SAMSUNG GALAXY S5

The Samsung Galaxy S5 can be defined by one word: evolution.

The camera has evolved to give clearer, faster snaps. The fitness-tracking abilities of the S5 are enhanced over the Galaxy S4 by packing in a more powerful S Health app and a dedicated heart rate monitor on the rear. A fingerprint scanner adds to the most secure Galaxy phone ever made.

The battery is larger, the screen bigger and brighter, the processor quicker and the design altered.

The spec sheet certainly doesn't let it down: a 2.5GHz quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 2800mAh (removable) battery, 16 / 32GB of memory (with up to 128GB extra through microSD), one of the world's most vibrant screens that's been extended to 5.1-inches and added biometrics.

UI

The interface on the Samsung Galaxy S5 is improved quite a lot over the S4 and previous iterations of the Galaxy family.

This is mostly do with the new circular icons and geometric layout allowing everything to look a bit more premium and fluid - you could argue that it's relying a little less on skeumorphism, but then that would insinuate that it's trying to look like Apple again, which I don't think Samsung is trying to do here.

The animation transitions between homescreens is a little slow still, as the pages stack on top of one another, but it's a negligible wait.

The notifications area is one of the places that have been tweaked quite heavily, as it's now got that circular font that I mentioned, and looks a lot nicer.

The settings menu is the same, and has been divided up into better sections to get to where you want more easily, although this does take some getting used to if you're already familiar with Android.

BATTERY

I'm just going to come out and say it: battery life on the Samsung Galaxy S5 is excellent. If you don't want to read on, I won't blame you.

The reasons that it has improved are two-fold: one, you've now got a larger 2800mAh battery pack, which obviously extends the life of the device day to day. Two, you've also got the snappy Snapdragon 801 processor kicking things along under the hood, making everything more efficient and keeping your battery life from draining away.

On top of that, the screen is also much more efficient at the same brightness as the Samsung Galaxy S4 - which was itself no slouch when it came to keeping your power locked away tightly.

CAMERA

The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S5 is one of the more powerful on the market, featuring an Isocell unit that offers up 16MP snaps.

There are a whole host of other features here as well that a lot of people will like: real time HDR mode lets you see how your photo can be enhanced before shooting, for instance.

But the big thing that Samsung's touting is the speedy autofocus, which can manage to work out the image sharpness in up to 0.3seconds.

MEDIA

Samsung's not got the same hardware as HTC or Apple in terms of dedicated amplification of the sound output, meaning your headphones have to work less hard to output noise to your ears.

Samsung Galaxy S5 review

That said, the volume on the Galaxy S5 is such that I'd be surprised if there's not something similar, even on the software side, working hard to compensate.

The output, especially when combined with a decent pair of headphones, is excellent. I could make out every note and bass was punchy enough without being overbearing.

The Samsung Galaxy range has historically always been one of the best for watching movies on. Every year the Note comes out, makes things even better, and the following S version appears to make that a more mainstream technology.The gaming experience on the Galaxy S5 should be excellent, but as I said earlier (starting to worry I'm repeating myself a little) the higher-power games seem to struggle at times.

Clearing out the cache by restarting the phone seems to remove the problem somewhat, and if you're only going to be a casual gamer, the S5 has that lovely large screen is the best place to check it out on.

But beware of pushing the GPU, especially just out of sleep mode, as the experience can be marred by low frame rates.

Samsung's continued with its trick of letting you see content from Picasa / Google+, Facebook and Dropbox from the gallery, and this sadly seems to slow things down badly as well as filling up the internal storage.

CONCLUSION

For

·         Amazing screen

·         Great battery life

·         Hugely powerful

Against

·         Creaky design

·         Unnecessary heart rate monitor

·         Slow background de-focus

Powerful, competent and with a whole new UI, it's a shame that Samsung hasn't progressed further with the look of its new challenger.

-Vandhiyadevan