Health tracking applications and enhanced camera capabilities top the new features found in Samsung Electronics Co.’s newest Galaxy S5 smart phone.
Unveiled today by the South Korean electronics conglomerate, the S5 comes with a 5.1” Super Amoled touchscreen that changes brightness levels in order to adapt to external lighting conditions. When the phone is low on battery, the screen switches to monochrome mode to double the remaining battery life.
The smart phone has a 16 megapixel (three megapixels more than the one on its predecessor, the S4). Samsung said the new camera can auto focus in 0.3 seconds and has the ability to blur either foreground or background. The S5 also has a 2 megapixel front facing camera that can record 4K video at 30 frames per second
Positioned as a lifestyle device, the S5 has a fingerprint sensor that can be used in lieu of a password to unlock the phone and to make mobile Payments via PayPal. The feature can also be used to measure the user’s heart rate.
The phone also has a pedometer, sleep tracker, glucose tracker, activity tracker and more.
The S5 runs on Android 4.4.2.
It is 5.6” x 2.8” x 0.31” and weighs 5.1 ounces. The body is plastic but it is also water-resistant.
Inside, the S5 has a 2.5 GHz, quad-core Qualcomm processor. It has 802.11ac with MIMO for fast Wi-Fi performance, and LTE/Wi-Fi aggregation.
The phone has 2GB of RAM and comes in 16 and 32GB storage models. It has a MicroSD slot for up to additional 125GB of space
The S5 will go on sale in Canada on April 11 and will be available through Bell Mobility, Eastlink, Fido, Koodo, MTS, Rogers, SaskTel, Telus, Videotron, Virgin Mobile and Wind Mobile.