Is my S6 camera broken? (Two more days to return) So the rear camera is 16MP with 8x zoom.  Everybody has said the camera is awesome except that my S3 photos look better. Here is an 8x zoom photo from the rear camera from my S6: Photo of cupboard from few feet feet away with Auto everything in a regular lighted room with 8x zoom in 16MP

How is this impressive? It's grainy.  Is it broken?
The zoom on the S6 like most phones is digital zoom. It works the same way as enlarging a photo in your photo editor. Since no extra information is being added, your image quality will suffer at anything over 1x zoom level. This is normal.
The image that people are talking about is the one at 1x zoom which is essentially no zoom.

Also image quality can be a subjective thing. Some people like over saturated colors, some don't. Some like high contrast and some don't and the list goes on.

It is unlikely that there is something wrong with your camera. To confirm, go to a store which has a phone on display and take the same pictures with both the cameras and compare.