Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge Come Bundled With Microsoft Apps

Samsung late on Sunday revealed its next Galaxy flagship the Galaxy S6 alongside its curved-display variant, the Galaxy S6 Edge. One of the most notable features in the new Samsung premium handsets are the bundled Microsoft apps, which for some reason were never mentioned during the launch event.

The rumours that pointed towards Samsung preloading some Microsoft apps certainly seem to have come out to be true.

Both the Samsung Galayy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge and handsets come preloaded with Microsoft apps such as OneDrive, OneNote, and Skype. The Verge reports that the Microsoft's popular apps have been pinned on the home screen and have been bundled in a special "Microsoft Apps" folder.

(Also see: Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge: Top 6 New Features)

This might not be great news for Samsung flagship owners as these apps can be installed via Google Play anyway; though a big takeaway is that now OEMs are offering Microsoft apps on their handsets out-of-the-box.

Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage app is offering up to 115GB of free storage to Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge users, which includes the regular 15GB free storage + 100GB of cloud storage for two years. It is being speculated the move is related to removing reliance on Google's ecosystem.

Recently, Microsoft offered 100GB of free OneDrive cloud storage as a promotional offer to Dropbox users for a year. The Redmond giant was also giving away 100GB of free OneDrive storage via its promotional Bing Rewards program.

So far, there has been no announcement regarding a move to preload Microsoft apps on premium Samsung handsets; though previous reports cited the move likely to be a result of settled contract dispute over patent royalties between both the companies.

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