So how are we justifying Samsungs decision for non-removable battery and no expandable memory? Whatever the S5 and 6 were, the Note 5 was really anticipated to come with at least a microSD slot.
Now Android forums are saying Samsung is giving in to consumers by modeling their phones after the iPhone.
They are just following Google's guidelines, which were precisely that. Also, with that UFS storage and slim body for what it fits, it had to be done to unleash full potential of what they wanted to achieve with it.
I jumped the gun on the S6 right after I saw that chipset on 14nm Finfet, that camera which was the biggest jump for any Samsung flagship and the design change. It's the first phone since the S4 that is so far ahead of competition on so many levels, even months after launch, even though partially it's because of the competition not moving forward.
The Snapdragon 820-running devices in 2Q 2016 will be first to overtake it, because frankly, all others are in a very inconvenient situation of having no choice but running the faulty Snapdragon 810, which is a downgrade even compared to the 805, sans the GPU - the Sony series are heavier and bulkier just because of the heatsink to keep them at 805-level temperatures, and performance gains are minimal in real-life scenarios, while Qualcomm won't deliver a high-end product stack with Krait cores anymore, so OEMs are stuck between decent generations, in a placeholder low.
I have no regrets about the S6, although I miss the SD slot and sturdiness feel of polycarbonate. You drop this one and it won't be any more durable than an Iphone, which prevents me from being as comfortable with it.. yet.
From other news, HTC is basically dead, which is sad, since the latest HTC One was a downgrade compared to last year's model.
LG's G4 is also destined to be less successful than the G3, since they made many downgrades and only came up with superior camera.
Sony Z5 series are decent, but not worth an upgrade over the Z3 series.
Huawei is the biggest surprise, even though their phones are severely underpowered with semi-amateur chipsets, and out of this world prices out of a sudden.
Who else is there? The new Iphones are of course not worth the upgrade over the Iphone 6, which was surprisingly decent for an Iphone, although in some ways annoyingly so far behind the Android pack and even more surprisingly the 6s didn't fix those shortcomings. I can't believe Sony's new phone coming with 4K resolution, while the newest Iphone still rocking barely 720P, 8 times less pixels. Amongst the others, which is a shame, because I quite liked the positive change in design.
The Galaxy Note series lost it this year. Samsung came up with the A8 though, which is very underrated, but it's considered to be an upper-mid-ranger - there's lots of innovation in it, however.
I'm curious to see the Nexus phones, although the leaks are rather disappointing.
If you're not in a hurry, wait till next year. Since 2014 not that much has changed, except the S6 being a little ahead of its time. Still, there's lots of cool tech being finalized for next year's flagships that will be far superior than that.