Samsung Galaxy S 5 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Joshua Ho on April 8, 2014 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy S 5
CPU Performance
The Galaxy S 5 marks the second Snapdragon 801 based device we've reviewed at AnandTech, the first being HTC's M8. I've gone through the Snapdragon 801 in depth already, but we're basically dealing with a reasonable upgrade to Snapdragon 800 on an improved 28nm HPm process. The bulk of the improvements impact GPU and ISP performance, but the SoC is just better overall. GS5 owners are lucky as all versions of the device that use Qualcomm silicon feature the MSM8974AC v3 SKU, which includes four 2.5GHz Krait 400 cores and a 578MHz Adreno 330 GPU.
Snapdragon 800/801 Breakdown | ||||||||||
SoC Version | Model | Max CPU Frequency | Max GPU Frequency | ISP | eMMC | DSDA | Memory IF | |||
MSM8974VV | v2 | S800 | 2.2GHz | 450MHz | 320MHz | 4.5 | N | 800MHz | ||
MSM8974AA | v2 | S800 | 2.3GHz | 450MHz | 320MHz | 4.5 | N | 800MHz | ||
MSM8974AB | v2 | S800 | 2.3GHz | 550MHz | 320MHz | 4.5 | N | 933MHz | ||
MSM8974AA | v3 | S801 | 2.3GHz | 450MHz | 320MHz | 5.0 | Y | 800MHz | ||
MSM8974AB | v3 | S801 | 2.3GHz | 578MHz | 465MHz | 5.0 | Y | 933MHz | ||
MSM8974AC | v3 | S801 | 2.5GHz | 578MHz | 465MHz | 5.0 | Y | 933MHz |
Although Samsung was the first major OEM to be caught cheating in Android benchmarks, it appears to have completely abandoned the practice with the Galaxy S 5's shipping software. Not only was I unable to find any evidence of the old cheats, I couldn't find any evidence of HTC's new subtle cheating either. The Galaxy S 5 appears to be clean as far as I can tell. Kudos to Samsung on doing the right thing, and I hope all other OEMs take this as a sign to stop the silliness.
For our performance tests I turned to our usual suite of browser and native applications. If there's one obvious takeaway from our CPU tests it's that despite having faster silicon than HTC's M8, the GS5 isn't always faster. I believe this has more to do with thermals than anything else. HTC's metal chassis is able to do a better job of dissipating heat than the GS5's plastic chassis. I don't believe there's a substantial impact on user experience, but it's interesting to note how choice in materials can have a performance impact like this.
GPU Performance
GPU performance remains where we see the biggest benefit from Snapdragon 801 vs. 800, and since the GPU gains are almost entirely due to frequency scaling it's not too surprising that the M8 pulls ahead of the GS5 here in most cases.
There aren't any surprises here. The Adreno 330 in the Galaxy S 5 is more than capable of driving the device's 1080p display both in current and near term future 3D games.
BaseMark X 1.1
GFXBench 3.0
NAND Performance
The GS5 ships with 16GB or 32GB of NAND internally on an integrated eMMC device. Expansion is supported through a microSD card slot behind the removable back cover. Although the Snapdragon 801 inside supports eMMC 5.0, that alone doesn't guarantee a substantial increase in NAND performance. Keep in mind that most OEMs find multiple sources for their internal eMMC/NAND solutions, so what I'm testing here may only be representative of a portion of all GS5 devices.
Samsung sampled a 16GB GS5 review device. I put it through our usual random/sequential IO tests on a 100MB span of LBAs.
Random read performance is disappointing, it falls behind all modern devices we've tested. Random write performance is middle-of-the-road at best. It's unclear to me if this is a cost optimization or a lack of concern for NAND performance, but either way I'd rather see these metrics improve rather than regress.
Sequential read/write performance both improve handsomely compared to the Galaxy S 4. I can see why Samsung would want to optimize for these two cases as they are quite common in regular usage, but random read/write performance can also significantly impact user experience.
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doobydoo - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
Hardly any phones offer different screen size options, including the Galaxy S4...OCedHrt - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
What's with the constant 5s pitch. In the low light lab shot the z1s clearly has the better picture compared to 5s (less noise, similar brightness/tone) yet is not mentioned.rauelius - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
No word in this review about the 16GB version only having 5GB of space for Apps? Come on, the press is the second to last bastion for consumer rights! Offering 16GB and advertising it as such when 70% of it is taken up by the OS, is as close to lying on the box as you can get. Also, SD cards are basically useless for apps at this point, so putting one on the phone, then having the press point it out is just a big middle finger in the face of the consumer.eastbei - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Well finally it is mentioned that amoled even with pentile is a better technology then IPS , LCD, etc. I personally hate pentiles but the true blacks that you get plus much better contrast, lower battery consumption and better colors make amoled the clear winner, now we just need someone else to start using them other then Samsung, I'd definintly get the g2 if it was amoled but I might be stuck with Samsung as I can't go back to an overbright backlit LCD phone.kmmatney - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
One crappy thing about AMOLEDs is that they seem to get worse over time. On several older phones I have the screens are now discolored, and overall look crappy. I'll stick with IPS screens.Cyleo - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
The device you refer to in your conclusion sounds a lot like the upcoming xperia Z2. I for one can't wait to see how it fares. Any plans on reviewing that device? I'm asking since I've noticed the Z1s pop up in this review. I know Sony's release schedule in the US can be a bit wonky.MrCrispy - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Why are things like removable battery, sd card, IR transmitter, HR monitor barely mentioned or completely ignored, while the fingerprint reader gets a detailed criticism? The fact is the S5 is a very well balanced phone.How exactly do the GS5 materials 'prevent it' from being a perfect device? This stupid myth about 'metal > plastic' needs to die, and its one this site likes to keep repeating. The GS5 is much more durable and waterproof compared to the 5S or M8, yet its seen as a tradeoff ?!! I don't want a metal body, plastic is shown to be better built and more durable.
kyuu - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
There's plastic, and then there's plastic. Not all plastic is the same. The problem isn't that Samsung uses plastic; the problem is that they use cheap, crappy plastic.MrCrispy - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
What makes the polycarbonate used by Samsung 'cheap' and 'crappy', besides subjective opinion?doobydoo - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
The fact that it looks and feels cheap and crappy.