Samsung Galaxy S5 Is the Upgrade You Can Skip

What's This?

By Pete Pachal2014-04-08 04:00:14 UTC

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is boring. While its competitors, Android flagships such as the HTC One M8 and Google Nexus 5, stake out their territory with a couple of standout features, the GS5 wants it all. Bells and whistles, however, don't necessarily add up to a great experience.

And Samsung pulled out plenty of bells and whistles. The smartphone, which goes on sale April 11 in the U.S. on every major wireless carrier, is notable for being the first mobile device to offer a heart-rate monitor. There's also a fingerprint sensor. The camera has a new, faster kind of autofocus. And it's waterproof! Pretty sweet, right?

It should be. However, with each supposedly standout feature, I couldn't help but think about how they didn't really make the phone stand out that well. Other phones have most of them, by and large with better execution. Those phones may not have specs that are quite as good, but they've got more flavor.

At 5.1 inches, the screen on the Galaxy S5 is just a bit larger than the S4. It packs a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with 2GB of RAM. The internal storage is 16GB, but you can supplement that with a microSD card. The rear camera snaps images at 16-megapixel resolution, and impressively, it can capture 4K (3,840 x 2,160) footage. The front camera is 2.1 megapixels.

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If setting up yet another smartphone sounds like a nightmare to you, you're in luck: Samsung makes it easy to get started via the Smart Switch app. It even works with iPhones by letting you log into your iCloud account to gather your Contacts, Calendar and email. And if there are Android equivalents of your apps, it'll download those, too.

Designing Right

The Galaxy S5 gets on your good side right away with a design that's simply outstanding. At 5.1 ounces and 0.32 inches thin, its size-to-mass ratio feels dead on. Although it's technically wider than the HTC One M8, it's easier to hold because it's so light.

The grooved metallic trim on the outside may look a little retro, but as a tactile experience, it makes a hell of a difference. Your fingers will almost always have a sure grip, which helps considerably when operating the phone with one hand. The plastic backside of the phone, which is removable, is nothing special, although the dotted pattern is a refreshing change from Samsung's recent design addiction to faux-leather trim.

The display is incredible. I say that with the caveat that the displays on all flagship Android phones today are incredible. They're all around 5 inches, and they all have full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080). Colors really pop on the Galaxy S5's Super AMOLED screen, although it tends to give whites a slightly bluish tinge.

Unlike many other Android manufacturers, Samsung opts for a home button on its Galaxy phone, and the S5 follows that pattern. It must because it needs the button for one of its marquee features: a fingerprint sensor.

Image: Mashable, Will Fenstermaker

Samsung's fingerprint sensor — the first time the company has offered the feature on a smartphone — is conceptually the same as the one on the iPhone 5S. You can store multiple fingerprints, and their primary purpose is to ease the oft-repeated task of unlocking your phone 30-odd times a day, potentially saving time and hassle.

On the iPhone 5S, this typically works fine since the sensor on the home button has a large enough surface area to catch a decent fingerprint no matter how you press it. Not so on the Galaxy S5: You need to slide your finger downwards over the button to activate it, similar to the sensor on the HTC One Max.

It sounds comparable, but it's night and day. I'd say the failure rate for my index finger and thumb was greater than 50%. The phone was constantly telling me to swipe slower, wipe the pad or simply that my digit wasn't a match for the prints stored. For my pinky finger, the failure rate was more like 90%. Once you hit five strikes, you're shunted to your alternative password, which is even harder to enter than a PIN.

Camera Trouble

Samsung worked hard on the GS5's camera. A good camera is one of the top features people look for in a smartphone, and manufacturers walk a fine line. Put in too many features, and users get flummoxed. Too few, and competitors will easily outdo you.

And there's a great camera on this device, but it's sometimes hard to unearth. Samsung gave the GS5 what may be the fastest autofocus in mobile at 0.3 seconds. However, you often won't be able to take advantage of it. If the light isn't great, and you don't tap to focus, the phone takes several seconds to actually take the photo, negating the autofocus advantage.

The camera UI has several irritations, as well. For starters, it takes awhile to launch the camera from the lock screen. Then, when you turn the phone to the left to take the shot (which I believe is the norm), the volume buttons, which serve as the physical shutter, are on the bottom. Finally, the UI doesn't respond in a way where it's clear you actually took the photo, an annoyance of many Android cameras.

Image: Mashable, Will Fenstermaker

If you like photos with bokeh — where your subject is in focus while the background is blurred to the extreme — you're in luck. The Galaxy S5 can simulate the effect with a software trick. After using it, however, I found the results lacking. The HTC One M8, with its Duo Camera, does a much better job creating bokeh, although the pics are lower resolution. Also, because the HTC creates the effect with a depth sensor, it's available on every pic; on the S5, you have to choose the feature before you shoot.

For the S5's camera, Samsung pared down the number of Smart modes — presets for things such as portraits and panoramas — with more available for download. It's a step in the right direction, but misguided.

The problem wasn't just sheer numbers; it's one of overall approach. If you take one look at the settings screen in the camera, you see it clearly. There are more than 20 adjustments you can make, all democratically laid out in a grid. I expect the usual reaction will be to take one look at it, and vow never to return.

One camera feature that's fantastic — with no qualification — is the real-time HDR mode. Most smartphone cameras can shoot with HDR (high dynamic range), which snaps multiple shots of the same scene with varying exposure and combines them. However, there's no way to know if HDR will actually improve the photo … unless you're using the Galaxy S5. With HDR preview engaged, you can see what you're getting before you snap. Much appreciated.

Feature Creep

Samsung thankfully has rolled back its typical bloatware; you won't find apps and widgets for the Samsung hub pre-installed on the Galaxy S5. You will, however, find widgets that serve as gateways to downloading certain Samsung apps, as well as some apps from their partners. And there are still certainly a few pre-loaded apps, the most notable being S Health.

S Health is more than just Samsung's bid to get in on the fitness-tracking movement. I mean, it's definitely that, but it's not a half-assed bid. S Health, which actually debuted in the Galaxy S4, serves as a central hub for fitness data, communicating with any Gear smartwatches you may have. Even if you don't have a wearable, S Health can track your steps via the built-in pedometer. That's 50% of what your Jawbone UP does right there.

Part of S Health is the famed heart-rate monitor. Samsung got lots of attention for being the first to put such a sensor in a smartphone, and it should: The monitor works very well. You need to master the art of pressing firmly yet gently for it to work, but having a spot check of your heartbeat anytime you want is nice to have, even if the number of situations where you'd need it is pretty limited. In any case, now developers are free to think up some more.

Image: Mashable, Will Fenstermaker

Samsung is in love with a feature borrowed from its tablets called My Magazine. It's essentially a clone of HTC's BlinkFeed, which is itself a clone of Flipboard. You swipe to the right from your home screen to see My Magazine, which is basically a scrollable list of visual updates from various sources you specify, mixed with some of your social feeds.

Here, once again, I find the Samsung experience inferior to the HTC's. My Magazine only shows a dozen or so updates before the scroll ends — a strange limitation given today's ever-scrolling default on most services. More disappointing is that the overall mix between news and social updates just seems a little off. I hardly ever saw anything worth checking out in My Magazine, which is strange because Flipboard actually makes it.

If you've ever had your phone die on you, the Galaxy S5's Ultra Power Saving mode will have you breathing a little easier. When engaged, your phone will only work with calls and text messages, and the screen goes black and white. A few minutes of battery will last for hours when the phone is in Ultra Power Saving mode. It's a great idea — I just wish Samsung thought to add manually pulled email to the list of communications allowed.

Arguably the best new feature in the Galaxy S5 is the download booster. When it's turned on, the phone is able to use both its Wi-Fi and LTE connections to speed up downloading of large files. That's potentially very useful for transferring, say, video files from a cloud service. Unfortunately, the feature needs to be carrier-enabled, and we weren't able to test it prior to launch. We'll examine the GS5's download booster in a future story.

One thing you'll be reminded of every time you recharge the Galaxy S5 is that it's waterproof. That's because you'll need to pull off the tiny flap over the microUSB port (3.0, by the way) in order to connect the cable. The GS5 is rated to withstand 3 feet of depth for up to 30 minutes. Like the Ultra Power Saving mode, it's not a feature you'll use much, but you'll be glad it's there when you do.

Not the Sum of Its Parts

I was surprised that the Samsung Galaxy S5 disappointed me. I found the Galaxy Note 3 to be an awesome phone, with such a clarity of purpose that its productivity-focused audience of power users couldn't not love it.

But the S5 is a different animal, with a different customer in mind. The mainstream is more fickle, and it cares more about intangibles like "feel" and everyday features like the camera. On that score, the Galaxy S5 doesn't fall on its face, but it doesn't excel either.

Let's face it: There are a lot of great Android phones out there. While the GS5 is a well-performing device (and benchmarks, courtesy of AnandTech, confirm this), it's hurt by Samsung's jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none approach. Phones such as the Nexus 5 and HTC One win loyalty by excelling at one or two standout features.

The Galaxy S5, on the other hand, tries to power through on sheer quantity of features rather than quality. That may work with the Galaxy S III crowd who are looking to upgrade, anyway. But for the rest of us … well, you can try again next year, Samsung.

Product Name

The Good

Great design • Fast autofocus in good light • Can preview HDR photos in real time • Waterproof!

The Bad

Clunky camera UI • Unreliable fingerprint sensor • Individual features inferior to those of competitors

The Bottom Line

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is a well-performing smartphone, but its standout features ultimately don't add up to much.

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Topics: Android, galaxy s5, Mobile, samsung, Samsung Galaxy S5, Tech

Image: Mashable, Will Fenstermaker