Dan Seifert at The Verge:
What do you do when you’re one of the world’s largest smartphone makers and it’s time to update your flagship device? If you’re Samsung, you trot out the new Galaxy S5, a refined and updated take on last year’s wildly successful Galaxy S4. Like the new Gear wearables, the Galaxy S5 looks and feels familiar, but offers a number of improvements over last year’s edition.
It’s not a total design overhaul, but there’s definitely a couple of small adjustments that I like. The dimpled back is an improvement, and the waterproofing is a great feature to have on the stock flagship model (sadly, the USB port has a flap to accomplish this).
The other hardware changes include a fingerprint scanner and heart monitor. I think the heart monitor is pointless; like this year’s version of the Galaxy S4 Air Gestures.
The fingerprint scanner though, could be very useful if it works well. Here’s the kicker though; it’s a scanner, not a button, and fingerprint scanners have always been very junky in the past. I don’t really like the idea of holding a phone one-handed and simultaneously sliding a thumbprint over a button. Sounds like a recipe for a dropped phone to me.
There’s a few videos of it in action out there now; I can’t say I’m impressed with the implementation versus the iPhone 5s. Still, at least the scanner isn’t on the back.
There’s also some new S Health stuff that could be interesting (like guided feedback and coaching), but the best parts of this will hinge on whether the new line of Gear smartwatches are successful. Speaking of Galaxy Gears, the most promising amongst those is the just-announced Gear Fit, with a wider curved AMOLED display.
I think it looks kind of great too; sort of a futuristic take on the watch with a horizontally-scrolling display to match the curve.