The Edgy Camera

iPhone had always been the go to smartphone for photographers. It gave a consistently pleasing results, and with each iteration of the phone, the results kept getting better and better. It is a given that any flagship smartphone would come with a great camera.

The Lumia series then redefine the concept of a cameraphone. I own a Lumia 930 and the results had always been fantastic. But the main drawback with the Windows platform, was the lack of software, although the Windows 10 looked promising. Hopefully more apps would be available of the likes of Snapseed and VSCO cam for a bit of post-processing.

Even the Blackberry - at least on the Z10 - had a decent camera. I really like the output from the phone, but it was grainy and blotchy on low light. It also relied heavily on post-processing as the out-of-the-camera result wasn't always that great.

Then came the Android. They tended to be a mixed bag. Sony tended to have great sensors for their camera. LG was not far behind although I was disappointed with the Nexus 4 - which was made by LG. Oppo made great hardware and screen, but their camera was always so and so. The we came to Samsung. They were improving over the years and the output from Note 3 and S4 was pretty decent.

The S6 edge was a different beast however. The 16MP - or in my case 12MP since I use the 3:2 format - snaps I was getting from the phone had been mind-blowing. Yes, they tended to be oversaturated one minute and subdued in another, but overall I was not expecting it to be this good. I would have bought the phone on the camera alone, let alone the scrumptious screen and form factor.

The jpeg had issues in high contrast situation struggling to cope with a wide dynamic range, but it held its own pretty well. On par if not better than my iPhone 6 plus in most situations although it occasionally tended to underexpose indoors. The iPhone tended to get the exposure right compared to the Samsung. Low light performance? Astounding. However, I still rated both the iPhone 6 and the S6 lower than my Lumia. The Lumia could challenge even a half-decent compact cameras at times.

At the moment, I was pretty happy with the results from the S6, and paired with Snapseed, it was definitely worth a look as a compact travel shooter. As they say, the best camera was the one you have with you at the time.

At the edge

I had been impressed with the review on the S6 since the announcement was made. It was a toss up between this new Samsung flagship or the HTC M9.

Having owned the M7 and Galaxy Nexus and S2 previously, I was familiar with the strength of both lines, but clearly the Galaxy S series had moved along quite far, compared to the HTC.

So, I did a free order and picked up my phone last weekend. I went for the S6 Edge. Although honestly, apart from the slicker form factor and bigger battery capacity, there were not much deterrence between the standard S6 and the Edge. The specs were identical.

After a couple of days of use, I was struck by how comfortable the phone felt on my phone compared to my staple, the iPhone 6 Plus.

The Edge was just blazing fast and the Lollipop OS just sang! There was no lag which I could detect although I hardly put any skin on the system to compliment the standard Samsung interface.

I use the standard Google app - Mail, Calendar and the rest. Of course the first thing I did was download Facebook, Twitter, Feedly, 2Do, Instagram, Flickr and VSCO cam among others. Then I went about putting the phone through its pace.

A couple of things was plain obvious from the start. Yes, the screen was gorgeous and reception on LTE was fast. But unexpectedly the camera and battery life were the features which impressed me the most.

The home button, cum the fingerprint recognising buttonLet's start with the camera. 16MP with optical stabilisation. Sound basic, but that's double the amount of pixel on the iPhone camera. And the results were just fantastic. Hands down, out of the camera they were better jpgs compared to the iPhone. Almost at the level of the Lumia 930, but with better post processing apps to chose from.

The app of choice so far for image post-processing was Snapseed. The newly updated 2.0 version was just amazing. I can't stop admiring the camera output and I have yet to explore its full potential.

The second thing which impressed me was the battery life. I had been reading reviews that due to high resolution screen and small form factor, battery life was limited. I have yet to experience such a drain so far. At least compared to the Nexus 4 and M7. Or even the Oppo Find 7 which carried the same.screen resolution - although on a physically larger-dimensioned screen.

I have a wireless charger placed at my clinic and I just put it on the tray while seeing patients. No issues. And setting up emails were a doodle, but I was still using the basic apps for them. None of those fancy app or Samsung's proprietary programs. They were just too fiddly.

One major criticism I had out of the box was the keyboard. They were just lame. Fleksy soon fixed those up. If only they could make some similar to my Z10 - which I still use for emails at home - then the S6 Edge would be perfect!

These were still my early impression but I think this phone would be a hit, especially for the power user. I have set up my Feedly account to connect to my bitly service, so expect many updates on Facebook coming soon!‎

The View at Night

It's amazing how good the current crop of camera phones nowadays. Well, this was taken at my balcony just before Isya' prayers.

The ISO count was 1000, with camera slowing the shutter speed down to 1/7 sec. Good thing that the camera has a built-in optical image stabiliser. The fact that the aperture was f1.9 came in handy as well.

A bit of tweaking with Snapseed completed the capture. All done within a minute with the snap being ready for upload. Good night!