Speed test: Lollipop on the Samsung Galaxy S6 vs Galaxy S5 [VIDEO]

We know the Samsung Galaxy S6 is a fast phone. It damn well better be. Coming equipped with a new 14nm 64-bit Exynos 7 octa-core chipset and 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM — this phone should be screaming fast. That, and the fact that Samsung has trimmed much of the fat on TouchWiz, without a doubt it’s got to be quicker than the previous model, even if it has to push 34% more pixels than the Galaxy S5.

But how much faster is it? Well, that’s a little harder to quantify. But in an effort to better illustrate the speed we felt in our time with the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, we decided to give you guys a quick demo showing off how quickly the Galaxy S6 opens apps when compared against its predecessor, the Galaxy S5.

While there are all sorts of variables, we tried to keep things as fair as possible. Here’s what we did before speed testing:

• Both devices running Android 5.0 Lollipop


• Both devices were freshly factory reset


• All background apps were closed

That being said, it’s still fun to experiment. One thing we wanted to point out was that, despite both devices were running Android 5.0 Lollipop, Samsung has 2 very different versions of TouchWiz: the S5 with the still laggy version (maybe even laggier due to Lollipop), and the S6 with the newly overhauled version. This is only a year after Samsung debuted a refreshed TouchWiz for the Galaxy S5, a version very different than its predecessors, (and many of Samsung’s older devices were never updated to). Talk about Android fragmentation.

Before we get too off topic, TouchWiz on the Samsung Galaxy S6 — with its much higher res assets and all new features — barely saw a 1GB jump in system memory (6.62GB) when compared against TouchWiz on the Galaxy S5 (5.46GB). Looks like Samsung really did trim some of the fat, or at least kept it from gaining too much weight. Well, before carriers like Verizon get their hands on this thing.

That being said, you guys convinced yet the Galaxy S6 is adequately faster than the Galaxy S5? As an owner of the S5 (and regretting life after the recently rolled out Lollipop update on Verizon), I can safely say the S6 Edge can’t get here fast enough.