Samsung S5, how goes it?

rexbaumgartner

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I sold my Nexus 5 (32gig) on craigslist and bought the S5. A little concerned, the N5 was smooth as butter!

I can report that I am more than pleased that I switched! Screen is amazing and the battery life is crazy good! This 16 gig model has all the apps I used installed and I have 9.3 gigs left on the phone. A 32 gig SD card picks up the slack for all other storage needs.

"Do it"

Posted via Android Central App
 

Prinny Mask

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Glad you like the display. When I saw the S5 at the AT&T store, I instantly fell in love with the display. It is super vibrant, which I love. I am still having a hard time deciding between the S5 and the Note 3.

When I saw the Note 3's display I thought, "wow," because it was really vibrant and colorful, but being completely honest, it's too vibrant for me. I know that seems like a dumb thing to have an issue with, but it literally is so vibrant that my eyes are drawn to it, and at the same time it's painful for me to look at for more than a few seconds lol.
 

atishc

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When I saw the Note 3's display I thought, "wow," because it was really vibrant and colorful, but being completely honest, it's too vibrant for me. I know that seems like a dumb thing to have an issue with, but it literally is so vibrant that my eyes are drawn to it, and at the same time it's painful for me to look at for more than a few seconds lol.

A new thing in the S5 compared to before is that you can set the Display mode. Apparently Cinema mode is more accurate and subdued, but I am enjoying Adapt mode myself.

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Prinny Mask

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A new thing in the S5 compared to before is that you can set the Display mode. Apparently Cinema mode is more accurate and subdued, but I am enjoying Adapt mode myself.

I'd really like to check some of those modes out. If I go to Best Buy to try and find a Dot View case, I'll probably play around with one for a little bit if they have a display model.
 

3rdpig

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I've had mine for 5 days and I'm really happy. I came from a Droid Bionic so you can imagine how big an upgrade this is for me. I always avoided Samsung phones for two reasons, first was the creaky, flimsy plastic build, and the second was the gawdawful garish, laggy Touchwiz. I'm happy to say that the build quality of the S5 is head and shoulders above their last two phones and Touchwiz, while still mildly annoying, is smooth and usable. Mine has no lag, the camera takes great pictures both outdoors and indoors under decent lighting (this is not the best camera for darker indoor lighting such as in a bar or nightclub) and the battery lasts all day.

I'm self employed and I work in my customers homes and offices and I use the phone to navigate and play podcasts, and I usually use an app like Triplog to record my mileage at the same time. I HAD to have the Bionic plugged in, even with the larger factory battery or it would be dead by 3pm. And, even with a 2A car charger the battery would not charge while doing all that at once, and I have two of the factory extended batteries. The S5 will do all that without being plugged in and I'll still have 40% battery life when I get home. And if I leave the house and forget to charge it overnight, it will charge while doing all that at the same time. If I start out with a full battery and keep it on the charger in the car while navigating, I'll get home with the battery at 80% or above.

The camera takes super fast, super sharp pictures that can be zoomed in on and cropped. I use it both for fun and for documentation purposes. I never have to wait or kill other apps to get to the camera and get a quick, quality shot. I don't take low light photos, so this camera is perfect for me. It also does great with pics to PDF and for mobile banking deposits. I don't have one bad thing to say about it. My wife upgraded her Bionic to the S5 also, and she's a real estate agent and is now leaving her 7 MP Canon camera at home, the first house pictures she too with the S5 turned out great. And she's still experimenting with the Virtual Tour mode.

Honestly, we loved our Droid Bionics, we had 3 in the family and until the upgrade to JB they were great. JB never ran right on them and I'd finally had enough. I skipped on the phone that I really wanted, the MotoX because of the sub par camera. I agonized over the M8 vs. S5 as bad as Sheldon Cooper agonized over the PS4 vs. XBO. But in the end the camera and water resistance (the washing machine video really pushed me over) of the S5 sold me. I would have loved to have had the software of the MotoX, the build of the M8 and the camera and IP67 of the Samsung, but in the end the S5 won.
 

RionDunn

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What he said!!! :)

Having said that, however, I'd still recommend replacing TW with the excellent Nova launcher and shutting off animations in developers options. With those two changes it's buttery smooth.

What does the animations option do? What am I going to lose when I disable this feature?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using AC Forums mobile app
 

RionDunn

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Does the S5 enable the option for ART? Will this option come complete with the Google now launcher. I feel that ART runs incredible on my Nexus 5!!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using AC Forums mobile app
 

atishc

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The animations are just the small zooms and swipes when you open apps and things - there should be no functional consequence. You can enable ART but it leaves your launcher intact. You would need to add the Google Now launcher as a separate step. But do be aware of:

A word of caution on using the Google Now Launcher on the Samsung Galaxy S5 | Android Central

Does the S5 enable the option for ART? Will this option come complete with the Google now launcher. I feel that ART runs incredible on my Nexus 5!!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using AC Forums mobile app
 

Garpar

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Great battery life, i wish you could turn off the gps and still have the phone work correctly. I've had the phone 2 weeks and it's an amazing device. Samsung does need to address the weather not updating on the lock screen and allow wifi location in place of exact gps.

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bassplayrguy

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My experience with the S5 has only been so-so. The battery life is amazing. But little quirks are driving me nuts. Like how you have to have your GPS enabled to get the stock weather app/widget to work (should work off wife/ network w/out GPS) and how the LED still lights up even when blocking mode is on. The stupid flap the covers the charging port is a major annoyance too. I'm just waiting for mine to break off. That good old touchwiz lag still exists too, don't let anyone tell you differently. A 2014 flagship device should not have any lag on it at all!

I have experienced ZERO lag in my S5. Super fast phone and buttery smooth.
 

Jon Jackson

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My experience with the S5 has only been so-so. The battery life is amazing. But little quirks are driving me nuts. Like how you have to have your GPS enabled to get the stock weather app/widget to work (should work off wife/ network w/out GPS) and how the LED still lights up even when blocking mode is on. The stupid flap the covers the charging port is a major annoyance too. I'm just waiting for mine to break off. That good old touchwiz lag still exists too, don't let anyone tell you differently. A 2014 flagship device should not have any lag on it at all!

I had a slight lag as well, then I uninstalled app killer, lookout, anti virus, etc and it's the fastest device I could ever imagine now. Zero lag, none, not even a 1/10 of a second lag. I'm talking about opening and closing out of 10 apps in less than 3 seconds no lag.
 

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