All of the hallmarks that make the Galaxy S6 an attractive smartphone can be found on its Edge sibling. Tempered Gorilla Glass 4 covers its faces and the application of multiple nano-coatings results in its colour shifting tones along with the whims of light. Metal has been used for the chassis and this leaves the smartphone feeling solid, while attention has been paid to fine details, such as its buttons and ports.

The S6 Edge has the same screen as its sibling. It spans 5.1-inches, has a high 2560x1440 resolution and a market-leading 577 pixels-per-inch. A case can be made for the high pixel density when it comes to displaying the detailed photos captured by its camera, or for using the smartphone in its virtual reality headset.

What separates the S6 Edge is the curve of its screen. No other smartphone in the world has two curving edges and doing so requires the screen's glass be heated at 800 degrees Celsius.

We find the curving screen better suited to the S6 Edge than the iteration used on the Note Edge phablet. Applying the effect to both sides upholds the smartphone’s symmetry and this makes it both more comfortable to hold and more attractive. The screen subtly folds half-way down the sides until it is stopped by the bevelled edges of an aluminium chassis.

Swipe inwards from the edge display and five of your favourite contacts appear. They can be associated with specific colours, and when the smartphone is face down, the edge display doubles as a stylised notification light.

Information can stream down the screen in the same fashion as the Note Edge. Yahoo powers news tickers for sports, stock prices and news; a Twitter pane serves up continuous tweets; and a notification pane publishes updates from applications of choice. In this regard, the Edge display’s functionality overlaps that of the notification blind built into Android.

Downloading more panes is possible, though the range remains limited in number as it is early days for the ecosystem. And by early days, we mean only three additional panes could be downloaded at the time of writing.

Viewing these notifications can be done without turning on the screen. Quickly run fingers up and down the edge display and only the pixels needed for the ticker will turn on. Such a feature makes it possible to stay in the know discreetly during an office meeting or a child’s recital. The only sign of lag experienced using the S6 Edge happens when waiting for the edge display to illuminate.

The Galaxy S6 family runs a version of Android 5.0 Lollipop overlaid in a light version of Samsung TouchWiz. Software remains identical across the S6 range, sans for the aforementioned Edge functionality and its corresponding settings menu.

TouchWiz has long let down the hardware of Samsung smartphones. Fortunately the sixth Galaxys has had its software stripped: the dialer is now stock; the messaging application is stock; the task manager is stock. Few things aren’t stock.

The camera, music player and video player are all Samsung’s own, but each one benefits from significant refinement in both functionality and design. The homescreen, the settings menu and parts of the notification blind are custom. The remaining majority is vanilla Android, with any changes extending the already functional operating system.

TouchWiz is significantly easier to use and, what’s more, it’s pretty. It’s as pretty as the smartphone’s exterior. Samsung has turned its weakness into one of its strengths.

Internal hardware is the same across the Galaxy S6 series. Both smartphones are powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 7420 processor, which is the first chipset in a smartphone to be built on a 14nm fabrication process.

The chipset is similar to that of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 in that it uses ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture. It is composed of two quad-core CPUs: the first is clocked at 1.5GHz, while the second runs at a more powerful 2.1GHz, and it will alternate between the two depending on how much computational power is needed. Graphics are handled by a Mali T760 GPU from ARM and it shares 3GB of RAM with the Samsung processor.

The first Samsung smartphone to come with a waterfall-style edge display, the Note Edge, underwhelmed on performance. Common tasks — such as taking the smartphone out of standby or opening the task manager — were let down by lag. Enduring this made the innovative smartphone less special.

The same gripe does not plague the S6 Edge. Its processing hardware and its lighter software work together well to ensure the S6 Edge feels as fast as a flagship should. Measuring the smartphones performance using benchmarking software 3DMark returned a maximum score of 22,248. This score exceeds the 21,967 achieved by the HTC One (M9) and the 17,462 scored by the iPhone 6 Plus.

Missing from the Galaxy S6 range is an expandable memory slot. Samsung instead has increased the internal storage capacities to 32, 64 and 128 gigabytes. The company has used UFS 2.0 storage, which is allegedly faster than the eMMC standard.

A point of difference between the Galaxy S6 and the Edge variant is the size of the battery. Integrated into the Edge is a battery that is fractionally larger at 2600 milliamps-hour (mAh).

We have been using the Galaxy S6 Edge as our primary smartphone for seven days insofar. We relied on it for calls, texting and emailing; for social networking and web browsing; to take photos, record videos and play music. We used it to stream videos over YouTube and the brightness of the screen alternated between automatic and full. Often we kept the power saving mode enabled as, even with its power curtailed, it still met our needs

Standing out is the calibre of the Galaxy S6 camera. Both cameras have a wide f/1.9 aperture for low-light photography and the rear camera benefits from optical image stablisation. It captures photos at 16 megapixels, records videos in ultra high definition and has the support of an LED flash.

The camera of the S6 Edge has a wide dynamic range. Photos taken of Sydney’s Cockle Bay Wharf during twilight captured all hues. The cascading colours of sunset, the fluorescent glow of pier lights and the reflections of each in the harbour water was all rendered in clarity. The high resolution 1440p screen proved a valuable addition when viewing these detailed photos.

Photos captured once the sun set maintained a high standard. Less image noise than rivalling smartphones marred these photos and although the black sky was set against the complex lighting of the wharf, the texture of clouds remained discernable. A lesser camera would have sacrificed this detail in an effort to keep the complex lighting in focus.Samsung has updated the front camera of the S6 Edge to 5 megapixels, though the native 4:3 aspect ratio of the front camera limits the size of group photos. Dropping the resolution to 3.8 megapixels makes it possible to take photos at the wider 16:9 standard.

The camera proves proficient at self-photography with solid low-light performance and advanced software features such as face detection. The heart sensor can double as a shutter key for the front camera so that ‘selfies’ can be taken easily.

The camera interface has been overhauled to combine Samsung’s features in an easily digestible fashion and accessing its settings menu brings with it the familiarity of stock Android. Stand out shooting modes include the ‘Pro’ mode, which houses granular imaging settings, and the ‘Panorama’ shooting mode.