The Galaxy S5 is a blockbuster: big, loud, powerful, and dumb. It does all the necessary things too well to be considered a failure. It runs fast, takes good photos, lasts a long time, and isn’t a pain to hold. The foundations it’s built upon are exceptional.

Tremendous performance, Lively, colorful display, Can produce great photos

TouchWiz is bloated and sloppy, Fingerprint reader and heart rate monitor are useless, Feels cheaper than other flagships

It’s that time of year again and Samsung’s latest flagship device, theBefore we go any further, let’sThe Galaxy S5 has an IP67 rating from the International Electrotechnoical Commission. The The first two letters (IP) stands for Ingress Protection.

Amazing camera with tons of settings to toy with, Water resistant (proof would have been nice, but resistant is a start), Fingerprint scanner and Heart Rate Monitor are nice features, Brilliant display, Overall form factor is much improved from previous Galaxy S models, Device still feels just a...

Nutshell: A lot of cool tricks and neat looks produce a shiny follow-up to the S4 which ultimately impresses everyone else save for the owner. It will sell in the millions because it’s the best-looking, most advertised Android phone — but the clunky interface and average experience I had with it...

Performance Analysis: Samsung's new Galaxy S5 rips through benchmarks, besting many of the top smartphones on the market today. It competes with the HTC One M8 and the two are on par performance-wise since they're based on the same Snapdragon 801 SoC processor complex.

Best Smartphone Display Yet, Lightning-Fast General Performance, Fantastic Camera Performance, 802.11ac And USB 3, Solid Battery Life, Interesting, Useful Features, IP67 Dust And Water Resistance

Slightly lower Overall Build Quality Vs. Top Competitors

Overall I grew to like the Galaxy S5, yes the overall quality isn’t as good as some of the other flagships flying around at the moment. Yes the launcher and the home button do create quite a bit of lag opening up folders and returning to the home and yes it doesn’t take the best shots in low light.

Great crisp vibrant colourful screen., In broad daylight the camera is really good., Memory card slot and removable battery make for a flexible device., Water and dust resistance IP67

The built in software is getting a bit much., Camera struggles in certain situations., The launcher is a bit laggy to launch folders and return home., Overall feel isn’t as good as its flagship competitors., Rear speaker is little odd sounding at times.

Space...the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Notebookcheck as she continues her mission to explore the (Samsung) Galaxy S5. The crew is hoping for a result that is out of this world - and although the scores fall slightly short of expectations, the S5 nonetheless earns the...

Outstanding screen, Long-lasting battery, Very good and well explained software, Camera quality very good, Recording and playback quality of UHD videos, Resistant to water and dust, Supports many current transmission standards, USB 3.0 port, High quality GPS, High voice quality, Sturdy case, Battery...

Case is torsionally not completely rigid..., ... and complains with slight creaking when forces are applied, Pop-up warnings to close the covers properly get annoyoing, Compared to the predecessor, only some details have been improved, Not as easy to maintain, Finger print sensor not always easy to...

Summary: Samsung has done a good job with the Galaxy S5. Software bloat has been pared down and a few useful new features added, while the technical specifications are superb and battery life is good.

Good battery life, Software bloat has been reduced, Nice usability features

Plastic chassis, Fingerprint scanner is tricky to use, Average-quality sound from speaker

Editor’s Note: Review adapted from T3 Malaysia This time round, Samsung has gone for a carefully considered upgrade in the GALAXY S5 rather than a complete reboot, with Samsung running through a greatest hits of 2014’s headline phone updates before adding a few esoteric extras for good measure.

Despite being one of the most technologically advanced phones on the market, the Galaxy S5 does not have wireless charging...

By now we expect a flagship phone from manufacturers on on an annual basis of not sooner. One of the companies we anticipate highly from is Samsung. With their rise in popularity with consumers and the tech world, we’re always waiting to see what Samsung will come up with next.