Editor's Note: Now that the Galaxy S5 is 10 years old, make sure to check out IGN's latest Android Phone reviews for more modern picks.
The Galaxy S5 is a great phone, even if it isn’t particularly ambitious. Samsung has iterated upon the Galaxy S4’s exceptional performance, gorgeous photo quality, and battery life, while simultaneously ignoring the most common of complaints — its cheap, uninspired design and unwieldy and unnecessary software suite. New features like its water resistant casing, fingerprint scanner, and integrated heart rate monitor help to differentiate the Galaxy S5, but it still lacks the focus and attention to detail that makes devices like the iPhone 5S or the HTC One (M8) remarkable.
Among the myriad of features found in Samsung’s S-series devices, performance has long been a top priority and the Galaxy S5 is no exception. This year’s model makes a considerable leap forward with its 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor and 2GB of RAM, up from last year’s 1.9GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 series chip. The added horsepower makes navigating the Galaxy S5 snappy and responsive with apps and games booting quickly, but it also enables new features like the camera’s rapid capture speed and time saving fingerprint security.
Samsung’s also dropped in some other interesting tech into the Galaxy S5, like its new Download Booster feature, which utilizes both Wi-Fi and LTE connections to improve transfer speeds on files larger than 30MB. Sadly, certain carriers hide the feature and it can’t be used for purchases from Google Play, where users are most likely to download games and apps. However, for other large files from Google Drive and other sources, I found small increases in speed.
The Galaxy S5’s display is marginally larger, now measuring at 5.1” as opposed to the Galaxy S4’s 5” screen. Thankfully, the modest screen size increase doesn’t have a noticeable impact on the overall footprint of the device and it’s still a Super AMOLED panel, which produces rich, bright colors and a wide viewing angle.
The exterior has been spruced up a bit, with the Galaxy S5 taking on a flashier silver plastic trim and a dimple textured faux-leather back. Although it’s a welcomed change over the Galaxy S4’s high-gloss, almost slimy to the touch finish, the Galaxy S5 is a far cry from the premium look and feel of the iPhone, HTC One (M8), and much of Nokia’s Lumia line. What’s worse, what little ground Samsung has gained with the Galaxy S5’s design tweaks is undone by its cheap, toy-like materials.
Uninspired as it may be, the Galaxy S5’s design does have one redeeming quality: water resistant casing. Samsung has made the Galaxy S5 capable of surviving not only partial exposure to water, but complete submersion for an extended period. I’ve run the Galaxy S5 under the tap and let it sink to the bottom of a tub of water without suffering any damage. For anyone who has ever lost a phone to water damage, the Galaxy S5’s water resistant casing and the peace of mind it yields could be a big draw. Despite the obvious utility, it’s a surprisingly uncommon feature amongst premium smartphones — at least, for now.
Samsung has also embraced biometric security, which Apple thrust back into mainstream consciousness with the introduction of the iPhone 5S’ TouchID sensor. The Galaxy S5’s fingerprint scanner differs from Apple’s, however, requiring users to swipe their finger over the home button rather than a touch and hold gesture.
Given the frequent use of swipe gestures in touch interface design, the Galaxy S5’s fingerprint scanner is actually more intuitive than Apple’s TouchID, and in my experience, more consistently accurate. Whereas the iPhone 5S periodically fails to recognize my fingerprint, the Galaxy S5 has only rejected it a couple of times during the span of my testing. It’s fast, efficient, and one of the safer ways to secure your smartphone.
On the software side, Samsung has made numerous changes to its TouchWiz UI, ranging from small design enhancements to the phone app to a revamped multitasking view. In some cases, the changes make for a cleaner, more intuitive experience, but most make simple tasks all the more challenging. For instance, the settings menu has gone from a relatively simple list-based structure to a grid of tens of icons spaced far apart that makes quick identification unnecessarily difficult.
If I had to sum up the Galaxy S5’s software in one word, it’d be “cluttered.” From the moment you take it out of the box and fire it up for the first time, TouchWiz’s factory fresh home screen is inundated with Samsung-crafted widgets for its various baked-in apps. It takes 10 minutes just to eradicate all of Samsung’s unnecessary bloat, but even then, it lives on within the app launcher, taking up precious storage space until you root your device and get rid of it for good.
Although there’s some utility to be found in some of Samsung’s apps, few are as effective or well designed as the wealth of third-party solutions available on Google Play. Samsung’s fitness and diet tracking app, S-Health, is probably the lone exception — if only because it’s the only app compatible with the Galaxy S5’s built-in heart rate monitor, which is placed just beneath the camera on the back panel. With S-Health open, users can place a finger on the sensor and get a beats-per-minute reading. But much like S-Health itself, the integrated heart rate monitor is inferior to other third-party solutions, often delivering inconsistent results or failing to register entirely.
Gimmicks and poorly conceived software aside, there are some areas where the Galaxy S5 excels, namely photography and battery life.
The phone’s rear-mounted 16-megapixel sensor takes some of the best photos I’ve seen on an Android device. Whereas many phones will struggle with mixed lighting or blown out exterior shots, the Galaxy S5’s camera produces consistently sharp and balanced shots. And as I alluded to before, capture times are almost instantaneous. It’s even capable of capturing 4K video, though with 4K monitors and TV still so exorbitantly priced, most are unlikely to have a way to appreciate. Where the camera struggles, however, is in low-light settings. Photos can come out grainy and capture time is prolonged, often causing blurring unless you're reasonably still.
Battery life is also similarly exceptional, lasting for anywhere from a day to a day and a half with moderate activity. More conservative use or employing the device’s various energy saving modes will extend the battery even further.
