Samsung galaxy S5
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:30 pm
I needed a new plan so I thought why not - upgraded to one of these.
I've opted to go with Telstra. As much as I hate them, they have the best coverage, and these phones came at a very similar price everywhere.
I thought I give you guys my first impressions after two days.
Now, the phone itself is brilliant after my 2yo S2, it's bigger but not overly big, so it's good to look at (things are bigger). The screen is extremely nice, especially that it's bright enough outside, and it's dark enough at night (it's really-really dark at the lowest setting, which is excellent). The resolution is crazy; full HD, which means I can run spaceChem now!
I find that the wifi is much snappier than it was on the S2, and overall the phone works very smoothly.
The pictures I took came out ok, nothing mind-blowing, but nice. Pretty high res. The video I took, however, was extremely nice. Full HD.
Oh, and the low-light pictures are far better than with the old one's camera.
Also the battery; it's just great. I've charged both phones ( old S2 & new S5 ) and enabled everything (gps, wifi, location, you name it) used the S2 for one longer phone talk, and to log some GPS data while walking the dog. The S5 for taking photos, videos, two shorter calls, news reading, the wife made a call, kiddo looked at pictures for 15 minutes...
By the evening, the S2 was a 22% (usually I don't have everything on; that way it lasts the day) the S5 was at 67%. Impressive.
Charging was funny; I've plugged it into a regular USB and it did not really want to go up, some 5% after an hour. So I thought, ok, let's try the charger. It was up on 100% in no time. Computer USB ports aren't enough, apparently. By the way, I'll need a usb3 cable...it did not came with one.
But it came with the wrist-watch like fitness gadget (gear fit), which looks cool and really gadget-y. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, though.
It also has a new Android version, which seems mostly better than the old version, things are more streamlined, altho some stupid things remain - like you can't move the icons around without tapping the pencil, but you can delete them.
Overall I'm pleased but there's one big annoyance, the Android version 4.4.2 has some problem with rights management (how the hell could they release it like this?!?) and so you can't properly manage files on an SD card. It seems owners (filesystem ownership) can do everything ok, but non-owners can't - and the card coming from my old phone contains non-owner stuff. A lot. Funnily enough I can delete the files, but I can't copy into old directories. I couldn't move old files. I'm still to explore to what extent I'm inconvenienced by this, but it's a bummer. Altho it's not the S5's fault
I'm now on the hunt for a good case - and here's a question; I've seen a number of cases that open side-ways. How the heck are you supposed to make a call in such a case?
I've opted to go with Telstra. As much as I hate them, they have the best coverage, and these phones came at a very similar price everywhere.
I thought I give you guys my first impressions after two days.
Now, the phone itself is brilliant after my 2yo S2, it's bigger but not overly big, so it's good to look at (things are bigger). The screen is extremely nice, especially that it's bright enough outside, and it's dark enough at night (it's really-really dark at the lowest setting, which is excellent). The resolution is crazy; full HD, which means I can run spaceChem now!
I find that the wifi is much snappier than it was on the S2, and overall the phone works very smoothly.
The pictures I took came out ok, nothing mind-blowing, but nice. Pretty high res. The video I took, however, was extremely nice. Full HD.
Oh, and the low-light pictures are far better than with the old one's camera.
Also the battery; it's just great. I've charged both phones ( old S2 & new S5 ) and enabled everything (gps, wifi, location, you name it) used the S2 for one longer phone talk, and to log some GPS data while walking the dog. The S5 for taking photos, videos, two shorter calls, news reading, the wife made a call, kiddo looked at pictures for 15 minutes...
By the evening, the S2 was a 22% (usually I don't have everything on; that way it lasts the day) the S5 was at 67%. Impressive.
Charging was funny; I've plugged it into a regular USB and it did not really want to go up, some 5% after an hour. So I thought, ok, let's try the charger. It was up on 100% in no time. Computer USB ports aren't enough, apparently. By the way, I'll need a usb3 cable...it did not came with one.
But it came with the wrist-watch like fitness gadget (gear fit), which looks cool and really gadget-y. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, though.
It also has a new Android version, which seems mostly better than the old version, things are more streamlined, altho some stupid things remain - like you can't move the icons around without tapping the pencil, but you can delete them.
Overall I'm pleased but there's one big annoyance, the Android version 4.4.2 has some problem with rights management (how the hell could they release it like this?!?) and so you can't properly manage files on an SD card. It seems owners (filesystem ownership) can do everything ok, but non-owners can't - and the card coming from my old phone contains non-owner stuff. A lot. Funnily enough I can delete the files, but I can't copy into old directories. I couldn't move old files. I'm still to explore to what extent I'm inconvenienced by this, but it's a bummer. Altho it's not the S5's fault
I'm now on the hunt for a good case - and here's a question; I've seen a number of cases that open side-ways. How the heck are you supposed to make a call in such a case?
