Exploring the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge’s curves

If you’re anything like me, you may sleep with your smartphone close at hand. On the nightstand, perhaps. And when you wake up in the middle of the night to the addictive glow of a newly arrived notification, you probably do the same thing that I do – flail around for your device, then pick it up, twist it around and stare at the screen as your eyes adjust to the reality that you just woke up to read another spam email on the latest get-rich-quick scheme.

But what if you didn’t have to flail around in the dark? And what if you could tell what’s going on just by staring at your phone edge-on?

That’s the promise of Samsung’s Galaxy S6 edge, which features glass that curves down on both the left and right sides of the display. While it’s a feature that’ll surely get you lots of attention the next time you’re surrounded by a circle of friends, the real value of the Galaxy S6 edge shines through during those times when you’re sleeping, working, or otherwise too occupied to stop what you’re doing to grab your phone.

Instead, when a quick glance will do, the edge comes into its own.

Curved glass. Doubled up.

Samsung isn’t new to the curved-edge display. In fact, they included a curved-edge display on the recently released Galaxy Note Edge. What’s different here is the curved display is now on both sides of the screen. This opens up an entirely new range of creative uses that take advantage of the strip of screen real estate that’s easily visible when the device is sitting on a desk or a table.

And to capitalize on this extra screen real estate, Samsung has built a number of features into the Galaxy S6 edge, including:

• People Edge – A quick and easy way to access your five favourite contacts with one flick of your finger. Simply head to the home screen and find the tab near the top right of the screen. From there, setup is a breeze – just click the gear icon to easily select your top five favourite contacts from your contact list. You’ll also need to select which colour they’ll be assigned to, which will impact the notifications and edge lighting.
• Notifications and Edge Lighting – Unique colour coded messaging identifiers for your favourite contacts – for example, if it’s blue, it must be my wife – that let you see at a glance when an important call or message is coming in. And in the case of a call, if you’re too busy to take it you can simply choose to dismiss it – and you can even send a pre-written text message to the caller by touching the heart rate monitor for a couple of seconds. This is an incredibly useful feature when you’re tied up in meetings for most of the day. For the record though, no matter what I’m doing, I’m all over it when it’s blue.
• Information Stream – This handy single line message stream persists when the main screen is off, and allows discrete access to news stories, sports scores, weather advisories, texts and items that are currently trending on Twitter.
• Night Clock – Set your Galaxy S6 edge to display the time – for up to 12 hours – along either edge of the display. The edge display uses relatively little power, and minimizes the amount of light dispersed into the room. In other words, this is basically the most useful and unobtrusive alarm clock you’ll ever use.

The Galaxy S6 edge’s unique screen makes everything easily readable from virtually any angle without having to lift the phone or otherwise stop what you’re doing. The curved parts of the display are even visible when the device is turned screen-down, which lots of folks like to do when they’re asleep. You get the advantages of a darkened room, along with continued, unobtrusive access to notifications through the night.

And if you like to keep your phone on your desk while you’re working, it means more information at-a-glance and less reaching for those messages that really aren’t that important to you.

The bottom line

The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge is the world’s first smartphone with a dual curved edge display, and this functionality opens up a whole new range of uses for smartphone users. In the time that I’ve had my Galaxy S6 edge, the dual curved edge display has certainly proven useful. And my wife appreciates it as well.

How will you take advantage of the dual curved edge screen? Let us know in a comment.