usage and a fully charged device should last you for 13 hours of video viewing.

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XDA Link

The M9 has a 10% percent or so larger battery and should see improvements with the new qualcom chip as well.

As far as Sony goes the way it is currently looking we may not see another cell phone from them.

s5 Active is the best phone I've ever had by a long shot. That includes the iPhone6 I also have.

On that note, I won't be buying an s6. Samsung lost me as a customer by doing the dumbest thing ever. They removed their only valuable market pieces. Expandable storage, removable battery, and water resistance are all gone. That's literally all I care about. Hopefully, another xperia will come out.

I'd be interested to see what percentage of the market cares about removable battery, expandable storage, and water resistance... Also add wireless charging to that list.

The battery and storage were must-haves for me back with my nexus one when there wasn't space for apps and it constantly needed battery pulls to stop overheating and from software freezes. Nowadays I have a Moto X 2014 and really haven't missed the battery or expandable storage at all. Also Googles shift to prevent most apps from being stored on the microSD changed its value.

To me I'd rank those as:
1. Wireless Charging
2. Water Resistance
3. Expandable Storage
4. Removable Battery

...But I wonder how that ranks with the general public, not just tech-enthusiasts.

After reasonable display quality, a good camera, and general construction quality I care most about battery life. I don't care much about wireless charging. I want two years of Android updates.

With good battery life I don't care much about replaceable batteries. And now that I have had a 32Gb phone for some time, with plenty of memory to spare, I don't care much about microSD slots.

I'm not going to watch movies on my phone. And I only keep a small amount of music on it. I use my iPod for music. Not gonna use my phone's battery to play music.

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I'd be interested to see what percentage of the market cares about removable battery, expandable storage, and water resistance... Also add wireless charging to that list.

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It would be interesting to see Samsung's numbers on how often people swapped batteries or used an SD.

I agree with your rankings. Wireless charging is a nice convenience, and water resistance is a great feature in the event you need it but to me the other two just aren't a big deal if other features exist that can easily mitigate them like 128gb on-board storage or Good battery life and quick charging.

The S6 reveal reminds me a lot of the Xbox One reactions where there were a slew of knee-jerk complaints where people didn't think through how the changes could be beneficial. I don't see any issue with the theory behind the changes but it is up to Samsung to follow though on showing the phone will last all day and hopefully they drop the price tiers for storage from the current norms. At this point based on all of the reactions from various sites i have seen i think the launch will have a lot of the same clouds the xbox one did.

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It would be interesting to see Samsung's numbers on how often people swapped batteries or used an SD.

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In my S4, I've never cared about removing the battery. I did need the SD card due to the amount of available storage on the 16GB models. I put a 32GB SD card in the phone.

Since Samsung has apparently scaled down the preinstalled software, a 32GB phone will be more than enough for me. On my current phone, I have about 3GB available memory on the phone, and only use 8GB of the SD card.

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After reasonable display quality, a good camera, and general construction quality I care most about battery life. I don't care much about wireless charging. I want two years of Android updates.

With good battery life I don't care much about replaceable batteries. And now that I have had a 32Gb phone for some time, with plenty of memory to spare, I don't care much about microSD slots.

I'm not going to watch movies on my phone. And I only keep a small amount of music on it. I use my iPod for music. Not gonna use my phone's battery to play music.

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I agree with all of this, I'm sick of each refresh by Samsung, Apple, HTC, Motorola, etc. feeling the need to go thinner and thinner while sacrificing or keeping battery life the same. And when they do scale up batteries its because they are scaling up the screen size which is typically the largest battery use and there's not really a net-battery-life-gain. The Droid Turbo always interests be because they focus on battery life, but I don't have Verizon so I can't speak to the phone itself. Hopefully the trend to thinness will begin to curb towards competing for battery life, since screen-sizes seem to have leveled off around the 5.0-5.3 range.

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It would be interesting to see Samsung's numbers on how often people swapped batteries or used an SD.

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In my S4, I've never cared about removing the battery. I did need the SD card due to the amount of available storage on the 16GB models. I put a 32GB SD card in the phone.

Since Samsung has apparently scaled down the preinstalled software, a 32GB phone will be more than enough for me. On my current phone, I have about 3GB available memory on the phone, and only use 8GB of the SD card.

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Agree, Samsung's bloat made my 16GB S4, an 8GB phone almost out of the box. Freaking unbelievable. Tell me how many GBs will be for me to use. Hopefully Samsungs "scaled-down" bloatware will be significant. Still the carriers will try to throw their crap on the phones too though.