Today, Samsung is making the Galaxy S5 available to customers in 125 countries worldwide. This year’s announcement as well as regional launch events weren’t that big nor glamorous compared to last year’s Galaxy S4 launch. Also, this year the price of Samsung’s flagship “S” device has rose up to RM 2,399 opposed to a mere RM 2,199 for previous generation Galaxy S devices. The pricing is a bit on the high side but this shouldn’t worry customers because other Spring 2014 flagship devices like the Xperia Z2 and HTC One (M8) are also price at RM 2,399. Today, i’m going to talk about my very first experience with the device, ok i’m lying this is not my first encounter with the device. I actually had a short play with the device early last week. Before i jump right into things, i’ll discuss about some sales stats which i managed to get out of the salesperson during my time there. Apparently there are only 10-20 units of the device being brought in every day and majority of the stock coming in are in Charcoal Black and don’t expect to instantly bring home a Galaxy S5 instantly this weekend because the stock in the shop is pretty low and the sales rep would most probably put you on pre-order status. If you see people walking out with new Galaxy S5’s then they are actually there to collect the device because they pre-ordered it last week. Not surprisingly, the shimmery white Galaxy S5 is selling faster compared to the charcoal black model and if you pre-order the shimmery white GS5 today, you would need to wait at least 2 weeks to get it. I really don’t know why people like the white version, the sales rep told me that the white version is actually quite prone to collecting dirt due to the perforated back design and over time it will shift its color from white to some other color. Other than the Galaxy S5, i was actually expecting to try out the new wearable devices like the Galaxy Gear Fit but the smartwatches were not in store and yeah, it’ll be arriving in stores next week.

“you’ll need to wait at least two weeks to get the shimmery white Galaxy S5”

Earlier today, i went to the Samsung shop in 1 Utama to try out the Galaxy S5. At the shop, i could obviously see that the people who came to experience the Galaxy S5 was more quiet than usual and practically nobody approached the salesperson on what is so new about the new flagship from Samsung. I spent close to an hour standing there playing around with the device and the crowd at the shop is not a big as last year’s Galaxy S4 launch. Last year i needed to wait a few minutes for my turn to try out the device but this year i could get to try it out instantly. Maybe it’s because, last year i was there during the weekends and this year it’s a Friday night. Anyways, i’ll justify that matter further in my full hands-on article coming up in the next few weeks. The first thing i did on the device is to look through the settings menu because Samsung’s settings menu are always filled with a ton load of things. I spent about 20 minutes looking at the settings looking for the finger scanner and after that i got fed up and so i asked the salesperson where the setting for the finger scanner is. And as expected, the Finger Scanner is actually disabled in retail mode and there is demo app like on the iPhone 5S where you could test out the feature. Anyways, during the process of searching the whole settings menu, i actually found some interesting tweaks which Samsung has included to increase your productivity level inside the settings menu. Each individual setting is actually categorized very nicely (finally!?) and there is actually an option to for you to change the menus in the settings into list view, grid view or sorted by category. Another thing which is new is the integration of S Finder in the settings menu. I tried it out and it can indexes virtually every letter inside the settings menu which makes life a lot easier and trust me there will be a day where you somehow can’t find the settings you want and then you would be all happy to know that S Finder is integrated there. 
After dealing with the whole settings menu chaos,  i continued my journey into the camera app and i have to say that the focus is really darn quick. I basically clicked the point i want to focus and “BOOM” it’s focused, it’s really that fast and this is the kind of thing where you would need to see it to truly believe it. However i did noticed that the camera could not focus on near objects which are not that obvious. I didn’t manage to try out the other plethora of features in the camera app but i did manage to try out the live-HDR which worked perfectly and also the selective focus which didn’t quite work out for me. After that, i did my usual thing where i scroll through the multiple homscreens and then i did some web browsing (the internet connection the phone was connected to really sucked so loading pages was quite slow) and i actually chose to use the stock Samsung browser opposed Chrome. Unlike other manufacturers, Samsung is still including their own homegrown browser alongside chrome with their flagship devices. The stock Samsung browser on the Galaxy S5 has been modified slightly compared to the one on the Note 3 and physically it looks a little like Safari on iOS7. I’ve always known that the stock Samsung browser works better compared to Chrome on Touchwiz based devices and this time its no exception. One cool thing which i found working on the Galaxy S5 is the google search widget which supports the “Ok Google” command directly from the homescreen but only works when you’re on the homescreen which houses that widget. While i was scrolling through the app drawer i also noticed that app drawer was not nicely categorized into folders like on the Galaxy Note 3, instead all the apps were scattered into separate pages and i found out that other than Dropbox, Google Drive is also preinstalled on the device. This move by Samsung could be because of the recent reports sstating that Google is pressuring android manufacturers to cut down on the heavy android skinning. Overall the experience in the app drawer and homescreen was quite good with the exception of a small stutter when i shift homescreens especially when i swipe towards the My Magazine reader. I believe that this slight stutter is most likely cause by the retail mode app running. Towards the end of my time with the device i notice that my hands weren’t sweaty and this is because the phone didn’t quite heat up. I also noticed that the back was unlike the Galaxy S4 or the Galaxy S3, it wasn’t feeling all slimy and full of fingerprints. From this initial look i can say that the back is a lot like the faux leather back on the Galaxy Note 3 but with the addition of the perforated design. Alright, that’s all for my very first experience with the Galaxy S5, stay tuned in the coming weeks for more follow up articles regarding the Galaxy S5. Also if you want to know what i initially thought about the Galaxy S5, do read my article about it at our international blog. If you would like to experience that Galaxy S5, do head over to any Samsung shop to experience it.

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