The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the latest flagship smartphone from the
Korean electronics giant, its next-generation salvo in the war with Apple, Sony
and HTC, but is it enough?
Looking almost indistinguishable from its predecessor, the S4,
the Galaxy S5 was pushed out several weeks early in Samsung’s product refresh
cycle amid sales that failed to live up to expectations.
Samsung appears to have leveraged a
modicum more restraint across the board with the Galaxy S5. Its marketing and
launch event for the flagship smartphone was much less extravagant than the
Galaxy S4’s all-singing all-dancing unveiling in New
York’s Times Square in March 2013 and that change of tact has been carried over
to the smartphone itself, much to its benefit.
Plastic?
Fantastic
Samsung
has steadfastly stuck to its guns with the Galaxy S5, keeping the plastic
construction and body from the previous generation and only altering the back
from shiny plastic to a vinyl-like back cover.
Attractiveness is certainly subjective, but in my opinion
some of the Galaxy S5 colours look much better than others. It is available in
white, black, blue and gold, but the white colour looks particularly cheap with
the chromed plastic edging.
Despite being plastic, Samsung’s build-quality shines in
the Galaxy S5 with almost no flex in the body and a very solid feel in the
hand. The S5 is light at 145g compared to the 160g HTC One M8,
but heavier than both the 130g Google
Nexus 5 and the
smaller 112g iPhone 5S.
The Galaxy S5 has a larger display than its predecessor at
5.1in, but you would be hard-pressed to tell by looking at it. The screen is
particularly good for an AMOLED display,
with very wide viewing angles, and is sharp and vibrant and very close in
quality to that of the high-end LCD screens like those found on the iPhone 5S
and HTC One M8.
One-hand operating
The size of the screen is at the absolute limit for one-handed
use for me, but some will certainly struggle to reach all corners of the screen
without dropping the phone. The power and volume buttons are easily reachable
on the side, while Samsung has also included a "one-handed" menu
option to help by moving things like the keyboard over to one side of the
screen.
TouchWiz:
the triumph and the terror
For the winter months, users can also adjust the screen’s touch
sensitivity so that it can be used through some gloves.
Unlike most other Android
smartphones, beneath the display the Galaxy S5 has capacitive sensor
buttons for Back and Menu, flanking a physical home button. The home button
acts as a fingerprint scanner (more on that later). Unlike pretty much every
other Android manufacturer (including Google's Nexus models), Samsung chooses
to put the menu button on the left and the back button on the right. This can
be very irritating if switching from another phone manufacturer. And you can't
reprogram them.
The buttons are also very easily activated by your palm when
holding the phone, making accidental presses a frequent, annoying occurrence.
Taking a leaf out of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active’s book and
Sony's Xperia range, the S5 is waterproof with an "IP67" rating -
meaning it can be immersed in up to 1m of water for 30 minutes. That entails a
rubber gasket-sealed door for the microUSB port in the bottom of the phone, and
one within the back cover. While it is unlikely you’ll want to go swimming with
it, you should be OK if you drop it down the toilet or spill coffee on it.
Specifications
·
Screen: 5.1in full HD Super AMOLED
·
Processor: 2.5 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon
801
·
RAM: 2GB of RAM
·
Storage: 16/32GB
·
Operating system: Android 4.4 “Kitkat”
·
Camera: 16MP rear camera, 2MP front-facing camera
·
Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0
with BLE, USB 3.0 and GPS
·
Dimensions: 142.0 x 72.5 x 8.1mm
·
Weight: 145g
Extreme
juice saving
The Galaxy S5 uses the same top-end chip from Qualcomm, the
Snapdragon 801, as the rest of the latest top-end smartphones including the HTC
One M8 and the Sony Xperia Z2.
It means the Galaxy S5 is both fast and fluid, but also
relatively light on the battery. There’s no perceptible lag anywhere while
using the phone, while apps load more or less instantly.
Battery life will take you through a full day of heavy use
emailing, tweeting browsing and playing music over Bluetooth; I had with 20%
left in the tank without using any power-saving functions. For normal users the
Galaxy S5 will easily last a day, perhaps two – and with power-saving modes
active, more than that.
The Ultra Power Saving Mode is really impressive, capable of
eking out a rated 24 hours worth of standby time from just 10% battery and a
likely much more than that. Though it does that by, in effect, transforming the
phone into a glorified feature phone.
When
the Ultra Power Saving mode is activated (which you have to do – it's not
automatic, unlike HTC's), the S5 switches the screen to black and white, turns
off all non-essential features and allows access to just a few apps, including
voice calls, email and a browser. Users can chose to add a few more apps such
as Facebook and Twitter, but the selection is limited.
The
super-efficient mode allows the phone to be useful for much longer, and could
be invaluable for when you need your phone to last waiting for a call while out
and about.
Having
a removable battery also means users could carry a spare and swap it in as
needed. And as battery life diminishes over the life of the smartphone, users
can just replace the battery themselves rather than relying on a service
centre.
The
Galaxy S5 comes with 16 or 32GB of built-in storage, plus a microSD card slot
which can add up to 128GB additional storage for music, movies and photos. Like
the Galaxy Note 3 before it, the S5 packs USB 3.0 for faster file transfers,
but Samsung strangely fails to ship a USB 3.0 cable in the box - there's only a
standard USB 2 microUSB cable.
TouchWiz:
the triumph and the terror
Software is where Samsung has struggled the most. The companyadmitted that its software needed work and dedicated half of its research and
development effort to improving it in November last year. Sadly, while the
software is somewhat refined on the Galaxy S5 compared to its predecessor, it
still has some way to go to match the quality or experience of its competitors
like Google, Sony, HTC and Apple.
Samsung
calls its customisations to the standard Android experience
"TouchWiz", and frankly they add clutter and confusion to the
experience. The primary settings menu, for instance, is a list of 61 icons, stacked
in rows of three, under nine categories. Or you can format them as a long list
– or in an even more confusing tabbed interface.
While
they are much more logically organised than previous iterations of TouchWiz,
finding the right icon for the right setting can be arduous, and is needlessly
complicated compared to the standard Android settings menu. (There is a search
menu for settings, at least.)
On
the homescreen, the bottom row of icons forming the apps dock, plus the
homescreen page number indicator, needlessly take up a quarter of the screen.
This feels like wasted space.
Samsung’s
also added some odd, sluggish animations, such as the transition effect to its
own My Magazine app – a Flipboard-powered social news app much like HTC’s
BlinkFeed that sits on the left of the primary homescreen. This makes the
Galaxy S5 feel slow even when its underlying hardware certainly isn’t.
Samsung
also duplicates functionality with its S Voice voice-controlled assistant.
Android already comes with the Google Now personal digital assistant – so the
Galaxy S5 has two voice assistants that do not interoperate.
Quite
a lot of the gimmicky features, which peaked with the Galaxy S4 (remember its
"wave to turn a page" feature?) have been removed or at least
minimised on the S5 – a big step forward towards producing a phone with
features people actually need, rather than ones they just immediately turn off.
Samsung’s
additions to Android aren’t all bad. The Ultra Power Saving Mode, for instance,
is something neither standard Android nor Apple’s iPhone has and is of real
benefit. And you won't find the Settings search on other customisations.
Overall,
TouchWiz is improved over previous iterations but still makes the Galaxy S5
feel less premium than its competitors and for the most part detracts rather
than adds to the standard Android experience.
Fingerprint
scanner
One of the Galaxy S5’s main selling points is its fingerprint scanner
which is hidden beneath the home button. Unlike Apple’s Touch ID, which
requires the user to simply touch the iPhone 5S’s home button, you have to
swipe your finger or thumb across the sensor to
unlock
the Galaxy S5. (Or use one of the other unlock methods, such as a PIN, pattern
or "Face Unlock".)
As
long as you ignore the instructions and swipe your thumb or finger in the
orientation you would if you were unlocking the device in use, then the scanner
works fine and successfully unlocks the device first time about 95% of the
time. I found it much faster than entering a lock code or using Face Unlock,
and never had to resort to entering a passcode.
The
scanner can remember three different fingers, but it would be good to have it
remember at least four to cover both left and right handed use – left and right
thumbs and index fingers.
Samsung’s
partnership with PayPal also means you can authenticate payment for shopping
using the fingerprint scanner, which Samsung says is the first of many extended
applications for the fingerprint beyond simply securing your phone.
Heart
rate sensor and S Health
Samsung’s
push into health and fitness through its S Health app and Gear smartwatches has
been bolstered by the integration of a heart rate sensor on the back of the S5
directly below the camera and next to the flash.
It
works well enough as long as you don’t move or talk while measuring your heart
rate – but it is a bit of a gimmick and something you might only use
occasionally. It doesn’t get in the way during normal operation, so there’s no
real downside to having it on the back of the phone.
S
Health, Samsung's health monitoring system, has been improved: as well as
collating heart rate data (on the back, remember?) can now act as a pedometer
and activity monitor using the S5’s built-in sensors.
However
I found it inaccurate compared to dedicated fitness trackers such as the Misfit
Shine or Fitbit: I walked 3.5 miles and it insisted I'd done a mile less.
Camera:
make it snappier please
The
16-megapixel camera on the Galaxy S5 is great for the most part. Its autofocus
takes just 0.3 seconds and generally gets it right first time, although there
were a few occasions where like most cameras I found it missed the target.
Image
detail was good – much better than the HTC One M8’s UltraPixel camera for
instance – thanks to the high megapixel count. But low-light performance wasn’t
as good with grainy photos being produced in dim lighting.
Samsung’s
real-time HDR mode displays what the image is going to look like in a
viewfinder before capturing a photo. That's a real boon which its competitors
cannot manage.
The
only real detractor is that the camera can take up to three seconds to start
up, which is an eternity when you’re trying to capture a spontaneous photo.
There
are also a couple of gimmicky modes, including a selective focus shooting mode
that captures different focal lengths of image and allows users focus either on
the near ground or far ground after capturing the image. It doesn’t work as
well as HTC’s Duo Camera, but with practice can produce some interesting shots.
The
Galaxy S5 can also shoot 4K ultra-high definition video, but it will quickly
fill up the phone’s storage space, even on an SD card, and can’t be viewed at
full resolution on the phone nor, indeed, most computer monitors or TVs.
Remote
control
The
S5 has an infra-red emitter embedded in its top left edge so you can control
their TV or other remote-controlled appliances using the WatchOn app,
introduced with the S4, which turns the smartphone into a universal remote. Let
us know if you've ever used it.
Gear
2 and Gear Fit smartwatches
The Galaxy S5, like others in the Samsung Galaxy family, is
compatible with Samsung’s new smartwatches, the Gear 2 and Gear Fit, both of
which are looked at in detail in a separate article.
Price
The
Samsung Galaxy S5 is undoubtedly a top-of-the-line smartphone, and is priced
accordingly. The 16GB variant costs £579 SIM-free (without a mobile phone
contract), which is £279 more expensive than the Google Nexus 5, £49 more than
the HTC One M8 and £29 more than the Apple iPhone 5S.
Verdict:
decent – but not great
With
the Galaxy S5, Samsung has attempted to turn down the gimmicks and boost the
useful features. For the most part it has succeeded. The fingerprint scanner is
genuinely useful (as long as you get the setup orientation right), as is the
waterproofing, and the Ultra Power Saving Mode is fantastic.
The
camera is also solid, if not quite the best on the market at the moment – that
crown is still held by Nokia’s 1020 PureView.
It's
powerful, but lasts all day on a single charge without activating any power
modes. The screen is bright, crisp and colourful.
But
it's Samsung’s software, which is still not up to par with that from Apple, HTC
or standard Android, and the plastic build that lets it down. Both are
relatively subjective qualities, and some will be very happy with them, but
compared to its premium competition from the HTC One M8, iPhone 5S and Sony’s
new Xperia Z2 it feels and looks cheaper.
The 5.1in screen will also be too big for some people to
comfortably handle in one hand, and verges dangerously into phablet territory.
(Strictly, it is a phablet according to the definition
used by some research companies, where anything over 5in counts.)
Overall,
the Galaxy S5 is a solid Android smartphone – but isn’t quite as complete a
package between hardware and software as some of its competitors. Samsung fans
will undoubtedly love it; others might want to look elsewhere.
Pros: Powerful,
great power saving mode, useful fingerprint scanner, good camera, waterproof
Cons: Substandard
software, plastic construction, very big footprint, cheap fee
SOURCE : TheGuradian
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