Samsung is believed to be working on the Galaxy S6 Active, which is slated for release this summer and will reportedly feature a microSD slot, the remarkable absence of which has been noted in the Galaxy S6.
The Korean smartphone maker has always followed up its flagship smartphones with a rugged Active model that often comes with a bigger battery, a camera not as impressive as its parent model, and hard capacitive buttons, so it won't be surprising if Samsung unveils an Active version of the S6 soon.
For now, though, Samsung remains mum on whatever smartphone it has in store for the future, but one Reddit user claims to have spoken with a Samsung representative who apparently confirmed that the company is indeed working on the rumored smartphone.
Going by the nickname Garshol, the Reddit user says the Galaxy S6 Active will, by and large, be very similar to the Galaxy S6. That means it will have the 5.1-inch quad-HD Super AMOLED display and the 32 GB of built-in storage all running on Samsung's own Exynos 7420 system on a chip. One thing that plenty of users will rave about, however, is the addition of a microSD slot.
Samsung famously irked a lot of its customers when it unveiled its new flagship smartphone missing a microSD slot and waterproofing, and with a battery that could not be removed. The decision, says Garshol, was made because Samsung wanted to be more similar to Apple when it comes to design, storage capacity, and "core functionality."
Indeed, when the Galaxy S6 came out, Samsung impressed design-centric customers with the phone's sleek, premium-feel metal-and-glass design, but it had to make certain compromises.
"To be more like our main competitors, we felt like we needed to remove SD and waterproofing. Not only did this make the device more refined, it also made it thinner, and better in more ways we could imagine due to the extra space this freed up for other hardware to take its place," Garshol paraphrases the Samsung rep's explanation.
With the new Galaxy S6 Active, Garshol says Samsung is bringing back some of the features it chucked out of the Galaxy S6. Aside from the microSD slot, Samsung is also including a bigger, removable lithium polymer battery that is said to be at 3,500 mAh. No word has been made on waterproofing, but since it is an Active model, Samsung is expected to keep this new phone waterproof.
There are, of course, some trade-offs. Garshol says Samsung is taking out the fingerprint reader and the heart rate sensor. The camera will have fewer pixels than the 16 MP and 5 MP cameras on the Galaxy S6, although the Active phone will still have optical image stabilization. The Active version will also have the same clicky buttons found on the older Galaxy S5.
Garshol says the prices are pegged at $600, $650, and $700 for the 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB models, respectively. Those are pretax prices, so expect to pay more to get the Galaxy S6 battery. The information, however, only applies to Europe, and Garshol says he does not know if Samsung plans to release the Galaxy S6 Active in the U.S.
Again, it is always good to take every bit of rumor with a large spoonful of salt.
