Galaxy S5 Releases Tomorrow – Everything You Need To Know
The fifth Galaxy S smartphone was unveiled last month at the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, but it won’t be available until April 11 2014. If you live in South Korea you can already buy the Samsung Galaxy S5 as carriers broke the release date and released Samsung’s upcoming flagship in retail stores; the decision is a direct consequence of restrictions imposed by the South Korean government, that prevent the carriers from signing up new customers form April to May. If you live in the UK you probably already pre orderd it from carriers O2, Three, Vodafone or EE or form retailers Amazon UK, Phones4u and Carphone Warehouse.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 releases tomorrow internationally and if you didn’t pre order and want to know more about it, this article will help you. As mentioned above, regardless if you are in the United Kingdom or in the United States, you can pre order the fifth Galaxy S at Amazon (UK) for $189.99 on contract, or $699.99 without contract and you can choose between three color variants: black, white and blue. At Amazon you can also pre order the recently unveiled second generation Gear devices: the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smartwatches and the Gear Fit fitness tracker.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 keeps the design of the fourth Galaxy S almost intact. The Samsung galaxy S5 features a Super AMOLED panel capable of a Full high Definition resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The fifth Samsung Galaxy S is powered by a 2.5 GHz quad core Snapdragon 801 System on Chip with 2 GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU. It will also be released in a variant with an octo core Exynos 5422 System on Chip that will feature two CPUs (a 2.1 GHz quad core Cortex-A15 and a 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7), 2 GB of RAM and an ARM Mali T628MP6 GPU. It also features 16 GB of internal memory (that you can expand to 128 GB via the integrated microSD card slot) and a removable Li-ion 2800 mAh battery that is larger than Galaxy S4’s 2600 mAh Li-ion battery and it also offers a low power mode that is enabled when battery life is low.
One of the new additions is a home button that, just as the iPhone 5S, integrates a fingerprint scanner. The swipe based fingerprint sensor is inspired by iPhone 5S’ similar sensor, but unfortunately first impressions were not very good: due to the swipe based nature of the fingerprint sensor it is almost impossible to activate it when using the Galaxy S5 with a single hand. The fifth Galaxy S also integrates a heart rate monitor placed on the smartphone’s back, next to the camera’s flash. The heart rate monitor can be used from within the S Health app and after placing your finger on the sensor, it will grab your pulse in about ten seconds, with very good accuracy.
The heart rate monitor is located near the rear camera’s flash. Speaking of Galaxy S5’s rear camera, it features a 16 megapixel sensor, capable of recording videos in 4K resolution, phase detection auto focus (which can focus in around 0.3 seconds), real time HDR photos and video, and an image sensor that can isolate individual pixels inside the sensor to improve its ability to capture light (this translates in better images in low light environments). It also features an F2.2 aperture. It also features a front facing 2.1 MP camera capable of recording videos in High Definition (1080p) at 30 frames per second.
Just like the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, the fifth Galaxy S features an IP67 (Ingress Protection) rating, which makes it dust proof and water proof as it is “totally protected against dust” and is “protected against the effect of immersion between 15cm and 1m“. The Samsung Galaxy S5 also comes with Android 4.4.2 KitKat out of the box and Samsung’s own front end touch interface, TouchWiz, over it plus the usual S branded apps and features. All in all, it is a high end smartphone, worthy of the Galaxy S brand.
If you intend to get Samsung’s new flagship device, the Galaxy S5, we recommend you pre order it (either from your carrier or from one of the retail stores that offer it). It is better to pre order as release date shipments may not be enough since this is a smartphone that everyone wants. It is also better to have it arrive to you, than wait in line during the release day. We will have more news on the Samsung Galaxy S5 after it is released so stay tuned. In the meantime, you can leave your comments using the dedicated section below.
