I was shopping this morning and to my surprise the Samsung Galaxy S5 was out on display heavily clamped down. Fortunately, when I asked they had another S5 to hold freely.

I was looking at the black finish, which is like a grey black dimpled back and metallic looking rims. Being honest the S5 doesn’t look at special or even stand up particularly. From first glance you wouldn’t even know what it was.
The HTC One M8 really puts the S5 to shame with its aluminium unibody design.

But holding the S5 was fantastic. Really felt lightweight, very comfy, secure and well balanced in the hand. The screen was vivid, bright and touchwiz was superb. The new flatter design really appealed to me. Only one issue third party app icons looked out of place. This is a problem Apple had initially with iOS 7. However, I cannot see developers making new app icons just for Samsung. The touchwiz folders looked better too, and I proffered the settings icons and menu system.

Speed. Despite being a show floor demo, there was no lag present. It wasn’t as fast as the HTC One M8 switching between apps but if you didn’t have the 2 phones to compare you would be none the wiser.

I couldn’t test the loudspeaker or headphone output but the sales assistant did say it was not as loud as the HTC One M8.

Camera. I took several shots inside the store. The store was brightly lit but it was still artificial light. The first camera samples were out of focus. The next few were in focus but nothing special. The M8 had no trouble focusing or capturing a decent photo. With some other shots the S5 was really accurate and you could really notice the fast auto focus time.

So what do I think after a short play? It’s not going to set the world alight for looks, but then again it does have water and dust resistance built in. It did feel more durable and better balanced in the hand and overall I quite liked it. It’s inoffensive but will appeal to many.