The Galaxy S6, like its “edge” sibling, is a fine piece of crafted hardware and software from Samsung, and is a testimony to the company’s growing ability to interpret consumer needs in the changing smartphone market. The Korean manufacturer scaled down TouchWiz in the latest devices, a welcome change for many Google fans who want Google and Google alone in the software experience.
However nice the device, there’s always a drawback or two, no matter the trouble area. Fortunately for Samsung, the drawback in the Galaxy S6 has a bit of a twist. Business Insider just recently wrote a post about its testing time with the Galaxy S6, and the site touched on battery life (a major topic of smartphones and mobile devices in general). We’ve witnessed that Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 edge have provided a few problems here and there for some individuals, with some users getting a few hours of battery life while others get a day of battery life. The site’s conclusion? Samsung’s TouchWiz UI isn’t the problem; the design of the Galaxy S6 isn’t the problem; the battery size in the Galaxy S6 isn’t the problem, and neither is the Quad HD screen resolution.
The culprit, according to the site? Google. Google’s voice assistant, Google Now, is to blame for the Galaxy S6’s battery woes:
I experienced the same questionable battery life that many Galaxy S6 owners were reporting. This one isn’t Samsung’s fault. I was getting only slightly better battery life than with my old Nexus 5, and I was about to put the S6 back in its box and ship it back to wherever it came from. Before I did that, I tried one last thing. I switched off Google Now, Google’s digital assistant, and my battery life skyrocketed to last me about 36 hours on a single charge with relatively decent usage, including music streaming.
In the end, what many consider to be Samsung’s strength in the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge (letting Google’s vanilla Android experience shine through) may be the new devices’ greatest weakness. There’s no way to verify that Google Now is the problem, and this hasn’t been the case in a number of user experiences, but it’s interesting (though isolated), to say the least. If you can never get enough battery life, or want to give the claim a spin, you can always disable it on your device.
Take a look at what we think of the Galaxy S6’s battery life if you’re still deciding whether or not to pick up Samsung’s latest.
