Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini

Product Information

The smaller size will make a difference, especially if you get the mini right after the bigger Galaxy S5. But despite the hardware and software limitations, the GS5 Mini's rear camera generally takes good-looking shots — better than the HTC One Mini 2's 13-megapixel camera, at any rate. Most of the time you'll get pleasing shots without any of the aberrations associated with low-quality smartphone sensors: visible noise, mushy over-processed images, artefacting or washed-out color. On the whole, particularly in daylight, the Mini captures decent-looking photos with a plenty of fine detail. Look up close and you'll see evidence of software sharpening, but even that's not too obnoxious. And the infra-red blaster on the S5? Surely that's been elided here? No, it's there on the top edge, ready for you to use the phone as a handy and EPG-friendly TV remote. The battery is smaller than on the S5 but it's enough to keep the phone going for a fullish day without problem. You will need to charge it every night, or you'll panic in the morning. There's a trend, now that phones have tended to the hefty, that manufacturers follow their flagship blowers with smaller versions that will suit smaller hands. When they launch them the makers say, actually always say, that they have not cut any corners with their new, diddier device.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini is an Android smartphone developed by Samsung Electronics. It was announced in May 2014 and released on July 1, 2014. The S5 Mini is a mid-range model of its flagship Galaxy S5 smartphone and a successor to the Galaxy S4 Mini. It competes with the HTC One Mini 2 and the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact. It has a similar design and software features to its high-end counterpart, the Galaxy S5. [4] [5] Specifications [ edit ]

The S5 Mini only has a 4.5in screen and a 1,280×720 resolution, but its Super AMOLED display is just as lovely to look at as the S5’s. Our colour calibrator showed it was displaying an outstanding 100 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, so you can expect colours to look their very best when watching films and videos. This screen is bright, colourful and has the vividness that Super AMOLED offers. Samsung is king of Super AMOLED and matches software to hardware with shortcut icons, wallpapers and app choices that all make the most of the colour saturation the tech excels at. Even if this means the results are sometimes eye-searingly colourful.

We like the design of the Samsung Galaxy S5 mini and the fact that it hasn't moved away from the original. This is the first mini since the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact that does justice to its original. The Galaxy S5 mini and S5 look astonishingly alike and that has carried over to the feel of the device. Controls At first glance, the UI is essentially identical to what you'll see on a full-sized Galaxy S5. Same bright, colorful widgets, dark teal color schemes and labyrinthine settings menus. TouchWiz has grown to the point where if you can imagine it, there's probably a feature buried somewhere in that maze of colored circles that'll let you do it. The GS5 Mini model we're reviewing has 16GB of onboard storage, of which an ample 11.8GB is available to use. Samsung also provides a microSD slot, naturally, which works with cards up to 128GB. Above the display lies the earpiece, the ambient light sensor, the proximity sensor and the 2.1MP front-facing camera. Also to the left of the earpiece lies the LED notification light, which is normally invisible - it blinks only for notifications. Still, charging an extra battery is arguably even more of a faff than remembering to plug it in when you turn in. Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini: Verdict

No, is the short answer. As you’ll see from Katherine’s original review below, the S5 Mini was significantly less powerful than the phone it was based on. Nearly three generations of phone later, that gap is more insurmountable now than it ever was. Inside, the S5 Mini takes a more radical departure from the Qualcomm-powered Galaxy S5 we got in the UK. That handset used a2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 chipset, while the Mini uses one of Samsung’s own quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos 3470 processors instead. While the Exynos 3470 is perfectly fast enough to run Android 4.4.2 and Samsung’s customised TouchWiz interface, the phone’s web browsing performance was much slower than we were expecting. The first figure refers to dust resistance - six is the highest rating there is - and the second to water-resistance. Seven is good, and protects against immersion in water between 15cm and 1m for half an hour. Okay, so it's not a full HD screen on the Mini, but the 720p display is still impressive. Since itís a 4.5-inch screen the need for 1080p isn't as great as on bigger models - though the HTC One (M7) has a 4.7-inch 1080p screen and looks amazing.

The Galaxy S5 Mini comes with Android 4.4.2 KitKat and Samsung's TouchWiz software which includes almost all of the features of the S5.The device is claimed to be water resistant despite the exposed USB charging port, while the USB charging port of the Galaxy S5 requires to be covered by a flap to ensure water protection. But there is also a higher rating, eight, which means your phone will survive in water under pressure for long periods. The Sony Xperia Z2, for instance, reaches this waterproof level. If you're a photo addict, there are better cameraphones out there, large and small, but the S5 Mini is not bad. The S5 Mini may only have an 8-megapixel camera, but our photos were very detailed and had very natural colours