Gimme a high S5: Samsung Galaxy S5 puts substance over style

Back to basics?

I'll happily have one in two years time when they will be discounted as the year-before-last's model, but the street price of this is about £500. Is that really "back to basics" and "destined to sell in huge numbers"?

If the spec was the same and the price was £400 I think they'd have a better proposition by far, offering sufficient over the Nexus 5, but not over-stretching themselves into the premium market.

Given the number of phones that Sammy make, isn't is about time they offered two top enders, one in the mould of the S5, and the other a sealed battery, fixed storage, metal chassis device to take on the Sony and HTC top enders? There's clearly room for both types at the top end of the market, and whilst I want a removeable battery and storage, that's not everybody's priority.

HTC One M8

Has a kids mode too, it's not unique to the Samsung.

J.A.P

Just another phone.

Fingerprint thingymabob - Definately nothing game changing here - 0.00058% of the population have a need..

Kiddie mode - That will keeps the excited masses enthralled for hours that will... again 0.00064% will use that function.

What is new, - really not a lot, if anything at all..

This phone will become popular because it will become the defacto high end phone available when renewing contracts.

Competition is so stifled these days by the telcos that selecting a phone is either "Do I want Samsung or Apple", the masses don't care a toss about the characteristics, as long as it plays Crush Candy, or whatever the app of the day is, then its great....

Smart phones have lost their smarts, they have become "banale phones".... The marketing dweebs really can't come up with anything worthwhile outside of pure futility.

Now if someone could invent a smartphone that had a battery life of one month, that could be dropped without smashing the screen, that would automatically shut of the ringer on the train/airport/public place, then that would be worthwhile. They would also need to be capable of latching on to the poor 3g/4g coverage that we currently have in anywhere but the center of large cities.

End of Rant ( it's friday and there is nothing interesting on El Reg today). Patiently waiting to see what El Dabsy will churn out just before beertime

Tough choice

It will be interesting to see how many units they shift. I'm coming to the end of my current contract which included an S3. I could upgrade to an S5 or I could switch to a PAYG contract which will be cheaper (work pays either way). I find myself in the odd position of not really caring about getting an upgrade. As far as I can see basically nothing interesting (technically) has happened in the mobile phone world for the last couple of years.

Yawn

Commodity phone is commodity.

Flat icons a la iOS?

Can't wait til Windows Phone gets that!

Nice salespitch..

Ka-ching!

>The resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels is the same as the Galaxy S4

I can get that resolution in a phone, but not in a laptop? There'll be cats and dogs living together next.

I've reached the end of my contract

on my Galaxy Nexus, but none of the current crop really seems to have anything to justify the cost of an upgrade. I'll wait and see what reviewers say about the Sony offering. It certainly looks better than the S5, and I'm interested to see how their camera performs.

I'm in the middle too.

I've been using Samsung S2 and S3 for the past 4 years but the HTC M(8) does look pretty decent as well.

Especially seeing as I never buy a spare battery but do use the phone as a small radio from time to time and the improved sound could swing it...especially as HTC allows for expandable memeory.

The only thing putting me off is HTC's past performance on Android updates

Last year at the end of a contract I replaced my S2 with an S3, and was planning to upgrade to an S4 about now given the price drop thanks to the launch of the S5.

I used to always want the latest and greatest handset (I had the HTC Desire and the S2 when they were brand new) and always looked for the new features on the latest phones. Now there aren't any must-have new features and many people are criticising the manufacturers for a lack of innovation, but I don't understand why?

Flip the question around - what new function (not an iterative improvement, but real new function) do you want your next phone to have? I can't think of anything. Unbdoubtedly there are ways to improve on my S3 (the S4 and S5 prove that, but I'd have to pay a small fortune for one of them), but the reality is that the S3 is all the phone I really want.

I quite like the idea of the waterproofing, but since I've never dropped my phone down the toilet, it's not something I'm going to shell of hundreds of pounds (or sign up to an expensive contract) for.

So now I've decided to keep my S3 and stay on my cheap unlimited data 3G sim-only deal. Maybe I'll buy an S4 or 5 next year. Maybe.

Wot? No wireless charging?

It's much easier to keep things waterproof if you don't have to faff around with covers.

It's interesting that the android top end appears to be a three-horse race this time out. The S5 vs the M8 vs the Z2. A cursory glance at the data so far suggests there isn't much in it in terms of spec and features (each seems to have a couple of features it's ahead on, a couple it's behind on, and the rest are much of a muchness. Would actually be interesting to see a direct head-to head on them, to be honest.) Not sure whether it;s a good thing or a bad thing that there's no clear leader of the pack, givent hat the main competiton for those three is the iphone.

Feels really cheap

As an S3 owner, I was really looking forward to this. But it just looks and feels really cheap. The rubber back looks and feels like an elastoplast, while the ridged chrome around the edges is uncomfortable to hold and it looks like the trim on a £1 toy car.

As for the irritating port cover - I don't understand why they can't just make the USB-port itself hermetically sealed, and make the electrical contacts waterproof (for example, the Pebble handles this just fine).

Now, if only the M8 would put capacitative buttons on the otherwise wasted space of the bezel, and keep the screen estate for the actual content (rather than wasting it on soft-buttons, so that the screen is effectively smaller than an S3), I'd get one of those! For now, I think it's a new battery for the S3, and I'll wait for the next generation.

Huh?

In the AnTuTu screen shot, it's ranked behind the Galaxy S4.

Forgive my ignorance if I've misunderstood, but does that mean the new S5 is slower than the older S4 ?

Is that USB plus HDMI I see?

That shot of the waterproof cover over the USB looks like there are two connectors, can anyone confirm?

Cos separate HDMI and USB connectors would be nice... Most phones cannot connect USB Host and HDMI devices at the same time, and certainly can't do USB2Go + HDMI + Charge.

New feature - thermometer?

On the subject of new features - the S3 is generally great outdoors for GPS, mapping etc. but although I can find out how high I am above sea level I can't tell what the ambient temperature is.

Granted that much of the time a thermometer would be recording the temperature inside your pocket, it would still be nice to have a digital thermometer built in.

Even nicer to have an IR thermometer for spot readings :-)

Oh, laser tape measure? Hmmm...possibly need a bigger handset :-(

benchmarks

Are these real numbers or has Samsung played the benchmark-genie again, as it has done before?

Did anyone check yet?

And from an actual user of the S5...

It's my first galaxy. Last phone was the htc one m7.

The fingerprint scanner is ok. It does need two handed operation, although that's pretty much given for general use on such a large phone. Apparently you can register a Apart from that, it works well. The phone is much better for it, and I'm happily using it. It's a bit fussy, but it's fast. Biometrics is a joke for security since you can't change them, but it's convenient. Touchwiz is fine. I haven't used it before and apparently it's much better this time around, I can't compare except to std android and to sense. It's ok. I use Nova launcher. The built-in calendar app is good. The stock keyboard is good. The camera is very good. The display is excellent. The pulse reader works. Battery life is radical compared to the m7, but the m8 also has a big improvement. It's not as nice looking as the m8, but it's lighter, it's waterproof and the battery is swappable. This means I can expect a long useful life for this phone in the hands of family members, since the battery has a much short practical life than the rest of the phone. The audio latency is much better than the m7. This is a little thing which no one has ever mentioned in a review, but I find it classy (it means you can use key clicks, hopeless on the HTC One, they are way too late). I'm pleased to be using it.

I love the fact that these days, no review of a smartphone ever asks the basic question, does it still get a chuffing mobile signal. Can I make a bloody phone call on it?

Stick to the S3

Having just about reached the end of a 2 year contract on an S3, I cannot see anything except a bit of speed and resolution that would make me sign away another 24 months.

3 New batteries plus a battery wall charger with USB port for £7, delivered from China will get me through for a while until something really exciting comes along.

No FM Radio

Yes some of us still listen to that.

I see the HTC One M8 has a FM Radio, so that might have just made my decision for me. (a small thing I know, but do use the FM Radio on my S3 a fair bit)