The iPhone 6 Plus is one of the best selling phablets from last year, but there are several other devices that have started to challenge its dominance—and one of them is the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active. Here is how these two devices compare.

Design

When it comes to high end design, the phablet from Apple has a definite edge as it has a metal unibody and rounded edges. In addition, it has a touch-based finger print reader incorporated into its home button—a feature which the S6 Active does not have.

As for the S6 Active, it is much smaller than its competitor and is mostly composed of plastic with a camouflage coating on its back panel, as well as a layer of hard plastic and rubber on its sides. However, it has a major advantage as it is waterproof and dustproof. It has an IP68 certification which means it can be submerged in up to 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes. It is also MIL-STD-810G certified, making it resistant to vibration, solar radiation and thermal shock.

Display

The display on the S6 Active is smaller as it is a smartphone but it is sharper than the version on its competitor. The device from Samsung comes with a Super AMOLED screen measuring 5.1 inches with a resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels and a density of 576 pixels per inch, while the iPhone 6 Plus comes with an IPS LCD screen measuring 5.5 inches with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a density of 401 pixels per inch.

Specs

The specs on the iPhone 6 Plus are great but its Apple A8 chipset, Cyclone CPU with two cores clocked at 1.4 GHz and PowerVR GX6450 GPU cannot keep up with the S6 Active when it comes to speed. The S6 Active comes equipped with an Exynos 7420 chipset, an octa-core CPU comprised of four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.5 GHz and four Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 2.1 GHz and a Mali-T760 GPU.

Memory

It is not surprising that the iPhone 6 Plus has no memory slot, but this year, Samsung also decided not to provide one on its flagship lineup which includes the S6 Active variant. As for RAM, the iPhone 6 Plus only has 1 GB while the S6 Active has 3 GB.

Camera

There is an 8 megapixel camera with optical image stabilization on the iPhone 6 Plus while the S6 Active has a 16 megapixel camera.

Price

The 16 GB model of the iPhone 6 Plus costs $299 with a two-year contract while the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active costs $199 with a similar contract.