Samsung Galaxy S5 Price T Mobile

Office over form. The Samsung Galaxy S5 ($660, or $27.50/month) is America'due south best-performing smartphone, bringing excellent voice quality, a terrific camera, speedy operation, and the best screen we've seen on a handheld yet. It'due south amend than last year's Galaxy S4 in a bunch of ways, most notably in actually exercising restraint for the beginning time in a while. Mainstream smartphone fans, people who like to surf the Spider web, and shutterbugs will thrill to this model, making it one of our two Editors' Choices for T-Mobile smartphones.

But that'south the thing—the Galaxy S5 doesn't stand up alone, and why it doesn't stand alone is telling. Samsung simply tin can't figure out premium pattern, at least from an American perspective. I spoke to the designers behind the S5, and they alleged its plastic form to be "modernistic glam" with a "warmth and softness" (also as a removable battery) that isn't available on glass-and-metal phones. But agree the S5 next to our other Editors' Selection on T-Mobile, the HTC One (M8), and the S5 doesn't feel similar the expensive 1.

Concrete Features
The Galaxy S5 still has an uncomfortable relationship with its own materials. At 5.85 by 2.85 past .31 inches (HWD) and 5.1 ounces, information technology's a large phone, but that's par for the course nowadays. Information technology'south all plastic. The back is a stippled, textured fake-leather, borrowed from the Milky way Note series, which is a major pace upwards from the slick, fingerprint-collecting casing on the Galaxy S4. The back comes in black, blue, aureate, or white. The pattern is near ruined, in my mind, past a cheap chromed-plastic bezel. You'll learn to live with it, but I didn't learn to dearest it. Well-nigh the elevation, a useful colored LED blinks blue when you have a new message. On the bottom, a large micro USB three.0 port promises fast charging and fast data transfer in exchange for needing to be covered past a silver plastic door. A physical Home button with dedicated, light-up back and multitasking buttons are a petty more convenient than the purely virtual buttons on the HTC One.

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The S5 is waterproof and just a bit rugged; it's about equally tough as last year's Milky way S4 Agile. That means it's sealed against liquids and made from flexible materials, so you don't accept to worry nigh getting it wet or dropping it on its edge. You tin still crevice the screen, though, then a screen protector would be useful.

Dr. Ray Soneira of DisplayMate Labs put it best(Opens in a new window): The Galaxy S5 has the best screen nosotros've seen still on a smartphone. It's vivid, vibrant, and highly customizable, appearing brighter and punchier than competing displays in almost every circumstance. The trick isn't just the 5.ane-inch, 1080p Super AMOLED console, although the panel itself has amend colour representation and a more fifty-fifty subpixel layout than the S4'due south. It's software. Samsung's Professional Photograph and Cinema Modes give picky viewers truthful whites, while Suit Mode constantly alters the display color for maximum readability, and Super Dimming Fashion makes the phone viewable in the dark without bravado out your eyes. Adapt Manner also deals very well with outdoor viewing conditions; I had no problem reading annihilation on my S5's screen through a calendar week outside in Seoul.

The screen has a few other neat tricks, too: Information technology works pretty well with styli, including using the tip of a graphite pencil on the screen equally a stylus. While in that location was all the same a tiny bit of lag, the GS5 showed much better precision when tapping with a small stylus than other Android phones I've tried, except for the Galaxy Note line.

Call Quality and Bombardment
The Galaxy S series have always been fantabulous voice phones and this model is no exception. The earpiece here gets actually loud. If you demand volume, yous'll be happy. The earpiece tone tin can besides exist tuned to your specific hearing profile, merely like on the Galaxy S4. Exercise that if calls sound a little muddy, which they might on the default setting. Transmissions in normal call settings come through clearly. The phone cancelled street and car racket very well, although some background chatter from a Starbucks came through under my voice.

GS5 Inline

The single, small, dorsum-ported speakerphone performs perfectly fairly, but it's nowhere near equally clear and powerful every bit the HTC One'south front-ported BoomSound speakers. Transmissions through the speakerphone mic, on the other hand, are excellent thanks to Samsung's top-notch noise cancellation. I as well had no problems with Bluetooth headsets.

Bombardment life looks very proficient. Because of SIM provisioning issues, I couldn't consummate our standard single-long-call exam, but the 2,800mAh bombardment was however at 41 percent after 11 hours, 15 minutes of calling. In a week'due south worth of utilise, information technology lasted out the twenty-four hours every fourth dimension.

The new Ultra Power Saving style delivers peace of mind: Kick it in when your battery is around fifteen percentage to limit the phone to calling, texting, Facebook,and Web browsing, and picket the phone report that it magically has more a day's worth of standby time remaining. With the battery downwards to 2 percent, I managed to squeeze out several hours of standby, a few text messages, and even a brief phone call. That was magical.

Wi-Fi and LTE
The Milky way S5 takes networking to a new level. Its Wi-Fi performance outdoes the HTC One significantly when 25-50 anxiety away from an 802.11n router. At a 30-foot distance from a router with a thirty-Mbps-up-and-down connection in a tough environment, the HTC dropped to seven-10Mbps only the Galaxy S5 maintained 15-20Mbps. I saw a similar difference up to nigh 75 feet, when they both dropped off. That will make a serious departure when Web browsing.

Lousy Starbucks wireless connections could be farther enhanced by Download Booster, a Samsung characteristic which combines Wi-Fi and LTE throughput when y'all're downloading files larger than 30MB. I'chiliad worried nearly this one, though, considering information technology was disabled on my telephone. Samsung insisted to me that information technology would exist enabled with a firmware update at launch, but this is just the kind of thing a carrier could kill.

Otherwise, the S5 comes in four different carrier LTE versions. We tested the T-Mobile model, which features the carrier's Wi-Fi calling. Radio-wise, the handsets all back up diverse carriers' highest-speed networks but won't switch between U.S. carriers well. The non-T-Mobile models lack T-Mobile's primary 3G ring; the AT&T and Verizon models lack each other's 700MHz LTE, and the Dart model won't piece of work on anyone else's LTE network. So you demand to purchase the correct model for your carrier and stick with it, like with the HTC I simply unlike with the carrier-flexible iPhone 5s.

Annoyingly, both the AT&T and T-Mobile models lack LTE Band 12, which T-Mobile and some regional carriers are implementing at the terminate of this year to improve rural coverage, only no other phone has that yet, either.

The phone comes with 16GB of memory, with 11.5GB available (slightly more than on the HTC One). There's a microSD card slot nether the dorsum cover which took my 64GB carte du jour without complaint.

Processor and Functioning
The S5 has a 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, the fastest processor we've seen on an Android phone yet. Its operation on our benchmarks was pretty much indistinguishable from the HTC One's. It's perfectly smooth in high-end applications like Asphalt viii and Need for Speed: Virtually Wanted. Either of these phones will bring the best performance you'll see for the next few months, at to the lowest degree.

The S5 runs Android 4.four.2 with Samsung's latest peel, which is somewhat lighter than last year's version but still won't please Android purists. (Don't worry; I'k close to 100 percent certain that a Google Play Edition is on its way, if you're into that sort of thing.) In that location'south a lot less Samsung bloatware than there used to be. Nearly of the S4'southward features are however kicking around here, just they've been buried in settings; fewer, flagship features take prominence, and so the interface doesn't feel as overwhelming anymore. Ane of my favorites, South Finder, is a total on-device search that lives in the Notifications console. That helps cut down on hunting through the interface.

GS5 Inline 2

Samsung's Flipboard preload (non quite as configurable as HTC'due south) and Idiot box remote-control app (ameliorate than HTC's, with support for more streaming video services) likewise come to the forepart. If yous want dual-window multitasking, Kids' mode, Piece of cake mode, Car style, or a manner where the display shrinks and then you tin can use it with one hand, well, it'south all hither—you just accept to dig for it. That's an adequate residuum.

The overall visual event is still bright and a flake cutesy—the previous 'h2o droplet' metaphor has been swapped out for 'shining gemstones'—so it's less elegant than the HTC One's, only the bright, colorful theme goes well with the super-vibrant screen.

The fingerprint sensor is a adept endeavour, but like most swipe-mode fingerprint sensors, the Synaptics Natural ID sensor'due south inaccuracy can get frustrating; I often had to swipe it 2 or three times to register. In 2012, Apple tree bought Authentec, which makes the unique fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5s; as a result, everybody else is behind. The fact that Samsung'southward hardware trails Apple's here is particularly frustrating considering its software is superior: There's an SDK for third parties to use fingerprint ID, and you can already use it to pay for things via PayPal in Samsung's bundled Spider web browser.

The wellness and rubber features are nevertheless gimmicky. The pedometer is useful and relatively accurate, only the heart rate monitor is awkward and a little pointless: You want a heart rate monitor that constantly checks you lot as part of a fitness band, not something that you put your finger on once every iii or 4 hours. Samsung said they're looking for third parties to find interesting uses for the heart-charge per unit monitor SDK, but for at present I consider it a forgettable feature. For real fitness buffs, the Galaxy S5 is i of 18 devices that works with the new Samsung Gear Fit accompaniment (which we have also reviewed).

Camera and Multimedia
The camera is ane large reason why this telephone is an Editors' Choice. The 16MP shooter's UI marks an important footstep back towards simplicity from the GS4's ridiculous array of photographic camera modes; all the ones y'all won't want to use are buried under "Shot & More," and you won't take to see them again. Rather, a few of import tricks (most notably, the excellent live HDR) sit down on the camera app's principal screen, and there are a 6, rather than 30, modes to choose from.

GS5 Inline 3

I took photos with the S5, HTC One, and iPhone 5s side past side. The camera takes about four seconds to launch, just later on that, shots are pretty much instantaneous. In bright conditions, the S5 did the best of the three, especially with HDR turned on. It was followed by the iPhone, and so the HTC which struggled with done-out images. The S5's flash as well worked very well. For flashless photos in the dark, the HTC did the all-time of the bunch.

The S5 doesn't have the manual modes that the HTC One does, but its automatic modes are very, very good. On my trip to Seoul with this phone, I ended upwards just ditching my Galaxy Camera and taking all outdoor shots with the phone in HDR mode. They came out looking not bad. The ii-megapixel front camera is as well a solid performer.

The S5 as well has a better video camera mode than the HTC and iPhone practice. Not only do you have live HDR video and motion picture-in-picture dual photographic camera recording, the S5 can maintain resolutions up to 4K and frame rates at thirty fps in all lighting conditions, and in that location are options for 8x slo-mo and 60fps, 1080p recording as well.

Multimedia playback won't disappoint, only information technology doesn't quite match up to the HTC's level; those big Boomsound speakers and overpowered headphone amp play in a league that the GS5 decided non to enter. Music on the GS5 is treblier and more than midrange-focused than on the HTC, which really bumps upwardly the bass.

Conclusions
The Samsung Milky way S5 is the fastest, most functional smartphone available today. Information technology has the all-time screen, the best Wi-Fi performance, and the best camera for an Android telephone (outpaced simply past the Nokia PureView photographic camera). Samsung dialed back its software excesses to produce a lively phone that'due south more fun to use than the previous model.

Samsung still doesn't quite get how Americans perceive manner, though. Over and over again, executives told me how "warm" the telephone's materials are and how they follow fashion trends or emulate luxury items. But ultimately, Samsung's plastic-metal and plastic-leather are still fakery, and it shows. Nokia and LG embrace plastic more honestly, with better design results.

All this goes to say why the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One will share our Editors' Choice for Android smartphones for now. The Galaxy S5 triumphs on role, although its manner falls a little short; the HTC One is downright gorgeous, merely you make some serious compromises with its camera. Both exemplify the electric current state of the art.

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