Samsung has really gotten my attention with their S6 lineup first with the edge
whose Stellar looks unique curved screen and phenomenal camera would have
captured me as a user if it wasn't for its average at best battery life and now
with the S6 active it looks like they've addressed my one complaint but is it
enough for me to switch from the Droid Turbo drop a like on this video by the
way if you're stoked to see the results from our GPU Boost 2.0 investigation
with six GTX Titan X graphics cards and
seeing how they perform against each other under identical
conditions Intel brings ddr4 to the mainstream with their allnew core i7
6700k and core i5 6600k processors check
out the link in the video description to learn more the Galaxy S6 active features
an 8 core x07 420 processor with a Mali
t760 GPU 3 gigs of RAM and 32 GB of
onboard unfortunately non-expandable storage the screen is a beautiful 5.1 in
Super AMOLED Corning Gorilla Glass 4 covered Affair that boasts a resolution
of 2560 x440 and infinite contrast since
the black pixels are actually turned off outright and man I love the screens on
S6 phones that I've used and above that you'll find a 5 megapixel selfie camera
to go along with the 16 megap main camera that also records in Ultra hd4
video sounds pretty familiar right well it should because under the hood the
Galaxy S6 active is really not very
different from its siblings a really nice change from previous active SKS
which toned down the flagship specs of the regular ones in exchange for its
additional ruggedness which isn't to say it's identical there are some small
differences like the fact that it's available in only one capacity instead
of having 64 or 128 gig options and
cannot be bought pre-equipped with wireless charging and there are some
major differences like the fact that the active does not feature a fingerprint
sensor and that it comes equipped with a massive 3500 milliamp battery that's
enough for even me to get through the day love it once you go big battery
there's just no going back I mean these days I laugh at people who have Slims
Sleek phones and big stupid battery banks in their pockets that they have to
keep them plugged into which I guess leads us into the physical tour doesn't
it this is a love it or hate it design
my friends while I personally love the looks I've actually never seen it in
person without the sexy dbrand skin that those guys put on before they sent it
over so that weird arctic Camo thing
never had a chance to bug me and life isn't just about looks anyway what use
is like a lady who looks looks great but like falls out of your arms every time
you try to give her a hug and that unfortunately was my experience with the
S6 active while I never actually did
drop it The awkwardly positioned multitask button way over here and the
boxy design not to mention the higher than usual weight made it more difficult
to manage for my small hands than even phones that are slightly bigger and
thicker like my daily driver droid turbo
the good thing is that this particular lady is super duper ruggedly built at
the back is an ever so slightly raised border around the camera bump with the
Flash and regrettably rearm mounted speaker being the only other features on
the back I mean the the speaker's not that bad it's just rearm mounted so
basically the worst possible position at the front are the hardware home back and
multitasking buttons that are a huge turnoff for many users but that I
actually found more convenient than capacitive buttons in this position
since they're stiff enough to require a fairly
decisive click so I never accidentally
pressed them while holding the phone in landscape orientation to watch a movie
and not much else on the front either around the edges are a micro USB port on
the bottom supporting quick charge a headphone jack on the top in my
preferred position a horrible lock
button on the right that sticks out about 4 miles from the chassis and this
thing is super easy to press by accident it's a real pain in the butt and until
you manually disable this function in software it actually hangs up the phone
if you bump it during a call and then there's also a poorly positioned volume
rocker seriously it's nearly impossible to hit one without the other with a cool
multi-function button right above that which acts as a shutter when you're in
the camera app click and can be
programmed to perform a variety of other functions with a single press or a hold
from within the settings menu Neat now what some of you might have noticed is
that in spite of the S6 active's ip68 dust and water resistance rating of 1
and2 M for 30 minutes to go along with its salt solar radiation thermal shock
and vibration resistance I mean hey you might need vibration resistance I'm not
I'm not judging it has no lame you know
rubber flaps or anything like that all buttons microphones speakers Jacks and
even the toolless SIM tray are always
sealed an implementation that just feels much more trustworthy to me so let's
talk then about General usage experience well it's a Galaxy S6 with stormtrooper
armor essentially so generally speaking performance was great the camera is
magnificent with both the rear and selfie cameras just delivering some
truly stunning results I mean look at this shot of me sitting in a darkened
room writing this review on my laptop versus the Droid Turbo another decent
phone and Touchwiz has improved so much
that I don't feel like it's a knock against a device anymore so kudos for
that Samsung but there were a few things that bugged me this time around anyway
first the S6 active has got an unbelievable amount of bloatware on it
disable all that stuff before you even set up the phone I mean seriously wild
tangent games milk video AT&T Navigator
what is this crap and and and don't tell me in the comments what it is I don't
care I don't want it on the phone it shouldn't be there another weird thing
and maybe it's just mine so guys let me know this one in the comments if if your
experience is different is that double Taps only register like 70 to 80% of the
time for me when I go really fast which cost a lot of typos in Words with double
letters for me and then finally we've got a couple of Touchwiz annoyances
number One never tell me what I can and
cannot do with the battery life left on my phone Samsung disables the camera
under 5% causing me to miss a great
picture opportunity with my baby girl not cool and
please fix the trusted devices unlock
like if you have a wearable or something like that you need to press to wake then
there's no way to disable the stupid swipe to unlock I never noticed on the
edge because I was always just using the fingerprint reader anyway but this was
kind of annoying on this phone I have a trusted device so I don't have to have a
screen unlock which doesn't mean that I don't like the phone the S6 active lives
up to its name it's a phone for people who use their phone rather than just
admiring it and while I don't plan to
switch because I prefer the extra 10%
greater battery capacity and the gestures of the droid turbo like
flicking for the flashlight and wiggling for the camera I wouldn't criticize
anyone for picking up an S6 active instead of a regular S6 as long as they
know what they're getting themselves into because that is both the appeal of
Android and it's Achilles heel the S6
active is just different enough from other Android devices to make it a
contender for me it's and it's great to have that choice but because it's a
weird carrier exclusive model and therefore a relatively low volume one it
is already lagging behind other s6s when
it comes to software support a problem that's often difficult to properly
overcome since the more obscure your devices the lower the chance that anyone
manufacturer or Indie developer will be working on new Android updates for it so
that makes the answer to should you get one fairly straightforward if you like
it exactly the way it is then I give it a massive thumbs up in fact I'm
switching my wife over to it because her 1 m8's battery life and Camera are
driving her up the wall and for baby owners man this phone is perfect thanks
to its Stellar camera and durability but if you're expecting it to continue to
evolve over time then I might not take the plunge speaking of taking the plunge
head over to dbrand.com Linus active if
you guys want to learn more about dbrand and the awesome skins that they offer
for phones game consoles controllers
laptops all kinds of cool stuff their vinyl skins serve a couple of purposes
number one is they look great you don't have to get white you can get all kinds
of different finishes and different colors definitely check out the variety
uh actually our LG G4 video has a great
Showcase of all the different finishes on the same phone backing so that's
pretty cool and the other purpose they serve is additional durability so if
you're worried about you know uh an incidental drop scratching your phone or
something like that a vinyl skin only costs a few bucks so if you scratch it
rip it off replace it it leaves no residue and you can put them on quite
quickly the last thing that's great about dbrand skins is the fit and finish
of their vinyl skins they spend a lot of time on the fit and finish and they go
on absolutely flawlessly so check it out
that's dbrand.com Linus active it's linked in the video description and uh
give it a try see if you want to you know personalize one of your your things
that needs a vinyl WAP cuz that's what they do thanks for watching guys if this
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stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button
in the top right corner to check out our brow browser Showdown video where we put
Microsoft edge up against Google Chrome and Firefox and Opera basically it's a
browser Showdown so yeah