I had to go ahead and return the GS5. I found that the number of compromises were mounting, and I was not going to be happy with it. I think LG has spoiled me at this point lol.
Points of contention:
-Battery Life: While decent, and better than the GS4, it was not to the level I'd find acceptable. It does great with the screen off, but drains a bit too quickly while actively using it.
-Lag: The GS5 lags. There is no other way to put it. A perfect way to see it is to swipe left on the home screen, and watch how slowly it transitions. It also seems prone to lag hiccups much more frequently than a phone with that sort of horsepower should.
-Speaker Quality: In short, the speaker on the GS5 is TRASH. It gets great volume, however it gets quite distorted, and it's worse when you're holding it.
-Charging Port Cover: The charging port cover is a big time annoyance. Every time you want to plug your phone in, you have to contend with that. You need nails to get to it, and as a man (without long nails), it can be a bit difficult pulling the cover off.
-Notification Panel: You have very limited control over your notification panel. S Finder and Quick Connect are permanently taking up a row of space in the panel, whether you like it or not. You are limited in your control over the quick toggles, and which of them show or don't show. This means I'm stuck with a bunch of toggles showing, that I don't even want to be there.
-Remote Control Software: Samsung did a poor job of implementing the remote control software, as far as making it convenient. In LG's software, you can access your remote quickly by swiping down the notification panel and tapping the remote control toggle. With the GS5, you don't have that same level of convenience. Instead you have to actually open the app to use it, or have the remote controls sitting on your lock screen. I do not want my remote control sitting on my lock screen each time I turn my phone on.
-Trimming a screenshot: With LG's software, if I want to trim a screenshot, I simply swipe down the notification panel and tap quick memo. From there, I can just select the part of the screen I want to capture. I can't do that with the GS5. Instead, I have to take a screenshot, open it in a different app, and then crop it. It just lacks the same efficiency and convenience of LG's implementation.
-Magazine Feature: The implementation of this feature was just plain horrible. It's slow, laggy, and it's nothing more than just Flipboard. Fortunately, you can disable it.
Summary:
All in all, I think the GS5 is a pretty good phone, and most people would be happy with it. For me however, it was too much of a compromise, to continue forward with it. I feel like LG has done a better job with their software than Samsung has. Most of the issues I had with the GS5 were small things, but it was one small thing after another. In the end, I found myself looking at a bunch of small things that I did not like about it, and those things add up. The one big thing that irritated me the most about it, was the lag. The amount of consistent lag the GS5 demonstrated was unacceptable, and shows that Samsung really needs to pay more attention to the details. They need to spend less time coming up with useless features (like a heart monitor), and more time fine tuning and polishing their software.
Points of contention:
-Battery Life: While decent, and better than the GS4, it was not to the level I'd find acceptable. It does great with the screen off, but drains a bit too quickly while actively using it.
-Lag: The GS5 lags. There is no other way to put it. A perfect way to see it is to swipe left on the home screen, and watch how slowly it transitions. It also seems prone to lag hiccups much more frequently than a phone with that sort of horsepower should.
-Speaker Quality: In short, the speaker on the GS5 is TRASH. It gets great volume, however it gets quite distorted, and it's worse when you're holding it.
-Charging Port Cover: The charging port cover is a big time annoyance. Every time you want to plug your phone in, you have to contend with that. You need nails to get to it, and as a man (without long nails), it can be a bit difficult pulling the cover off.
-Notification Panel: You have very limited control over your notification panel. S Finder and Quick Connect are permanently taking up a row of space in the panel, whether you like it or not. You are limited in your control over the quick toggles, and which of them show or don't show. This means I'm stuck with a bunch of toggles showing, that I don't even want to be there.
-Remote Control Software: Samsung did a poor job of implementing the remote control software, as far as making it convenient. In LG's software, you can access your remote quickly by swiping down the notification panel and tapping the remote control toggle. With the GS5, you don't have that same level of convenience. Instead you have to actually open the app to use it, or have the remote controls sitting on your lock screen. I do not want my remote control sitting on my lock screen each time I turn my phone on.
-Trimming a screenshot: With LG's software, if I want to trim a screenshot, I simply swipe down the notification panel and tap quick memo. From there, I can just select the part of the screen I want to capture. I can't do that with the GS5. Instead, I have to take a screenshot, open it in a different app, and then crop it. It just lacks the same efficiency and convenience of LG's implementation.
-Magazine Feature: The implementation of this feature was just plain horrible. It's slow, laggy, and it's nothing more than just Flipboard. Fortunately, you can disable it.
Summary:
All in all, I think the GS5 is a pretty good phone, and most people would be happy with it. For me however, it was too much of a compromise, to continue forward with it. I feel like LG has done a better job with their software than Samsung has. Most of the issues I had with the GS5 were small things, but it was one small thing after another. In the end, I found myself looking at a bunch of small things that I did not like about it, and those things add up. The one big thing that irritated me the most about it, was the lag. The amount of consistent lag the GS5 demonstrated was unacceptable, and shows that Samsung really needs to pay more attention to the details. They need to spend less time coming up with useless features (like a heart monitor), and more time fine tuning and polishing their software.
It's basically a poor man's Blinkfeed. Blinkfeed is ten times better than Samsung's "Magazine". Maybe if they spent more time fine tuning things, instead of worrying about ridiculous "features" like a heart rate monitor, they could have done a better job.
