Samsung Galaxy s5

The Samsung galaxy s5 the successor to the Samsung Galaxy s4 is evolutionary. The screen is bigger and brighter ,the camera is faster and clicks better pictures ,the processor which is a 2.5 GHz quad core CPU is quite impressive and is complimented by a 2GB RAM and a 5.1 inch vibrant screen with a 2800 mAh removable battery. But with competition from the likes of iPhone 6 and the HTC M8 there's nothing that makes the phone stand out, except the plastic body. But it wouldn't matter to many as Samsung has made a fan base which only Apple can rival. Samsung claims that this phone has been designed keeping in mind the demands of the customers. Keeping all that aside Samsung has put all the latest specs under the hood and optimized them for superior battery performance.

Design

When it comes to Samsung, design is always an issue. Since the famous Galaxy s2 Samsung has used a lot of plastic or should I say only plastic in this line up. The failure to come up with a new material to build its phones, things are not looking very good in the design department. Be it HTC, Sony or Apple all these brands use metal in their flagship phones. With consumers asking for a metal chassis the only reasonable explanation is that Samsung is trying to cut manufacturing costs. The Galaxy s5 is water resistant and dust proof. The phone feels good in the hands and provides a better grip. Though it takes no expert to figure out that s5 has the same lineage as the s3. The white colored s5 gives a medical feel but the blue and copper options are better looking but comes nowhere near to the HTC M8 or the iPhone 6. The center button in the phone is wider than before and yes the phone comes with capacitive touch buttons. The phone has a removable battery, one of the very few out there among the high end phones. Its way more convenient you don't need some special key to remove the Sim card and it always comes handy when you can remove the battery. Galaxy s5 is light weight and hard-wearing. Samsung could do so much more in this area but it can always make improvements with the Galaxy s6 or the s5 prime.

Performance

The Galaxy s5 is powered by a 2.5 GHz Qualcom Snapdragon 801 processor with 2 GB RAM. This is one the best processor in the market and on paper it all looks perfect but when you use the device it’s totally different. The transitions from one screen to another are slow you will barely have to wait but you will acknowledge the lag. Let alone playing games like Real Racing 3 or Dead Trigger the phone stuttered and crashed on apps like Facebook and Swiftkey .The camera takes ages to start not to mention that if you have cloud storage the gallery takes forever to open. But recently the software got an update and now things look better from the time of the launch.

Camera

The Galaxy s5 features a 16MP primary camera .The camera comes with whole lot of features like real time HDR, quick autofocus and selective focus. Real time HDR is a feature that will show you in real time how your picture will be enhanced which is amazing ,generally you have to click the picture and wait for a good 10 seconds for the phone to process the picture and then you get to see it. The speedy autofocus is lightning fast, it can manage to bring out the brightness of the image in about 0.3 seconds though sometimes its not that accurate and the image is blurry but that can be fixed by a tap on the screen. Selective focus is something of a mixed bag. On one hand, it can work in macro mode, which means you can take some close up shots and have the background blur out, which is what you'd want. On the other hand, too often it would tell me that it couldn't work out what I was taking a picture of, so the picture couldn't be altered after the snap. It's one of the few devices in the market which is capable of 4k recording. Though we could do without this feature for a year or two. As it occupies a lot of space regardless of how it looks.

Battery

You simply can't compete with the Galaxy s5 when it comes to the battery life. The 2800 mah battery has done wonders for the phone and the Snapdragon 801 processor was designed for making things more efficient in the phone. To top it all the display is very efficient even when the brightness is increased. The two power saving modes Ultra and normal both work well enough - with normal power saving mode coming with the ability to turn your screen black and white too, meaning you won't need to worry as much about the drain. The phone in this department beats all its competitors like the HTC M8, Lg G3 and the iPhone 6.

The New Things

The S Health 3.0 is a great upgrade. It clubs all the important aspects of your day to day activity that can help you live a healthy life. The big hitter for S Health this year on the Galaxy S5 is the new heart rate monitor on the back of the phone, just under the camera and giving you easy access to your pulse rate whenever you fancy it.

So S Health is a great app for those that have a medical condition and require non-exact read outs. But for people without such conditions it’s just something to show off.

The phone has the second best fingerprint scanner in the market. As apple got it right the 1st time and is still more accurate than the s5. The placement of the scanner is very intuitive and helpful. The good news is that you can swipe a thumb sideways across and still have things work, but the accuracy is lower. Only about one in seven or eight attempts would see me able to open the phone first time, and if your hand is slightly askew then you'll hit the maximum of five attempts pretty easily.

Download Booster –
one of the best ways to destroy your data allowance if you leave it turned on. I'm joking, as it's not going to harm you that much unless you've got a tiny 3G data cap. The premise is simple and it works: you have 3G but are connected to Wi-Fi and you want to download a file from the magically cloud-based world of the internet. Instead of just using the speed of one, their powers are combined to create a super speed.

Conclusion

Samsung has done enough with the Galaxy S5 to still be a decent smartphone of 2014, and I would still recommend it as a solid, if unspectacular, smartphone that ticks the boxes it needs to and very little more. It initially squeaked in as a great phone, largely due to the fact that it's got an excellent screen, great battery and high-end specs combined with a strong camera - but now there are plenty of other options ahead of it from Sony, HTC, LG and Apple.