Samsung Galaxy S5 unveiled: Fingerprint scanner, 16-megapixel camera, but still a plastic body

Samsung Galaxy S5 unveiled: Fingerprint scanner, 16-megapixel camera, but still a plastic body

At its Unpacked event in Barcelona, Samsung has released the Galaxy S5 — and, to the surprise of everyone, three new smartwatches: the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and the Gear Fit. We’ll talk about the smartwatches in a separate story and will focus on the Galaxy S5 here.

The Galaxy S5 is, for all intents and purposes, the Galaxy S4 but with a few cool new features: a fingerprint scanner, a heartbeat sensor, and some tech that constantly calibrates the AMOLED screen to compensate for ambient lighting, to ensure that those gaudy super-saturated colors are always present no matter the conditions. The Galaxy S5 is indeed splash-proof (similar to the S4 Active), but not ruggedized. This post will be updated with the release date and pricing when we know it (soon).

Specs-wise, the Galaxy S5 is not a huge step up from the S4. The 5.1-inch 1920×1080 (432 ppi) Super AMOLED screen is as wondrous as ever. Under the hood there’s a top-of-the-range Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974) SoC clocked at 2.5GHz, with the Adreno 330 GPU. There’s 802.11ac with MIMO, and LTE/WiFi aggregation — a relatively new feature that lets you download files over both connections at once.

On the back of the S5 is a heartbeat sensor (it’s close to the camera) — put your finger over it, and S Health picks up your heart rate very quickly. The home button, as expected, is now a fingerprint scanner — and yes, unfortunately, you have to swipe your finger over it (it remains to be seen how stable a 5-inch phone is, when swiping your thumb). There is a special chip that adjusts the screen’s contrast and color gamut, so that it retains the over-saturated AMOLED “pop” under different lighting conditions.