One of the biggest smartphone launches of 2014.
It's the brand new flagship from Samsung!
The Samsung S5!
This the variant from Sprint, the nation's third largest wireless provider, with the
model number SM-G900P.
I'm Muwen360.
Let's get into the review.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the latest phone from Samsung.
It succeeds the S4 to become Samsung's new flagship device.
You can get this from Sprint for $199 with a 2 year contract or $649 unlocked.
The biggest shocker that a lot of people had with the S5 when it was first announced, was
the material they chose for the back of the phone.
It's this soft-touch matte finish with many little dimples on the back.
And a lot of people thought it was ugly and unnecessary so on and so forth.
But in reality, at least from a person that played around with the phone, I can tell you
that the material on the back is a real pleasure to hold.
Granted it might not be as pretty as the HTC One M8 or the iPhone 5S, but the back of the
phone on the S5 serves a great purpose.
First of all, it rejects fingerprints extremely well when you compare it to previous phones
from Samsung that had that glossy finish on the back.
My favorite part about the back is that it's very easy to grip and hold the phone with
those little dimples because they really allow your fingers to have good traction to hold
the phone.
Plus, just the nature of that soft-touch matte finish on the back makes it really comfortable
to hold it the hand which is another thing that I like.
Overall the design of the back really isn't as bad as some people say.
It might not the prettiest thing in the world but it works really well.
The design for the rest phone is very similar to the S4.
We've still got the fake metal ring around the phone and the tapered edges.
So very similar in terms of design between the S4 and the S5.
The GS5 is slightly bigger that the S4.
It measures to 5.59 inches tall by 2.85 inches wide by 0.32-inch thick.
So slightly heavier than the S4 due to the extra hardware but still very light to carry
around.
The home button just ever-so-slightly more capsule-shaped.
Also less clicky too in my opinion due to that fingerprint scanner which I'll explain
later.
And of course we still have the capacitive multi tasking and back keys.
The display of the S5 is an improvement over the S4.
It's got that full 1080p Super AMOLED® HD display.
1920x1080 resolution screen with a pixel density of 432 pixels per inch.
The screen is absolutely gorgeous.
One of the best phone displays on the market right now.
Images are extremely crisp and colorful, with good contrast.
Photos and videos look really great.
The display can get pretty bright and you also get a wide viewing angle which is really
nice.
I've also noticed that it's better at reducing glare as well.
External controls are where you expect them on a Samsung phone: power is on the right,
volume buttons on the left.
3.5 millimeter headphone jack up top, next to the IR blaster.
On the back, we have the new heart rate monitor that is integrated with the camera's LED flash.
The USB 3.0 charging port is a little different.
It now has a little flap door which you now need to peel open whenever you want to access
it.
It is a little annoying to do it every time you want to use it but it was necessary for
that IP67 certification for water and dust resistance.
The 6 means the phone can be completely submerged by water 3 feet for about 30 minutes.
The 7 means that it's completely resistant to all dust.
And also the back of the phone is removable and you do have access through that to the
lithium-ion battery.
For the user interface, the GS5 runs Android 4.4 KitKat with Samsung's own TouchWiz customizations.
In the GS5, you get a updated version of TouchWiz which is a huge improvement over previous
versions.
Samsung kind of tweaked it to freshen up its look and feel.
The icons are more modern and flat.
It also has less pre-loaded Samsung apps which is nice but there is still Sprint pre-installed
stuff though.
The interface does have the magazine screen carried over from the Galaxy Tab Pro line.
What it essentially does is give you a Flipboard style magazine which is fine for what it does.
But it might bother a lot of people like me that you can't get rid of the magazine screen
because it does get in the way sometimes.
The settings menu is updated and you get more sorting options so you can get access to the
setting you want faster.
So thumbs up to Samsung for doing that.
A pretty awesome feature they built into the S5 is the new multi-tasking capability.
It allows you to run two separate apps simultaneously to really boost your productivity.
Very cool and useful in a lot of situations and definitely worth checking out.
The Galaxy S5 is very fast and responsive thanks to its 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon
801 Quad-core processor with that Adreno 330 graphics.
Everything loads up really fast and definitely a high-performing phone as you would expect
it to be.
The camera on the Galaxy S5 is amazing.
I'd say it has one of the best cameras out there for a phone right now.
It has a 16 megapixel camera on the back that has auto focus with LED flash.
The front facing camera is a 2 megapixel camera.
Samsung has definitely improved in the camera department.
Photos that you take with the phone look really good.
Colors are rich and they really natural.
The camera does also have 4K ultra HD video recording capabilities.
You get a ton of settings and features in the
camera app which is also improved.
You can make tons of edits and quick adjustments to your pictures right in the app which is
very cool.
Overall, great camera for taking pictures and shooting pictures and if you're someone
that take a lot pictures with your phone, you're really going to like the camera on
the S5.
As for the battery life, it's got a decent sized 2,800 mill ampere battery.
The battery lasted around 10 hours for me with 4G, GPS on and some gaming and internet
browsing so it should get you through the day without any problem.
Alright so now I want to get into the two most hyped features of the Galaxy S5 and that
is number 1 the fingerprint scanner and number 2 the heart rate monitor.
So I'll first talk about the fingerprint scanner.
So the fingerprint scanner on the Galaxy S5 is probably inspired by the fingerprint print
scanner on the iPhone 5S and it works okay on the S5.
I mean it works and if you do it correctly, it will unlock your phone.
But it's not always accurate.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn't so the results you get will vary.
So the fingerprint scanner is cool and everything even though it doesn't work as well as the
one on iPhone 5S.
It's still valid choice if you want to have another way to secure and unlock your phone.
Next, the heart rate monitor is a new thing.
The Galaxy S5 is the first to have this feature.
You can access it through the S Health app and to use just put your finger on the sensor
located in the back of the phone and it measures heart rate.
It tells you your heart rate after 10, 15 seconds and that's basically what it does.
The heart rate monitor might be a great feature for people when their exercising to easily
know how fast their heart is beating.
So the uses are different for different people.
It's cool to have it but it's really not a feature that I think everybody could take
advantage of.
So overall the Samsung Galaxy S5 is basically with the exception of a few non essential
hardware and software additions -- like the fingerprint scanner and the heart-rate monitor
-- and a few design tweaks here and there, you're pretty much looking at the same phone
Samsung released last year, the Galaxy S4.
So the Galaxy S5 is really an evolutionary upgrade over the S4 and that is why a lot
people are calling it the Galaxy S4 Plus so I'd say if you have the S4 right now, I'd
say this is an upgrade you could skip and perhaps wait until year when Samsung hopefully
will release a more revolutionary Galaxy S6.
But you're someone that is in the market for a brand new phone to replace your old one,
this could be a great option for you.
It's got everything you would ever want in a smartphone, good camera, fast processor
and you really can't go wrong with the S5 in terms of performance.
So this will wrap up review of the Samsung Galaxy S5 and if you enjoyed this review,
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