Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Samsung Galaxy S5 Review!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here – and this is the samsung galaxy s5, so right off the bat we can see. This phone looks really similar to the galaxy s4 from last year. It has upgraded specs inside, of course, which are virtually identical to the one m8, except for one or two things, but it keeps a very similar design to the galaxy s4, though it is a little bit bigger now to fit that 5.1 inch 1080p display and slightly Bigger bezels so awkwardly enough, one of the biggest complaints with the new design is about the backing which a lot of people aren’t a fan of. I mean i called it. I call the gold version of this phone – the band-aid edition, but basically it has all these little dimples across the back of this soft touch.
Material turns out. This is easier to grip and hold in the hand than the slippery metal of the htc one m8. So while the m8 might be a little bit heavier and made entirely of metal, the s5 is easier to hold because it’s lighter and the button placement is much better. You got the power button on the side now, so you don’t have to shimmy your hand and it has actual sides to grip, even though those sides are made of samsung’s fake metal, oh and the back happens to still be removable, so you get not only micro, Sd card expansion up to 128 extra gigabytes, but you also get access to that 2800 milliamp hour battery and something you might notice while taking that back off.
Is this seal all the way around the inside of the cover of this phone? This is to make the internals or the whole phone ip67 certified, so ip67, the six means totally protected against dust and the seven means water resistant for limited periods of time, which is useful to some people, but you’ll notice. The seal does not go over the speaker, which sounds alright, but it maxes out pretty low in volume compared to the htc one. But i guess you know everything is quiet compared to the one. So the full video comparison between the s5 and the one are coming soon, but bottom line is this thing, is water resistant and a lot of people are gon na like that, but also to protect the phone from dust and water they needed to add.
Probably my biggest gripe with the design of the entire phone, this freaking flap at the bottom – that you have to pry off every time you want access to the usb port. Every time you want to charge it. That means you can’t use any battery cases, because you have to pry that thing out the way, all the time it just gets in the way when you’re plugged in and to top it all off.
Every time you unplug the phone from the wall. It reminds you to close the flap every single time bottom line, i’m not a fan of the flap, although i guess it is necessary to keep that certification, but other than that. This is really a familiar design for anyone.
Who’S used previous galaxy devices, especially the galaxy s4 and you’ll notice. They’Ve changed the capacitive buttons up front. So now, really the only face change besides the bigger bezels. Is you have that multitasking button and back button? So you can hold down the multitasking button to act as a mini button and right between those capacitive buttons.
Is the fingerprint sensor slash home button, i’m basically going to cover everything by saying it’s not really that great. First of all, it makes the home button a little bit mushier and less clicky than before and second of all, much more importantly, you have to swipe your finger perfectly vertically along the center of the pad for it to work. You don’t just put your finger there.
You have to swipe it perfectly vertically for it to work. So, yes, you can register a bunch of fingerprints and secure your phone or your paypal payments or whatever you want to do and it’ll work. If you take your time with it, but it’s difficult to use correctly and it’s not always accurate when you don’t swipe your finger at just the right speed at the right angle, which does, by the way, require holding the phone with one hand and swiping with the Other, so you need two fingers to unlock your phone, and sometimes i’d actually go to unlock my phone with the fingerprint on and it would work and then i’d unlock it a little bit later and it just wouldn’t even work. It doesn’t even ask just lets me swipe to unlock and get in without my fingerprint uh, and that was it so yeah. I turned off the fingerprint recognition stuff before the end of the first day i used.
It really was a pain, but anyway, once you unlock the phone and get in you are greeted with touchwiz on top of android 4.4 and it’s all right. It’S definitely not. My cup of tea – it’s not my favorite, but i prefer it to previous versions.
They definitely made some adjustments and cleaned it up and made changes that i, like. I know they’ve shaken that uh inspired by nature stuff from touchwiz on the galaxy s3, but they still have these nature sound effects. These bloop and noises that i’ve disabled had to disable them pretty much immediately for my own sanity, i wish they would clean up.
The sounds, and actually i think that would have a surprisingly big effect on how you perceive the user interface, but other than that. Thanks to the specs, the s5 is pretty quick. It’S responsive.
There isn’t really any lag in most places, but when you do find lag like in the gallery, for example, it’s bad, like i mean for a high-end flagship phone with monster. Specs like this, the phone really does have the slowest gallery. So when you do find lag, you’ll notice it, but touchwiz is pretty much exactly as you’d expect. Colorful, big, bold and constantly pushing samsung features, one of those samsung features being my magazine, which is the pain that sits to the left of your home screens like blinkfeed or google. Now – and it’s kind of this news, aggregator like blinkfeed and just talks to flipboard, basically pulls in some cool stories, very beautiful imagery and uses the entire 5.1 inch display.
Uh i mean it does what it’s supposed to it’s just a matter of whether you want it. There, or not also it can’t be disabled or hidden like blinkfeed, can now. Another notable thing here is the settings menu. Actually i i thought it was in my galaxy s4 review that i mentioned that samsung really needs to change the way they organize their settings.
Basically, because there were so many and they needed a search box, but this is absolutely not what i meant, i didn’t mean put them all in a grid of 60, something colorful icons that i have to scroll through to find what i want holy crap. There are just way too many for that, so i maintain samsung should really find a better way to handle all of the device settings than this there’s a grid view. There’S a list view either way. There are just too many uh, but yeah, i don’t know. I guess touchwiz just isn’t my favorite uh plenty of people will not have a problem with it at all. Obviously, if you’ve used a galaxy s3 or you’ve used a galaxy s4 and you like it, this experience here will be very similar and there are other plenty of new useful features.
The editable, quick notification settings are really useful. There’S also feature called toolbox that lets you store any five apps in this bubble that you can move around and it gives you quick access from that bubble to those apps anywhere. So, no matter where you are you just tap it and it brings up your favorite app list.
It’S nifty. I actually left that on and use it for a quite a bit. So these are the types of things that will get you to like the phone.
More and even if the things that you like aren’t enabled by default, you’ll, probably find something buried in the settings somewhere that you can turn on and make it a much more enjoyable user experience. Now i mentioned at the beginning of the video that the galaxy s5 has basically identical specs to the one m8, except for a few key areas. One of those key areas is sitting on the back here of this phone you’ll notice, this lens protrudes from the body.
A bit it’s that 16 megapixel camera, this camera is excellent and i’ll immediately go on record and say it’s one of the top five smartphone cameras. You can get right now. It is very, very good now. Maybe it’s because i spent too much time with the four megapixel camera on the one m8, but basically the shots. I’M taking i’m noticing a few key characteristics again here, one very, very detailed tons of resolution and detail at 16 megapixels and two they’re very saturated photos and colorful in pretty much any conditions. So the camera interface is pretty standard. Samsung stuff, not you know too overly simple.
You know samsung likes to give you a ton of options, there’s lots of effects and things you can play with and change. You can take 4k video. You have software stabilization, you have hdr the whole deal. You have something here, also called selective focus which again might ring a bell from the one m8.
It’S done a little bit differently here. Basically, it instructs you to take a photo of something close with an out of focus background, and it takes a pair of photos for you, one that focuses on the foreground and one that focuses on the background. But lets you pick between them using just one button for near focus or far focus, but what i really liked was actually the pan focus button which actually lets you grab everything in focus at the same time, which can actually be really useful and let you get A whole shot a whole composition right through some software processing. So here we have another version, you can see near focus, far focus and then pan focus.
Obviously, it’s not perfect and it’s a pretty artificial effect, but the ability to switch the stuff on the fly on your phone with a single button press is pretty neat. I think a lot of people like that. So basically, i found myself taking a lot more pictures with the galaxy s5.
Just because of how good the camera looks, how good the pictures look on the phone so there’s an awesome display combined with a 16 megapixel shot and that really lets you grab detail from the smallest things and blow them up. The images look really razor sharp. Now, obviously, if you zoom in a ton, you’ll see smaller imperfections and blurs, but this stuff you’ll have trouble doing on pretty much any other smartphone camera 16 megapixels gives you a lot of room to play with it’s, not 41, it’s not 50, but you guys know. I love pixels and it’s awesome to see this much detail and color in a quick shot like this and the ability to shoot 4k.
Video is a sweet bonus, so nice job on the camera samsung, but hold up a minute. What is below the camera? What is going on there, that is not an extra depth sensor or anything fancy for imaging that is actually a heart rate, monitor yeah a special hardware to measure your heart rate. Obviously s health is still a thing that samsung does so they’ve plugged into that sensor.
On the back of the phone, and essentially, if you hold your finger there for a few seconds, it’ll give you a reading of your heart rate in beats per minute. Now i don’t actually know how accurate this is, because i don’t have another heart rate sensor to control, but it’s a neat feature. It’S a neat demo to bolster the s health uh portfolio of things. It can do it’s a pedometer and hurry monitor whatever it’s s.
Health, so anyway yeah, if you’re not getting the picture by now. Basically, the galaxy s5 is an improvement in a lot of ways over the galaxy s4 uh and a lot of smartphone enthusiasts tend to see that, as i guess, a bad thing, because they really didn’t like the galaxy s4 or they were expecting a bigger change. But for the many millions of people who will inevitably buy this phone, that’s actually great.
The galaxy s4 was a solid phone and this phone improves on it in a lot of important ways. So so what if this phone looks like a band-aid in gold? Get it in black or get it in white, get it in blue. You know it’s great. It’S a high-end phone with a ton of features. It’S water resistant.
It has an excellent battery life that nobody should have any problems with. It has a beautiful large colorful bright display, easily the best amoled display in the business on a smartphone right now. It’S lightweight it’s made of some cheap materials sure but you’re coming from the s4, so you’re, probably not going to notice and really the only real downside. I have with touchwiz is, or with the galaxy s5 is touchwiz, and it’s quirks – and i guess the speaker a little bit too, but touchwiz will continue to evolve and right now the galaxy s5 really is the galaxy s4 s that i called it in my first Impressions, video so don’t mind me, i’m just going to sit back over here and quietly cross. My fingers waiting for a google play edition of this phone because the new google camera came out today and it’s great and i like stock android and i feel like i would really enjoy a google play edition galaxy s5. But in the meantime there it is. This is the samsung galaxy s5, thanks for watching guys and i’ll talk to you guys in the next one peace you .