The first great smartphone of 2015

The upscale Samsung Galaxy S6's smooth glass-and-matte-metal body, improved fingerprint reader, and convenient new camera shortcut key make the phone a stunner. Samsung's decluttered take on Android 5.0 brings the beauty inside, too.

The bad Longtime fans will bristle at the Galaxy S6's nonremovable battery and absent expandable storage. The phone has an intensely reflective backing and looks embarrassingly like the iPhone 6. Battery life, while good, falls short of last year's Galaxy.

The bottom line Worldly looks and top-notch specs make the impressive, metal Samsung Galaxy S6 the Android phone to beat for 2015.

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CNET REVIEW

Fall '16 update

Anointed by CNET as the "first great smartphone of 2015," the Galaxy S6's attractive aesthetics, first class components and wireless charging support made it stand out from the field. Then, in March 2016, Samsung introduced its successor, the Galaxy S7, to rave reviews. Six months on, we still love it.

You may have heard about one of the Galaxy S6's newer siblings, the Galaxy Note 7; it featured a little in the news this fall. Initially praised as Samsung's ultimate phone, the Galaxy Note 7 was subverted by problems with overheating and, in some cases, catching fire. After a botched recall and some very negative publicity, in September Samsung stopped production of the Galaxy Note 7.

The Galaxy S6 and S7, along with their larger S6 Edge and S7 Edge brethren, were not involved in the scandal, and are terrific phones that do not explode. The newer S7 models have expandable storage, are water-resistant and come with bigger batteries and more powerful processors; the older versions are considerably less expensive. To get a feel for how Samsung's current top models stack up against their predecessors, check out our comparison of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge vs. the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, Note 5 and S6+.

There are other phones to consider, of course. Apple released its iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and Google recently released its Pixel phone. Still, though the Galaxy S6 and its plus-sized S6 Edge sibling are solid, affordable, full-featured phones that are well worth the money, their successors -- the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge -- are the better phones to buy, by far.

Editors' note: What follows is the original review of the Samsung Galaxy S6, which was updated regularly after its publication on March 26. In April 2015, CNET designated the Galaxy S6 an Editors' Choice Award winner. We have since lowered the rating to account for the better features and faster performance of the newer Galaxy S7 phones discussed above.

The Galaxy S6 leaves much of its Galaxy S5 DNA behind. Perhaps even more shocking than this materials about-face are the decisions to seal in the battery and leave out a microSD card slot, both choices made in service to staying slim. These are commonplace omissions in the smartphone sphere, but Samsung has been a die-hard defendant of both the removable battery and the extra storage option, until now. It's a move that makes a difference, too, at least on the power front. The S6's ticker ran down faster than last year's S5 did on a single charge.

In many ways, Samsung had no choice but to adopt this svelte, metal chassis and a pared-down, less "bloated" variation of Android 5.0 Lollipop. (Note that in February 2016 Samsung begun to roll out Android 6.01 Marshmallow to the Galaxy S6, bringing with it a number of new features including Google Now on Tap, "doze" mode for automatic extended battery life, support for Android Pay and more.) These moves silence customer complaints about the Galaxy S5's (and the S4's and S3's) plasticky build, while also girding Samsung against staggering iPhone profits and an army of decent low-cost rivals from Lenovo, Xiaomi and Huawei.

Luckily for Samsung, the S6 is good enough to win back straying fans while also surpassing the all-metal HTC One M9 in extra features, battery life and camera quality.

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