Samsung Galaxy S5

Take a look at the newly introduced Samsung Galaxy S5. It’s another flagship phone by the South Korean tech giant announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday. With new features and a new design, it may just be the best smartphone in the market when it’s released. As of now, some of us can only review it (or at least compare it with other devices) hands-off.

But first, let’s go back to 2012, when the Galaxy SIII was announced. It shocked the world, and started the rise of Samsung to be one of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers. SIII was arguably the best Galaxy Samsung has ever made. And then in 2013, Samsung put even more features to the S4. One thing, though, the innovation had already started to slow down (except for some features).

Now, the Galaxy S5 sports a new design. It’s not much different from the S4, though. It’s still plastic. It has a 5.1 inch screen—a little bump from the S4, with the same 1080p resolution. That could be a letdown, as the pixel per density is lower, even if it’s just a tiny bit. Then its processor is a quad-core clocked at 2.5 GHz with a RAM of 2 GB. But the processor may vary in different parts of the world just like the S4. It also comes with the latest Android release, 4.4.2 KitKat.

Comparison for all the Galaxies

The thing Samsung tries to emphasize isn’t specs, but rather new features. First, the 16 MP camera surely will take better pictures, also the real-time HDR can be a killer. Then, the heart-rate sensor, located just below the rear camera. It does sound a bit gimmicky, and it’s not much of a useful app right now, but it shows promise to how smartphones may work in the future. There are also other features, such as that the Galaxy S5 is water and dust-resistant—NOT water and dust-proof. And last, the fingerprint sensor. This also sounds gimmicky, and some people even call this as plagiarism from Apple’s Touch ID. The sensor is located on top of the home button, and you have to swipe first, whatever that means. That makes it less sophisticated than the Touch ID.

Other than that, Samsung also says that the battery life will be longer. Surfing up to 10 hours, watching videos up to 12 hours. When you’re out of juice (less than 10%), your S5 will turn into black-and-white mode and you will only be able to make calls and text messages. Samsung claims S5 can last up to 24 hours after its battery goes down to 10%.

So there’s that, some good new features that comes with a bit of disappointment. Compared to the S4, it’s not so much of a better phone, so I suggest S4 owners should not upgrade to the S5 unless you’re just pure rich. I think it will be the best smartphone by the time of its release. The Galaxy S5 comes out in April in many variants of color. Let’s just see how it will fare against the competition.