Samsung Galaxy S5 mini Review

Samsung is a big name in the world of Android smartphones, in fact, it has been the most dominant player on the Android smartphone market and right after the release of Galaxy S II, this giant has established itself as an inexorable boss that in no way is ready to share its share of success with others. Rather, all the other mobile companies had been left fighting over the leftovers so that they could survive in the Android world.

But, now since the market landscape in the early 2014, we witnessed the first sign that indicated this unbalanced status quo is coming to an end. This is mainly because some of the competitors are gaining momentum by offering consistently strong smartphones. So, we will have to wait to see whether this year really is the end for Samsung’s Android supremacy.

For the past 4 years, Samsung was successful enough in managing to sell more and more of its flagship devices and this year too, it is expecting to do the same. Although, it does has some very fierce competition now, but it is expected that Samsung follows its footprint in providing a do it all device with all the features you could imagine packed into a single device. The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini is this year’s entry. Though, it is smaller but not actually that much cheaper. It is a mini version of the Samsung Galaxy S5 that lets you get most of the Galaxy S5 experience in a more pocket friendly package.

The Galaxy S5 Mini essentially is a Galaxy S5 packed in a smaller body with 4.5 inch display that looks like the S5 and also retains most of the S5’s flagship features, however, it does make some compromises. One of the most prominent one is the absence of S5 impressive camera long with the full HD screen.

So, let’s see whether or not the company succeeded in providing the great value to your money or not as there are better value phone also available.

The retail box of the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini is no different than the other Mini phones from Samsung. Here is the list of accessories you will get with the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini.

• Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini
• Headphones
• MicroUSB Cable
• A/C Adapter
• Several Leaflets

The new flagship device from Samsung with its new glam look tries to keep the warmth and approach-ability of Samsung’s typical design language, and also adds a touch of class. This is the reason that you won’t spot any difference in its design at first glance. It has a design that closely resembles with the Samsung Galaxy S5.

The S5 Mini has the same design as the S5, though, it is not all bad because a 4.5 incher is much more manageable as compared to the S5 5.1 inch size. For instance, reaching to the top left of the screen does not require you to stretch your hand more. Furthermore, the S5 Mini does not has a flap to cover the miniUSB port which is a progress. On the other hand, the S5 Mini does retain the S5 IP67 rating which means that the S5 Mini is also waterproof as well as dustproof phone. Some other key features that resemble with the S5 are same fingerprint sensor and heart rate monitor and same color variations i.e. black, white, gold and blue.

Like the Samsung Galaxy S5, the S5 Mini design also looks better in blue and gold color variants and gives you a more comfortable feel. On the whole, the S5 Mini is an indistinguishable image of the S5 from afar ranging from the colors it is available in to the positioning of all the key buttons and ports, along with the same curvy corners to the plastic sliver trim around the edge. In addition, it still has that dimpled plastic back, which makes a nice change from the polycarbonate rears on previous Galaxy handsets.

The new S5 Mini measures about 9.1mm thick and weighs 120g that makes it slightly heavier than the S4 Mini, but the difference is nearly unnoticeable. The S5 Mini is a smaller, light weight and well-built phone that is more comfortable in handling with one hand. There is a plastic back that unclips to reveal a removable battery along with micro SIM card and microSD card slots. Around the back, you can find the speaker and the camera sensor along with LED flash.

Super AMOLED screens have been so controversial yet so well received, although Super AMOLED screen technology gets better in the S5 yet it remains just as flashy as before. Thankfully, the company is well aware of all the weaknesses that its display technology has, and is continuously trying to evolve and enhance the Super AMOLED panels. The display on the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini is one of the biggest differences you will find between the Galaxy S5 and S5 Mini.

The Galaxy S5 Mini comes with a 4.5” Super AMOLED panel of 1280 x 720 resolution that's good for around 326 ppi but that's barely remarkable bearing in mind that we all are used to full HD displays on our smartphones, including the 1080p 5.1-inch screen on the Galaxy S5. The 4.5” panel of the S5 Mini uses a diamond PenTile subpixel arrangement just like many other leading Samsung phones. Although, the screen looks perfectly fine for the most part but that irregular subpixel pattern means text appears less sharp than an equivalent 720p LCD.

Colors are as bright and vivid as you could expect from any modern Super AMOLED display, regardless of the fact that there is some artificial contrast boosting going on. Outdoor visibility is just fine. Furthermore, same like its bigger sibling, the S5 Mini activates a super-high brightness mode when using the phone in direct sunlight. This sacrifices some of the contrast as well as the image quality so that screen becomes more visible in sunlight. With the S5, this change is not much drastic but in the case of S5 Mini, this sunlight mode is totally insane that blows out colors making the already colorful TouchWiz UI pretty psychoactive. This is one odd quirk with the Mini’s screen.

Battery life of any phone is very subjective and varies according to the way one uses the phone. The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini sports a 2,100mAh battery that should supply enough power to the device during your daily tasks. The battery on the S5 Mini, in our testing, offers great battery life. It gives commendable 72 hour score when the phone is used for watching video for an hour and web browsing and calling for an hour daily.

The stand-by time is also good enough which is around 250 hours. A 30-minute charge adds 28% of battery power, so an hour should be enough to get you through most of the day if you're caught short.

The S5 Mini offers two versions i.e. a non LTE dual SIM and two LTE, both of which support quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and quad-band HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100. There's NFC on board the LTE Galaxy S5 Mini but none on the dual-SIM one.

Other connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, low-energy Bluetooth 4.0, GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS, and an infrared port. Along with that, microSD card slot is also there for expanding the storage up to 64 GB. Furthermore, same like the Galaxy S5, there is microUSB port 2.0 that supports on the go. With the help of the fingerprint scanner, you can communicate with your finger via a swipe down and has been certified to work with PayPal. Wireless TV-Out is only available via the Miracast protocol.

Like the Galaxy S5, two web browsers co-exist in the Galaxy S5 Mini as well. One is the stock Android browser customized by Samsung and the other is Google Chrome. Air View is only supported in the stock browser. Interfaces of both the browsers are quite similar. Both the browsers can sync bookmarks and open tabs across devices. Plus, multiple tabs can be handled easily with incognito mode, however, Chrome allows you to switch between tabs by horizontal swipes from the side that is very comfy.

Air View works in the browser and is very useful for the websites that are not optimized for mobile devices. It lets you simply hover your finger over a web element, and it will act like mouse hover.

With the Galaxy S5, the company introduced a totally new and vastly improved version of the TouchWiz user interface that took the S5 to the modern, flat UI era. The new Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini is also powered by the latest available Android 4.4.2 KitKat customized by the most recent embodiment of TouchWiz for smartphones. With the S5 Mini, the TouchWiz UI has gone through some serious visual simplification. Moreover, Samsung has added multiple features that increase productivity and enhance security.

No more support for widgets on the lockscreen but you do have the security features, that is, you can now fingerprint-secure your S5 Mini. The phone can recognize up to three fingerprints. In addition to fingerprint security, there is password protection as well just in case if fingerprint fail for some reason, the phone asks for a password.

Majority of the design elements in the S5 such as icons and built-in widgets are now appear flat and more simplistic looking with less gradient effects and more solid colors. The notification area is also identical to notification area found in the Galaxy S5. It looks more stylish with flat design and rounded corner icons. Quick toggles is also present for quick customization.

In addition to the regular homescreen that comes with shortcuts, widgets and folders, there is My Magazine app that displays both news articles and social networking updates. My Magazine is powered by Flipboard to provide you a clean interface for reading and sharing articles and post with your friends. My Magazine can be disabled completely.

The Recommended Apps feature presents you a set of apps when you connect an accessory. For example when you connect your earphones, it shows Music player, Youtube etc. as recommended apps. From the Setting Menu, you can choose between a grid view and a list view. Furthermore, many other elements of the user interface like as the homescreens, app drawers, etc. remain the same and also retains the same functionality as found in the Galaxy S5. However, there's no Multi Window on board since this is a smaller-screened Galaxy.

With Ultra Power Saving Mode, you can make those last few percent battery charge last. Ultra Power Saving Mode when enabled cuts off all advanced functions and even changes the homescreen to a simple one with big shortcuts saving the battery.

Samsung is taking things into the right direction with its latest version of TouchWiz and we are definitely happy to see this. Although, it is not as polished and perfect as we’d expected it but yet in terms of GUI, it has mostly become very stylish as well as uniform.

Processing is one of the key areas where the Galaxy S5 Mini differs from the S5. The beating heart at the core of the S5 Mini is an Exynos 3 Quad 3470 chipset, a quad-core 1.4GHz processor with Cortex-A7 cores, and 1.5GB RAM. This chipset does not sound bad on the paper, but what is disappointing here is that this isn’t truly any more powerful as compared to the last year’s Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, which has a Snapdragon 400. While it may be the dual-core version of the 400, its Krait cores are more powerful than the S5 Mini’s ones.

Gaming is the section where this chipset does show up the difference a bit. On the whole, this is not only about the overall performance rather also about the graphical quality. Mid-range processors of the S5 Mini tend to miss out on a few visual effects in the top games when you compared it with its bigger sibling.

The S5 Mini performs pretty well and is quite responsive in the real world. Although, it cannot be compared with the Galaxy S5 flagship as there are some hints of lags here and there but the overall performance is pretty much satisfactory.

This is another department where the S5 Mini differs with its big brother. The Galaxy S5 Mini sports an 8-megapixel rear camera and 2.1-megapixel front-facer, and both are relatively competent mid-range shooters. Since there is huge difference between these two phones, so do not expect quite as good camera performance as you see with the Galaxy S5. The camera of the S5 Mini is not on the same level as its big brother not even on the paper.

The best thing about S5 Mini camera is its speed. It is fast enough that it can take photos with virtually no pauses between them with the only exception is using HDR mode that causes a slight pause. Other than that the camera acts and looks the same as that of S5’s camera. The interface is pretty simple and easy to use. It offers a column of shortcuts on the left. For easy access, all settings are collected into a grid of shortcuts.

Same like with other higher end Samsung smartphones, the Galaxy S5 Mini also offers a little goldmine of extra modes that give you several options. Some of them you may not even use. These include a virtual tour of home, removing objects from a scene, touching up your photos and bursting shoot. With virtual tour shot, you can move forward, turn left or right, move some more. It is similar to panoramas. Several other modes can also be downloaded.

Now, move on to quality of images being captured. The overall quality of the images is quite good with reliable metering and decent sharpness. The S5 Mini camera produces generally pretty good image quality, though, it should not be compared with the Galaxy S5. Images have plenty of details with good saturated colors and good white balance along with appropriate exposure. The camera is capable enough to capture plenty of details even in the smaller and more refined areas. HDR mode photos are pretty impressive as the company claims that it has one of the best HDR modes on the market at the moment. On the whole, it is fairly difficult to frown at the images that came out of the Galaxy S5 Mini.

The camera can also record smooth and detailed videos of 1080p with the bitrate of 17Mbps with a constant 30 frames per second ensuring fluid playback. Although, it doesn’t shoot video at 4K. Video quality is generally decent looking with no real complaints. There is plenty of sharp details with good exposure, however, audio is somewhat toned down. Dynamic range is prominently narrower as compared to the Galaxy S5, but this should not be much of a problem.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini gives you the best possible multimedia experience you can get in a 4.5” form factor. Just because it is not much of a media tycoon as compared to its big sibling, does not mean that it cannot handle a whole host of media applications. Its Super AMOLED screen technology offers a welcome boost to colors when it comes to video playback and it suffices for a movie on a long trip. Furthermore, the inclusion of a microSD card suggests that you can load your favorite songs, movies, games and apps.

Let’s start with the TouchWiz gallery app. You can view your photos by time or by album and can also filter them by several categories. Using the Gallery app is an easy affair. Moreover, the app handles Facebook, Picasa and Dropbox out of the box. For easy sharing, there are several shortcuts to use. There is a Quick Connect button in the notification area that quickly scan for all the available ways to share your photos with nearby devices.

There are some built-in media editing features that can be very handy for creative individuals and professionals. With such features, they can easily enhance and retouch their photos right in the Gallery itself. The new Studio option allows you to do anything from editing and retouching your photos to creating and trimming videos along with some post processing of your photos.

Just as most of the other apps in the device, the music player app in the S5 Mini is quite fresh and inviting. It is fully packed with lots of features and provide support for a wide variety of file formats. You can filter musical content in a variety of ways based on your convenience. On top of that, you can also use it to access your music on other Samsung devices via your Samsung account.

There is a huge plethora of available options in the music player which are considered as the mandatory set of sound enhancing tools. These include SoundAlive, audio effects, Adapt Sound, and Smart Volume. SoundAlive equalizer presets are cleverly organized into a square similar to the Music Square, and maintain a balance between Treble and Bass, Vocals and Instrumental. Furthermore, Smart Volume works to keep the sound level consistent across tracks, whereas Adapt Sound tests the performance of your headphones and tunes the equalizer based on that.

One of the impressive feats in the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini is that it comes with a dedicated video player app, and unlike many other smartphones, you do not have to sift through your gallery trying to locate videos among your photos. The dedicated video player app in the S5 Mini makes it easier for you to get all your movies and videos at one place. It can handle files from the local storage and DLNA-compatible devices. We can happily say that the device is a true multimedia powerhouse that lets us play almost every type of media file.

Its Super AMOLED display is a great fun when it comes to video streaming and playing games. Moreover, pleasing visuals and vivid colors make content to appear more fancy and eye pleasing.

With this new flagship device, the company remains true to its archetypal design language, on the other hand, the company has further improved the exterior in order to make it look more eye-catchy and sophisticated, while maintaining the comfort that comes with a finely built design. Without a doubt, no competitor can match the sophistication of Samsung’s split screen technology, with all its content transfers etc., its video sharing, and its long tech specifications list.

In a nutshell, the S5 Mini is yet another a competent mid-range smartphone from Samsung that integrates most of the hallmark features of its current flagship. But it does not come without its faults. It does has some compromises. But, on the other hand, it is a pretty good miniature take on the Galaxy S5 that looks and feels similar, and offers most of the features of its more expensive brother.

You will love the S5 Mini if you like the Galaxy S5, but if you weren't a fan of the full-sized Galaxy S5, then you will not find anything here to influence you. The overall user experience is essentially the same on both the phone except on the S5 Mini, it is on a smaller form factor with slightly less power available.