Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2015
I am evaluating the Galaxy S6 920F through a narrow lens. We upgraded to Galaxy S6s from Galaxy S2s, and until now, we have purchased our phones on contract through AT&T as our carrier. We bought two phones through Amazon (Tek Deals). The phones arrived on time and in sealed boxes with a separate two prong European to US power adapter that fits on the European round pin charger. In both phones, the adapter fit too loosely over the European pins, and appeared unable to stay connected with any kind of minor jostling of the cord. Fortunately, the adapter was easy to take apart and I used a pair of pliers to squeeze the spring clip legs together, which easily fixed the problem. Of course, the adapter does make the charger stick further out. Our old S2 chargers will work, but the charging rate is lower, because they are only 1A chargers, rather than the standard 2A fast charger that comes with the S6. We took the phones to our local AT&T carrier store, and obtained SIM chips; I was pleased that the SIMs and switch over was free ( at least in our area).
We have had these phones a little over a year, and I have found in necessary to substantially change my glowing review. In the year, Android 5.1.1 was succeeded by Marshmallow 6.01. However, our phones never received the OTA (over the air) update. Our carrier of course will not update the phones. I called Samsung and they said the phones would have to be sent in to Samsung to receive updates, because they are from the U.A.E. We live in the US and are not citizens of the UAE. If you are the type who changes phones on a yearly basis, or is happy with the current operating system. regardless of potential new features or potential security issues, then you have no problems. Otherwise, you have two options: Either send the phone to Samsung to be updated, or second, manually update by using the independent Odin software package, and finding the latest android image file from an independent web site. Both cases are not optimal, and though I have not manually tried updating yet, which is a bit involved, the latter is more acceptable
Coming from the Galaxy S2 to the S6 constitutes a big uptick in speed of everything, from downloading to app loading and operation. The screen is not only larger, but as expected, much sharper. We downloaded the Samsung Smart Switch mobile apps to the new and old phones to transfer as much information as possible. The app worked great. Google accounts transferred seamlessly, but some other accounts manually updating the username and passwords. Of course, all the wifi routers passwords had to be added manually.
One feature missing on the phone, which apparently exists on US carrier branded phones, is the ability to alphabetically arrange apps with a one button click. At this time, apps are organized by when they were downloaded. App reorganization is a manual operation that can take quite a bit of time.
I was used to seeing 4G/LTE on the notification panel on our old branded S2s, but on the 920F, only "4G" shows up. This worried me, despite researching that the necessary channels for 4G/LTE are active on the phone. From reading, and I believe, editing out misinformation on some sites, the international version only shows "4G", which is "4G/LTE".
As noted by others, updates seem to just keep coming over a couple of days, but compared to an S2, the updates happen several times faster.
The phone is slippery; wife already dropped hers once, and it was only one day old! Fortunately, no damage. New case will help.
A concern, like for others, was battery life. It is often very difficult to compare usage from other users, who too often complain about battery life, without a hint about their usage. We live around 1/4 mile from the nearest cell tower, which is line of site, so 4G communication is quite good. Our wifi routers are generally within 50 ft of where the phones are used in our multilevel home. Wifi is used on an intermittent basis for updates or adding apps or heavy browsing sessions, to ensure staying under our carrier plan data cap. I am definitely a low level user, checking weather several times a day, reading and composing a few messages a day with or without attachments, an occasional email, and taking several camera shots a week. Syncing is set to automatic. I do not listen to music on the phone, or watch videos during the test periods. I may average a couple of calls a day. I may use a browser several times a day in either 4G/LTE mode or wifi. There were a number of updates or apps downloaded during the test measuring periods.. With power saving mode activated, I monitored my average battery usage over several charges. After 32 hrs battery reserve was down to ~65 %. Somewhere between 46 hrs to 67 hrs, battery reserve was 53%-56%. A worst case was leaving wifi on for about 10 hours, which drained the battery to 65% capacity in 23 hrs with minimal use (mianly overnight). Obviously, as a low level user, close to a cell phone tower and wifi routers, these values represent a minimal battery drain comparison baseline. I can get away with charging my wife evey second day. My wife's usage is greater, but even in her case, battery usage was similar, and she could charge every second day if she wished, but she is used to charging her phone every day anyway. For those whose life is not marginalized by their cell phone, I would say battery life should be quite acceptable and noticeably better, especially if upgrading from a smart phone that is several generations (like three years) back. Compared to our S2, my impression is that wifi mode does not drain the phone battery nearly as fast as our old S2s
