I have been browsing through various web sites since the announcement yesterday evening, and I am stunned by the amount of whining and moaning about the GS5. Most of it is about the hardware, and to my mind I think it's time for a reality check:
From a software point of view there is a suggestion that we will have only 7.8 GB of usable space on board. Remember the phone shown last night was a demo for the launch, and we don't know what software was on board. Let's wait and see what the retail version actually gives us before making a judgement.
Other than that I can't see much to whine about. A fantastic camera, water and dust resistent, fingerprint technology, pulse monitor, etc etc. I certainly will be looking at the GS5 now that it seems that my GS3 will not be getting KitKat after all (which I had hoped would fix the lag issue).
- The display resolution. It's full HD 1080p on a 5.1 inch screen. Why on earth would you need a QHD 4K display on a screen that size? Are you seriously going to notice the difference? And in any case a higher resolution is just going to hit the battery life more. Does anybody moan about the display on the GS4 which is almost identical? From what I've seen, the GS4 display is gorgeous.
- The onboard RAM. People are moaning that it hasn't got 3 GB like the Note 3. I have a GS3 with a paltry 1 GB RAM, and that is what I call laggy. Please can somebody who has a GS4 tell me whether they experience any lag with the 2 GB RAM that they have on board? The GS5 will come with KitKat which will mean that it will need less RAM than previous Android versions. The GS4 and Note 3 were made for Jelly Bean. The Note 3 probably needs 3 GB to cope with the larger screen and all the S-Pen software on board. My guess is that the GS5 will perform better than the GS4 with the same amount of RAM.
- It's not metal. So what??!!! Most people put their smartphones in a case, so you can't see what it's made of. Metal cases are heavier, damage more easily, are more difficult and expensive to repair, and prevent you changing the battery. While style is important for some, the more important thing is what the phone can do.
From a software point of view there is a suggestion that we will have only 7.8 GB of usable space on board. Remember the phone shown last night was a demo for the launch, and we don't know what software was on board. Let's wait and see what the retail version actually gives us before making a judgement.
Other than that I can't see much to whine about. A fantastic camera, water and dust resistent, fingerprint technology, pulse monitor, etc etc. I certainly will be looking at the GS5 now that it seems that my GS3 will not be getting KitKat after all (which I had hoped would fix the lag issue).