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Samsung Galaxy S5 vs iPhone 5S

What does it take to become the best selling smartphone of the year? That’s a question that the new Samsung Galaxy S5 and the Apple iPhone 5S want to try and answer.

Samsung Galaxy S5 VS iPhone 5S: Design

As ever, the newest iPhone is a thing of beauty. Finely crafted aluminium frame, thin, light at just 112 grams and rocking its distinctive fingerprint sensing home button. It doesn’t look much different from the iPhone 5, but Apple’s approach of “if it ain’t broke”, hasn’t upset too many fans as of yet.

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The Galaxy S5 certainly doesn’t break the mould either, but it does sport a less shiny, more comfortable textured soft-touch back. Make sure that all the important ports are sealed and the S5 is happy to take a dip up to a 3-feet of water too. Don’t try that with the iPhone though; you won’t be pleased with the result.

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Naturally the S5 is significantly larger, in order to accommodate the extra inch of screen. It’s still pretty light and plays “me too” by boasting a fingerprint sensor in its home button as well, but you can’t deny that it’s a convenient addition.

Samsung Galaxy S5 VS iPhone 5S: Display

It’s a toss up between the screens on these two phones, they both boast the same resolution and screen tech as their predecessors, a 4-inch Retina LCD on the iPhone and a 5.1-inch Full HD Super AMOLED on the S5.

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The Galaxy S5’s screen certainly has the wow factor, with incredibly vivid colours and good contrast. The 5S wins out for its brightness and its size. It may be an inch smaller, but it makes one-handed use that little bit easier as a result.

Samsung Galaxy S5 VS iPhone 5S: OS

iOS is one of the most popular mobile operating system’s on the planet and with good reason. The interface is clean and simple, eye-catching and super smooth.

Samsung’s latest TouchWiz interface is a major improvement running atop Android KitKat, but it still can get confusing. There are plenty of options to customise the interface and the Settings menu may be cleaner, but it goes on forever.

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The S Health app and its ability to read your heart rate is a cool addition, if a little novel and the My Magazine feed gives you the news you want to hear about in a Flipboard style format.

In essence the S5 offers a ton of stuff out of the box, while the iPhone leaves you to pick and choose from the App Store, arguably giving you more control over what takes up space on your phone from the off.

Samsung Galaxy S5 VS iPhone 5S: Performance

It’s tricky to compare the muscle on show here. The Galaxy S5 has one of the most powerful chipsets of any Android device out right now, the quad-core Snapdragon 801.

The user experience and heavy duty apps like 3D games run flawlessly, so this thing will stand you in good stead on your average two-year contract. Battery life that lasts over a day and half, even before you reach for ‘Ultra Power saving mode’ is awesome too. Not to mention it’s well connected.

The 5S, does its own thing. Its A7 dual-core chip is the first to support 64-bit architecture and there’s nothing else really like it out there right now. This means that eventually, we’ll see some pretty powerful apps running on iOS devices including the 5S, there just aren’t really any right now to test this theory.

Apps and the general user experience are undeniably good and it’s all thanks the more predictable hardware setup developers have to work with. You won’t get the epic battery life or the breadth of connectivity options that you do with the S5, but you can still manage a day on single charge.

Samsung Galaxy S5 VS iPhone 5S: Camera

It’s not just enough to offer a big sensor now, the 5S and S5’s cameras duke it out in the features department too. Both perform well across the board, you’ll appreciate the iPhone’s 8-megapixel snapper for its ability to automate everything, making sure exposure and colour look as accurate as possible, especially now that it has its dual-LED flash.

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Like the iPhone, the 16-megapixel rear camera on the Galaxy S5 can shoot capture HDR snaps and slow-motion video, but can also film in 4K, that’s four times HD resolution. The modes have been cut back, which makes it easy to navigate, but there are still a ton of options to choose from. Be prepared to spend a lot of time getting to know the camera’s full skill set.

  

Samsung Galaxy S5 VS iPhone 5S: Conclusion

Both phones offer more of a good thing. The iPhone 5S doesn’t change much from the previous iPhone, but bumps up its security, fluidity and photography skills. The Galaxy S5 meanwhile tries to simplify the convoluted experience of older Galaxys, yet still crams in the features.

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If you want a phone built for creating and consuming media, then the Galaxy S5 is an entertainment powerhouse. The iPhone is the reliable alternative. Even if you’ve never used one, the learning curve is much smaller than that of the S5 and aside from the battery life, it still offers one of the best all-round smartphone experience there is.

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