Samsung Galaxy S6 Active Review

Unboxing

Like its predecessor, Samsung Galaxy S6 Active ships in a white/orange retail box with AT&T branding. Inside it, you will find the handset, a charger, a microUSB cable, and quick start guide.
This year, Samsung and AT&T have opted not to include a stereo headset with the smartphone. Users will have to pick one up on their own dime.

Design, build quality, handling

You will be hard-pressed to tell Samsung Galaxy S6 Active apart from its predecessor. Save for the different placement of the heart rate sensor, the newcomer is practically identical to the SM-G870A.
Just like a year ago, Samsung Galaxy S6 Active look unmistakably like a member of the Korean giant's flagship family, but with added layers of armor. Some might argue that the device is not the best looking one around, but, after all, Samsung has not designed it to win beauty contests. That's what the regular Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge are for.
Samsung has once again opted to offer its rugged flagship smartphones in bold color schemes. This time around, they include Camo White and Camo Blue in addition to just plain gray. We reckon that the camo patterns suit the Galaxy S6 Active much better than any conventional color.
Build quality of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active is once again impressive. The device's polycarbonate body is just a tough as you'd expect, thus allowing you to be truly careless with its handling and not use a protective case. Furthermore, its water and dust resistance ensure that it will make it out of just about every life event unscathed.
Physical measures of the smartphone are 146.8 x 73.4 x 8.6 mm, while its weight tips the scale at 150 grams. Samsung Galaxy S6 Active has almost the same footprint as the outgoing model and (unsurprisingly), it is considerably bulkier than the regular model (6.8 mm thick and with 138 grams of weight).
The device is easy to handle, thanks to its grippy back and textured polycarbonate frame. Of course, the Galaxy S6 Active doesn't quite match the superb tactility of the regular model, but it more than makes up for it with its ruggedness.
Like last year's Samsung Galaxy S5 Active, the successor has one major handling advantage over its regular sibling. Its hardware back and recent apps buttons cannot be pressed accidentally like the capacitive ones of the SM-G920.

Controls

Above the display we find the earpiece, a couple of sensors and the 5MP F/1.9 selfie camera. A trio of keys for navigating your way through Samsung's TouchWiz UX.
The volume rocker and the custom shortcut key are located on the left side of the device. The power/lock key and the nano-SIM card slot sit on the right.
The top of the Galaxy S5 Active features the 3.5mm audio jack, a secondary microphone and the IR port that lets the smartphone remotely control various home appliances. On the bottom, you will find the microUSB port and the mouthpiece. This time around, the microUSB port doesn't need a flap cover like in past Galaxy Active iterations.
The back of the handset is home to the 16MP camera lens with LED flash, the heart-rate monitor, as well as the single loudspeaker. A Samsung and an AT&T logo keep them company.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Active does not feature a removable back cover like past iterations. This feature is probably the reason why the device offers higher IP rating than its predecessors.

Display

Samsung Galaxy S6 Active features the same 5.1" QHD Super AMOLED display as the regular Galaxy S6. With 577ppi, the screen is among the sharpest in the business.
Samsung has again went for the diamond-shaped PenTile matrix, although given the sheer number of pixels the sub-pixel arrangement will hardly affect the perceivable sharpness of the screen.
Here's how the layout looks under a microscope. The diamond-shaped PenTile uses OLED sub-pixels of different sizes as each color has different levels of power efficiency and longevity. Sub-pixel rendering is employed to properly distribute each of the primary colors.

The default screen mode comes to underline the Super AMOLED panel's key strength, high contrast, by producing overly saturated colors that make every image look like it's about to pop out of the frame. Yet if you are a professional that requires the color accuracy or simply dislike the unrealistic images, the professional photo mode gets colors as true to life as possible.
The Samsung AMOLED panels have been improving with each new generation and this latest effort is further proof of that. Giving you a choice between saturation and accuracy, and comfortably beating its rivals at either end is an impressive achievement, but with the inherent AMOLED strengths in the equation, you get arguably the most impressive screen in the market.
Yep, the practically infinite native contrast and the low reflectivity that makes sure you enjoy most of it in brighter environments are still here, alongside the impeccable viewing angles. There isn't much else one can wish for.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Active has a practically unlimited contrast ratio, as it's capable of displaying black by simply turning off individual pixels. AMOLEDs light up only the parts of the screen that display a color different than black.
The Super AMOLED panel on the Galaxy S6 isn't particularly bright, especially compared to some LCDs, but it can go higher than the Galaxy Note 4.
Auto Brightness mode can push the brightness higher than manually adjusting the brightness slider allows. The feature is customary for Galaxy smartphones with AMOLED screens.

Battery life

Samsung Galaxy S6 Active features a non-removable 3,500mAh battery. The unit is almost 40% larger than the 2,550mAh solution found in the regular Samsung Galaxy S6, so we had hefty expectations for the device before putting it through our battery test.
With endurance rating of 109 hours, Samsung Galaxy S6 Active more than exceeded our expectations. The Korean giant’s rugged flagship edged out the current battery test champion Nokia Lumia 1520 for the top position in our chart!

This means that Samsung Galaxy S6 Active can easily make it through four days of usage if you opt for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback every day. None of the current flagship smartphones can match what the Galaxy S6 Active has to offer in terms of battery performance - Motorola Droid Turbo is the closest rival with endurance rating of 90 hours.
By combining an energy-sipping 14nm Exynos chipset and Super AMOLED display with massive battery, the manufacturer has truly hit the jackpot in terms of battery endurance. Even more impressively, the waistline of Samsung Galaxy Active has remained at a manageable 8.6mm.

Connectivity

The Samsung Galaxy S6 Active is armed to the teeth in connectivity terms. The mandatory 2G/3G/4G LTE is present with Cat. 6 downlinks thanks to Samsung's latest Exynos 7420 chipset. This gives you download speeds of up to 300Mbps, with 50Mbps worth of uploads. If you missed it in the specs section, the Galaxy S6 Active uses nano-SIM cards.
In terms of local connectivity, there's dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, so you can make the best of your home's Internet connection. DLNA is supported in multimedia apps for sharing content across compatible devices.
Speaking of, the Galaxy S6 Active makes it easy to share the Wi-Fi hotspot info with nearby devices (detected via Bluetooth) using the Quick Connect feature. This saves you the trouble of typing in the Wi-Fi password.
Bluetooth has been bumped up to version 4.1. There aren't any easily noticeable changes since 4.0 but, among the more important ones, Low Energy mode is now supported for connecting to smart watches and some sport sensors. ANT+ is available for such sensors too, so the Galaxy S6 Active will happily talk to whatever sports sensor you have.
NFC is on board for quick pairing and sharing and there's an IR blaster for controlling home appliances. Samsung's default app mostly handles your AV setup, but third party apps can be used for a wider range of devices.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 Active features a microUSB 2.0 port. It's slower at transferring data than the USB 3.0 port used in a few Samsung devices, but it has a standard size plug and it offers Quick Charge 2.0 and MHL 3.0. With the right adapter, you get 2160p@30fps output so you can watch videos you shot with the phone in their full resolution. There's 7.1 surround sound output, if the video player supports it (the pre-installed one does not).
Finally, there's a GPS/GLONASS SatNav receiver on board. GPS alone is enough on its own but GLONASS provides extra precision, especially in dense urban settings as it also uses Russian satellites.

Still camera

The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active borrows the 16MP Sony IMX240 sensor that the Galaxy Note 4 uses, but puts it behind a lens with a wider, f/1.9 aperture. This lets more light in and makes for much improved bokeh effects. The camera software is highly sophisticated too.

One of our favorite features is the quick launch - double press the Home key from anywhere in the UI and the camera pops up in less than a second.
The UI is pretty simple, most settings are available on the viewfinder. The selection changes as you go between the different shooting modes. You can download new shooting modes, but currently only Sports shot is available.
In Auto mode casual users can skip tapping the HDR icon altogether. There's an auto HDR option so you don't have to turn it on and off each time.
There's also an automatic night mode that fights handshake in the dark. Several color effects are available with a few more in the download section.
Tracking autofocus automatically follows moving subjects, making sure they stay in focus. This can't be used in for 2160p video though.
Selective focus makes a comeback - it snaps two photos and then lets you chose near focus, far focus or everything in focus. The Galaxy S6 camera is quite good at macro shots and creates a great soft focus on its own, so with some experience you don't need this software trickery.
Virtual shot has been revamped. It now lets you pick an object and rotate the phone around it. After, the phone can use its motion sensors to replay the object, rotating it along with the phone as if it's still in front of the camera.
Image quality
Samsung not only has changed the lens compared to the Galaxy Note 4, but has also fine tuned the image processing. As a result the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active photos look even better when observed at 1:1 magnification.
Detail is impressively sharp. Noise is kept in check, while processing artifacts from noise reduction are hard to spot, foliage in particular looks great. Software sharpening is moderate too, Samsung has been known to dial it up in the past. White balance is spot on even in tricky conditions and the color saturation has been brought even further down from the already toned down setting in the 2014 generation.




Samsung Galaxy S6 Active camera samples The dynamic range is quite wide and you can improve it further with HDR mode. It's very fast so you can just leave it on auto without slowing down the shot to shot time. The HDR mode has a light touch, brightening shadows and recovering highlights, but the changes might be too small for some.
The device shoots panoramas with very high resolution - 3,200px tall if you hold the phone upright, 1,800px if you hold it on its side. The software and fast chipset make shooting very simple, you just start panning in one direction.
The resulting images are rich in detail and aside from the moving cars and the ledge that was too close, there are no major stitching artifacts.
The selfie camera can also take HDR photos (good when the sun is at your back) and can do Virtual shot. The wide selfie mode works kind of like a panorama - it stitches three photos for a wider field of view. You get instructions (e.g. tilt phone forward) to keep you on track.
The 5MP selfie camera is of pretty good quality and captures photos with plenty of detail and little noise. Color rendering is comparable to the main camera, slightly less saturated. It's a 4:3 camera though, unlike the 16:9 main camera.
You can enable Wide selfie to make a photo more suitable for widescreens. The stitching is as good as panoramas shot with the main camera.
Finally, Interval shot is a like a photo booth, snapping four shots with a few seconds between each.

Video camera

There's no dedicated video mode because most settings work for videos too. Even Pro mode, though you can't adjust the settings during recording and the autofocus will override your setting as soon as the video starts.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Active tops out at 2160p resolution, but it can also do 1080p at both 30fps and 60fps and 720p video at up to 120fps (that's handled by the Slow Motion mode). The front camera shoots only at 30fps, but goes over 1080p - it maxes out at QHD video to match the phone's screen.
HDR and color effects are available for video, though 2160p disables them, taking pictures while shooting video, the tracking autofocus and the additional software stabilization.
The 2160p videos are shot at the usual 48Mpbs total bitrate, all videos from the Galaxy S6 have 256Kbps/48kHz audio. The videos nail 30fps and a still frame has a good enough quality to pass for an 8MP photo. The videos are sharp, have practically no noise and accurate colors, good dynamic range too.
The 2160p videos can't make use of the digital image stabilization but the optical one is quite good on its own.