In terms of looks, Samsung Galaxy S6 is still one of the best devices in the market. Besides the looks and design, camera and performance benchmarks are impressive as well. However, with the Samsung Galaxy A5, the company has raised the standard of its mid-range segment devices. Based on specs, the Galaxy A5 is a mid-range device but it comes with premium looks and design elements.
The unlocked 16GB variant with one SIM card slot is available on Amazon at a price of $326. However, at that price, you will get a phone that is quite close to the Samsung Galaxy S6. The 2015 flagship’s price has been dropped owing to the fact that Samsung now has a new Galaxy S7 flagship device.
As a result, it is close to the price tags being offered on most mid-range devices in the market. At first, both Galaxy S6 and Galaxy A5 might appear similar but the latter is slightly taller than the S6. Besides that, it will be hard to distinguish between these two devices. In the build quality aspect, both of them make use of glass and metal. The backs turn glossy and the edges are rather silverfish.
Both of these devices have physical home buttons and the snapper appears to be slightly protruding. No dust or water resistant features in either of these handsets. Considering the display, it is undoubtedly top-notch there.
The 5.1inch Super AMOLED display has a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels compared to the A5’s 5.2inch Full HD Super AMOLED display. The performance on the S6 is significantly better than the A5 but the battery on the A5 is better at 2900mAh, compared to the 2550mAh battery in the S6. In terms of specs, the S6 has an Exynos 7420 SoC coupled with 3GB RAM under the hood while the A5 uses 615SoC Snapdragon chip with 2GB of RAM.
Moreover, storage options are also better in the A5. The A5 has front/rear camera combos of 13MP/5MP compared to 16MP/5MP camera combos in the S6. The 5MP camera is better A5’S front facing camera since it has Auto HDR support and 1440p video recording. Both these devices have fingerprint scanners located on the physical home button.
Both handsets have Samsung Knox in order to give you that extra layer of security. Sadly, there is no heart-rate monitor on the Galaxy A5. Moreover, Samsung Galaxy S6 has already been updated to Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 but the same is yet to be seen on the Galaxy A5.
However, when you compare the Galaxy S6 to the Galaxy S7, the latter emerges as a clear winner.
In its first quarter, the device secured 5.8 percent of total market sales and it reached 10 million sales, a lot quicker than the S6. Compared to that, the S6 managed only 3.2 percent during its first quarter.
Kantar, a research company later found that 26 percent of Samsung Galaxy S6 users upgraded to another device within the brand, during the period from February 2015 to January 2016.
A lot of Samsung Galaxy S6 users who wanted to keep using the device, are probably thinking about upgrading to the S7 or the more-gimmicky S7 Edge. However, the Edge flagship has an additional 0.4inches in its size. It also has an additional 1000mAh battery capacity, IP68 water resistant certification and microSD support.