Samsung Releasing Galaxy S5 April 11
Samsung just announced the Galaxy S5, which is due to be released April 11th in over 150 countries – including the US and Canada. The S5 is styled similarly to the S4 and Note 3 and includes a fingerprint scanner as well a solid bump up in specs. Samsung is still going with a polycarbonate body, but added a soft-touch dimpled back cover on the phone, similar to the faux leather on the Note 3.
The Galaxy S5 features a 5.1″ 1080P Super AMOLED display, a 2.5Ghz Quad-core Snapdragon 800, 2GB of RAM, a 2800 mAH battery, and a very solid 16MP camera that shoots video in 4K. It’s running the latest Android, 4.4.2 KitKat, and has Samsung’s usual TouchWiz flavor. This version of TouchWiz is more leaned down than that on the S4 and sports Samsung’s updated S-Health app, which is supposed to keep track of your pulse and activity.
One huge thing Samsung has done with the Galaxy this year is created essentially a global phone. Traditionally, there is an international Samsung model which features their Exynos chip and then several country and carrier specific models operating on a completely different processor. This is due to the differences in technologies over in Europe and the rest of the World. However, this year Samsung is using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip, which has support for several frequencies on GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, as well as several LTE bands. What this will mean for the consumer is more frequent updates, since there is only one model to develop software updates.
Galaxy S5 Specs:
- Android 4.4.2 (KitKat)
- 5.1″ Super AMOLED Display (1920 x 1080) ~430ppi
- 2.5Ghz Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800
- 2GB RAM
- 16MP Camera with LED flash & Realtime HDR lighting
- Captures Video in 4K UHD at 30fps & 1080P at 60fps
- 2.1MP Front-facing camera
- 2,800 mAH Battery
- 10 hours of web browsing
- 12 hours of video playback
- Cat 4 LTE (150/50 Mbps)
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
- Bluetooth 4.0 BLE/ANT+
- 16/32GB Onboard Storage – microSDXC up to 128GB
- NFC
- IR Remote Blaster
- IP67 Certified – Totally protected against dust & protected against immersion up to 1 meter
- Size: 5.6″ x 2.8″ x .31″
- Weight: 5.1 ounces
Features:
- Fingerprint scanner on Home Button
- Heartbeat Monitor (near LED flash)
- Polycarbonate body with dimpled rear cover for grip
