Featuring radically different styling to all of the past DSC-Sx models, the Sanyo Xacti S6 is slightly wider than those cameras, but shorter, thinner and lighter at the same time. This comes at the expense of the optical viewfinder, with the S6 instead offering a slightly larger (and just a touch higher resolution) LCD display instead. Optical resolution has been boosted to 6.0 effective megapixels, and the zoom lens is now slightly brighter and has been extended at the wide end a little, to a 3x optical zoom. Macro focusing is not as good as it was on the earlier S-series cameras though, with a focusing distance of 5 centimeters being the closest possible. Higher ISO sensitivity is now available, with an ISO range of 50 - 400, although the available shutter speed range is reduced somewhat. A range of scene modes has been added, and the USB connectivity boosted to a USB 2.0 high-speed connection. The camera's built-in memory drops by one megabyte, to 15MB.

Sanyo is touting two features of the Sanyo S6 particularly strongly. One is the a fourth-generation LSI said to offer better image quality, and the other is a rather unusual shutter button. Where most cameras focus the scene with a half-press of the shutter button, and capture the image with a full-press, the Sanyo's button offers only a full-press position to capture the picture. Instead of a half-press, the button itself is touch-sensitive, and the camera focuses immediately that the tip of your finger touches the shutter button. The press release also mentions camera speed, with a 2.4 second startup time, prefocused shutter lag of 0.05 seconds, 2.25 frames per second burst mode, and 0.8 seconds to switch to playback mode.