“Metal body design? Nope. Eye-wateringly crisp 2K+ display? Nuh-uh. Overhauled Android interface? Only a little,” Jessica Dolcourt reports for CNET. “After all the rumors and hype, the Samsung Galaxy S5 revealed with much fanfare at Mobile World Congress is more an iteration on the Galaxy S line… Yet the been-there, done-that design isn’t novel enough to trample rivals the way Samsung might hope.”
“Samsung still has a ways to go to reinspire jaded followers and fans, and those who value luxury materials and crafted designs over Samsung’s stamped-out phones should keep the door open for Apple’s iPhone 6,” Dolcourt reports. “In designing the Galaxy S5, Samsung didn’t go very far for inspiration. In fact, the Galaxy S5’s body looks event more like the Galaxy S4 than the GS4 did the Galaxy S3.”
“At the end of the day, the phone still feels like it always has: like plastic,” Dolcourt reports. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if Samsung is at all striving for loftier ambitions, it hasn’t reached those heights.”
“The GS5 is only a fraction larger than the Galaxy S4 — 5.1 inches versus the GS4’s 5-inch display,” Dolcourt reports. “The Galaxy S5 measures 142mm by 72.5mm by 8.1mm — or 5.59 inches tall by 2.85 inches wide by 0.32-inch deep — and weighs 145 grams, or 5.1 ounces. It’s taller and heavier than the Galaxy S4 as a result of its extra hardware.”
Read more in the full article here.
“In general, the Galaxy S5 looks similar to previous models and is made from polycarbonate plastic. Samsung did try to “glam” it up by adding a perforated pattern to the back cover and offering the phone in electric blue and copper gold, in addition to black and white. Glam isn’t exactly the word I’d use, but it does make the phone feel less plasticky. The texture is similar to the faux leather used on the Galaxy Note 3,” Bonnie Cha reports for Re/code. “”
“The Galaxy S5 now has a heart-rate sensor built into the camera’s flash. Users can simply touch their index finger to the sensor to monitor their heart rate,” Cha reports. “The Galaxy S5 now has a fingerprint scanner. It’s not built into the Home button like the iPhone 5s; rather, you swipe your finger on the bottom of the screen. I got a demo of it, but it seemed a little temperamental and took a couple of tries to work.”
“The Samsung Galaxy S5 will be available worldwide (except in Japan) on April 11,” Cha reports. “Though the company didn’t announce pricing today, I’d imagine it would fall in the usual $200 range on contract.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Alternate headline: 32-bit antique dealer fails to impress with latest effort.
Related articles:
Demand remains strong for Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 5s three months after launch – December 19, 2013
Canaccord: Apple’s iPhone 5s ‘by far the top selling smartphone’ in the U.S. for 3rd straight month – December 12, 2013
Forbes reviews Apple iPhone 5s: ‘The best all-round smartphone on the market’ – November 18, 2013
Apple iPhone 5s reviews are universally positive, many crown iPhone 5s the best smartphone – September 19, 2013
Engadget reviews Apple iPhone 5c: A breath of fresh air that will be wildly popular this holiday season – September 18, 2013
Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 5s is by far the fastest smartphone in the world – September 18, 2013
Ben Bajarin: Apple’s new iOS 7 will cause consumers to discover their iPhones all over again – September 18, 2013
John Gruber reviews Apple iPhone 5s: ‘This is what innovation, real innovation, looks like’ – September 18, 2013
AnandTech reviews iPhone 5s: Apple’s 64-bit A7 is seriously impressive – September 18, 2013
TechCrunch reviews Apple iPhone 5s: The best smartphone available – September 18, 2013
Apple’s new iPhone 5S likely to be in exceptionally short supply – September 18, 2013
USA Today’s Baig reviews Apple iPhone 5s: ‘Makes the best smartphone even better’ – September 18, 2013
Mossberg reviews Apple iPhone 5s: ‘The best smartphone on the market’ – September 18, 2013
Apologetically plastic.
Correct me if I am overstating this but if I recall correctly, the anti-Apple world could not stop screaming at the top of their lungs what a gimmick the 64 bit processor was. Then hours later, Samsung’s CEO went on camera and emphatically stated that Samsung would have a 64 bit phone on the market “very soon.” I ask politely, Samsung has failed to deliver a 64 bit architecture phone and the press is quiet; why??
Because the checks keeps on coming.
Priceless!
Why silent? They we’re paid to be quiet when Sammy sez.
The press is quiet because they are only activated, like a fire extinguisher behind glass, in case of emergency. Any Apple announcement is an emergency for everyone else, because it signals another frenetic scrambling to catch up, an alarum to rouse the FUD brigades to stall until countermeasures have obtained purchase.
But at such times as these, when Apple is in a state of stillness, the lapdogs known as the press lie quietly in their kennels, panting softly, waiting till they are roused to attack by a sharp stick wielded by their masters.
remember this on the Sep 12 2013 | 5:43 am
Samsung boss JK Shin has told the Korean press that its future handsets will also include 64-bit number-crunching capabilities. Speaking with the Korea Times, the Samsung co-CEO confirmed that “our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality,”
Looks like the fucking fucked up plastic iPhone 5C.
And not one single fsck was given that day
Really??? That’s it?????
Quad core , 430ppi, 2gb, 2.5ghz. Is that it??
Luckily I’ve got a top of the range phone from a different company – duel core, 330ppi, 1 gb, 1.3ghz.
Of course you need that whole bunch of ram and a battery sucking over-clocked CPU (didn’t they say they would go 64 bit…?) for having a… Mediocre user experience.
It truly totally match the personality of shamesuck users who are cheap and stupid and don’t know what is the best .
They want to pay one cheap price for all the things which they can’t judge are good or not .
You can’t put lipstick on a pig.
Actually you can, but you still don’t want to kiss it.
Apparently with faux leather; you can put lipstick on a pig!
“…Samsung did try to “glam” it up by adding a perforated pattern to the back cover…”
Sure those “perforations” weren’t caused by buckshot from a shotgun blast from an irate user being locked out because they can’t get the fingerprint scanner to work?!
Plainly they’ve run out of things to copy. Did you read this lame excuse below like “if our customers REALLY wanted us to put in new disruptive technologies we could have easily done so, but since they don’t, we didn’t. Eh heh.”
“We learned from our Galaxy S users that they really want basic, everyday life features. They weren’t looking for the eye-popping, disruptive technology that everybody else was looking for,” said Young-Hee Lee, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile division,
Yeah, like I COULD have played in the NBA if I’d REALLY wanted to.
Yes. They couldn’t pop out a 64 bit machine.
And basically the Mobile VP called Apple’s stuff eye popping and disruptive. Haha. Disruptive to them.
Oh look. Now Samsung has a gold colored phone. Shocking. Is there nothing about Apple that they won’t copy in the chittiest way possible?
You know, from what I understand they did have a gold phone a long time ago. It was only available in other markets I think, but it may have been one of the only things they did before we did. I hate to say it, but I think it’s true.
Notably, it was still ugly , and was still a crap phone. As all their phones are.
Glowing reviews everywhere…checks in the mail of course!
Slumping toward irrelevance.
Most of the comments I’ve heard and read state that even loyal Samsung phone users consider this no better than the Note 3 and some consider it a step backward. The only thing new added is the fingerprint scanner.
This was supposed to be Samsung’s new iPhone killer?
I suspect that is because Android is a 32 bit OS and to go 64 bit would require a whole new set of apps not yet available. So with no 64 bit CPU they don’t have many other things to copy. Thus you get this crap.
So the world yawns, but does Samsungs stock get penalized like Apple’s has?
Samesuck’s job is to shamelessly copy Apple . To innovate is not its job . So , shamesuck won’t be punished for this .
Recyclable materials …..
I can predict right now that the fingerprint scanner will be hacked in weeks of this POS being released. There’s no way it’s as secure as TouchID, it’ll be software bolted onto Android – a recipe for disaster.
Isn’t TouchID on a separate chip that is isolated from everything else? This is probably a bit of crummy software that has been hastily written to use the screen to read your thumbprint , most of the time. I wonder if it works with a grubby screen?
Samsung Electronics
“It ain’t gold, it’s plastic gold”™
A shameless company.
The fingerprint reader is in the home button.
You slide your finger over it.
The onscreen thing is just a reference point in where to start sliding.
ooh, that thing IS ugly!!!
Given how all the Android fans bitched about how the iPhone 5s really didn’t add much new, I wonder where their complaints are today?
Well of course it’s just like the S4 — all those S4 returns had served their useful purpose in life (inflating shipped quantity reports) so now they get a new wax coating and get shipped again. Bonus on the “cost of goods shipped” line in the budget!
Here’s my comment on Facebook:
Now that the Galaxy S5 has arrived, I’m most interested in how it benchmarks.
Anyone who follows computers in general knows that hardware tends to leapfrog each other (sometimes massively, sometimes not), so I once again expect the S5 to get the speed crown against the iPhone 5s.
That said, it took (whatever chips Samsung used) the processor two iterations before a quad-core could best a dual-core, embarrassing. When the S3 was out and had a “faster” CPU with double the cores of the iPhone 5, one would have expected a bloodbath. Instead, it sometimes pulled ahead and, in some instances, lost. WHAT?
Then the S4 came out and trounced the iPhone 5 (and probably a slew of other phones). It was a faster version of the same quad core chip.
Then Apple released the A7 on the iPhone 5s and effectively doubled its (own) speed, *without* adding cores and *without* adding massive clock enhancements (A6 ran at approximately 1.1GHz – 1.3GHz; the A7 runs at approximately 1.3GHz).
Now, I know My post is already perceived as another “Apple fanboy” post and that’s ok, but I’m more interested to see how a quad core CPU at 2.5GHz does against a dual core CPU at 1.3GHz.
Android and iOS aside, iPhone and Galaxy aside, why is the tech community heaping praises on quad core CPUs that should be doing much, much more? If Apple can make a stupidly-efficient, 64-bit, dual core processor, why can’t these other manufacturers, who have been in the game FAR LONGER, make some seriously good chips?
I WANT to see this new quad core chip trounce the A7. I say that without sarcasm because, if these other guys can’t finally catch up with 4 cores, then it shows how sad the tech industry has become and how people only cheerlead for a company because they like it (or they just HATE the other guy), but not because it’s actually good at what it does.
Voted down is fine, but why? I’m not lying. I’m not exaggerating. All the articles and benchmarks exist to prove my argument.
If you’re an apologist for quad-core CPUs at double clock speed that cannot obliterate a dual core CPU at half the clock speed, you either have an agenda or you’re stupid.
Stupid because you fail at basic math.
Agenda because you must *really* hate Apple to try explain away why an A7 still sucks.
You leave out the simple fact that Samsung has tweaked their implementations to *cheat* at the standard benchmarks. This has been documented and proven by several people. (In fact the only to smart phone sellers that have not been caught cheating at the benchmarks are Apple and Motorola.)
I doubt very much that Samsung has changed this for the S5. *IF* the S5 beats the 5s then I’d suggest very, very closely looking into how the phones run the benchmarks.
The benefit of a traditional 64 bit CPU is memory addressability. In the case of the 5s, the 64bit CPU doubles the phones speed while still providing additional 64 bit instruction because the CPU reads two 32bit instructions in and processes them in one clock cycle. So the dual core 64bit CPU when executing 32bit code is actually more like a quad core than a dual core CPU but does not have to be optimized for multiple cores. The android OS cannot do this without a new kernel. It can easily scale to many cores but if the apps aren’t written to use multiple threads then the extra cores don’t help any.
apple has always handled multiple core technologies well, even from G5 to intel, the way they were able to slip 64 bit into their OSX without throwing out the 32 bit code and without creating an OS on OS (like windows).
This is just what apple is exceptionally good at. And until Samsung implements their new OS you won’t see a 64bit System.
This is a good explanation and just goes to show what Apple does when they want something done right. It also proves my point that the other guys (phone, computer, now CPU) ONLY attempt to do it right after Apple shows ’em up. There’s no reason why CPU/GPU guys couldn’t make the chip function this way. None. Well, ok… except for that whole “how much more money can we squeeze from this older design?”
(0_o) ‘You woke me up for THAT?‘
Now will the media make hay of the lack of innovation, the death rattle, or seek to give advice on how Samsung should make new products? No, just paid crickets sound off.
Wait, I thought Samsung’s CEO said just after the iPhone 5S announcement that the next Samsung Galaxy phone would be 64-bit? Or did they just forget to mention that?
Plus the Master Overlord command that his minions must work/innovate 24 by 7. What happened? Nothing! lol
The bump out where the camera sits reminds me of in the 80s when cars started having a 3rd brake light. Many manufacturers basically bolted on an ugly hunk of plastic with a light in it.
5S is first, and 64bit, way before S5 POS.
Hey Wall Street guys….wake up!! Don’t forget to drive up the Samsung stock. They delivered beyond your expectations, so let’s see the stock soar.
The new Samdung phone is the same brown color as the Microsoft Zune!!!
How appropriate.
It probably looks like the Zune in a toilet.
Well at least it’s a better copy of a turd than the Zune was, and will float because it’s waterproof!
😉
Who doesn’t like “rich corinthian leather”?
Sunshine supermen. The same people who complained about green felt textures and other gratuitous skeuomorphs and called for Scott Forstall’s head, and who now complain about flat abstract design and Playskool colours and want Jony Ive’s head.
I should have put in a /s.