Galaxy S5: Huge disappointment, Samsung TOTALLY dropped the ball!

[garublador]

My guess is that no matter who does it first, the real reason both of them do it is because the cost from going from 16GB to 32GB will be much lower. I bet that Samsung and Apple will be two of the last OEM's to move to 32 GB because they have the most to lose from upping their BOM cost. HTC could do it because they sell a fraction of what either Samsung or Apple sells and they needed a way to differentiate themselves.

 

[dpham00]

The note 3 has 32gb base.

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

 

[garublador]

The note 3 has 32gb base.

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

That's interesting, I didn't realize that. I suppose that supports the idea that Samsung will put more internal storage in a phone if they believe it will sell better enough that way. It also supports my idea that you'll see more internal storage on lower volume phones first.

 

[iN8ter]

Re: Huge disappointment, Samsung TOTALLY dropped the ball!

Hurray for 32GB options

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

One of the main reasons I got the Note III, never mind looking at what Qualcomm had out I didn't expect the hardware in the S5 to be a massive improvement over the note anyways. The Stylus and extra screen real-estate is worth all those other spec bumps, combined, to me.

 

[iN8ter]

Spec war is dead folks.

Not sure why every iteration have to be a revolutionary leap instead of an evolutionary one. Last two products in the mobile phone space (products as a whole, not hardware alone) that were revolutionary were the original iPhone and the original Note.

Posted via Android Central App

This.

Spec Race was hot for a while because software capabilities were out-distancing hardware muscle but I don't think specs [should] have been a selling point since mid-late 2011 when the Exynos and Snapdragon 3 processors came out. Those devices, even the ones with 720p screens from then, can run Android 4.4 without any issues.

New hardware clearly has benefits (i.e. camera tech improved with every iteration of the series), but I think people put way too much stock in the Specs.

It's time for companies to stop overselling specs and improve their software - this includes Apple as well, cause I had a 5S for 10 days before I ran back to return it and it falls short in a multitude of ways, software-wise.

 

[Fr0gburp3r]

This.

Spec Race was hot for a while because software capabilities were out-distancing hardware muscle but I don't think specs [should] have been a selling point since mid-late 2011 when the Exynos and Snapdragon 3 processors came out. Those devices, even the ones with 720p screens from then, can run Android 4.4 without any issues.

New hardware clearly has benefits (i.e. camera tech improved with every iteration of the series), but I think people put way too much stock in the Specs.

It's time for companies to stop overselling specs and improve their software - this includes Apple as well, cause I had a 5S for 10 days before I ran back to return it and it falls short in a multitude of ways, software-wise.

Damn quote button! Disregard. Sorry.

 

[NaijaBerry]

Trandz, you forget that the vast majority of buyers will be S3 upgraders

Posted via Android Central App

Really hated the laggy thing on the S3, tried the S4 and it was still there a little even with the extra power and specs, lost faith in the GS series, bought a Nexus 5! I'll miss the camera though......

 

[iN8ter]

Re: HUGE Disappointment -- Samsung TOTALLY Dropped The Ball

Well, I'll throw my opinion in here, as if it matters...

First of all, this phone will sell. It is just a matter of how well it will sell. Can Samsung lure more people away from the Iphone with this? That is the fundamental question.

The look of the phone isn't my style, in fact I think it's ugly as heck....but I just do not see how it matters. As others have surely mentioned, you should be putting a protective case on it anyway. If you are going to walk around carrying a near $1000 device in your hands without some protection on it, you are either supremely confident in your own ability to never have an accident, stupid, or like to burn money.

I think the greatest potential for the S5 is with the camera, which is something that will take a little time to come to light. If this camera ends up being at least on par with the Iphone5s, it will be a huge deal. If this S5 camera turns out to be decent, or even terrible, I think this device just doesn't make any waves. Again, it will be a while before a good understanding of the quality of the S5's camera hardware and software gets fleshed out. But to me, this is the most important aspect of this phone and the Iphone is still the mainstream flagship smartphone camera king.

Selling a 16gb version is not that huge of a deal for many users, although I will say that we are on the precipice of that becoming a real problem. A lot of people are going to have to purchase an SD card to get buy with the 16gb version, which adds to the cost. In a year or two down the line, I just don't see 16gb being a viable option with the OS bloat that you get with Samsung (and Samsung plus Verizon, sheesh). I think it is only a matter of time before, for example, some mom out there who owns a galaxy S5 won't be able to update to the latest version of Google Maps because it is a 450mb download and they are out of space. That is when this memory thing is going to blow up. But again, I think we are still a couple years away from that for your very pedestrian users.

I had the iPhone 5S and I didn't find the camera to be amazing. The pictures were ridiculously post-processed to the point that a lot of detail was unsalvageable in image editing. My friend's S4 took sharper images, and I'm sure some of this had to do with the higher MP count - however, I did examing the images in 1:1 size on a computer monitor not just on a phone screen. I find the Note 3 to be as good as the S4.

The only area where the iPhone pulls ahead is in low light, but the Kit Kat update for the S4/Note 3 is supposed to come with a Camera FW update that improves low light photography noticeably so the jury is still out on that for me. I don't take much low light pictures, anyways. I still find the Flash on Samsung devises to be better than the iPhone 5S. I didn't really notice any improvement from the "True Tone" flash. In most cases, Auto-Correcting (especially using decent desktop computer software) the image from another phone gave a better skin tone, but without the camera's aggressive post-processing destroying image quality in other areas...

The pictures looked amazing on a smartphone screen, but when I loaded them up on my PC to crop some pictures (I do a lot of cropping) I noticed people looked like they were painted (Very soft edges and a lot of facial detail was smudged/processed out and a ton of background detail was smudged/processed out as well. There's nothing you could do in Photoshop or Lightroom to recover detail the camera software destroyed in those pictures...

Also, the 32GB iPhone I had with iLife, iWork, and a few other 1st party apple apps installed (Find My Friends, iTunes Remote, Apple Store, iBooks, Podcasts and maybe one or two others) had less storage than my 32GB Note 3 with all Verizon Bloatware Disabled, a bunch of installed Google Apps (including some from Play Store that weren't pre-loaded), and Samsung Apps installed (ditto, e.g. their Video Editor is a 120MB+ install and I added that , I disabled Samsung Link however)... The Note has 23.08 GB free space in Internal Storage. The iPhone had < 21GB free.

So, after looking at things from the other perspective, I suddenly didn't feel as bad about what they put on these Samsung devices, Lol. Apple's iWork and iLife apps by themselves are like a 1.5-2GB install size on the iPhone. It is *much* harder to deal with a 16GB iPhone than a 16GB Galaxy S or Note Device, because there is no SD Card slot to Offload things like Camera Data (Pictures, Videos), Music (Play Music can Cache to SD Card now, for example), Documents, etc.

Totally Satisfied with the Note 3 camera. Have no issues with the phone storage or what Verizon puts on it, as long as I can disable it and never be bothered by it again

Another camera thing I noticed... All these phones coming out with OIS, but apart from the Lumia 1020, even those "low light specialist" cameras have been underwhelming in quality. Both the Lumia 920 and HTC One have been rather underwhelming. While they do let in a lot of light, even their low light images are at a lack for detail, to the point that I'd prefer "Low Light Mode" images from my old Galaxy S3 over the pictures I've seen/been sent from those devices. The LG G2 was said to not be as good as the Note 3 in low light photography or videography, despite having OIS, by some reviewers. OIS is nice, in theory, but I think that needs a little maturity before it becomes as must have as some people are making it sound like it is.

 

[Haalcyon]

Sent from my liberated iridium rMini LTE

 

[Ry]

This.

Spec Race was hot for a while because software capabilities were out-distancing hardware muscle but I don't think specs [should] have been a selling point since mid-late 2011 when the Exynos and Snapdragon 3 processors came out. Those devices, even the ones with 720p screens from then, can run Android 4.4 without any issues.

New hardware clearly has benefits (i.e. camera tech improved with every iteration of the series), but I think people put way too much stock in the Specs.

It's time for companies to stop overselling specs and improve their software - this includes Apple as well, cause I had a 5S for 10 days before I ran back to return it and it falls short in a multitude of ways, software-wise.

In a lot of ways, Samsung went that route with the S5 IMO. Almost felt like a Motorola-like presentation touting the benefits of 3 or 4 "core" S5 features (or differentiators) and that's it.

It's the people on sites like this that need to seriously get over specs. They're not as important as they were before.

 

[iN8ter]

Re: Huge disappointment, Samsung TOTALLY dropped the ball!

There are a lot of Real World use features that enhance the usability of Samsung devices. And those features are certainly not bloat.

Reading Mode in the browser is not a bloat feature. It's part of the reason why Samsung and HTC (and others) still put the Stock Browser on their phones. Cause Google is dragging their feat bringing Chrome up to feature parity with it.

Calendar, Email, and other PIM apps are a major improvement on Google's offerings. Samsung's Messaging app may not bethe prettiest but it certainly Rivals Hangouts for capabilities. That's another area where OEMs are still using their own app due to Google dragging their feet on improving their offering (have no issues with improving the iOS app though, apparently).

Samsung's Camera software blows Motorola's away. It isn't even a contest.

Most of the pre-installed Apps on my Note 3 were from Verizon and Amazon, not Samsung, BTW. All are disablable. About half of Samsung's Apps were nothing but stub links to an installer, not actual installed apps or packages on the devices. You click the link, it asks if you want to install it, if yes, it downloads the package and installs the app. If no, nothing gets installed. You can disable the link or hide it.

Even some Google Apps weren't even pre-loaded. This Note 3 didn't even come with Google Drive, Google Keep, Google Earth, or QuickOffice (though it has Polaris Office, which renders documents better than QuickOffice so I never use QO, anyways) pre-loaded. Samsung's own Video Editor (which is actually useful, for me at least) wasn't pre-loaded; neither was S Voice HD Voice data and a bunch of other stuff.

Disable the features you won't use and get on with your life. I don't find the Moto X all that appealing, personally. I just disable the features and apps that I don't need on the better device, use the better device, and move on with my life

It's not that serious. It's just a phone.

Oh, and a universal remote. That IR Blaster + WatchOn: Baller.

B/c the Moto X is a MUCH better size than the S5, has significantly better and less bloated software, and features that make the user experience light years better than the Galaxy S devices. If all you care about is specs then yea, get the S5. If you want a device that was built for real people with useful features that you'll actually use on a daily basis, then the Moto X ****s all over it.

 

[Eric Mazariegos]

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/05/8ubuvyje.jpg


Sent from my liberated iridium rMini LTE

"Hey is that the new Galaxy whatchamacallit?"

 

[Haalcyon]

"Hey is that the new Galaxy whatchamacallit?"

"Why yes, how'd ya know?"


Sent from my liberated titanium 5s 32

 

[Fr0gburp3r]

Re: HUGE Disappointment -- Samsung TOTALLY Dropped The Ball

I had the iPhone 5S and I didn't find the camera to be amazing. The pictures were ridiculously post-processed to the point that a lot of detail was unsalvageable in image editing. My friend's S4 took sharper images, and I'm sure some of this had to do with the higher MP count - however, I did examing the images in 1:1 size on a computer monitor not just on a phone screen. I find the Note 3 to be as good as the S4.

The only area where the iPhone pulls ahead is in low light, but the Kit Kat update for the S4/Note 3 is supposed to come with a Camera FW update that improves low light photography noticeably so the jury is still out on that for me. I don't take much low light pictures, anyways. I still find the Flash on Samsung devises to be better than the iPhone 5S. I didn't really notice any improvement from the "True Tone" flash. In most cases, Auto-Correcting (especially using decent desktop computer software) the image from another phone gave a better skin tone, but without the camera's aggressive post-processing destroying image quality in other areas...

The pictures looked amazing on a smartphone screen, but when I loaded them up on my PC to crop some pictures (I do a lot of cropping) I noticed people looked like they were painted (Very soft edges and a lot of facial detail was smudged/processed out and a ton of background detail was smudged/processed out as well. There's nothing you could do in Photoshop or Lightroom to recover detail the camera software destroyed in those pictures...

Also, the 32GB iPhone I had with iLife, iWork, and a few other 1st party apple apps installed (Find My Friends, iTunes Remote, Apple Store, iBooks, Podcasts and maybe one or two others) had less storage than my 32GB Note 3 with all Verizon Bloatware Disabled, a bunch of installed Google Apps (including some from Play Store that weren't pre-loaded), and Samsung Apps installed (ditto, e.g. their Video Editor is a 120MB+ install and I added that , I disabled Samsung Link however)... The Note has 23.08 GB free space in Internal Storage. The iPhone had < 21GB free.

So, after looking at things from the other perspective, I suddenly didn't feel as bad about what they put on these Samsung devices, Lol. Apple's iWork and iLife apps by themselves are like a 1.5-2GB install size on the iPhone. It is *much* harder to deal with a 16GB iPhone than a 16GB Galaxy S or Note Device, because there is no SD Card slot to Offload things like Camera Data (Pictures, Videos), Music (Play Music can Cache to SD Card now, for example), Documents, etc.

Totally Satisfied with the Note 3 camera. Have no issues with the phone storage or what Verizon puts on it, as long as I can disable it and never be bothered by it again

Another camera thing I noticed... All these phones coming out with OIS, but apart from the Lumia 1020, even those "low light specialist" cameras have been underwhelming in quality. Both the Lumia 920 and HTC One have been rather underwhelming. While they do let in a lot of light, even their low light images are at a lack for detail, to the point that I'd prefer "Low Light Mode" images from my old Galaxy S3 over the pictures I've seen/been sent from those devices. The LG G2 was said to not be as good as the Note 3 in low light photography or videography, despite having OIS, by some reviewers. OIS is nice, in theory, but I think that needs a little maturity before it becomes as must have as some people are making it sound like it is.

I find the iPhone 5S camera better than my GS4 even after the KitKat update. The shutter lag was a deal breaker for me. The iPhone 5S is almost instant while the S4 takes almost a second from the time a touch the shutter button to the time it captures. Not really good for moving subjects. The night shot on the GS4 does too much post process and lose a lot of details in the photos. It's very good in daylight with stationary subjects and static scenes.

 

[iN8ter]

Re: HUGE Disappointment -- Samsung TOTALLY Dropped The Ball

I find the iPhone 5S camera better than my GS4 even after the KitKat update. The shutter lag was a deal breaker for me. The iPhone 5S is almost instant while the S4 takes almost a second from the time a touch the shutter button to the time it captures. Not really good for moving subjects. The night shot on the GS4 does too much post process and lose a lot of details in the photos. It's very good in daylight with stationary subjects and static scenes.

Disregarding the fact that night shots are terrible from almost all smartphone cameras. The iPhone included...The S4 does Auto Night Mode, among other things, by default. You can turn that off and get a darker shot but use more robust desktop software to get a better end product.

This also increases the percieved shutter lag in some cases. Clearly the camera is capable of zero shutter lag shooting. The burst shot speed proves that. The default settings are not set for maximum speed. They are set to automatically aid the user in taking pictures with the appropriate mode. The iPhone also does much of this in the background. Yes. The iPhone is faster, but I think it's quality is overrated when you look at he details in the images. I have some. They are grossly unimpressive Compared even to the S4. Background details look like a watercolor painting and faces of people look smudged. The 5S goes haywire on your pictures with its post processing. I have taken some pictures on my S3 that looked better than a lot of the pictures I took on my iPhone 5S. I've taken pictures of basically the same scene where the exposure on the iPhone was wildly different between shots despite having almost the exact same image (and certainly no variation in lighting) in the picture. I still think Samsung devices are better for recording video than the iPhone, and I do a lot of that.

A lot of these smartphones deploy "Intelligent Auto" by default. Thank Sony for that, and Apple since a lot of people just want a point and shoot camera with no need to dig into settings because "the iPhone does it." So many phones now come with auto shake, auto night mode, auto hdr, etc. Enabled by default. Lol There was a point in time when companies like HTC and LG were terrible for camera tech and Apple was significantly further ahead of them (iPhone 4/4S timeframes), but I think a lot of the hype about Apple's camera has a lot to do with them just riding the wave of that momentum because their image quality has not improved nearly as much as Android flagships have. We seen this going from 4S to 5, and then again going from 5 to 5S. In both cases, those were quite marginal increases in camera quality.

Of course you can use something like Camera Awesome to bypass Samsung Camera software. It's not like you can do much without installing a 3rd party camera app on the iPhone (however I don't since I have my stock camera set up nicely, for me).

Additionally, Snapdragon 800 devices have an ISP which makes them much better camera phones than the S600 equipped Galaxy S4. The Note 3 uses the same camera, but everything is better and faster due to the better hardware. The S5 will be even better since the ISP is actually one of the most improved areas moving from the Snapdragon 800 and Snapdragon 801, and of course the camera hardware gets an improvement as well.

The iPhone camera is not bad certainly. It's decent. It is probably the fastest smartphone camera I've ever used. It is better in low light than the Note 3, clearly better. But some people talk about it like it's the Lumia 1020 and it isn't nearly that good. I take almost all my photos and videos in decent lighting (not necessarily the best) so I prefer the greater detail of the Samsung cameras at this point.

I certainly prefer the flexibility of the Samsung camera software.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[xchange]

Re: HUGE Disappointment -- Samsung TOTALLY Dropped The Ball

The spec war is never dead. It has slow phases while certain elements catch up now and then but it's never dead as long as technology continues to evolve and demands higher specs to run. It would be far more accurate to say that the spec war is currently in a slow phase pending new developments which are never very far away.

 

[Fr0gburp3r]

Re: HUGE Disappointment -- Samsung TOTALLY Dropped The Ball

Disregarding the fact that night shots are terrible from almost all smartphone cameras. The iPhone included...The S4 does Auto Night Mode, among other things, by default. You can turn that off and get a darker shot but use more robust desktop software to get a better end product.

This also increases the percieved shutter lag in some cases. Clearly the camera is capable of zero shutter lag shooting. The burst shot speed proves that. The default settings are not set for maximum speed. They are set to automatically aid the user in taking pictures with the appropriate mode. The iPhone also does much of this in the background. Yes. The iPhone is faster, but I think it's quality is overrated when you look at he details in the images. I have some. They are grossly unimpressive Compared even to the S4. Background details look like a watercolor painting and faces of people look smudged. The 5S goes haywire on your pictures with its post processing. I have taken some pictures on my S3 that looked better than a lot of the pictures I took on my iPhone 5S. I've taken pictures of basically the same scene where the exposure on the iPhone was wildly different between shots despite having almost the exact same image (and certainly no variation in lighting) in the picture. I still think Samsung devices are better for recording video than the iPhone, and I do a lot of that.

A lot of these smartphones deploy "Intelligent Auto" by default. Thank Sony for that, and Apple since a lot of people just want a point and shoot camera with no need to dig into settings because "the iPhone does it." So many phones now come with auto shake, auto night mode, auto hdr, etc. Enabled by default. Lol There was a point in time when companies like HTC and LG were terrible for camera tech and Apple was significantly further ahead of them (iPhone 4/4S timeframes), but I think a lot of the hype about Apple's camera has a lot to do with them just riding the wave of that momentum because their image quality has not improved nearly as much as Android flagships have. We seen this going from 4S to 5, and then again going from 5 to 5S. In both cases, those were quite marginal increases in camera quality.

Of course you can use something like Camera Awesome to bypass Samsung Camera software. It's not like you can do much without installing a 3rd party camera app on the iPhone (however I don't since I have my stock camera set up nicely, for me).

Additionally, Snapdragon 800 devices have an ISP which makes them much better camera phones than the S600 equipped Galaxy S4. The Note 3 uses the same camera, but everything is better and faster due to the better hardware. The S5 will be even better since the ISP is actually one of the most improved areas moving from the Snapdragon 800 and Snapdragon 801, and of course the camera hardware gets an improvement as well.

The iPhone camera is not bad certainly. It's decent. It is probably the fastest smartphone camera I've ever used. It is better in low light than the Note 3, clearly better. But some people talk about it like it's the Lumia 1020 and it isn't nearly that good. I take almost all my photos and videos in decent lighting (not necessarily the best) so I prefer the greater detail of the Samsung cameras at this point.

I certainly prefer the flexibility of the Samsung camera software.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 3 using Tapatalk

tl;dr

 

[iN8ter]

Re: HUGE Disappointment -- Samsung TOTALLY Dropped The Ball

The spec war is never dead. It has slow phases while certain elements catch up now and then but it's never dead as long as technology continues to evolve and demands higher specs to run. It would be far more accurate to say that the spec war is currently in a slow phase pending new developments which are never very far away.

There's a difference between the normal evolution of device capabilities and the spec war we had from 2009-2011. This is normal progression. Back then OEMs were ramping up specs for no reason except to say they had them, even if the device ended up being rated for only 4 hours battery life like the LG Nitro HD.

Cameras that were pitiful like the HTC G2 or whatever that hinged device was. Huge LCD displays at WVGA with terrible power management. And all of this when the average battery size in flagship phones was 15-1600 mAh.

This isn't a slow phase. Things are just progressing at a normal pace. The spec war was a completely different situation.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[iN8ter]

Re: HUGE Disappointment -- Samsung TOTALLY Dropped The Ball

tl;dr

People say the same thing about user manuals.

If you didn't, your shutter would be faster

Sent from my Galaxy Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[prepaidguy9081]

Re: HUGE Disappointment -- Samsung TOTALLY Dropped The Ball

I find the iPhone 5S camera better than my GS4 even after the KitKat update. The shutter lag was a deal breaker for me. The iPhone 5S is almost instant while the S4 takes almost a second from the time a touch the shutter button to the time it captures. Not really good for moving subjects. The night shot on the GS4 does too much post process and lose a lot of details in the photos. It's very good in daylight with stationary subjects and static scenes.

I think this guy needs a cammera

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 4