SAMSUNG GALAXY S5 Review

PROS

• Fantastic screen
• Still one of the best cameras around
• Now updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop
• Update has improved fingerprint sensor
• Better battery life than S6
• Has microSD and water resistance

CONS

• Not the prettiest of 2014 phones
• Processor still decent, but behind the times

KEY FEATURES

• 16-megapixel camera
• 5.1-inch 1080p Super AMOLED screen
• Android 4.4 with TouchWiz
• Manufacturer: Samsung
• Review Price: £329.00/3500MAD.

HOW DOES THE GALAXY S5 COMPARE TO THE LATEST PHONES?

When’s the best time to buy a flagship phone? When it gets replaced by a new flagship phone, of course. Following on from the announcement of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, the Samsung Galaxy S5 has been given a second wind, courtesy of an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop. Does this update give the Galaxy S5 a new lease of life? Let’s take a look at what improvements have been added with the Android 5.0 update.

Fingerprint scanner improved

The fingerprint scanner is the most improved aspect of the Galaxy S5 following the Android 5.0 update. Pre-Lollipop, the scanner was an utter hinderance that required multiple attempts to unlock your phone. Failing it three times forced you to enter a backup pin to unlock the screen and this occurred all too often.

Rather than resting your finger over the button, you swipe a finger over it. The sensor sits under the central select button, but you need to swipe over the very bottom of the touchscreen too as there's an element under the screen that activates the scanner.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: DESIGN

Samsung has done its best to make the Galaxy S5 look quite different from the S4. It has a dimpled back. 

The Galaxy S5 is almost entirely plastic. And it is not plastic that's happy to look like what it is. The sides of the phone are trimmed with metallic plastic that an onlooker might mistake for metal. But the feel of plastic is unmistakeable in-hand.

Samsung is likely to offer the Galaxy S5 in a whole rainbow of colours before the phone slips into obsolescence in 2015-2016, but at launch there are four shades to choose from. There is a black version, which is actually a very dark grey, and the other options are blue, gold and white.

Like the previous Galaxy S phones, the Galaxy S5 uses an ultra-thin removable plastic back cover that hides a microSD memory card slot supporting cards up to 128GB. There are 16GB and 32GB versions of the phone.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: WATER RESISTANCE

The Galaxy S5's water resistance works just as it does on other recent water resistant phones. There are rubber seals on the plastic cover and on the flap that sits over the USB port on the bottom. This is one of the few phones to use an oversized micro USB 3.0 socket.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: HEART RATE SENSOR

Perhaps the most conspicuous of the new hardware elements is the dedicated heart rate sensor, because it adds new sensors to the LED flash area on the back of the phone. The camera area on the pack looks positively gadget-packed now.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: SCREEN

At 5.1 inches it's just 0.1 inches larger than its predecessor, it uses the  1080p resolution, the  Gorilla Glass 3 top layer and the  Super AMOLED panel type.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: PERFORMANCE AND HARDWARE

At launch the Samsung Galaxy S5 is among the most powerful phones ever made. It uses the Snapdragon 801 processor. The Galaxy S5's particular iteration is a 2.5GHz quad-core model, clocked 200MHz fast. The S5 has 2GB of RAM.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: CAMERA HARDWARE

The Samsung Galaxy S5 has a 16-megapixel sensor and f/2.2 lens with a equivalent focal length of 31mm. Both the S4 and S5 have 1.12 micron sensor pixels. That's pretty small, and the size of these pixels has a big hand in low-light performance.

Samsung Galaxy S5: Camera Image Quality and Performance 

It is often said that megapixels are meaningless in mobile phones. However, give a high-resolution phone like the Galaxy S5 a bright and sunny day and it will generally be able to resolve more detail than a lower-resolution phone.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: FRONT-FACING CAMERA

Last of all in the camera section we come to the front-facing camera. It is nothing special.

It uses a 2-megapixel sensor, and it does not seem much of an upgrade . It's pretty noisy with anything but perfect light conditions, and produces more worse selfies. 

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: BATTERY LIFE

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is one of just a few current top-end phones to give you access to the battery unit. It's a 2,800 mAh.

Many of the most important battery optimisations come from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor.

Without using any of the phone's special power-saving skills, you'll get a day a half out of the phone with moderate use. This year's new flagship phones won't suddenly see us get mobiles that last an age longer than last year's ones if you use things like mobile internet a lot.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5: CONNECTIVITY

The Samsung Galaxy S5 offers a very complete array of connections. Those that mark the phone out among some of its peers include 4G, Wi-Fi ac, NFC and a new connectivity mode that lets the S5 use your Wi-Fi and mobile internet connections simultaneously for faster download speeds.

The most visible connectivity aberration, though, is the micro USB 3.0 port on the bottom of the handset. It looks like a microUSB port with a half-formed twin jammed onto its side – and that's more-or-less what it is.

OVERALL SCORE

SCORES IN DETAIL

• Battery Life9
• Calls & Sound7
• Camera8
• Design7
• Performance8
• Screen Quality10
• Software7
• Value8