Samsung Galaxy S5

Samsung is about to release their new rendition of the Galaxy line of phones, the S5.  Samsung went all out to launch the S3 back in the day and it was a true flagship phone for Samsung.  Its also the phone that converted many iPhone users over to Android; I personally know at 10 people who fit this.  Then the S4 last year wasn’t that much of a leap from the S3; the design of the phone changed and they added an IR blaster to it (wahooo!).  The new S5 is pretty much the same deal- no fancy launch and nothing that is mind blowing new.  However, it of course does have improved features.

A friend at work today asked me what I thought about the new S5 and then I realized that I really hadn’t looked much into this phone.  I know Samsung isn’t going all out on the marketing and launch of the phone and I’ve heard that there aren’t upgrades that are that amazing.  So, this was the perfect opportunity to look in this new phone and educate myself.

This is pretty much my 20 minute research of the new phone and mainly comparing it to the S4.

• The S5 does add a fingerprint scanner and a heart rate sensor
• The S5 is also claiming to be water and dust “resistant” (not water and dust proof)
• The S5 is slightly bigger; its 5.1 inch screen vs 5.0.
  • S4- 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm 130 grams
  • S5- 142 x 72.5 x 8.1mm 145 grams
• The screen quality is pretty much the same between them, both super AMOLED screens
• The S5 The S5 definitely does have a more powerful processor
  • S4- quad core 1.6 GHz cortex A15
  • 2.5 GHz quad core krait 400
• Both phones have 2GB of RAM
• S5 can expand up to 128GB through the SD card slot whereas the S4 goes up to 64GB
• S5 out of the box will come with kitkat and S4 will most likely come with jelly bean, but can be upgraded to jelly bean
• The camera of course is better on the S5 and probably has the biggest difference between the S4 and S5
  • S4- 13 MP with autofocus which is a pretty decent camera.  I’ve taken some awesome pics with my phone that has blown me away with quality.
  • S5- 16 MP with something Samsung is calling “phase” detection autofocus.  I just read up on it and it’s a different way the phone camera to focus.  It’s super-fast to focus and it being claimed as the world’s fastest auto focusing phone camera.  Here’s the short article I read about it: http://gizmodo.com/the-samsung-galaxy-s5s-killer-camera-feature-speed-1529922377
• Another thing about the camera is the S4 can record 1080p HD video and the S5 can record “Ultimate HD” also known as 4K.  I fell like this is not even something I’d ever use- I can only imagine how big the video files would be for this and once you record what on earth would/could I do with the video?  I don’t think youtube even supports this resolution yet.
• The S5 comes with a battery that is about 200 mAh bigger, which doesn’t make too much of a difference, but the processor in this phone is more efficient, so I battery should last noticeably longer in the S5.

I currently have the S4 and don’t plan at all to upgrade.  But if anyone is planning to upgrade just simply weigh your cost/benefits of all of your options.