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.