When the Samsung Galaxy S5 launched it got a bit of the old torches and pitchforks treatment online, both from a press and public who’d been expecting a lot more new features based on pre-release rumour. In addition, many of the disgruntled appeared to be ardent Samsung fans.
But this seems to have been something of a storm in a teacup, because subsequent sales figures indicate that the digitally vocal frothing masses disappointed with the device are actually something of a minority – the phone shot to Samsung’s favourite 10 million units shifted figure faster than any previous model.
Despite Samsung’s official line to continually deny that it exists, the rumour mill has turned towards a successor model with gusto. The so-called Galaxy S5 Prime, also potentially called the Galaxy F, appears to be either Samsung’s response to criticisms, or the device it had planned all along and which confused pre-Galaxy S5 launch rumours. My money’s on the latter, with phone development being a sufficiently long-term process that this must have all been in the pipeline already.
The important question is: will the “premium” reboot be enough to satisfy Galaxy S5 naysayers? And will it be irksome to those who already shelled out for a Galaxy S5? Of course, we won’t know until the device is launched, but there’s just about enough circulating that we can have a look at the next evolution of the Samsung Galaxy to see how it stacks up.
Note: This is a speculative piece based on current rumours from varying sources, industry trends, observations and best-guess estimates. It is not intended to be a 100% accurate representation of how the devices will compare, rather an interested musing on what might be.
Design
This is the main area of change for the Samsung Galaxy formula and for Samsung in general – the company’s mobile division hasn’t really done much with metals before, so an all-metal bodyshell is something of a landmark step.
Despite being a significant change, there’s not a lot to this component of the Galaxy S5 Prime. As far as we can tell, it is more or less the same build and design as the Galaxy S5 but made from brushed metal rather than plastic. A most recent leak from PhoneArena suggests that the S5 Prime may have a slight re-design, it was described as “asymmetrical” with a top end that is rounder than the bottom, it’s also allegedly ever-so-slightly smaller and with a narrower bezel around the display. Overall though, the leaked images suggest it’s not very different aside from the build material.
Although the body may have switched to metal, it’s thought the Galaxy S5 Prime will retain the regular Galaxy S5’s IP67 water and dust proofing certification. While nothing has been said on the subject, as far as we can tell the removable back panel design seems to have remained and we know Samsung is rather fond of removable batteries – there’s every reason to suppose this is the same too.
Display
There’s plenty of debate to be had on whether a QHD resolution display is strictly necessary on a smartphone, or even whether it’s a good idea or not (ie: battery drain), but it seems that it’s happening with the Galaxy S5 Prime regardless. Samsung may be competing directly with its South Korean neighbour LG, which recently launched the LG G3 with a QHD display. LG made a rather compelling argument that, contrary to Apple’s claim about 300ppi being the limit of what humans can see, higher pixel densities can be seen by the human eye and are beneficia as a result, although it must still be said that most content still isn’t engineered for QHD.
It doesn’t appear the Galaxy S5 Prime’s display size is changing much, if at all, so you can expect with the higher resolution the sharpness and pixel density will go up. A 5.1-inch display with a 2650x1440 pixel QHD resolution should result in a pixel density of 591 pixels-per-inch (ppi), so expect an insanely sharp picture quality.
While DisplayMate dubbed the Samsung Galaxy S5’s screen the “best” the site has ever tested, there have since been some fairly scathing criticisms of the phone’s AMOLED display. Tests by PhoneArena, AnandTech, and Erica Griffin of AngelofTech.com, independently suggest colour accuracy is nowhere near “best”, in fact it’s way off, as it’s traded off in favour of a “punchier”, “vibrant” colour reproduction. It did score well on brightness and sharpness, however.
Samsung could seek to address these issues with the new model .
Hardware
As it became more and more obvious that the Galaxy S5 would be launched in February 2014, the idea of it shipping with a significantly upgraded processor faded away too. The top-of-the-line chip at that time was the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, an update on the Snapdragon 800, but not a massive next-gen leap. The original Galaxy S4 had a Snapdragon 600, but Snapdragon 800-equipped models (the I9506) had been shipping since late 2013. With a launch so early in the year, there was no hope of a Snapdragon 805, which by all accounts wasn’t due to start appearing in launched handsets until, well, about now-ish.
That’s where the Galaxy S5 Prime comes in. It’s thought this will be Samsung’s first Snapdragon 805-based device, and that means it’ll be an absolute powerhouse, possibly with 3GB of RAM. The Snapdragon 805 is natively capable of a lot of interesting new features, however, it remains to be seen precisely how much of this latent capability Samsung taps into.
There are some pervasive duff hardware choices that every manufacturer seems slow to correct, mainly due to the way the mobile industry works – by the time a manufacturer gets negative feedback multiple successor models (Mini variant, phablets etc) are already in the production process.
One such area is storage. While 16GB of space is nothing to sneeze at, and for some users is more than sufficient, there does seem to be a somewhat troubling trend for flagships to ship with only a 16GB onboard storage variant. Oddly enough, many of these also ship with at least a 32GB model, but only to Asian markets, which is kind of annoying really. Samsung is one such company, with the Galaxy S5 hitting shelves in the UK with the only choice of a 16GB model. Sure, you have up to 128GB of microSD to play with, but it’s not without its limitations on Android, and larger storage variants are definitely a useful option for some consumers.
Could the Galaxy S5 Prime address the balance and offer at least a 32GB higher-end option for those who want it? Possibly, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much. Still, it’s bound to have the same high-capacity card storage capabilities.
There’s been very little talk about the Galaxy S5 Prime’s camera or battery.
Samsung addressed “the battery issue” on the Galaxy S5 spectacularly with its Ultra Power Saving mode, so ostensibly it has little reason to upgrade from the current 2,800mAh setup, although a little bump up to 3,000mAh for the say-so of a bit of extra juice in normal operation wouldn’t be surprising regardless.
I must admit a certain preference for Samsung’s camera setups. To me they strike the balance smartphone cameras should in terms of visual quality versus portability versus ease-of-use and deliver satisfying results with little effort. Between this and the silence about the Prime’s camera I can’t really see it changing much from the current Galaxy S5’s 16-megapixel ISOCELL setup. Perhaps a dual-LED flash. Some rumours indicate we might see optical image stabilisation (OIS), which could be beneficial.
Software & Other Features
Samsung’s re-design of TouchWiz was a brilliant move and I don’t expect the company to change much for the next handset. However, it could well be brushing up on its apps and services given some of the recent revelations elsewhere in the mobile space. Apple, for example, announced a boatload of new and innovative sharing, cloud and cross-platform features at WWDC 2014. I suspect Samsung was taking copious notes and wouldn’t be at all surprised to see some kind of family photo sharing suite, expanded cloud services and more besides. S Health and the fingerprint scanner obviously played prominent roles with the Galaxy S5 launch and I don’t think the S5 Prime will be any different as these features are likely to remain.
There’s also a lot of talk about content streaming and messaging, particularly as Apple bought Beats Audio and Facebook bought WhatsApp. I’m thinking Samsung may have its own attempts in these spheres too.
Conclusion
Don’t expect anything groundbreaking. The Galaxy S5 Prime might feature a metal body, QHD display, and a next-gen processor, but I doubt it’s going to have enough onboard to make current Galaxy S5 owners green with envy.
by pbriden via Featured Articles
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