Samsung’s weird Galaxy S6 unboxing videos continue, this time showing off Fast Charging feature [VIDEO]

As you may have seen last week, Samsung is celebrating the (very successful) launch of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge with a handful of “unboxing” videos. These aren’t your typical (read: boring) unboxings and are essentially action shorts shot in first-person. The unboxers finds themselves chased by someone and using a variety of fancy parkour moves, is able to allude them with his brand new Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. Kinda cool, but whatevs. Check ’em out below.

Running with that same idea, Samsung is continuing their unboxing series with a new video uploaded to YouTube today. The video shows off the fast charging capabilities of the Galaxy S6 and all the things you can get done during that time. Samsung claims you can get 4 hours of battery life while fast charging the device for only 10 minutes, something we more or less saw in our own testing (check out our full review here). The point of the video was kind of lost on us but you can check it out the full 90-second version below if you’re interested.

It’s not a placebo effect: this is why your Nexus 6 feels so fast after the Android 5.1 update

Android 5.0 Lollipop is great, but for those on the Nexus 6 there’s no secret there were some troubling performance issues that a phone of its stature shouldn’t experience. We thought much of the issues were due to the infancy of the ART runtime and possibly due to problematic device encryption. We expected much of that to be cleared up with Android 5.1’s arrival.

It was, at least according to some early impressions around the Phandroid office. But what changed to bring about that performance boost, exactly? Google wasn’t keen to go into detail, but renowned kernel developer Francisco Franco gave us a good bit of insight.

Alongside general improvements to the ART runtime as a whole, Google apparently unlocked the device’s CPU to run at full quad-core mode at all times in order to handle task scheduling more efficiently. What this means is that “Job B” no longer has to wait on “Job A” to finish on a certain core before carrying out its task. It can simply jump onto another of three other cores to allow everything else ample time and room to work. Think of it as a one-lane street merging into a multi-lane highway.

Taking things a step further, Google was able to reduce the lag and improve battery life at the same time thanks to disabling a Qualcomm driver that would needlessly boost individual CPU cores whenever tasks migrate from one core to another. Franco says he’d already made these tweaks in his version of the kernel, so kudos to Google for seeing things similarly and following suit.

So if you notice increased performance and improved battery life after upgrading to Android 5.1, it’s not a placebo effect — Google made some significant changes, and the great thing is we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we know to be different in this latest version. Be sure to try Android 5.1 on for size on your Nexus device of choice using one of the available OTA links.

Samsung touts the Galaxy S6’s fast and wireless charging features in latest ad

You should have already heard about the Samsung Galaxy S6’s great charging capabilities by reading our review, but in case you haven’t Samsung has a cool new ad showing you just how great their new charging features are.

The company talks up the device’s ability to serve up enough juice to last 15 hours in nearly 15 minutes thanks to its fast charging, as well as the ability to charge the device wirelessly with nearly any charging pad without the need for extra accessories. They even show off Ultra Power-Saving Mode, a limited software form that scales back on processing power, displays apps in greyscale and other tricks in order to squeeze as much time as it can out of however much life your battery has left.

All of that is important for the device’s user experience. As noted in our Samsung Galaxy S6 review, battery life on the Samsung Galaxy S6 isn’t terrible, but it isn’t the greatest either. It’s a good thing that Samsung made the charging experience effortless and blissful in the absence of advancement in core battery technology, we’d say. Be sure to check out Samsung’s full video above.

Samsung Galaxy S6’s Fast Charge vs a skydiver: Who’s faster? [VIDEO]

Samsung’s latest promo video for the Samsung Galaxy S6 once again showcases the device’s fast charging feature, but they put a nice little spin on this one. They wanted to find out which was faster: the Samsung Galaxy S6 getting 4 hours of battery life or professional skydiver Yves “Jetman” Rossy making a 40 kilometer dive (about 24 miles).

The answer: fast charge, of course. Jetman still made impressive speed in getting to the ground, but it wasn’t quite enough to beat the Samsung Galaxy S6 to the battery capacity that helps get you 4 hours of talk time (around 20-22% last we’ve checked).

Keep this suff in mind the next time you have some awesome daredevil stunt to perform and your phone is dead and you somehow have the ability to charge it while you’re off getting your Evil Knievel on. You can check out the full race from star to finish from multiple angles right here, or take a look at the quick 2 minute recap above.

Qi will soon support 15 watt fast wireless charging

One knock on wireless charging was always that it wasn’t nearly as fast as getting your juice over a wire, especially after new fast charging products were introduced in recent years. Thankfully that won’t be the case for long.

The Wireless Power Consortium has announced a new specification for their Qi wireless charging standard that makes it possible to charge wirelessly at rates of up to 15 watts. This is actually the standard going rate for cable-based fast charging solutions, so they’re essentially delivering top-line charging speeds without the cumbersome cables needed to enjoy it.

While details of the specification have not yet been publicized, WPC confirmed that the new standard would be fully backward compatible with existing Qi-equipped devices, which could potentially mean you won’t have to do much more than buy a new fast charging pad to take advantage.

Unfortunately there is no solid date to look forward to when it comes to the landing date for this improvement. Not even a “later this year,” actually — we simply have to wait, but we’re hoping the wait will be well worth it.

[via WPC]