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Samsung Galaxy S5 Review

2014-04-23
what's up everybody John written from TechnoBuffalo with a full review for you of the latest flagship from Samsung this is the brand new Galaxy s5 it's got a lot of weight on its lofty shoulders carrying the pressure of the success of a galaxy s4 to three and the ones that came before it quit see if it lives up to the galaxy s heritage it deserves a spot in your pocket as I do with all my phone reviews let me begin it a disclaimer I use this for eight days two days with international version in six days with the AT&T variants if you want to get more information on anything that we're talking about or see galleries title 10 did a full written review hit the link down below to go into more detail with what I'm talking about here this reviews is being broken down into seven parts if you want to jump to any particular part I hit the link to the side and go right to it we're talking about call quality hardware software new sensors that are in it camera battery and then finally a conclusion and ultimate score but before we get there let's talk about call quality since that is most important as a phone after all doesn't matter what else that can do call quality was absolutely awesome I seem like a broken record now with modern phones good they also new be really good again tested on AT&T in Southern California so your experience might vary but cold cloudy was crisp snow popping noise I know drop calls and also the speaker was really really loud on it so if we rely on speakerphone a lot like I do you will be very well served with the galaxy s5 alright get to the meat of the review that's really the hardware so by just glancing at the phone it looks pretty similar to a galaxy s4 Samson clearly gave this the s treatment if I can borrow from Apple's roadmap these types of iterations tend to improve on the previous year's model internally without making really the huge dollar could be necessary for R&D for total complete redesign that's usually reserved for every other year looking at the phone though it's still unmistakeably Samsung from the shape of the device the shape of the home button capacitive buttons if your phone nerds you pick this phone up blindfolded you would know right away who made it but that's not necessarily a bad thing either sammy is clearly doing something right they're selling phones about as fast as they can make them the big design changes though come from the back go device right now have a soft touch dimpled rubber back sort of resembling a bit of a band-aid ip67 water resistance making this also serve as kind of an active device that Samsung's had in the past we'll see they've actually released a full active device but definitely works in the water and you know I wouldn't necessarily take it in the pool but if you drop it in water take to the beach you're going to be absolutely fine Samsung did up the screen size o2 5.1 inches this year in the 1920 by 1080p screen is colorful and crisp it's Super AMOLED display which is usually kind of struggles in direct sunlight although it actually looked really really good in my test so I've tested a ton of phones pretty much every phone that's come out over the past four years and a lot of phones obviously have a lot of screens this one I can safely say is the best screen I have ever tested Samsung has reputation for screens and displays and it's on full display here so to speak there is no color thinking at all if you had experiences with that with other Samsung devices it is absolutely stunning everything looks great on it from images to texts videos games it all works really just amazing Samsung hit the screen right out of the park the back cover is flimsy plastic the same as it's always been but it's got a nice soft touch field to it we've tested a white model too and that kind of dug the pearly way finish on it under the hood though there's a twenty eight hundred million power battery stamped Dragon 801 processor two gigs of RAM 16 gigs of storage or 32 depending which one you get and a slot for adding storage up to 128 gigs so I've said it before and I'll say it again I usually like higher quality materials but I get the plastic with the s5 since it does add a water resistance which you can't really do with metal you've given Samsung crap in the past for use of plastic like I have I can actually forgive it here I think it actually makes a bit of sense so that argument at least for the s5 I think doesn't stand let's talk about software Samsung really since the galaxy s3 is taking this off we're approached to just throw everything at you and hope that you like a few of the tweaks in reality though you probably appreciate some of the tinkering they've done and completely ignored the rest the galaxy s5 runs Android 4.4.2 kitkat right out of the box and also includes Samsung's new iteration of TouchWiz or nature UX it just says color and full and intrusive as it's always been buts cleaned up in a lot of ways to the top quick navigation bar is flatter and lot easier on the eyes it also is much quicker in general but it also might be that standard I need a one under the hood also here though is although but it put a nature dropping noise every time you touch the screen if you're like me you're gonna quickly want to turn those off so I really like the s5 supports audio commands anytime the screen is on and the Google search bar is nearby so I can always say okay Google and as to whether it's out tapping for example it's not as good as you always on motox but it's a really big improvement over the HTC One doesn't really offer that feature at all if you swipe to the far left of this Pleyel enter Samsung's my magazine interface which is basically just like Flipboard and a-singin pretty close copy catalyst influenced by HTC blinkfeed news interface in general Todd and I agreed that we're tired of TouchWiz even if Samsung does clean it up just a little bit it's high-risk company to try something new hopefully with just fewer colors next let's talk about new sensors Samsung added a fingerprint scanner to its home button the idea is that you can use your finger to unlock the phone and purchase items samia's hooked up with PayPal to make that happen it's the idea we've seen before but it's really not that well executed here so the sensor doesn't work all that well and all I found myself just turning it off completely after four days of frustration I do like that it's open but doesn't work or becomes more trouble and it's worse than what's the point the other new sensors a heartrate monitor it's essentially just software takes advantage of the camera and LED flash to tell your heartrate it works while you're sitting still but what would you probably eat a heart monitor probably not when you're sitting at your desk your table if I want to check it out when you're out on the run or in a bit of motion and in those conditions it doesn't work at all in fact it tells you to stand still also there are apps for iOS and Android that accomplished exactly the same thing for other devices so okay not much of a selling point here at all but if you're sitting still it will work let's jump into camera next the new 16 megapixel sensor is pretty awesome and arguably one of the best cameras out there todd has a huge gallery of images head on over to the review to see those that link will be down below the shutter speed here is crazy fast it also records 4k videos the pictures look bright and crisp really well done Samsung I've been hard on Samsung in the past for cameras and they nailed this one pictures look great 4k video looks gorgeous probably one of the better camera phones out there on the market so you want to make sure that your phone can last throughout the day let's talk a bit about battery it is a 2800 milliamp job it's got a really solid battery life end of the day have about 35% left so my general usage take off the charger around 7:30 in the morning it's usually connected to Wi-Fi at home or the office I've got two accounts being pulled down every five minutes a lot of social networking going on obviously a lot of videos that are being watched I'm just a ton of phone calls on it uses my primary device and 35% is actually really really good I like the HTC One m8 also has its own ultra or sittings mode that gives you incredible standby time when the power runs pretty low this mode activated your screen will turn into a kind of a grayscale mode and all you have access to your basic apps like your phone technologies calculator and manually pulling email and sort of a web browser among some others the idea here though is in this mode your phone will last way longer without things running the background when our device got down to 50 percent battery we turned on ultra power saving mode estimated we could leave a device powered on for another four and a half days which is really awesome although it takes a long time to turn it on it takes about 30 seconds to turn on but if you're desperate saving some juice it's probably worth that weight so what's a conclusion here the galaxy s5 on its own it's a really good phone but it's not a great one TouchWiz gets in its own way and the new sensors are debatably valuable the screen is absolutely gorgeous and the camera is awesome that's what's important to you you're really gonna dig this device so I think the phone is really competing against the galaxy s4 in addition to the current flagships like the iPhone 5s if you own the last generation it's really hard for me to recommend an upgrade here and I probably would year to look forward to see what the s6 is going to be if we do jump in though I think you'll be really happy this phone gets a very solid eight on the TechnoBuffalo scale what do I think is galaxy s5 your next phone are you gonna wait for the s6 or maybe see what Apple has to offer you're gonna jump over the HTC One or wait to see what Nokia's got next I want to hear your thoughts please leave in the comments right down below the next time I'm John Redinger from TechnoBuffalo I'll see you guys next video bye-bye what's up everyone thank you for watching that video if you want to see more the latest and greatest tech news you can subscribe to our main TechnoBuffalo channel by clicking the button right down below in my pants region or click on the buttons to your right to see more videos
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