The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the latest challenger from the South Korean
brand to launch into an ever more crowded market, but at least this time
the phone has focused on what users might actually want rather than useless gimmicks. The
Galaxy S4 was a strong phone in spite of the insistence that being able
to wave your hands over a phone or scroll with your eyes was a good
thing. The Galaxy S5 takes the DNA of that handset and improves on
it in most areas. It's a quiet improvement though, which may disappoint
a lot of people looking to see the world's highest-res display and an
all new metal chassis, but it's one that at least delivers where
consumers need it.
If
you're looking for a phone that reinvents the smartphone again, in the
same way the Samsung Galaxy S2, HTC Desire or iPhone 4 managed, you're
going to be rather disappointed with what's on offer from South Korea.However,
if you're after a better camera, a brighter screen, a faster processor
and a more solid design, then the Galaxy S5 will mostly deliver all
you'd be looking for.
The
company explained to me what it considered to be the core tenets it
stuck to when creating the Galaxy S5, and they show a renewed focus over
the predecessor: a better camera, faster connectivity for web browsing,
personal fitness tracking, protection, and a 'modern and glam' look
(its words, not mine).
Design
It's actually a little
redundant to talk about all the technology inside a phone before dealing
with the key question: does it look attractive? Yes and no. You
can't call it ugly, because Samsung does know how to put a phone
together well. But at the same time it's the same tired story on the
design front: taking some elements from the predecessor, adding in some
bits from the current Note and calling it all new.
The
'metal' surround is almost identical to the Note 3, to the point I was
looking for an S Pen to start poking out. But the back is the main
change, and I'd go as far as saying it's lovely. No more shiny
plastic or laughable attempts to make it look like a leather notebook –
while it is still plastic, it's a lot more grippable and feels a lot,
lot nicer in the hand.
The
overall construction is again more solid, but the device is markedly
bigger compared to the Galaxy S3 and S4. There's a lot more Note DNA in
the Galaxy S5 than ever before, that's for sure.In fact, the
design of the Galaxy S5 is one that evokes the S2 more than anything
else, as it's more rectangular in shape. It's certainly a departure from
the 'inspired by a blade of grass' creation of the S3.
But
the main thing to answer is how it feels in the hand – and the good
news is it feels solid, well made and less cheap than ever. Samsung will
have disappointed many by not releasing a full metal version, and it's
true that this isn't what I was hoping to see, but it's more than
adequate.The other big deal is that the Samsung Galaxy S5 is
waterproof and dustproof to an IP67 rating, which means it's almost
completely resistant to dust and waterproof to a depth of 1m for 30
minutes – more than enough time to fish it out when thrown down a
toilet.
Yes,
it's not a new trick, but the only port cover on show is the one
holding the USB 3.0 socket closed – it's got a nice lip to it as well so
it's very easy to open.What's more impressive is that this phone
still packs a removable cover and battery – while yes, it is a really
fiddly cover to clip back on, to be able to access the power pack and
microSD card slot is a really good move.
The only worry I've got, and it's a fairly big one here, is that the cover will show small gaps if you've not got it absolutely flush
to the back and totally clipped in. It's very easy to miss a clip,
which could make things a trifle wet if you throw it in a pint to
impress friends.
Screen
With the screen on the Galaxy S5,
once again Samsung was a victim of its own hype. We were all expecting a
grand step forward, the first manufacturer to bring a 2K screen to the
masses. But it's just a Full HD Super AMOLED version, one that's
actually a little less sharp in theory than before as it's now 5.1-
rather than 5-inches, meaning it's down from a 441ppi to 415ppi on the
new version. It's not massive, but it is a drop when we were expecting something higher-res.
Ever
since the Galaxy S2, Samsung has been faced with an impossible task:
make its smartphones so great that they blow the world's collective mind
time and again.Since that phone, one of the handsets that like
the HTC Desire and the iPhone 4 changed the expectation levels of the
phone buying public, it's hard to say that it's come close to managing
the same feat again.
The
display shouldn't be sniffed at though. It's sharp, clear, and when
placed next to the S4 is clearly a step forward in terms of Super AMOLED
technology. Although Samsung wouldn't confirm it to me, I'd guess that
there are more full pixels stuck in there – the colour reproduction was a
step forward again, and movies looked so much better again.
Interface
Like
the 2K display we were expecting big things from the new UI on the
Samsung Galaxy S5, and there has at least been a bigger jump forward
here. The notifications bar is the biggest change that I could
see, with the whole area looking a lot different to the standard version
Samsung has employed with TouchWiz over the years.
There
are now quick links to the likes of S Finder and Quick Connect, which
allow you to theoretically move through the phone at greater speed.The
former is the same thing as Google Search, it seems, with more
information drawn in from the web. It's the kind of thing you'd need to
spend more time with to see if it fits in with your lifestyle, as it
could either be a really quick way of flicking around or a waste of
valuable screen space.
Quick
Connect seems to make a little more sense, as it takes the best of
things like AirDrop and AirPlay from Apple and moves them all into one
place. You can also DLNA stream from here, and makes the Galaxy S5 a
really connected hub of the home.The
settings button seems to have gone a bit mad though – now there's a
massive long list of all the settings options (under the guise of being
quick) but there appeared to be a number of repeated items here –
definitely one to dig into further with the full review.
Fingerprint scanner
I'll
be honest, I wasn't expecting Samsung to bring a fingerprint scanner to
the mix for the Galaxy S5, as there were few signs that it had nailed
the technology just yet. In terms of what we've actually been
given, it's a middling effort. On the one hand, the scanner is actually
pretty accurate and gives an added level of security. On the other, you
still have to wake the phone by pressing the home or power button before
you can scan, which adds an extra step that Apple doesn't make you go
through.
The
action can be misinterpreted, as it's a straight scan down from the
screen to the bottom of the home key, although I noticed its accuracy
was pretty good right from the start.It's a few steps behind Apple's decent integration of TouchID in the iPhone 5S, but miles ahead of the finger-based abomination on the back of the HTC One Max.
Couple
that with the work Samsung has done to sign a deal with PayPal to offer
payment security, and you can see why I'm pretty excited about this
option.The TouchID payment security extends only to iTunes
purchases, so being able to shop the web and pay for stuff with your
digit is truly forward-thinking.
I just hope it's not a subset of shops that can recognise you're on a Galaxy S5 with the ability to perform this task.
Camera
The
camera on the Samsung Galaxy S5 is probably one of the most improved
elements of the handset, and that's not because it's leapt forward to a
16MP sensor. The megapixel count these days is largely irrelevant,
but the hardware's ability to process and take pictures should be
considered a much larger part, and Samsung has managed that well.
On
the Galaxy S5 you've got a super fast autofocus that Samsung reckons
can capture a photo in around 0.3second. We didn't have any fast running
dogs to test this with, but every photo we took whirling the phone
around seemed to come out largely blur free.The other big news is
real time HDR, which can give you a visual representation of what your
picture will look like when high dynamic range is applied before
pressing the shutter button. It works really well, and while there's a
relatively high amount of graining present, the end result compared to
the setting being turned off is huge.
Oh, and of course there's Selective Focus, which allows you to alter the focus of the shot after it's taken.This
looks like it's going to be big news in smartphones this year, but it
looks a lot like a gimmick to me if the S5 is anything to go by, which
is a shame when it's such a tough task for the phone to process.
You
have to activate the mode specially, and then hope for a scene with
movement in the background and a static object to focus on. Only then
will you be able to press the shutter button and wait up to ten seconds
for the Galaxy S5 to give you the option to move between different
levels of focus in the shot.It's something that could be an
amazing feature if it was there as standard, but it's too convoluted to
be anything other than an interesting feature to show friends down the
pub.
Fitness tech
One of the key pillars of the Samsung
Galaxy S5 is the fitness technology that's contained within it - and
while it's going to be a big part of the phone's marketing, as well as a
popular topic for all technology firms in the next year, it's not a
standout feature. S Health was something of damp squib on the
Galaxy S4, and while S Health 3.0 on the S5 is a much better app,
there's still not enough there to influence the buying decision. The
Galaxy S5 has a heart rate sensor, but that's under the flash of the
camera and requires you to hold your finger on it for a few seconds to
get a reading of your pulse.
Once
that's logged you can see how your health is improving over time as
your resting heart rate drops, but because it requires you to place your
finger in a certain way each day it's not a passive system, which these
things need to be.The
ability to track your calories in and out is also cool and helpful, but
only if it's used properly. The only way to make this a successful
system is to be completely devoted to it, and in reality things like the
Gear Fit are a much better idea as they're always tracking for you.
Will it be a success?
Of
course it will. This is Samsung we're talking about, and the
unstoppable marketing machine means it could rebadge a carrot with a
shiny screen and it would still get modest sales. But that would
do a disservice to this phone. The Galaxy S5 is the result of a company
going back to the drawing board, scrapping the pointless gimmicks that
so infuriated on the Galaxy S4 and bringing out a smartphone based on
the tenets it reckons users really want.
And,
to a degree, it's succeeded. The camera is much better, although
refocus is something of a gimmick, and the overall construction is
improved. There's part of me that's sorely disappointed that it doesn't
have a 2K screen, but that would have killed battery life and been a
marketing tool only.The battery life looks to be pretty good -
the 2800mAh battery is a little on the low side, but if the extra
features work to extend the life by turning off unnecessary elements,
then that will at least get you through the day comfortably. What
Samsung has produced is a phone that's devoid of any standout feature,
an incremental update that's played it safe in order to make the the
whole greater than the sum of the parts.
That's
not necessarily a bad thing; nearly every part of the phone, from the
UI to the camera to the battery life, has been enhanced in some way,
making it a much better phone than the S4, but definitely not one you'd
break your contract to upgrade to.The problem perhaps isn't
Samsung's, more the wider smartphone world: I've heard the word plateau
bandied about a few times when discussing how phone power and innovation
is increasing, and it's hard to point to where Samsung should have
improved dramatically and hasn't.
But
when a company with the scale and resources of Samsung makes a new
phone, it should make a huge splash, and for the last couple of years it
hasn't managed that.
Early verdict
If you read the few
paragraphs above, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Samsung Galaxy
S5 is a boring phone. It very much isn't - it's got lots of elements
that users can dig into - but if you were hoping for something that
provides a bar for the rest of the competition to aspire to, you'll be
left wanting. The Galaxy S5 has a great camera, strong screen,
impressive packaging, a waterproof casing and a blazingly fast engine
pumping things along. But it doesn't have an amazing camera,
incredibly battery life, stunning design or genuinely innovative
feature, and that cause a few people to wait and see what the
competition brings before deciding that this (likely pretty pricey)
handset is for them.
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