Out of the box, the Galaxy S5 still has two browsers, two voice-control apps, two photo-gallery apps and two video-player apps - one each from Google and Samsung. Samsung deserves credit for burying or offloading some of the gimmicky, duplicative software that burdened the S4, and for simplifying the bewildering array of camera options, but it didn’t go far enough.
While the phone is all plastic, with cheesy fake-metal edging, it feels solid.īut there were also some disappointments. The rear camera’s resolution has been upped to 16 megapixels from 13, and it took excellent photos and videos.
In every major hardware area, it’s a very good phone, with a sharp, gorgeous screen that, at 5.1 inches, is a teeny bit bigger than the five-inch display on last year’s model, the S4. I’ve been testing the new S5 for a couple of weeks, and I like it, though I didn’t find it especially exciting or novel. Verizon, in a somewhat unusual move for a new, premier big-name phone, is offering a buy-one-get-one-free deal for $200 with a two year contract (after rebates) - making the up-front cost just $100. The S5 will cost $200 with a two-year contract at AT&T and Sprint, and $660 without a contract at T-Mobile. That’s the strategy that Samsung, the global smartphone leader, hopes will work for its latest top-of-the-line model, the Android-based Galaxy S5, which goes on sale in the U.S. market that seems to be maturing? Maybe the answer is to simplify the thing, and stress just a few interesting new features, like the ability to survive being submerged in water, or to act as a heart-rate monitor. How do you get consumers excited about yet another expensive high-end smartphone, in a U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
