Is this the new S5?

[cheezy321]

lol at all the 'buuuuuuuut Apple apple apple doesnt innovate either! PLEASE LOOK AT APPLE. APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE!!! DEFLECT FROM SAMSUNG!!!!' types in this thread.

Like most have said, we have reached a point of saturation on new features. Confused as to how some people still think removable storage and removable batteries are an innovation. Um, those have been around since the very first smart phone. Not exactly an innovation in any way, shape or form.

I want phone makers to focus on two things: battery life and camera upgrades. Tired of a simple screen size boost being an innovation.

 

[WelshBloke]

lol at all the 'buuuuuuuut Apple apple apple doesnt innovate either! PLEASE LOOK AT APPLE. APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE!!! DEFLECT FROM SAMSUNG!!!!' types in this thread..

By "all the 'buuuuuuuut Apple apple apple doesnt innovate either! PLEASE LOOK AT APPLE. APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE!!! DEFLECT FROM SAMSUNG!!!!' types" you mean the one guy don't you?

 

[cheezy321]

By "all the 'buuuuuuuut Apple apple apple doesnt innovate either! PLEASE LOOK AT APPLE. APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE!!! DEFLECT FROM SAMSUNG!!!!' types" you mean the one guy don't you?

If the shoe fits.

All I want is for these companies to focus on battery life. If only our phones could return to the pre-smartphone level of 2 - 4 days of battery life.

 

[WelshBloke]

If the shoe fits.

So you were just drama queening?

All I want is for these companies to focus on battery life. If only our phones could return to the pre-smartphone level of 2 - 4 days of battery life.

2 to 4 days is excessive in normal situations (and unrealistic with current battery tech and what we want smartphones to do). A solid 18 hours with heavy use would be fine, and we are pretty much there with some phones.

 

[sweenish]

It's like getting that kind of battery life would be an innovation or something.

Dramatic increases in available on-board storage without the price shooting into the stratosphere would be nice, too.

 

[Generator]

Without Apple to lead the way Samsung is impotent. Their phones are attractive then you turn the thing on or on its backside...

In a lot of ways the iphone 5 was the truly the last cell phone. What we have now going forward are just phones that will illicit toaster like wonder. Combs, toothbrushes, cell phones. Apples next phone will not be innovative, but simply because it will be bigger it be as if its the second coming!

Good opportunity for HTC, MS, Sony, maybe Samsung if they are just deliberating deploying this turd anxious replicate the next apple offering. Samsungs turn around is impressive.

 

[shortylickens]

If the shoe fits.

All I want is for these companies to focus on battery life. If only our phones could return to the pre-smartphone level of 2 - 4 days of battery life.

Every time they improve battery technology its used as an excuse to ramp up processing speed and you end up with only one day of use again.
Many people stick with blackberry's for this reason.

 

[Trombe]

So you were just drama queening?



2 to 4 days is excessive in normal situations (and unrealistic with current battery tech and what we want smartphones to do). A solid 18 hours with heavy use would be fine, and we are pretty much there with some phones.

"Heavy use" is such a vague term IMO. Screen on? WiFi or LTE/HSPA? Gaming?

Without resorting to third party batteries I can't even think of any phone that can consistently handle 18 hours of just music streaming over cellular data. Maybe a Droid Maxx.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

"Heavy use" is such a vague term IMO. Screen on? WiFi or LTE/HSPA? Gaming?

Without resorting to third party batteries I can't even think of any phone that can consistently handle 18 hours of just music streaming over cellular data. Maybe a Droid Maxx.

I think there's more we can do with today's phones. There was a discussion on Reddit regarding why Android phones use so much battery in surfing the web. A lot of fingerpointing was done at Project Butter, which reinforces what I believed before. The whole scaling of two cores to 1+ GHz may be nice to provide smoothness, but in many ways its overkill. It might be why if I surf on my iPhone on LTE, it will get warm, but surfing on my Nexus 5 on LTE? It will get much hotter. Now of course we can cite the aluminum frame or whatever of the iPhone 5, but I'd say even with the old iPhone 4 or 4S design, it still didn't heat up as much.

Furthermore, there's a lot more software tweaking that can be done to minimize idle battery use. My proposal is to have further syncing options. For example, does Google+, Gmail, etc really need to sync in order to receive email? They hold the phone awake forever. There should be a battery saving option that relies purely on push notifications. Less wake time, less data use, less battery use. It's similar to the Facebook and Twitter apps. They both have a sync option where you can sync contacts, and likely pull messages at a fixed interval. This helps when you load up the app that new tweets/posts are already loaded, but at the expense of battery and data. However, you can still turn those off and get instant notifications via push. It's what keeps battery use of Twitter and FB (more recently) to a minimum yet I'm able to communicate with friends effectively. Right now looking at my wakelocks, I see G+ and Gmail eating up my wakelocks. G+ especially is a PITA. I barely use it, and I'd like to keep the few notifications I get on a weekly basis on, but the only way to get them is to continue syncing.

Anyway, that's just a thought. The other half of battery life is really the user. It's unfortunate, but people need to be taught to look at the Youtube app and disable "Improve suggestions" or any of those background data consumers. Pulse syncs every 6 hours by default. The AOSP News & Weather app syncs every 6 hours by default too. That includes a location ping too.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I honestly don't want better battery management on the software side if the alternative is killing Android's awesome multi-tasking feature.

 

[WelshBloke]

I honestly don't want better battery management on the software side if the alternative is killing Android's awesome multi-tasking feature.

Yeah, it would be pretty easy to get multiple day battery life by killing a lot of functionality.

When the guy posted me my S3 he obviously just factory reset it, stuck it in the box and posted it to me.
When it arrived 3 or 4 days later it still had a lot of charge left on the battery.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I honestly don't want better battery management on the software side if the alternative is killing Android's awesome multi-tasking feature.

But it isn't that black and white. Better management of battery doesn't mean you kill multitasking. This is the second time Google+ acted up this week, and it's post update too while the other one was earlier this week pre-update.

There's no reason my G+ needs to sync to begin with if I've already turned off contacts syncing, and the rest should be via push. I haven't taken a photo since Sunday, so there are no photos to upload.

The same with Gmail. Why isn't there a push-only option?

Project Butter can also be reworked so it's not just a power drainer.

Multitasking doesn't inherently mean more power drain. It's not like you guys are leaving downloads in the background consistently. In fact most people don't want apps consistently draining excessively in the background.

 

[Dari]

Yeah, it would be pretty easy to get multiple day battery life by killing a lot of functionality.

When the guy posted me my S3 he obviously just factory reset it, stuck it in the box and posted it to me.
When it arrived 3 or 4 days later it still had a lot of charge left on the battery.

Doubt it. Screen usage is what uses up most of the battery. A phone in standby mode will last for weeks.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Doubt it. Screen usage is what uses up most of the battery. A phone in standby mode will last for weeks.

That's if you have no apps running. Screen touches also cause a lot of drain. There's discussion on /r/android regarding how power usage triples upon interacting with the screen due to Project Butter.

I think there's more that can be done to help reduce background data usage and battery usage.

 

[WelshBloke]

Hmmm, I might just pick up a cheap S4 advance (I9506) when the S5 comes out, there doesn't seem to be a massive difference between them.

 

[Red Storm]

Hmmm, I might just pick up a cheap S4 advance (I9506) when the S5 comes out, there doesn't seem to be a massive difference between them.

Other than the camera, dust & water proofing, battery, better looking Touchwiz, and less bloat (so I've heard?)? Isn't the GPU also clocked faster?

 

[WelshBloke]

Other than the camera, dust & water proofing, battery, better looking Touchwiz, and less bloat (so I've heard?)? Isn't the GPU also clocked faster?

Not bothered about the water proofing (it doesnt look robust enough to trust TBH), battery is only 200Mah bigger, not bothered by the look of touchwiz(I use Nova so I dont see much of it), I just disable the bloat. The GPU and CPU are a little faster in the S5 but I doubt your going to notice it anywhere apart from benchmark.

Like I said most of the differences seem to be marginal and the price of the I9506 should drop when the S5 is available.

 

[Red Storm]

Battery may only be slightly larger, but I read they have some new power saving features in there to help with standby, web browsing, gaming, etc.

Anyhow, if the S4A drops in price enough then you're right about not spending a bunch more just for the S5.

 

[WelshBloke]

Battery may only be slightly larger, but I read they have some new power saving features in there to help with standby, web browsing, gaming, etc.

Anyhow, if the S4A drops in price enough then you're right about not spending a bunch more just for the S5.

Its hard to compare prices at the moment but the S5 is £550 after tax on clove and the S4 advance is £399 after tax on expansys so its already £150 cheaper and I'd probably just go for an ebay resale thats in good condition.

 

[blairharrington]

I bet the S4 will be a strong seller on Ebay and Swappa moving forward.

 

[poofyhairguy]

It's not like you guys are leaving downloads in the background consistently.

I do a lot actually.

In fact most people don't want apps consistently draining excessively in the background.

Well yeah most people don't want a computer in their pocket they want an appliance. Not me.

 

[dawheat]

Not bothered about the water proofing (it doesnt look robust enough to trust TBH), battery is only 200Mah bigger, not bothered by the look of touchwiz(I use Nova so I dont see much of it), I just disable the bloat. The GPU and CPU are a little faster in the S5 but I doubt your going to notice it anywhere apart from benchmark.

Like I said most of the differences seem to be marginal and the price of the I9506 should drop when the S5 is available.

I'm sure you'll check out the S5 first, but it does have some stuff that may be worthwhile to some:
- some hands on reviews have remarked the screen is brighter than the S4. Makes sense in being a new display, as Samsung has always improved AMOLED brightness and power usage in every gen.
- More than just straight battery size increase, it seems that there are a bunch of optimizations that are system level as well as better screen management
- Camera seems much better in low light than before
- My work S4 is noticeably slower and less responsive than my Note 3. Sounds like the S4 should be a touch better than the Note 3.

 

[IeraseU]

Here are some details on pricing for the European market: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/02/galaxy-s5-priced-in-uk-and-spain-not-as-cheap-as-we-thought/

As expected, it's not cheap. I expect the US model to retail for $700 (unlocked, 16gb model).

 

[CakeMonster]

I'll also be watching for the S4+ (the one with Snapdragon 800, seems like has a different name in each market). It seems like the best choice now. Unfortunately its still really expensive, but if it drops significantly in two months, I'm getting one.

 

[saratoga172]

I really wanted to be excited and I also wanted to say it was a let down but I'm really indifferent about the phone. It's a marginal improvement from the S4 with a spec bump, battery bump, camera bump and hopefully some software tweaks. Really samsung are on the edge of the best hardware they can put in a phone right now.

Is a 2560 screen really going to be an improvement on the 1920 screen they've currently got? Not likely imo. I would have rather seen them get a size of the phone closer to the moto x. That phone feels great in the hand.

But my view is a little biased. I'm on my iP5s but love new tech and phones and getting new toys. I really like the small size and for me a 4.3 is probably ideal. Light and small and fits in all pockets easily.