Mark Lyn­der­say

Like a par­tic­u­lar­ly fine nee­dle seek­ing its groove, Sam­sung in­tro­duced the new flag­ship mod­els of its smart­phone line at Home a week ago, the de­sign and art col­lab­o­ra­tive space in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the fam­i­ly home of the fash­ion for­ward Anya Ay­oung-Chee.The event, ap­pro­pri­ate­ly chic and ac­cent­ed with cool blue light­ing, at­tract­ed an even mix of me­dia, smart­phone di­vas and in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als with an eye on the re­sponse to the new de­vices.

They need not have wor­ried.The phones, of­fi­cial­ly launched last Fri­day, are avail­able for any­one to fon­dle in the stores of both bMo­bile and Dig­i­cel as well as Sam­sung's lo­cal Ex­pe­ri­ence Stores, and they are go­ing to move quick­ly among those who want the lat­est and great­est in An­droid smart­phone tech­nol­o­gy.

For those who want all the de­tails on the new de­vices, this col­umn's re­port­ing on the new S6 se­ries is here: http://ow.ly/M0O9Q.There's noth­ing like ac­tu­al­ly hold­ing the de­vice, though, and while the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the S6 and S6 edge are sim­i­lar, there are some cru­cial dif­fer­ences that shop­pers might want to look out for.

The most im­me­di­ate dif­fer­ence is in the rel­a­tive weight of the de­vices.Both are lighter than the S5 (142g). The S6 weighs in at 138 grams while the S6 edge tips the scales at 132g.The dif­fer­ence is tiny on pa­per, but sig­nif­i­cant in prac­ti­cal use.I heft­ed both phones one af­ter the oth­er and was shocked at the sur­pris­ing airi­ness of the S6 edge.

Add to that the curvy edge on that mod­el and you have an al­lur­ing lit­tle smart­phone pack­age that ac­quits it­self well among com­pe­ti­tion equal­ly de­ter­mined to of­fer a phone that's al­so an ac­ces­so­ry.Af­ter hold­ing both, it's clear there's re­al­ly no com­pe­ti­tion. The S6 edge is ab­solute­ly the phone to own.

Of course, be­ing fash­ion­able isn't the on­ly rea­son to shell out thou­sands of dol­lars to own a new smart­phone, though it might be for some well-heeled and am­ply-fund­ed folks.Snap­pers mak­ing use of a smart­phone to cap­ture im­ages in chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances will be pleased to find that the S6 se­ries is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ca­pa­ble in low-light set­tings.

Sam­sung has im­proved the S5's max­i­mum aper­ture of f2.2 to f1.9 for the rear leans and f2.4 to f1.9 for the front-fac­ing lens.It might not seem like a big change, but pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers are well aware that cross­ing f2 on any lens, even a tiny one, re­quires sig­nif­i­cant en­gi­neer­ing.

That's re­sult­ed in a lens hous­ing that pro­trudes like a gi­ant zit from the oth­er­wise sleek rear face of the de­vice, but it's an is­sue that's like­ly to be quick­ly ad­dressed by a good cam­era case–and who doesn't put a cam­era cost­ing that much in­to one?

Pho­tog­ra­phers mak­ing use of their smart­phone as a se­ri­ous cam­era (http://ow.ly/M116c) will be pleased to find that Sam­sung has al­so in­tro­duced Op­ti­cal Im­age Sta­bil­i­sa­tion, fur­ther im­prov­ing low-light im­age qual­i­ty and a Pro mode for the cam­era soft­ware, which fi­nal­ly al­lows shoot­ers to man­u­al­ly ad­just the cap­ture set­tings to taste.

Im­proved pho­tog­ra­phy isn't the on­ly rea­son to con­sid­er the new S6 se­ries, but it's one of those across-the-board im­prove­ments that's go­ing to im­press every­one.An­oth­er is the lean­er, Touch­Wiz in­ter­face for the de­vice, which is no­tice­ably faster and less clot­ted with use­less, un­re­move­able apps.

Sam­sung has wise­ly cho­sen to al­low users to choose their own free tools and games from its app store and shipped the S6 with core soft­ware.Even the sur­pris­ing re­ten­tion of USB2 as a con­nec­tion and charg­ing port has been dri­ven by a new fea­ture, wire­less charg­ing that works with most com­mon charge plates.

Ac­cord­ing to Ken­neth Moore, Key Ac­counts Manger for Sam­sung, the com­pa­ny is open to ex­pand­ing its pro­gramme to sup­ply such charge points with lo­cal com­pa­nies and is al­so ac­tive­ly seek­ing more B2B con­tracts, with its se­cu­ri­ty plat­form, Knox, as a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor.The new S se­ries, ac­cord­ing to Moore, have "ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions for sale since their in­tro­duc­tion."

They look set to do well in T&T as well.