Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones are expected to star at company's pre-MWC 'Galaxy Unpacked 2015' event in Barcelona on Sunday, an event that will also be live-streamed. The launch of the flagships by the world's largest smartphone maker will certainly set a benchmark for other manufacturers. With reported poor sales of the Galaxy S5 and a slowly declining market share, the South Korean giant will be hoping the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge will help regain its dominance.
To that end, the first concrete rumours about the Samsung Galaxy S6 had revolved around the company rebuilding its flagship smartphone from scratch - with the codename Project Zero. With the numerous leaks and reports of the past week revealing almost everything about the two handsets, the company seems to have done just that, incorporating the much requested metal into the build, and working on the much-lampooned TouchWiz UI to improve speed and remove bloat.
While photos of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge alongside have been doing the rounds from earlier this week, the latest leaks have revealed the Galaxy S6 Edge from all sides in rendered images. The dual curved display variant, the Galaxy S6 Edge, would further help the company showcase innovation in the design sphere, and recent leaks have shown a rather sleek handset.
One also can't ignore the promotional images used by US carriers Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile, for their contest and pre-registration pages for the new Samsung smartphones.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is likely to feature a 5 or 5.1-inch QHD Super Amoled display; run Android 5.0.2 Lollipop; octa-core Exynos 7420 processor; 3GB of RAM; a 20-megapixel camera with OIS (optical image stabilisation); 5-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 2600mAh battery with fast charging features. The company is tipped to have done away with the microSD card and removable battery, as also evinced by the various photos and image renders.
As for Samsung's TouchWiz UI, the company is said to have worked on boosting its performance while also giving it several animations and effects similar to Lollipop. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge are also expected to preloaded with very few native apps or bloatware, with just two in-house apps as per recent leaks.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is expected to be made available in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB inbuilt storage variants, priced at EUR 749 (roughly Rs. 52,800), EUR 849 (roughly Rs. 59,800), and EUR 949 (roughly Rs. 66,900) respectively for carriers. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is said to be EUR 100 (roughly Rs. 7,000) more than the Galaxy S6 for all the storage variants.
The native apps are said to include the themes feature that debuted on the Galaxy A-series that will allow users to choose icons, voice tones, background colours, and more. Themes should be available to download from a Theme Centre. Also expected are a revamped default keyboard app; the app drawer to include 4x4, 4x5 and 5x5 icon layouts.
Watch the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2015 event live-stream that's set to kick-off at 6.30pm in Barcelona i.e. 11pm in India, 5:30pm in London, and 12:30pm in New York.