The IT Nerd

Telus this week hooked me up with Samsung’s latest and greatest flagship phone. The Galaxy S5. It’s getting a lot of attention in the media. But when you look at it, it doesn’t look much different than a Galaxy S4. From a design standpoint, it’s an evolution and not a revolution. Though I will note that it is easy to hold and it will not slip out of your hands. Something that did grab my attention is the fact that this is a light and reasonably thin phone. The build quality is excellent as it feels very solid. I would not recommend putting it in your pants pocket if you wear tight jeans or the like. But it easily fits into your jacket pocket.

Turn it on and you see one of the stars of the show. That’s the screen which is a 5.1-inch 1920×1080 pixel Super AMOLED display. It’s simply sharp, bright, and vivid. Anything that I did with it, be it video or still pictures looked great. Another star of the show is the fingerprint sensor that’s integrated into the home button. Like Touch ID from Apple, you can use the fingerprint sensor to unlock your phone or buy something as PayPal supports this feature. However, the PayPal functionality doesn’t work in Canada. At least not yet. But the real problem with the fingerprint sensor is that you need to do a swipe motion with the finger of your choice. That requires you to not only hold the phone with your other hand, but it has at best 50/50 reliability. It got annoying enough that I disabled it after a day. I should note that if you cannot unlock your phone with a fingerprint, it will prompt you for a password. There’s also a heart rate monitor, but I didn’t find it useful. The reason being that it can only be used for situations where you’re sitting and wanting to see what your current heart rate is using the included S Health software. If you want to use it while exercising, then you should consider acquiring a Gear Fit to go along with the S5. One thing that athletes will like about the Galaxy S5 is that it has IP67 certification, which covers dust and water resistance for one metre up by 60 minutes.

In terms of specs, here’s what the phone comes with:

• Android 4.4.2 (KitKat) with Samsung TouchWIZ Flat
• 5.1-inch 1920×1080 pixel Super AMOLED display
• 2.5Ghz quad core processor
• 2GB RAM
• 16GB internal storage expandable via a microSD slot
• 16MP rear, 2MP front-facing camera
• 4K video capture @30fps
• 1080p video capture @60fps
• IR Blaster
• WiFi (a/b/g/n/ac) and Bluetooth 4.0

Even by my “seat of the pants” testing, it was easily the fastest phone I’ve tested recently. That’s likely due to the fast CPU that’s in the S5. Along with the CPU, it’s fast on LTE via the Telus network. It’s clocked an average of 20 Mbps downstream and upstream. Samsung’s implementation of Android KitKat with their new version of the TouchWIZ user interface is a lot cleaner and smoother. Users will find this a welcome change. The included software has two stand out features:

• S Health: It makes it easy to track eating habits, weight, exercise, heart rate trends and more. It will track your steps and measure your resting heart rate. Though to really leverage it, you’ll need to get a Gear Fit.
• There’s a kid mode that lets you lock down your phone to hand it over to your kids without them potentially deleting data.

When it comes to storage, you only get 10GB usable out of the 16GB that it comes with. I would highly recommend getting a microSD card to store music, videos and pictures.

When it comes to the camera, it is pretty impressive in terms of two features. First is the fact that it does 16 MP still pictures and 4K video. Impressive as that might be, it also allows you to shoot a video as well as take pictures at the same time. I used that functionality at my usual location to test these sorts of things which is Pearson Airport in Toronto. I got very lucky as I managed to catch an Air Canada 777 on final approach. First the picture. Click to see it at full resolution:

Besides the quality of the photo which is impressive, this phone has the fastest autofocus that I’ve ever seen on a smartphone. The main reason why I use the airport to shoot pictures is that a fast moving object like a plane landing uncovers the best or worst of a camera. In this case, it brought out the best in the S5. Now let’s see the video. Make sure to run it in full screen and to set it to 1080P:

The video quality is impressive as I was moving to capture this video and the video was basically stable. As for the sound quality, even though I shot this on a windy day, the wind noise didn’t overwhelm the audio. You can even heard my difficulty breathing due to a cold.

Finally, there’s the battery life. You’ll get a day and a half out of it easily. More if you use the Ultra Power Saving Mode. It shuts off background processes, makes the screen monochrome and limits the number of apps you can run. The battery is removable which is a good thing. However, the USB 3.0 port that’s used to sync or charge requires a special USB cable. And it has a cover to protect it that I am not sure that will last during constant usage as the tab that attached it to the phone did not seem all that robust to me. One thing to note, this phone charges quickly. I got the phone from Telus half charged and it was fully charged in 25 minutes. Impressive.

So what’s the bottom line. Let me put it this way:

• If you have a Galaxy S3, buy this phone. It’s way better than what you have now.
• If you have a Galaxy S4, the camera and the speed may justify buying this phone. But you might not find enough of a jump in terms of features to close the deal.
• If you have any other Android phone, you should seriously consider buying this phone. It clearly is one of the top phones out there.
• If you want a great camera on a smartphone, you need to buy this phone. The capabilities of the S5’s camera are top of the heap.

The Galaxy S5 is for Samsung an evolution in what they offer. Though it’s not the perfect phone, Samsung has a smartphone that kicks them up to the top of the heap for now. It’s $229 on a two year plan or $730 outright from Telus. If you want a Android phone that is fast and has a great camera among other features, look no further.