Samsung Galaxy S5 To Feature Very Different Home Screen
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is going to be replaced as Samsung’s flagship smartphone this year, by the fifth generation Galaxy S. And while Apple’s recently released iPhone 5S is the current star of the smartphone world, with its 64 bit System on Chip and Touch ID fingerprint sensor, the South Korean company is developing its upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 and readying it for its launch this Spring. There have been many rumors about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5.
Recent rumors hinted that the fifth Galaxy S will be the first Samsung smartphone to finally feature a metallic body. Another interesting rumor was confirmed by Samsung last year: the Galaxy S5 will be released with a 64 bit System on Chip, just like the iPhone 5S. However, while the Galaxy S5 will step in the iPhone 5S’ footsteps when it comes to the SoC, it won’t feature a fingerprint scanner as Apple’s latest flagship.
With rumors about the Galaxy S5 increasing, leaks have also started to appear. Last week, a tweet from @evleaks () showed a leaked image of the alleged home screen of the Samsung galaxy S5. The leaked image shows a very different TouchWiz user interface than we are accustomed with from Samsung. We can see a lock screen menu and a home screen menu that delivers push notifications and contextual menus to the Galaxy S5. It resembles Google Now a lot, as you may have already noticed. And while Google Now does come included in the South Korean company’s handsets, the user interface is a bit different on Samsung’s devices as you don’t interact with it via a simple swipe, like in other Android based smartphone; instead you have to hold down the menu button for a couple of seconds.
As you can see in the leaked image, the notifications pushed by the Samsung Galaxy S5′s new user interface range from social media shares to sports scores, weather updates, upcoming appointments etc. As you probably know, Google Now is an intelligent personal assistant developed from Google, available within the Google Search mobile application for both Android and iOS mobile operating systems. Basically, Google Now is Google’s version of Siri, only much better according to most people. Being integrated in the Google Search app, the way Google Now works is simple: it searches through your history and identifies patterns (such as common locations, repeated calendar appointments, search queries, etc). It then uses these patterns to give you relevant information in a wide range of subjects (as mentioned above). Google Now displays this information in the form of cards. Samsung’s own intelligent personal assistant is S Voice, but it is unknown at the moment if Samsung Galaxy S5 will use the same method as Google Now for notifications. And if it will use the same method, would it collect its own data or would it ‘borrow’ from Google apps?
You can also observe a certain resemblance to Microsoft’s Metro user interface. The Metro interface used in Windows 8 and the mobile Windows Phone 8 operating systems, makes use of flat colored “live tiles” that represent units of information. If you own a Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 you may already be familiar with the tile based interface on a Samsung device. It is very interesting to see if the South Korean company will go the same rout as Microsoft when it comes to user interface, using an interface based on flat colored tiles on all of its devices beginning with the Samsung Galaxy S5.
At the moment the leaked images should be taken with a grain of salt. Especially since it is said that the home screen menu in the image is just something that Samsung is testing, not a completed design. Whether or not the Samsung Galaxy S5′s home screen user interface will be similar to that of Google Now we will see very soon as the next generation flagship from Samsung is set to be unveiled in the coming months.
Samsung Galaxy S5 Specs
Apple’s iPhone 5S is the first smartphone in the world to be released with a 64 bit System on Chip, but Samsung announced last year that its upcoming flagship, the Galaxy S5, will also be powered by a 64 bit System on Chip. In an interview last year by Korea Times, asked if its upcoming smartphones will be powered by 64 bit processors, like the iPhone 5S, Shin Jong-Kyun (Samsung’s CEO of Mobile) said: “Not in the shortest time. But yes, our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality”. However, the iPhone 5S’ other innovative feature, the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, will not be included in the Samsung Galaxy S5. When asked if it is possible for the Samsung Galaxy S5 to include a fingerprint sensor, an official Samsung spokesperson stated: “We are not yet developing the technology [...]”.
It was also rumored that the Samsung Galaxy S5 will be released with 3 GB of RAM, just like last year’s Samsung Galaxy Note 3. Today’s smartphones need a lot of resources and increased RAM is always welcomed. In a statement from last year, Samsung confirmed it began mass production of the first low power 3 GB DDR3 RAM for mobile devices. Considering the Galaxy S5 is the South Korean company’s upcoming flagship, it is safe to assume it will make use of the company’s latest components so we expect the Samsung Galaxy S5 to be released with 3 GB of RAM. A Samsung spokesperson said: “Samsung’s new ultra slim memory solutions will enable thinner smartphone designs and allow for additional battery space, while offering a data transfer speed of up to 2,133 megabits per second (Mbps) per pin“.
The Samsung Galaxy S5′s camera will also be upgraded if we are to believe the rumors. It seems that the next generation Galaxy S will be released with a 16 MP camera that will offer higher quality than every other competitor, except Nokia Lumia 1020?s 41 MP camera sensor. Reports also claim that besides the upgraded camera sensor, Samsung Galaxy S5?s camera will also feature optical image stabilization, which will dramatically improve picture quality even at max zoom settings. The improved camera sensor is rumored to be currently in research and development phase, in Korea to replace the current 13 MP sensor found in the Samsung Galaxy S4. There were also rumors about the new 16 MP camera sensor being included in the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 but it turned out the rumors were just that, rumors, as Samsung’s latest phablet was released with the same 13 MP rear camera as the Samsung Galaxy S4.
