Is Samsung Galaxy S5 an iPhone 5S killer?

Feature for feature, Samsung Galaxy S5 beats iPhone 5S hands down, says Shruti Puri. However, the real picture will emerge only after the phone launches this April.

Finally, Samsung has announced its much-rumoured Samsung Galaxy S5 at MWC 2014 in Barcelona and if you are curious to know whether it will continue to be on the path of success, you have picked just the right article.

Usually, Samsung announces its new handsets after Mobile World Congress every year, but this time the company decided to announce S5 at MWC and the only major reason spotted is to overcome the disappointing sales of its predecessor Samsung Galaxy S4.

Click NEXT to satiate your queries about this flagship model.

Specifications

Before we discuss whether Galaxy S5 is really a miracle or just another add-on to the Galaxy S series, let's have a look at the specs of S5 to get a clearer picture.

Samsung Galaxy S5 comes with a crystal clear 5.1-inch FHD Super AMOLED touchscreen with a whopping 432ppi pixel density.

If you are a dedicated shutterbug, its 16MP camera has lots to offer you. The camera is one of those areas where Samsung has shown innovation and provided countless features to be explored and tested.

With Android 4.4 KitKat OS, the UI, a customised toned-down version for easy working, too has been revised and now the icons and software looks similar to Apple's iOS design.

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Along with these, Galaxy S5 works on a quad-core 2.5GHz processor and Adreno 330 GPU coupled with 2GB RAM.

The smartphone has two memory variants of 16GB and 32GB, and the external memory can be expanded up to 128GB.

For better and longer battery back-up, a battery of 2,800mAh amperage is provided. Also Galaxy S5 is IP67 certified for being water and dust resistant.

The above specs clearly indicate that in one way S5 is a refined version of S4.

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Additional features

As mentioned above, Samsung is in dire need of bringing out innovation to the market and it chooses this handset to play its card. Where it is a refined version, it is also an innovation in many factors.

Samsung, with S5, becomes the first company to provide its users an actual heart sensor in their smartphones which actually tracks your activity and plans out your workout and daily routine. For health conscious users, this is an absolute bliss!

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Another major addition is its fingerprint sensor, which can be used not only for security purposes but also for making payments and signing-in for apps and services. This is just similar to the one used in Apple iPhone 5S.

Fingers are crossed that this addition does not turn out to be pit hole for this handset because of security issues.

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Its crazy power-saving mode is another blessing where your screen goes black and white and all the non-essential apps are killed, enabling the last 10 per cent of your battery to last for 24 hours.

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Another major addition is the flexibility to combine Wi-Fi and LTE speeds for faster downloads. This is simply awesome and certainly offers an edge to the S5 over other competing brands.

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Moreover, this handset comes with a matching smartwatch and many other privileges from major app makers like LinkedIn, PayPal, Evernote, Box, and the WSJ.

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Will S4 declining sales affect S5?

Samsung Galaxy S4 may have shown some seriously disappointing sales figure but as they say, 'Failures are never permanent', and that is what the Samsung Galaxy S5 aims for.

These features may give you a feel that S5 is relatively an upgrade to S4, but the innovation behind the apps and sensors really prove this notion wrong. Whether these features will be as exciting to use as shown in commercials or not is left to its launch event in April and only then we can scratch S5 to its depth.

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Top rivals

In almost all aspects, S5 is a better phone than S4. Where the former offers heart rate monitor, fingerprint scanner, and ultra power saving mode, the latter does not even touch these features.

S5 offers 2,800mAh battery, while S4 offers 2,600mAh battery. Not only this, S5 hosts 16MP camera, whereas S4 hosts 13MP.

Second major rival of S5 is Apple iPhone 5S, which also surrenders to S5 in many aspects.

iPhone 5S's 1,570mAh battery is far lesser than that of Galaxy S5's.

Where S5 offers a quad-core processor, iPhone 5S offers only a dual-core processor.

Moreover, 5S does not have expandable memory, but S5 offers up to 128GB of external storage.

In terms of camera, the iPhone 5S with 8MP camera is far behind Galaxy S5. The only place where the 5S gets an upper hand is in its iOS design, which seems to have been copied by Samsung. This can cause a little harm to Samsung Galaxy S5's branding.

Some other major rivals of Samsung Galaxy S5 are LG G Pro 2, Sony Xperia Z2, Google Nexus 5, Nokia Lumia 1520, and Motorola Moto X.

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Conclusion

Seeing all these features and innovations, we can predict that Galaxy S5 will continue to succeed, by covering the glitches found in S4. The company has tried its best to give lag-free performance with S5; only time will tell if the customers will bite the bullet.

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