Samsung Galaxy S5 Review

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is one of the most eagerly awaited smartphones of the year; however, initial reactions have been mixed.  Those who thought we would see a drastic change between this and previous devices are disappointed.  Some however feel that the mix of a familiar design with some new additions is great.

In this review of the Samsung Galaxy S5, we try to point out what does and does not work

Design

• The Samsung Galaxy S5 features many familiar elements that they’ve retained from previous devices in the Galaxy series. While there are some differences these are minimal
• The Galaxy S5 still has rounded corners and a flat profile.
• The usual Samsung button layout remains but they’ve now added a physical home button, capacitive back button and a capacitive recent apps button.
• The bezels in the Galaxy S5 are a little bigger than previous versions. Samsung did this to improve the phones durability.  The large bezels will make it harder for the screen to break if the phone is dropped.  They are also supposed to help the phone be more water and dust resistant.
• Volume rocker remains on the left side and the power button on the right side.
• There is a microUSB charging port covered with a plastic flap on the bottom of the phone.
• The headphone jack and IR blaster are placed on top.
• The back cover is removable and now comes in a dimpled finish.

• Even if the display is a little larger, the overall size of the device has not changed much.

Display

• Uses a 5.1 inch Super AMOLED display. This is a 0.1 inch increase in size from the S4.
• Has a 1080 p screen for a pixel density of 432 ppi.
• .Colors are crisp and vibrant and the screen has good contrast and brightness levels as well as viewing angles.
• If you prefer more accurate color representation, you can use Cinema mode in the display presets.
• Air View capabilities allow the screen to register finger touches even when wearing gloves.

Performance

• Uses one of the best processing packages available.
• Use a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 that clocks at 2.5 GHz.
• This is backed by a Adreno 330 GPU with 2 GB of RAM.
• Stuttering and Lag have been more or less eliminated due to the updated and optimized TouchWiz interface.
• Multitasking on the Samsung Galaxy S5 is fast and smooth with the Multi Window feature free of lag.

Hardware

• The Samsung Galaxy S5 has an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance.
• This means the phone is almost completely dust resistant and can be submerged in water up to 1 meter in depth for around 30 minutes without affecting its performance.
• As long as you make sure the back cover is secure and the flap on the microUSB charging port is tight, water will not affect you phone.
• The Samsung Galaxy S5 retains two features that Samsung users love, a removable battery and a microSD slot.
• The IR blaster will allow you to control a TV or set top boxes.
• Sensors such as S Health Pedometer and Air Gestures return with the Galaxy S5
• Call quality is good.
• Sound quality is good with the speakers of the Galaxy S5 placed on its back. It’s not the best though, there are many other devices that get better sounds, especially devices which place their speakers in front.
• Two newest pieces of hardware in the Samsung Galaxy S5 are the Heart Rate Monitor and the Finger Scanner.
• The Battery is a 2,800 mAh unit.

Camera

• The Samsung Galaxy S5 uses a ISOCELL camera.
• This is an optic package with a 16 MP sensor which isolated every pixel from its neighbors for a better quality photo.
• The camera app has two particularly notable new features: Selective Focus and Live-HDR. Live HDR lets you see through the viewfinder what effect HDR would have on the photo.  Selective Focus allows you to focus on a main subject and the camera will take multiple photos which it will process together.
• The ISOCELL provides photos with good color saturation and detail.

Software

• The Samsung Galaxy S5 uses an updated version of TouchWiz.
• While TouchWiz has been updated, there has not been much change made to it.
• Swiping to the left of the screen brings you to My Magazine which is Samsung’s attempt to have a second homescreen experience.
• MyMagazine is a news aggregator that piggybacks on Flipboard. The app pulls information from a list of categories and your social media feed.

• There is a new recent apps button and a screen.
• The notification menue now uses circular icons and there is now a list of toggles for available features.
• Some new features are Toolbox, which can be set to provide short cuts to five of your favorite apps; download booster which allows TouchWiz to use WiFi and your mobile data connections to download files larger than 3 MB.
• This version of TouchWiz is smooth and doesn’t have the lagging problems other iterations did.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is going to be made available with all major US carriers at the premium prices for 2-year contracts.  This is usually around $199.  An unlocked version of the phone will probably be around $700 more or less.

What do you think of the Samsung Galaxy S5?

JR

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9zdCra9gCE[/embedyt]