Samsung has had a great start to 2014. First the Galaxy Note 3 Neo and now their flagship – the Galaxy S5. Samsung’s new poster boy has already received tremendous response in the short time that it launched. It already outsold Apple’s iPhone 5s in the US on the launch weekend. This is quite an achievement given how the US has been Apple’s proving ground for the longest time. Not only that, the S5 alone now accounts for nearly one percent of all Android phones around the globe.
So what’s so special about the S5? Why is a plastic phone priced like the iPhone 5s such a huge hit?
Design and Build
The Samsung Galaxy S5 hasn’t changed much in terms of design from its predecessor. It’s a little broader around the edges and the bezel is not as thins as the S4, perhaps due to the waterproofing. In fact it looks a lot like Samsung’s Note 3 Neo from the front. Their love affair with polycarbonate and faux-chrome continues with the new flagship as well. The S5 looks ‘blingy’ but not in a very pleasing way. If you kept this alongside Samsung’s budget offerings, it would be hard to tell it apart from the lot.
Good build but not so sure about the looks
Having said that, the S5 is built well and there isn’t any flex or creaking plastic even when you apply pressure. The side bezel damages easily however but luckily, does a good job of absorbing the shock and protecting the display.
USB 3.0 for good measure
We have the usual assortment of ports all around, including the IR blaster on the top and a flap-covered USB 3.0 port at the bottom.
The waterproof seal around the back
The rear cover is removable and instead of the faux-leather finish, we have water-repellent texture instead. The new surface is very easy to maintain as it doesn’t attract fingerprints or grime at all. In addition, you also get much better grip which is a nice upgrade from the S4.
The brand new 16MP ISOCELL camera
On the top, we have Samsung’s in-house developed 16MP ISOCELL camera. We already had a taste of it during out shootout with the Gionee Elife E7’s 16MP BSI 2 sensor and were quite impressed with the results. More on that later though. Below, is the LED flash accompanied by the heart rate monitor.
Then fingerprint scanner works well most of the time
The S5 also gets a finger print scanner in the front which can be used for unlocking your phone and other logins.
The heartrate monitor doing its thing
Features
While not much has changed on the surface, there’s a whole lot going on under the hood. TouchWiz gets a much needed overhaul and looks more grown up. Samsung has gone with a flattened theme for the icon set and menus, which we thought was really nice. You have to brace yourself when going into settings however as there’s an overwhelming amount of options. This can be sorted by list view or grid view, neither of which makes it any easier to find what you’re looking for.
A fresh new look
There are certain changes to the layout as well. Samsung’s ‘My Magazine’ app, now pulls out from the side instead of the bottom. There’s a new gesture as well which lets switches the entire OS in windowed mode. This can be resized so making it easier to use with one hand. The new ‘Toolbox’ feature lets access frequently used apps no matter which app you’re in. You can now choose to let videos open automatically in Multi Window mode. The trouble here is that there’s no easy way to switch to full screen directly through this method.
Some new tricks for the S5
Samsung has also added Private Mode, which lets you hide any file on your phone. This is a very handy addition which lets you keep your personal files private from nosy friends. You can view your private files through the File Manager. The rest of the features that debuted with the S4 also make an appearance here, such as the auto-pausing and auto-scrolling features.
Private mode is a handy addition
The S5 also gets its first ever fingerprint scanner and heart rate monitor built-in. The former can be set up to recognise three fingers, which could be yours or even your family members. After having registered both my thumbs successfully, I noticed that the phone had no trouble recognising my right thumb but the left was a hit or miss situation. You also need to swipe your finger just right, else it won’t work.
Now there’s really no excuse to not exercise
The heart rate monitor works in conjunction with the S Health app and is useful if you’re paranoid about staying healthy. It works well and you can do a lot more with the app like track your diet, check how many calories you’ve burnt, etc.
If wouldn’t be a Samsung phone without the occasional crashes and sadly, the S5 is no stranger to this. Despite being on KitKat 4.4.2, the S5 will lag intermittently and at times crawl to a halt, forcing you to restart the phone. We noticed this couple of times when listening to music. The song would just pause itself and OS would simply stop responding.
Water and dust? No problem at all
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is also dust and water resistant thanks to the IP67 certification. This means you can take the S5 for swim up to 1m without any issues. The coating on the display and the back gives the phone a duckback surface which allows the water to form beads and roll right off.
Stellar performance in benchmarks
The Indian version of the Galaxy S5 (SM-G900H) is powered by the Exynos 5 Octa 5422 SoC. This consists of the four Cortex-A7 CPUs running at 1.3GHz and four Cortex-A15 CPUs running at 1.9GHz. Thanks to the new heterogeneous multi-processing like we saw on the Note 3 Neo, all four cores can be active at the same time. This lets the S5 distribute the work load across all cores so they never have to run at very high frequencies when gaming or even shooting 4K. This in turn also reduces the amount of heat generated which explains why the S5 only gets a bit warm even during the most strenuous of activities.
The S5 could have really done with 3GB of RAM
If we have a bone to pick, it would be the amount of RAM used. We don’t understand why Samsung wouldn’t use 3GB of RAM when last year’s Note 3 had it. 2GB is simply too little when you have a bloated skin like TouchWiz running. At any given point, there’s just 500MB of RAM that’s free for apps to use. The rest is being used by Samsung and Google services. This could explain the intermittent crashes and slow downs.
The 5.1-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display is nothing short of stunning. Images and text are sharp and vivid and the S5 also exhibits very good sunlight legibility.
Media
Media playback is excellent as always. The new skin for the music player is slick and minimalistic. Samsung has also added some fun animations when you flick through the album art of your tracks. You get the usual suite of sound enhancements like SoundAlive, Adapt Sound and Smart Volume. The music player also display’s a full screen album art on the lock screen, which is pretty cool.
Music playback is very good as always
The video player can now playback 4K content as well in addition to the wide array of codecs. The ‘Devices’ tab allows you to easily stream video from your home network as well, right within the app. The S5 has a tight knit integration with Dropbox so you can pick and choose which Dropbox videos or pictures show up in the player or the gallery.
4K video support FTW!
Speaking of the gallery, the new redesigned app is really good. Apart from sorting your pictures by album and time, you can also filter it to show you images of people, scenery, documents, food, pets, vehicles or flowers. Samsung automatically sorts all your pictures in the right category, without you needing to tag anything. This works surprisingly well and is quite accurate almost all the time.
Connectivity
The S5 supports USB OTG
Camera
The new camera UI is pretty slick
The new interface looks neater and we have some new additions to some familiar features. For starters there’s the new live HDR mode and selective focus, both of which work extremely well. You also get 4K video recording, slow motion video and my favourite, smooth motion. The latter captures 1080p video at 60fps which is quite stunning to say the least.
Specifications
Display
| Form Factor | Bar |
|---|---|
| Screen Type | Super AMOLED Capacitive Touchscreen |
| Screen Size | 5.1 inches |
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Number of Colours | 16M |
Processor
| Processor | Quad Core |
|---|---|
| Speed | 1.9 GHz + 1.3 GHz |
Memory
| Internal Memory | 16GB, 2GB RAM |
|---|---|
| Extendable Memory | microSD, up to 64GB |
Camera Features
| Sensor Resolution | 16MP |
|---|---|
| Video resolution / frame rate | 1080p / 30fps |
| Video Recording | Yes |
| Front facing camera | 2MP |
General Features
| OS | Android |
|---|---|
| Version | 4.4.2 (Kitkat) |
| Bluetooth Features | 4.0(LE) |
| Messaging | SMS, MMS, Email |
| USB Connector | Yes |
| NFC | Yes |
| Available Colours | White, Black |
Carrier Networks
| 2G | GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz |
|---|---|
| 3G | HSDPA 2100 MHz |
| 4G | Yes |
| Speed | HSPA+ 42Mbps |
Data
| GPRS | Yes |
|---|---|
| EGPRS or EDGE | EDGE |
| WiFi | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac |
Body
| Dimensions | 72.5 x 8.1 x 142 mm |
|---|---|
| Weight(grams) | 145 |
Sound
| Media Player | Music formats: P3, M4A, 3GA, AAC, OGG, OGA, WAV, WMA, AMR, AWB, FLAC, MID, MIDI, XMF, MXMF, IMY, RTTTL, RTX, OTA - Video formats: MP4, M4V, 3GP, 3G2, WMV, ASF, AVI, FLV, MKV, WEBM |
|---|---|
| Speakerphone | Yes |
| Audio connector | 3.5mm |
Battery
| Type | Li-Ion |
|---|---|
| Capacity(mAh) | 2800 |
Miscellaneous Features
| Built in Applications | Chrome - Drive - Photos - Gmail - Google+ - Google Settings - Hangouts - Maps - Play Books - Play Games - Play Newsstand - Play Movie & TV - Play Music - Play Store - Voice Search - YouTube |
|---|
After Sales Service
| Warranty Period | 1 Year |
|---|
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