Samsung’s New Galaxy Phones Ditch Plastic for Glass and Metal

The Galaxy S6 has a metal body and Gorilla Glass screen. Gone is the cheap plastic case

Galaxy S6 Edge

After appearing to not care even a little bit about design for so very long, Samsung has shown signs of change in the last year. And this weekend at Mobile World Congress, the Korean giant debuted what may someday be seen as the first design-forward products the company has ever made: the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge.

These are flagship smartphones through and through, and they look like it. The sleek, sturdy devices—made of Corning Gorilla Glass and aluminum—are beautiful objects. They come in colors like emerald green and blue topaz, and are just artfully made. I know dozens of iPhone users who refuse to give up their 5S because it just feels so indescribably good, and I get the exact same vibe using the S6. It might even be too industrial-design-focused, if the fingerprints I left all over the demo unit are any indication. But it’s beautiful, and beautifully made.

The Galaxy S6 is a standard large smartphone, with a big flat screen on the front. The S6 Edge, on the other hand, has a screen that curves off to both sides. There’s some added functionality on the Edge—you swipe in from the sides to quickly access your favorite contacts, for instance—but there’s not much practical difference, just impressive aesthetic achievements. The original Galaxy Note Edge looks awkward and lopsided, with one size sloughing off into the distance; the new S6 Edge is much cleaner and neater in its design. The phones are almost exactly the same size, and have no meaningful functional differences—your purchase will depend on how crazy you like your screen tech.

Both devices are the result of what Samsung called “Project Zero,” a total reboot of how the company approaches and integrates design. In a press briefing, presenters repeatedly used words like “pure innovation,” “warmth,” and “emotional form.” None of it really means anything, obviously, but from a company that’s always sold its products based on being the biggest, the fastest, or the megapixeliest, it’s a clear change in priorities.

Of course, that’s not to say the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge aren’t big, fast, and megapixely. They are: they’re both powered by Samsung’s brand-new Exynos 7 processor, which it says is both more powerful and more efficient than any other smartphone processor ever. It also has 3GB of RAM, and 32GB or 64GB of internal storage. The processor might be the most important new thing, but the star of the show is the 5.1-inch, 2560 x 1440 display. (If you’re counting, that’s the same resolution as the already-great Note 4, packed into an even smaller display.) It looks terrific.

The camera’s been upgraded, too, with a 16-megapixel sensor and a super-bright f/1.9 lens. Samsung’s focus with the S6 series was speed: from anywhere on the phone, at any time, locked or unlocked, you can double-tap the home button and in a half-second be in the camera app. It’s really fast, as is the camera itself; Samsung says it’s taken a lot of lessons from its NX mirrorless cameras, and it shows. Oh, and speaking of the home button: it’s still a fingerprint sensor, but it seems to actually be usable now.

The big new software addition is Samsung Pay, which will roll out on these two phones later on this year. Samsung Pay is the direct result of the company’s acquisition of LoopPay, which lets you pay with your phone on a really remarkable number of existing devices. Samsung didn’t offer much detail, but expect the Apple Pay competition to heat up quickly.

There’s still a lot of Samsung’s heinous TouchWiz interface on the phone, but it continues its slow wane into nonexistence—there aren’t so many built-in apps anymore, or horrible noises. It’s just a bunch of ugly app icons and strange settings menus. It’s not great, but it’s better.

On one hand, this is just evolution: Samsung’s flagship phone, replaced by new flagship phones with somewhat improved features across the board. The S6 and S6 Edge will be available worldwide, and they’ll sell like crazy, just as every Galaxy S before them has. But this launch feels like it means something more to Samsung. It feels like Samsung trying to prove that even as specs become less important, as taste and fashion become crucial parts of the phone-buying process, that it can still hang. Based on what I saw, in a conference room in a hotel in New York City, maybe it can.