Samsung touts the curved sides as better for watching video, as they hide the bezels of the phone and make the video more "immersive." I disagree: even though hiding or shrinking the borders around a display does tend to make everything look better (just look to Dell’s recent XPS 13 laptop or Venue 8 tablet, which both pull off the trick to great effect), the Edge+’s curved sides actually stand out more because they distort the image on the edges. Further, the curved sides don’t fully hide the frame of the phone, and depending on what you’re looking at, can be brighter than the rest of the display.
The Edge+ does have a couple of new software tricks to take advantage of its unique design, but I don’t find them very compelling. The shortcuts to favorite contacts, which you can access by swiping in from the side of the screen, have been expanded to include apps, so you can launch any app you want without having to dive back to the home screen. It’s cool and can be useful, but it certainly doesn’t need the screen to be curved to work. You can replicate its functionality pretty easily on a normal, flat smartphone with a variety of apps available in the Play Store.
Samsung’s also built in live streaming to YouTube direct from the Edge+’s camera app. It’s not the first manufacturer to do this — Sony’s included it in its Android phones for some time — but it does make it rather painless to instantly start broadcasting to YouTube. I’m not convinced it will sway a lot of Periscope users, however, as it lacks the social aspect that draws many to that app.
The software doesn't justify the need for a curved displayOtherwise, the software on the Edge+ is very similar to the software on the rest of Samsung’s high-end smartphones this year. It’s still TouchWiz, but the annoyances of the past have been toned down dramatically, and the new theming engine makes it fairly easy to mimic a "stock Android" look if that’s what you want. This year marks the first time Samsung’s software doesn’t drive me completely insane.
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