The past two years, Samsung has worked with AT&T to create a more rugged version of their flagship device. The Galaxy S4 Active and Galaxy S5 Active. This past week the two announced the Galaxy S6 Active, and it came to AT&T on Friday. We’ve spent the past two and a half days with the device, and have some first-hand impressions now. This isn’t a full review – that will be coming in about a week or so – so keep that in mind.
We have the Blue camo version here, and it’s not too bad looking. Better than the white camo, in our opinion. The Galaxy S6 Active keeps, basically, all the same specs of the Galaxy S6 except for one. The battery. The Galaxy S6 has a 2550mAh battery inside, while the Galaxy S6 Active features a 3500mAh battery inside. Still non-removable though. Which helps solve one of our complaints – in fact it’s our only complaint with the Galaxy S6 – which was battery life. Along with the standby times on the Galaxy S6. Standby seems to be much improved. Obviously with a larger battery, you’re going to get better battery life, which is something we’ll all appreciate.
Pretty much the only thing that Samsung took out of the Galaxy S6 Active was the fingerprint reader. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on who you ask. Instead of having a physical home button and two capacitive buttons for the recents and back keys, there are three physical buttons here. They are very clicky, which is nice. Samsung has also, once again, added another button the side. So on the right side there is the power button and on the left is a volume rocker and another button above that. That is for the activity zone. Which shows you the weather, barometer, S Health, compass, flashlight and stopwatch. However, you can change that. The physical button can be used for a specific app or another feature of the Galaxy S6 Active, which is a nice touch. I, personally, love having a physical camera button.
So those are our thoughts on the Galaxy S6 Active. It’s a pretty good device, a pretty rugged and waterproof one. But not pretty in terms of aesthetics. We’ll be putting it through its paces over the next few days and bringing you a full review soon.
