Is the Samsung Galaxy S5 better than the iPhone 5S/5C?

emylamber said:

I've had the 5C since Christmas. It's my first iphone. It's fun to have and all but I'm not very impressed with it. Everybody at my school had one so I thought that I'd follow the pack and I wish I didn't. Are there any good reasons to switch to samsung? I heard the apps and music are free, is that true?

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My son just took on a new job and the new company issued him a 5S iPhone. Fortunately for him, he was already using an older iPhone (3 years old and crippled bad). He commented to me last night that he was pleased that all of his notes, contact lists, and other apps he had paid for transferred over w/o any issues.

He is having a bit of trouble with the menus but that will resolve itself with practice.

At the moment, the new company's IT department is having to set it up with ultra secure VPN so that he can directly access their internal servers. That stuff is so tight, they will not allow anyone to know how to tunnel into their stuff.

he had wanted to switch to the S5 Galaxy because I already have one and could help him out a bit.... but, when it is provided for you, you go with the flow.

I am thinking from rereading your post that you will appreciate the larger and brighter screen on the S5. Also, you will have available to you a much larger assortment of apps to pick from.

I just made a couple of Mobile Check Deposits with my S5 and was pleased with how well it went "again".

You will read of problems folks have experienced. Some real, others user inflicted them upon themselves.

As far as the hardware goes, my S5 has never had a problem from Launch Day.

Did "I" have any problems with it?
Yes, but it was growing pains as I became familiar with the new menus. Even though I have owned a Galaxy S for 3 years, the S5 has a different way of accessing things we need.

The single one most liked feature?
The Settings menu has a "Search" capability. That is a tremendous thing for helping you find things.

click on the Search icon (magnifying glass) and enter 3 characters and you will usually see a list of things that most likely have what you want to access. click on one of those items and it goes directly to the Settings page you need.

I recommend you get one, and continue to read the forum here and ask questions galore. Lots of friendly fingers typing to help you out.

.

Nope, the problem is the iPhone often has very good hardware and Apple make some good choices when it comes to hardware configurations and as a result you find a lot of technology enthusiasts often use iPhone's which some people find surprising.

The problem is the iPhone appeals to users who want high performance and the simplified interface also appeals to users with little hardware or technical knowledge.

To put things into perspective, the latest Android SoC's are only just matching Apples A6X when it comes to graphics performance and due to differences in the display resolution the iPhone 5S is STILL the fastest gaming phone on the market.

There is no Android device that matches the iPhone 5S is this area and the iPhone 6 is just around the corner.

emylamber said:

I've had the 5C since Christmas. It's my first iphone. It's fun to have and all but I'm not very impressed with it. Everybody at my school had one so I thought that I'd follow the pack and I wish I didn't. Are there any good reasons to switch to samsung? I heard the apps and music are free, is that true?

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Why are you disappointed with the iPhone 5C? that would be a good place to start.

There are more free apps on Android but music is definitely NOT free. You still have to pay for music but there is no rule as to where to get it from, once downloaded just copy over to your device and enjoy.

Samsung generally has superior specs to iphones released at similar times. As a poster on this forum (can't remember his name) pointed out, Samsungs have back buttons which work consistently while similar iphone function is not handled consistently. Sometimes it's in the upper right and says one thing. Other times it's in the lower left and looks different.

arkady said:

Samsung generally has superior specs to iphones released at similar times.

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That's not entirely true, they take difference approaches.

Android manufactures are pushing more CPU cores as it's great for marketing but not really great for real world performance or battery life, plus they have been using slower graphics processors compared to Apple devices at the time of release.

Apple on the other had went with a custom dual core CPU combined with a very fast graphics processor.

Android manufactures are also adding more memory, but that's not necessarily a good sign when the applications and games are still better on iOS devices with less memory.

The original Galaxy S had a faster GPU than the iPhone at time of release but had various other issues, hardware and software, since than it's been mostly advantage iPhone.

I'm an Android fan so I don't like saying any of this but it's the truth. I'm still not going to by an iPhone any time soon though.

Sounds like confusing Apple mumbo jumbo to me. Let's look at the facts. Iphone 5 released September 2013 vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 3 released two months later. All of the following differences are in Samsung's favor. Processor: 1.3 Ghz dual core compared to 2.3 Ghz quad core. RAM: 1 GB vs. 3 GB. Screen resolution: 640 X 1136 vs. 1080 X 1920. Camera: 8 MP vs. 13 MP.

arkady said:

Sounds like confusing Apple mumbo jumbo to me. Let's look at the facts. Iphone 5 released September 2013 vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 3 released two months later. All of the following differences are in Samsung's favor. Processor: 1.3 Ghz dual core compared to 2.3 Ghz quad core. RAM: 1 GB vs. 3 GB. Screen resolution: 640 X 1136 vs. 1080 X 1920. Camera: 8 MP vs. 13 MP.

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Apples A7 does very well in most CPU tests, oftern beating the Note 3 and other Snapdragon 800 devices, like I said it's a custom design so they are not directly comparable by just looking at the processor speeds.

I've commented on memory already, apps still run better on the iPhone 5S compared the flagship Android devices, it's better for multitasking but how often do users really multitask? very rarely in my case.

Camera's again cannot be directly compared just by comparing megapixels alone, the iPhone 5S has a larger sensor to enable good low light results and unlike HTC's Ultrapixel technology Apple's solution actually produces great results.

640 x 1136 pixels on a 4" display is fine, that's still 326 PPI which is good enough really.

I'll also leave you with this, the second and last result is the most important as that is the real world performance difference in games taking display resolution into account and is why games on the iPhone 5S run so much smoother.

There will never be a 'real' answer to this question. I mean, some like 'fliet mignon' others like 'lobster'. 2 premium meals in any high end restaurant, depends on your taste. ;-)
I have used iOS for a long time, and had 'dabbled' in Android over the past 5 years or so, however since the Fall of 2013, I am sticking to Android. Just more 'my thing' and Samsung is the UI that I prefer the most. Feels the most 'natural' to me when compared to my personal experience with Moto, HTC, or LG.

Enjoy.

Yes todays benchmarks are old and relatively meaningless. That being the case, I'll take the better specs. Apple leads in US but worldwide Samsung sales are twice apple's. Must be some reason for that. https://www.google.com/search?q=App...phone-marketshare-smaller-oems-rising;660;451

On your Manhattan benchmarks, here's another view. Android tops chart in 2/4 on CPU performance. And Apple loses 4/5 in GPU performance. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7893/the-htc-one-m8-review/7

Gaming: Larger Screen with higher resolution display makes the S5 superior to the iPhone for gaming

Piss on Games, a perfect waste of time IMO.

There is not a single game on my S5. I have no use for them.

So there, benchmarks be damned. I want ease of use and fast response, and Android's flexibility to do what I want, when I want, and not because some corporation tells me I can't do what I want.

AZgl1500 said:

Piss on Games, a perfect waste of time IMO.

There is not a single game on my S5. I have no use for them.

So there, benchmarks be damned. I want ease of use and fast response, and Android's flexibility to do what I want, when I want, and not because some corporation tells me I can't do what I want.

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Yay! No games on my Samsung S5 nor Tab 3 nor Samsung UltraTouch notebook either... got better things to do.

However, my wife and especially her younger sister.... play games all the time on their, you guessed it, iPhone 5s.

jack58 said:

Gaming: Larger Screen with higher resolution display makes the S5 superior to the iPhone for gaming

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Yes, the games on the iPhone 5S run as much as twice as fast as on flagship Android devices which makes them smoother and more responsive, also in some cases they add extra visual effects so they look better as well.

Larger display is better I agree but not when it comes at the expense of poor performance or reduced graphics quality.

AZgl1500 said:

Piss on Games, a perfect waste of time IMO.

There is not a single game on my S5. I have no use for them.

So there, benchmarks be damned. I want ease of use and fast response, and Android's flexibility to do what I want, when I want, and not because some corporation tells me I can't do what I want.

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If you don't play games I have to wonder why you have a flagship device as the extra performance is going to be wasted on you.

It would be like buying a

arkady said:

On your Manhattan benchmarks, here's another view. Android tops chart in 2/4 on CPU performance. And Apple loses 4/5 in GPU performance. AnandTech | The HTC One (M8) Review

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The results in the graph I posted are the average results from these devices from the developers website where all these results including Anandtech's are submitted, they are NOT my benchmarks.

Their score in T-Rex is a little lower than average but you can still see the average on screen test is still a lot higher than the M8. Also 3dmark is good benchmark but the Unlimited test uses offscreen rendering so does not take display resolution into account at all.

Here's a compare from the creators website, as you can see in the 2nd and last test the iPhone 5S dominates the HTC One M8.

In the offscreen tests the HTC One M8 just wins in the older T-Rex benchmark where as the iPhone 5S wins in the newer Manhattan benchmark.

Any good reasons that justify 660 dollar swing? Probably not, but my s5 blows my 5s out of the water in every single use I have for a cell phone.

O.k., so I had to do come cleanup as things tended to get off topic and non conducive to the OP's post.
Let's try not to concentrate on tests and benchmarks too much, rather offer more suggestions about other differences between the 2 devices.
Sweet Carry on!

Ok I know you don't want anymore benchmark talk but up above I posted benchmarks that show Iphone 5s losing to Samsung Galaxy note 3 in 4/5 GPU tests. Somehow Shocky never replied to that post.

arkady said:

Ok I know you don't want anymore benchmark talk but up above I posted benchmarks that show Iphone 5s losing to Samsung Galaxy note 3 in 4/5 GPU tests. Somehow Shocky never replied to that post.

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They're older OpenGL ES2.0 or lower benchmarks and most of these devices breeze through them, basically they're not demanding enough, I know futuremark are working on the new OpenGL ES 3.0 benchmark but due the state of Android display drivers from Qualcomm and others it's probably going to take a while.

The Manhatten benchmark from GFXBench 3.0 however uses OpenGL ES3.0 and it's the most advanced and most demanding 3D benchmark we currently have that's cross platform which is why I refer to it a lot.

Looking at the 3dmark results from their own website the results are very close.

3DMark Unlimited - Graphics Score

Galaxy Note 3 - 19447
iPhone 5S - 18977

This test is rendered at 1280*720 off screen which is a little higher than the iPhone S5's native resolution, if the iPhone rendered the benchmark at 1136*640 it would score higher than the Note 3.