The Samsung Galaxy S6 is surely one of the most popular phones of the year and justifiably so, with its QHD screen, powerful processor, premium design and oodles of features.
But if any phone is going to outsell the S6 it will be the iPhone 6S, the latest flagship from the only company in the business that's bigger than Samsung. With a premium design of its own and high-end specs and features it may even be worthy of all the sales it will inevitably enjoy.
Design
The iPhone 6S is a slim slab of metal, coming in at just 7.1mm thick and with very little breaking up the smooth lines of the aluminium build.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is similarly stylish, with a metal frame and a glass back, while at 6.8mm thick it's even slimmer than the iPhone 6S, though its glass back is prone to picking up fingerprints. They're not as visible if you pick the white model, but then you miss out on the gemstone-like finish offered by the other shades.
Display
There's a 4.7-inch 1334 x 750 IPS LCD display on the iPhone 6S coming in at 326 pixels per inch. That's the same resolution and size as the iPhone 6, making this one of the more compact smartphones around.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 on the other hand has a larger 5.1-inch 1440 x 2560 screen with a pixel density of 577 pixels per inch. So it's both bigger and sharper, but the resolution of the iPhone 6S doesn't seem lacking and it's likely to help its battery life, which is something that is a problem on the Samsung Galaxy S6.
Power and performance
There's an Apple A9 processor at the heart of the iPhone 6S, designed to be 70% faster at CPU tasks and 90% faster at graphics than the A8 chip in the iPhone 6.
The Galaxy S6 on the other hand has an octa-core Exynos 7420 processor, with four cores running at 2.1GHz and the remaining four clocked at 1.5GHz. It's a true powerhouse then, but while on paper the iPhone 6S may sound lacking in comparison, Apple's phones almost always offer seriously slick performance and we're not expecting the iPhone 6S to be any exception.
Camera
Apple has long delivered some of the best cameras found on a smartphone and that's likely to continue with the iPhone 6S, as it has a 12MP main camera and a 5MP front-facing one, both of which are upgrades over what was found on the still impressive iPhone 6.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 has a quality snapper too though, with a 16MP sensor on the back, complete with optical image stabilisation to avoid blur and a 5MP camera on the front. The S6's camera is one of the best we've yet tested, but we're hopeful that the iPhone 6S's camera will rival it.
OS
The iPhone 6S ships with iOS 9, which includes improvements to Siri, long awaited Apple Maps features and more, plus all the slick intuitiveness of its predecessor, iOS 8.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 on the other hand runs Android 5.1 overlaid with TouchWiz. Samsung's TouchWiz UI has been divisive over the years, but it's at its best here, while Android Lollipop is the cleanest and best version of Android yet.
Both OS's are seriously polished by this point, but if you favour either Google's services or Apple's then that could swing it.
Apple does have the edge in one way though, as it's equipped the iPhone 6S with 3D Touch, which can act as a pressure sensitive shortcut to certain features or options, as essentially a light tap on certain things will do one thing, while a harder press will do another.
Battery
The Samsung Galaxy S6's biggest weakness is perhaps its battery, which at 2,550mAh is smaller than the Samsung Galaxy S5's and won't typically last more than a day between charges.
It's too early to say how good the iPhone 6S's juice pack will be, but we're hopeful that it should be able to keep the phone powered for at least a little longer than Samsung's, though the official stats are the same as those for the iPhone 6, which doesn't last much more than a day itself.
Price and availability
The Samsung Galaxy S6 can be grabbed from around £410 ($600, AU$800) for the 32GB version, while the iPhone 6S is launching for £539 ($649, AU$1,079) in its smallest size. In other words Apple's latest is quite a bit pricier, but it's also newer and it's an Apple product, so that's no surprise really.
As the Samsung Galaxy S6 has been out for a while there should be stock in most places, but availability of the iPhone 6S might initially be more limited as millions of people head out in search of one.
Verdict
Samsung and Apple have both crafted stunning phones fit for 2015 and you can't really go wrong with either of them.
We'll let you know exactly how good the iPhone 6S is when we've put it through a full review, but based on the specs and features it's sure to at least be the best iPhone yet, while the Samsung Galaxy S6 is one of the very best smartphones of any OS.
The real choice between them is iOS or Android, because in most ways they seem similarly accomplished.
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