Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 at its Unpacked event in MWC, Barcelona, thereby ending months of rumors and leaks surrounding the handsets. The handsets are the biggest upgrade ever the Korean company has given to its flagship lineup since their inception with the Galaxy S six years ago. 

While the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge still unmistakably look like Samsung devices, they come with a metal unibody design and a glass back. Both handsets are extremely slim with a waistline of 6.8mm and weigh in only 138g. Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4 protects the front and back of the handset on both variants of the Galaxy S6. The taller home button on the new Galaxies hides an all new touch-based fingerprint sensor as well.

On the front, the Galaxy S6 comes with the latest generation Quad HD (2560 * 1440) Super AMOLED display from Samsung that measures 5.1-inch diagonally. Samsung has worked on further improving the brightness of its AMOLED panels, which is now capable of reaching up to 600-nits of brightness on the S6.

As for the Galaxy S6 Edge, it comes with a newer version of curved Super AMOLED display than what we had seen on the Galaxy Note Edge last year. This time around, Samsung has curved the display slightly on both sides, and is making smart use of it in certain cases. For example, the Edge screen can be configured to glow in a certain color when a particular contact is calling you.

Under the hood, the Galaxy S6 and (S6 Edge) are powered by Samsung’s Exynos 7420 SoC, which is based on the company’s 14nm FinFET fabrication process. It is the world’s first chipset that features 1440P/VP9 hardware based codec and many other advanced features. Other specs include 3GB LPDDR4 RAM, 32/64/128GB of storage space, and an internal 2550mah (S6)/2600mah (S6 Edge) battery.

http://youtu.be/CnYtWWDor2s

The handsets have fast charging support that provides them with about 4 hours of usage time with only 10 minutes of charging. Samsung claims that the latest Galaxies charge faster than any other device in the industry. Additionally, Samsung has added Qi wireless charging as well as PMA charging support on both Galaxies — a first for any smartphone in the industry.

For the camera, Samsung has equipped the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge with a 16MP rear snapper with an f/1.9 aperture and OIS. While the sensor is the same as already seen on the Galaxy Note 4, it comes with many advanced features like real-time HDR, high clear zoom, IR detect white balance, fast motion and more. Samsung boasts that users can quickly launch the camera on the Galaxy S6 in under a second by pressing the home button twice. The front camera sports a 5MP resolution and comes with an f/1.9 aperture that is also capable of real-time HDR and 108p video recording.

On the software side, Samsung will be shipping the Galaxy S6 with Android 5.0.2 and TouchWiz. The company has removed all the bloatware from its device and claims that all the lag and stuttering associated with its previous versions of TouchWiz are now a thing of the past. It has, however, still retained useful software features like Multi Window, Milk Music and more.

Samsung will also be preloading the Galaxy S6 (and S6 Edge) with Samsung Pay, its new easy-to-use mobile payment service. The Korean company claims that its payment service will be compatible “with more locations than any competing offering in a single application.” The feature, however, will launch in the United States during the second half of this year. Samsung Pay will work over NFC as well as MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) point-of-sale terminal, which means that S6 owners will be able to use their handset to pay at stores that don’t support NFC based mobile payment.

Samsung boasts that the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are the most secured smartphone in the market, and come with an upgraded version of Samsung Knox. Both devices are ready for enterprise adoption, and also feature Find My Mobile and a “Reactivation lock.”

The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge will be available in a multitude of colors: White Pearl, Black Sapphire, Gold Platinum, Blue Topaz and Green Emerald (S6 Edge only). The handset will be available globally in 20 countries from April 10th.