The Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 continues the
Korean firm's drive to create an Android
device for every single niche in the market.
Samsung's current range has the powerhouses
of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Note
3 , followed up by the less powerful yet still
impressive Galaxy S4 Mini .
Below that sits the Galaxy Ace 3, with the
Galaxy Fame and the Galaxy Young rounding
off the list.
Being one of the lower-specced handsets, it's
reasonable to assume that the pricing would
match, and you wouldn't be far wrong.
SIM prices start from around £200, $225,
with 4G contracts in the UK as low as £19pm,
or 3G for £17pm.
This puts the Galaxy
Ace 3 in square
contention with the
newly launched HTC
Desire 500 and the
Nokia Lumia 625, as
well as being a shade
more expensive than
the Samsung Galaxy
S3 Mini .
Being a more budget-
oriented device, the
Galaxy Ace 3 has a
lot to compete
against. Sitting within
the Galaxy range
should help, though -
as should an existing
user base that might
be looking to upgrade
from the original
Galaxy Ace.
In order to convince you to part with some
(though admittedly not much) of your hard-
earned cash, the Galaxy Ace 3 packs in a few
surprises. The more observant will have
noticed that it is 4G enabled, for example.
In truth, this will be the biggest selling point
of the Galaxy Ace 3, as there is not a lot else
that it has to shout about. Running only a
dual-core 1.2GHz processor, when the HTC
Desire 500 offers a quad-core, seems a
disappointing.
I'm still a little sceptical of the need for such
power in low-end devices, though, so I'll take
a look at that later.
Another key specification on the modern
smartphone is the screen. The Galaxy Ace 3
comes with a 4-inch, 480 x 800 screen,
meaning 233ppi. It's a long way off the Galaxy
S4, with its 441 ppi, but it's not too bad.
It seems a little odd that the screen matches
that of the HTC Desire 500, yet somehow
seems brighter and crisper. Then again,
Samsung is famed for putting truly spectacular
screens onto some of its devices.
To cope with that screen, the Galaxy Ace 3
measures in at 121.2 x 62.7 x 9.8mm. This
puts it in the same size bracket as the Galaxy
S4 Mini, although the extra 12g of weight is
very noticeable.
Previous TechRadar reviews have commented
that added weight can sometimes help make a
device feel more premium, but the Galaxy Ace
3 feels a little heavy.
Besides the 4G antenna and 4-inch screen, the
chassis also encases the more standard
smartphone features: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0,
GPS and GLONASS, and NFC.
The Galaxy Ace 3 is shaping up to fit nicely in
the Galaxy range, and this is aided by a strong
design ethos from Samsung. Put the Galaxy
Ace 3 alongside any of the Galaxy phones
since the Galaxy S3 and the curvier nature is
instantly recognisable.
You can pick up the Galaxy Ace 3 in two
colors. I'd tell you to guess what they are, but
black and white are too obvious to make the
game fun. Everyone would be disappointed if
it was just black, though.
There's little to say about the colors
themselves, but what is noticeable is that the
sensors by the front-facing camera are far
more noticeable on the white version. Hopes
of a notification light were also dashed.
A faux chrome band wraps around the chassis,
making it look a little more premium, as well
as breaking up the block white or black color.
As with all smartphones, the screen takes up
most of the front. The home button, as well as
the back and menu soft-keys sit below,
following the same Samsung layout first seen
on the Samsung Galaxy S .
The volume rocker sits at the top of the left-
hand side, with the power lock button
opposite on the right. This leaves the 3.5mm
port sat on the top, and the microUSB/
charger port on the base.
You knew that, though, didn't you? All Galaxy
models, from the Fame through to the S4,
follow in the same vein.
Tucked behind a removable plastic back cover
is an 1800mAh battery, as well as the Samsung
standard microSD slot. I'm really thankful for
its inclusion, although I should mention that
the Galaxy Ace 3 does come with a respectable
8GB internal storage, even if you can't use all
of it.
The added internal storage will give the Galaxy
Ace 3 a boost, as the Desire 500 has less than
1GB of accessible storage, compared with the
Ace's 5GB. It is beaten in the camera
department, with the Galaxy Ace 3 packing
only a 5MP rear sensor. A VGA sensor sits in
the top left, above the screen.
It's hard to be definitive about how much this
affects camera performance, as the Galaxy S3
Mini came with only a 5MP sensor and was
still very impressive.
In terms of size, the Galaxy Ace 3 hits a nice
medium. The race to ever-bigger screens
continues (check out the Sony Xperia Z Ultra
and its massive 6.44-inch beast), but the
smaller stature of the Galaxy Ace 3 means that
the entire screen can be accessed with one
hand.
Overall, the design of the Galaxy Ace 3 isn't
phenomenal, if only because it fits so nicely
within the Galaxy range, and that can't be a
bad thing. It has a lot to live up to, but
bringing 4G to the lower end of the market
should really help.
Interface
When it comes to any device running Android,
you're going to find a certain level of
customisation. The Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 is no
exception.
Anybody who has used any Samsung device,
whether running Android or not, will be
instantly familiar. It's understandable that
Samsung is keen to have uniformity across all
its devices, as it builds a tighter ecosystem,
and it will help convince users to make the
jump to Tizen, when that arrives next year.
Not everyone will be a fan of the overlay, but
it is very easy to use, and intuitive. It is also a
lot closer to the native stock Android, as
opposed to HTC's Sense 5.0. There is definitely
no BlinkFeed to be seen.
On the hardware side of things, the Galaxy Ace
3 suffers a little. The dual-core 1.2GHz feels a
little slow. On the whole, the handset chugged
along nicely, but the Ace 3 stuttered enough
times to demand comment. The quad-core
power is noticeable on the HTC Desire 500.
Of course, though, every OS and UI should be
intuitive. After all, what is a smartphone if it
doesn't feel smart? Samsung has nailed this
with TouchWiz, and every iteration takes it to
the next step. The immediate comparison will
always be to Sense, as it is the best known UI
besides TouchWiz.
Something such as having quick settings in the
Notifications bar as an example is a massive
boost, to both usability and battery life. One
key fault here, though, is the lack of any
autobrightness feature, and it's hard to explain
that omission.
There is access to both a quick settings page
and Google's push to have a settings button
via the notifications bar. On the Galaxy Ace 3,
as with all Galaxy devices, it feels a little
redundant.
Being Android Jelly Bean , the expandable and
dismissable notifications are around, and this
is an excellent feature. The top notification
expands to show you more information, such
as multiple messages from WhatsApp, or the
ability to archive via Gmail.
Swiping left or right also allows you to remove
the notification from view, meaning that you
don't have that text or email sat there bugging
you all day. Voicemail messages, as ever, are
still sat there until you call them.
The App drawer has taken a quick lick of paint,
differentiating from the stock drawer in some
pretty handy ways. The ability to sort your
application list by date, alphabetically in a
grid or list, or even hide apps that you don't
want on there, is greatly appreciated.
As ever, folder creation isn't possible within
the app drawer, which is a tad frustrating. It
seems needlessly difficult on the home screens
too, as there is no drag and drop. This could
be due to patent litigations, or the desire to
avoid them, but it's still disappointing.
The Koreans have also had another look at the
lock screen. Widgets are possible, although
the use for them is unclear, as you need to
swipe about to alternate lock screens. Having
preferred apps there is far better.
You can also add text to the lock screen, with
the idea being that you can put your details
on, so if you lose your phone it can be
returned

Years ago, people either bought an iPhone or “a Droid." Verizon’s marketing power, those insane robot ads, and maybe that just-close- enough naming convention made the carrier's Android phones virtually synonymous with their operating system. But now I hear people every day saying "Oh, is that the new Galaxy?" or "I don't really want an iPhone. I think I'm going to get a Galaxy." Thanks to its high quality and wide availability, not to mention Samsung's sheer brute-forcing marketing effort, the Galaxy S III became the face of the Android universe. It has sold tens of millions of units , and helped Android take huge marketshare away from the iPhone. Now Samsung's back with that device’s successor, the Galaxy S4. The new handset changes little from the GS III, but it adds a lot — a bigger screen, and a laundry list of software tweaks and features. It's a variation on a theme, a safe tweak to a strategy that’s worked impossibly well for Samsung. But the landscape has changed since the Galaxy S III came out, and good cameras, big and beautiful screens, and fast performance now come virtually standard. The Galaxy S4 comes into a fiercely competitive market, with great phones on all sides and a particularly strong showing from the HTC One — is it enough of an improvement to keep Samsung atop the Android heap? I've had one for a week or so, and I have a few thoughts on the subject. Some things never change The GS4's primary competitors are the iPhone 5 and the HTC One, and from a pure design perspective that should make Samsung very, very nervous. Where Apple and HTC have both made beautiful, well- made, high-quality phones, the GS4 has Samsung back in the land of cheap, plasticky handsets. It looks for all the world like the Galaxy S III — despite having a bigger screen and more horsepower, at 7.9mm and 4.6 ounces it's actually imperceptibly thinner and lighter than the S III. But copying the S III wasn’t a good idea. I don't like holding this phone, and I can't overstate how much that informs the experience of using it. It makes an awful first impression, slippery and slimy and simply unpleasant in your hand. My white review unit is completely smooth and glossy, with a subtle checkered pattern that looks textured but is neither grippy nor textured anywhere on its body. Even the silver band around the sides, which is obviously supposed to look like metal, is plastic. Everyone I showed the GS4 to frowned and wrinkled their nose as if it smelled bad, before rubbing their fingers on the back of the phone and then handing it back to me — that's the opposite of the standard reaction to HTC’s One, which everyone wants to ogle and hold. That's going to be a huge problem for Samsung, because the GS4 and One are likely to be next to each other on store shelves, and at least on first impression there's absolutely no contest between the two. It's a shame, too, because Samsung didn’t have to do it this way. The company made tradeoffs for a removable battery and a slightly thinner body, but I’m not sure those are features worth sacrificing so much for in 2013. It's not all bad: the GS4 is thin and light, and feels durable despite its cheap materials. It's also an improvement over the S III, thanks to slightly flatter edges and shrunken bezels. The port layout is smart: power button on the right, volume on the left, headphone jack up top and Micro USB on the bottom, with the SIM card, microSD slot, and battery accessible when you peel off the removable back. I’m thrilled the GS4 has a physical home button, with capacitive Back and Menu keys on either side. It's very comfortable for such a large phone, but I can't get over the gross feeling I get holding it. Samsung's proven repeatedly that people don't care about build quality, or at least will overlook it in favor of features and performance, but the landscape's different now. The HTC One is a powerful, feature-rich device that is also beautiful and classy, while Samsung's handset feels like an overpowered children’s toy. Samsung's feature list has to be awfully long to overcome that — and it is, but I'll get there. CAN WE FINALLY DECIDE DESIGN MATTERS? In living color IT MAY NOT BE PERFECTLY ACCURATE, BUT IT LOOKS GOOD Through my entire time with the GS4, I kept imagining walking through a store and trying to pick a phone. Before even considering how Samsung can beat HTC, I wondered how such an apparently evolutionary change would convince users to upgrade from the S III, or to spring for the newer and more expensive model when the GS III is still a solid choice. The answer's simple, and luckily for Samsung it's also immediately obvious. It's the screen. The GS4's 5-inch, 1920 x 1080 display is big, beautiful, and seriously eye-catching. The latter is partially a bad thing: the S4 uses a Super AMOLED panel like many of Samsung's phones, and like many of Samsung’s phones it displays overly contrasted and vibrant colors. Those colors may not be accurate — reds and oranges absolutely explode off the screen, whether they should or not — but they certainly catch your eye. And with a ridiculous 441-pixels-per-inch, even the PenTile display matrix I usually loathe causes no problems. The glass is rigid and responsive to touch, and works even if you have gloves on — which I shouldn’t have needed to test in April in New York City, and yet here we are. For some reason, Samsung has always had trouble with screen brightness settings — the GS4 can never seem to decide how bright its screen should be, changing suddenly and drastically often and without warning. I turned automatic brightness off very quickly. I tried to pick my favorite between the One's display and the GS4's, and wound up going back and forth a dozen times before giving up. Both are incredibly high-res, bright, and crystal clear; the One is slightly more accurate, but I still periodically forget my nitpicking and get lost in the GS4's vibrant colors. You really can't lose, and that's pretty great. The lone speaker on the Galaxy S4 resides on its backside, in that wonderfully unconsidered spot where audio is both muffled by your hand and blasting directly away from your ears. Once again, HTC broke the curve by offering two big, powerful speakers pointed straight at your face — but the One aside, the GS4 offers surprisingly loud sound from rear-facing grille. It's not very rich and is very compressed, but it's loud. Loud is good. The camera Instagram deserves While HTC is trying to convince buyers that megapixels don't matter, and that its so-called Ultrapixels are better anyway, Samsung went the opposite direction. I don't know if all the pixels in the Galaxy S4's 13-megapixel sensor are the reason, or if I should credit Samsung's fast processor or the clear attention paid to its software, but the upshot is that the GS4's camera is the best Android camera I've ever used by a considerable margin, and in most cases it's every bit as good as the iPhone 5's camera. However, the One and the Nokia Lumia 920 do considerably better than the GS4 in poor lighting. When it’s dark, the GS4 takes the same soft, noisy pictures as any other smartphone camera, but without the incredible brightness capabilities of the One — there are pictures you'll get with the One or the 920 that the GS4 just can't capture. The GS4's autofocus stumbles in low light, too; I learned quickly to take three shots at night, in order to get one that was properly focused. It's actually Samsung's experience with dedicated cameras that make shooting photos with the GS4 so nice. The company borrowed a lot of the GS4's camera software from the Galaxy Camera , a concept car of sorts that clearly informed its ability to build a great cameraphone. The interface is much improved over the S III, from the scrolling Mode dial to the one-press capture of either stills or video. It's also simple and fast, two things many cellphone cameras are not. The GS4's greatest photographic achievement, though, is that it manages to be simple and fast while simultaneously offering the largest, most impressive feature set of any smartphone camera I've ever used. If you're just turning the phone to Auto and firing pictures, you're missing out. Instead, you should try turning it to Eraser Mode, which detects moving objects in your photo — like the stranger that always walks by right as you take the shot — and automatically removes them. Or scroll up to Drama Shot, which takes a series of pictures as a subject moves and then shows a whole leap, or the soccer ball's whole flight path, in one automatically-overlaid photo. Animated Photo lets you take a few seconds of video, then choose with your finger whether a part of the frame is still or in motion — you can actually create and share animated GIFs without ever leaving the camera app. Some of the more advanced features require some staging — and Drama Shot sometimes takes a couple of tries — but they're all pretty cool. All except for Dual Camera, which despite Samsung's heavy promotion remains a mystery to me. The pitch is simple enough: you take a picture with both front and rear cameras simultaneously and overlay one on the other, so the person taking the picture appears in the picture as well. It's a neat idea in theory, but in practice left me just superimposing giant versions of my head onto random buildings, inside weird postage-stamp borders or within a heart. It's a fun, silly way to take an "I'm in New York!" selfie without turning the camera on yourself, and maybe that's enough, but it's still a little odd that Samsung is putting so much marketing muscle behind such a niche feature. There are a lot of trees in this forest, some of them less than perfect, but taken as a whole the Galaxy S4's camera is a triumph. If it supplants the many terrible Android cameras posting to my Instagram feed, we'll all be better off. What comes after the kitchen sink? Speaking of forests with lots of trees: the GS4 may run Android 4.2, but Samsung has heaped so many features on top of Google's operating system that it almost feels like something entirely different. Normally I'm conditioned to believe stock Android is better than any manufacturer skin, but Samsung overhauls the software so completely that I'm less annoyed than I would be with a company like Motorola or LG, where the changes are typically a combination of aesthetic, problematic, and pointless. Some of Samsung's added features are all three, but many are downright useful. To start, the GS4 keeps all the features Samsung has debuted on various Note models and the Galaxy S III. Samsung pioneered the radio and connectivity toggles in the notification windowshade, and the GS4 offers access to more and more settings there, including a brightness slider. Samsung's big clock-and-weather widget comes on the home screen by default, and the general Touchwiz look and feel remains intact. The green-on-blue-on-gray scheme is growing on me, but Samsung's hideous Calendar app never will; likewise many of the Phone menus and screens look cartoonishly terrible, with huge icons and ugly images. What Touchwiz mostly offers is options: with a bit of effort, the GS4 can look and feel almost any way you choose. You can hide or rearrange apps in the app drawer, pick and choose quick-launch apps for the lock screen, change the order of settings and toggles, and much, much more. There's even an Easy Mode on the GS4, which turns your phone into something like John's Phone : it presents a simple dialer, shortcuts to a few common apps, huge icons for everything, and hides almost everything else. Samsung probably should’ve taken this as a sign, because if your phone needs Easy Mode you’re probably doing something wrong, but it does at least do a nice job simplifying everything the GS4 has going on. THE GALAXY S4 HAS A LOT GOING ON – MAYBE TOO MUCH And boy, is there a lot going on. There are now 18 (yes, 18) toggles in the notification pulldown, which you can see by pressing a new button at the top right — it opens up a command center of sorts, which lets you turn off everything from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to some of the wilder eye-tracking features. I kind of wish there were a Medium mode that would take away all the Minority Report stuff, and just leave a more normal Android phone. I'll never forget Samsung's launch event for the GS4 , a bizarre spectacle at Radio City Music Hall where actors went through feature after feature, explaining how they work together to make the GS4 your "Life Companion." Some of Samsung’s additions fit this bill a little more closely than others. S Health is the best example of an actual Life Companion – it's a Fitbit- or FuelBand-style app that tracks your steps, calories, sleep, and diet, offering you a way to get fit (or in my case just provide more data about my pathetically sedentary lifestyle). It's handy to have built right into your phone, and the app's pretty powerful thanks to the S4's temperature and humidity sensors — you can actually tell it how you feel, and it'll figure out how you should adjust your surroundings to feel better. S Health is a great tool, though it won't be as good as it could be until its companion accessories come out in a few months' time. My aforementioned sedentary lifestyle is also probably to blame for why I used WatchOn, Samsung's handy universal remote and search- based TV guide app, far more than S Health. It’s a great app, offering quick and easy control over your whole home theater setup via the IR blaster on top of the GS4, plus the really clever Peel-made search and recommendations interface across your cable box, Netflix, Blockbuster, and other services. More than anything, it's just convenient — I tend to have my phone in my hands while I watch TV anyway, so switching to WatchOn to change the channel is light work. There's a full-fledged suite of Office products via the Polaris suite, though I can't say there's any way to make editing a PowerPoint on your phone a pleasant experience. There’s also a built-in translator app — I bet you can guess it’s name — plus a handy tool for scanning business cards and QR codes. Carriers (in my case T-Mobile) also add some bloatware, though Samsung lets you hide most of the apps you don’t want from the drawer — yet again, the GS4 is an incredibly malleable phone. It just takes some work to get it the way you want. You can even run two apps at once, side-by-side with a system just like the Note 8.0’s, which works surprisingly well on a smaller screen because there are just so many pixels to play with. I like the apps and services Samsung adds to the Android experience here, but I'm less enamored with all the ways Samsung has reimagined how you'll want to actually interact with your cellphone. These features were touted heavily on the GS III despite the fact that I never once saw a regular person using S Beam or AllShare, and the trend continues unabated with the S4. The hand waving software is more useful — sometimes. There's Air View, which approximates the Galaxy Note's ability to recognize when you're hovering over the screen with the S Pen and unearth content without making you tap, but requires only your finger. It's handy for previewing an email without opening it, or seeing stories in Flipboard, but not much else, and it requires precision to hover a centimeter away from your target — I wound up accidentally tapping on the screen half the time anyway. Air Gestures has me completely torn. It's really impressive, letting you wave your hand over the phone to scroll up and down a webpage or flip through a gallery, and it works reliably once you figure out your hand has to pass over the top of the phone, where the IR sensor sits next to the earpiece. I started using it while my hands were wet, or if I had something in my hand. (Sadly it doesn't work with Pocket, so I can't wave my coffee-filled hand over the phone to flip pages while riding the subway.) It's overly sensitive, though, and will often scroll back when you’re just moving your hands around. It also tended to jump as I was pointing something out or showing someone a photo, which became a pain. I wound up leaving both Air View and Air Gestures on, mostly just to show people how cool they are — and because I love that I can wave at my phone to change songs. The list goes on and on, really, with Samsung offering features galore that you'll probably never use. The Story Album app lets you create scrapbooks from your photos, though there are plenty of third-party apps that do it better. Group Play is like AllShare on steroids – you can have everyone listen to the same song at the same time, play a game together, or all look at a slideshow, except everyone has to have a GS4 and jump through a bunch of hoops to get it all working. Of course there's also S Beam and NFC, plus a forthcoming security feature called Knox that separates your personal information from your work data — handy if you're bringing your GS4 to work, mostly superfluous otherwise. Much of what Samsung offers seems to be just for show, designed to give sales clerks something to demo that makes the GS4 unique. The best features get out of your way, but too many are simply obtrusive — I wound up using the GS4 like I would any other phone, with most of the additional features off, and as much as I'd be thrilled to watch people waving at their phones on the subway, I'm not betting it catches on.

Samsung Galaxy Core I8260 Review, Specs, Price &
Availability Details
Samsung Galaxy Core I8260 Smartphone Review, Hardware-
Software Specifications, Price and Availability Details
A couple of months ago there were strong rumors about a Dual-SIM &
Dual-Core Smartphone from Samsung, which was to be called
Samsung Galaxy Core I8260 Smartphone. Today the rumors are
confirmed and Samsung is ready with its latest offering with Samsung
Galaxy Core I8260. The question though is, "with so many
smartphones flooding the market of late, will this new entrant prove to
be a hit?" Considering that it is quite different from the Mega
Samsung Galaxy series from the same company, there is belief that
the new dual SIM smartphone will make a mark for itself. So today we
will show you the complete Review of Samsung Galaxy Core I8260
Smartphone with its Specifications, Price & Availability Details
available below.

Samsung Galaxy S5 review: Design and
build
The Galaxy S5 retains that recognisable
Samsung look which means not much has
changed compared to previous generations
and, for that matter, other Galaxy devices.
The S5 looks a lot like the Galaxy Note 3
which is a shame because it really requires its
own style as a flagship device. Unfortunately
it's bigger, squarer and more boring than the
Galaxy S4 . Read: Galaxy S5 price and where
to buy in the UK .
It also doesn't feel like a premium
smartphone in the hand. A 'perforated' rear
cover supposedly makes it feel more natural
but we just don't see the benefit here. It does
feel nice and soft to the touch and has a nice
grip to it but reminds us of that 3D style
wallpaper you can get for your walls (that's
bad).
A huge design change is that Samsung has
added dust and water resistant credentials.
That's something which Sony has been
offering for a while now in its Xperia range.
The Galaxy S5 has an IP67 rating which means
it will happily get wet, even submersed in
water, without frazzling inside and is
completely sealed from dust particles.
However, you'll need to make doubly sure
that the microUSB port cover is on and the
rear cover is perfectly clipped into place. I'm
sure a number of users will get an unwanted
surprise when the gaps aren't completely
covered since it needs to clip in properly in a
total of nearly 20 places around the edge.
Samsung has decided to go against the trend
of on-screen navigations buttons and stuck
with its physical home button with a touch-
sensitive counterparts either side. Instead of
the previously used menu, we now have
recent apps. The physical button is fine and
houses the fingerprint scanner (see hardware)
but the other two, particularly the back
button, are hard to reach.
The Galaxy S5 comes in four colours at launch
– black, white (as you might expect) plus blue
and something called 'copper gold'. At launch
Vodafone has the network exclusive on the
gold model.
21 best smartphones: The best phone you can
buy in 2014.
New smartphones to expect at MWC 2014:
What will Samsung, Sony, LG, HTC, Nokia
and BlackBerry launch?
Samsung Galaxy S5 review: Hardware and
performance
Inside the Galaxy S5 is the kind of high-end
specs you'd want to find in a flagship. Like
rival devices, the handset has a Qualcomm
Snapdragon 801 processor which is quad-core
but clocked a little higher at 2.5GHz. This is
accompanied by a now standard 2GB of RAM,
although a handful of devices do have more.
We've hit a point where flagship smartphone
offer excellent performance – it almost goes
without saying. They're all running of
powerful and efficient processors so we're not
surprised to find the Galaxy S5 nippy in day-
to-day performance but it's not flawless.
For starters, there is a slight delay between
pressing the power or home button and the
lockscreen appearing and the same is true
when hitting the recent apps button. There's
also the fact that the camera app takes a good
few seconds to launch and quitting to the
homescreen from apps doesn't happen
straight away. These are minor gripes but the
Galaxy S5 seems slow in these areas compares
to rivals which can do these tasks seemingly
instantaneously.
See also : Samsung Gear 2 review: Classy Tizen
smartwatch is too expensive .
Samsung Galaxy S5 review: Storage
The Galaxy S5 is available in either 16- or
32GB capacities, although it seems to be a
classic situation where the larger of the two is
like a super rare Pokémon. A microSD card
supporting up to 64GB is almost a given
nowadays but the Galaxy S5 can take double
that at 128GB. Like other Samsung
smartphones, the Galaxy S5 also offers 50GB
of free Dropbox cloud storage.
It's a good job there is plenty of storage
options because like the Galaxy S4, a lot of
the Galaxy S5's internal storage is used up
before you've even downloaded an app. Our
16GB has just under 10GB available which is
less than average.
Samsung Galaxy S5 review: Screen
Despite numerous rumours of a 5.25in
screen, the Galaxy S5's display is only
marginally larger than the Galaxy S4's. It's
5.1in and if you were hoping for a new crazy
high resolution then you might be
disappointed to find out that the Galaxy S5
has a now very standard Full HD display - we
were expecting the next generation of
technology so can't help but feel a little
disappointed.
Nevertheless, the display does look brilliant
on a number of levels. Of course, it's still
Super AMOLED as you would expect from
Samsung so colours are vivid and pop out at
you and contrast is good, too. As you might
presume, the Galaxy S5 offers excellent
viewing angles.
The Galaxy S5's display performs better than
most outdoors and we found we rarely need
to up the brightness to gain visibility.
Maximum brightness is good and about level
with what we're using to seeing but it's worth
noting that the display goes exceptionally dark
which could be handy for saving battery or
situations like reading in the dark. A handy
brightness slider resides in the notification
bar but it can be switched off if you prefer.
Smart stay is carried over from the Galaxy S4
and keeps the screen from switching off as
long as you're looking at it. By default, the
screen is set 'adapt display' which
automatically adjust elements like colour
gamut, white tone and contrast but you can
use other modes which tweak the settings if
you prefer: Dynamic, Standard, Professional
photo and Cinema.
Flagship smartphones are generally large these
days so we're talking 5in and above. This
makes them difficult to use one-handed but
Samsung has included a special mode which
you can enable in the settings menu. A quick
swipe into the middle of the screen and back
out will launch the one-handed mode. Here
you can adjust the size of the interface so it's
easy to reach. It's a bit strange but we can
see it being helpful to some users.
Samsung Galaxy S5 review: Fingerprint
scanner
A key hardware addition is a fingerprint
scanner. It's keeping up with the Jones' here
since the iPhone 5s has one. The Galaxy S5's
is also built into the home button but you
have to swipe your finger across it. You can
register up to three fingerprints and need to
set a backup password because there's a five
attempt limit on using your paws to unlock
the device.
See also : Samsung Galaxy S5 fingerprint
scanner gets hacked: Follows iPhone 5s Touch
ID.
In general, the fingerprint scanner is accurate
at reading your print but swiping your digits
across it in the correct manner is awkward to
do one-handed which is quite annoying.
Unless you hold it with one hand and use
your other hand to swipe, you'll quickly hit
the attempt limit. Messages like 'swipe over
the centre' and 'swipe the entire pad' are a
little too common.
As well as unlocking the Galaxy S5 with your
finger, you can use your precious print to
authorise you Samsung account instead of
typing in a password. The same is true of
PayPal payments so this does make things
quicker and more secure. Furthermore, it can
be used to launch a private mode (see
software).
Samsung Galaxy S5 review: Heart rate
monitor
Samsung has successfully added new features
to the Galaxy S5, but this is one which might
sound cool but isn't something most users
will find to be an actual benefit.
Below the camera is a flash but also a heart
rate monitor, making the Galaxy S5 the first
smartphone to come with the feature. Place
your finger on the sensor and it can read
your heart rate in a matter of seconds. It's
integrated into the S Health app and while it's
a novelty to check your pulse a few times,
realistically it's something only enthusiasts
are going to use regularly.
We feel it's the kind of tech which is better
reserved for smartwatches and fitness
trackers. It seems more like Samsung has
added it just to tick a 'new feature' box on a
check list.
It's also worth noting that the S Health app
also keeps track of your daily step count
without a wrist band or similar additional
gadget, so the Galaxy S5 is keeping up with
rivals on this front – namely the iPhone 5s
and HTC One M8.
Samsung Galaxy S5 review: Wireless
connectivity
Wireless connectivity is all pretty up-to-date
with 11ac Wi-Fi (MIMO), NFC, Bluetooth 4.0,
an infrared transmitter, and the latest 4G
technology. Samsung has fitted the Galaxy S5
with Cat 4 LTE supporting eight bands and a
download booster which uses your Wi-Fi
connection combine with mobile data to give
you a theoretical max download speed of
400Mbps.
Unfortunately wireless charging is not
something which is built-in – look to Nokia's
high end devices and Google's Nexus 5 for
this. However, a charging cover will be
available to add this facility.