Budget Above 25K Should I get the S5?

ithehappy

Adept
Hey guys, I was an S4 user for pretty long (8+ months) before getting frustrated and selling it. I hated it cause with every update something broke and the phone itself was very fragile so that I had to put a protective case to it. Then I searched further and saw how disgusting and slow TouchWiz is. So I bought a hTC M7. However I received a damaged product but the major things of the phone were okay and I came to know the disadvantages of a metal phone. It took at least 3-4X more time to fix on GPS and same time to regain back network signals from areas of low / no network. Also the phone was really slippery, so I had to be careful each and every time I held it. Sense was great, but nothing extraordinary, far better and lighter than TW though.
Now I am all confused as to what to get! Sometimes I think that I need a phone with a compact size (I hate big phones), so I was thinking about the Moto X or Xperia Z1 Compact, then heard that neither of them are really that great and missing something from a high end flagship, so I now I am back to either Z2 or S5. But that Z2 is really huge! And I hate on screen buttons! Do you guys think I should get the S5? Has anyone moved to S5 from S4? Is TW little better now? I am only considering the S5 because it has a much better build quality now, if it were like S4 I would even think about it for a second.

There are no budget limitations, but honestly I don't feel that paying 45+k for Z2 is worth it, where I can get the S5 for around 38k, however doubtful that's worth it either. And if I get the S5 I am talking about the Snapdragon variant here, not Exynos.

Thanks in advance.
 
Not possible. There is literally NO support for G900H version, the only kernel available for it is the Aqua kernel. Don't know what governors that kernel has, not interested when there are kernels available from better devs. The people of India who bought an S5 didn't even root it, at least most of them, those who did just flashed the CF auto root and that's it.

I don't disrespect the simplistic users, but I don't see the point of using an Android as it is. I mean why I am bothering to go for an Android then? WP is there, that fruit company is there!
After two goes with exynos you want a change.

Absolutely not. I tried SwiftKey for one month, didn't like it at all. I don't depend on predictions, at all. Swype is THE thing why I am still with Android, along with very few other things. That is the only on screen keyboard where I can type as fast as my hardware keyboard, sometimes, even faster. And it's just a pleasure to Swype on on a 4.5-4.8" display rather than 5.1". It will the phone's physical size that'll matter most thought, rather than screen size.
Swype = one hand
swift key = two hand

You like Swype, you need a phone that allows one hand use. Swype limits the size of the phone you can get.

Swype users cannot use phablets or anything that is too wide.

Really? Why? I thought it'd be an efficient way of getting the notifications, as I tend to miss almost all calls when I am outside, at least that was the case with S4. The only reason I was thinking about getting the Smart Band was about the vibration notifications it provides for texts and calls, nothing else. I don't care about other features of Sony's lifelog app.
It is but its bulky for just that. You could wear the bigger one around your ankle. But there are alternatives that do the same which even come with a little oled display. This lack of display is what puts people off with the sony smart band.

If a phone is thicker then when it's in your pocket it will stay in touch with your skin, and that means you will feel the vibration. With slim phones, the phone sometimes stay at the front side of your pocket, so when it's not touching your skin you won't feel the vibration. With the S4, I never felt it vibrating, never. Until I realized that if I press the phone firmly with my hand when it's in my pocket then I could feel the vibration. So from then I used to put my handkerchief in the same pocket to fill up the gap. That didn't do wonders but well at least I felt the vibration, sometimes. However when I put on the UAG case on the S4, well the vibration was almost dead, as it was totally absorbed by that case.
Got it thx. This is the first proper reason i got for wanting a smartband.

Well my option would be asking eBay to agree for a refund, if the item doesn't come as described.
ok, i take it you will be going for the F version then.

Craziness :p No seriously that's the reason. Nothing in this world tempts me, nothing (excluding wrist watches), but once in a while I feel that I need to waste some money, and that's what happening here.
Then the same will happen next year.

All the best.
 
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@ithehappy :
Congrats on the buy!
So you finally bought an X! Do let us know your feedback. While I don't have an intention to buy the S5, I was closely following this thread. I was tossing between X, S4, N5 & G2, then it has come down to choosing between X & G2.
 
@blr_p : Well to be honest, I just bought the X cause I believe in the thing that it is a device which I loved from first sight, if I got the S5 or any phone I just would not be able to forget it. So bought it. Also, TouchWiz has NOT changed, so that was a no go.

@Jambumali : Thanks mate.

This is my very brief statement on the X and the experience coming from an S4 i9500.

The phone is compact, near perfect size for a mobile phone, my thumb can reach the top left corner and bottom right corner, that's great. Good ergonomics. However there was a big confusion, I bought the White one, and just by looking at the photos I thought that rear panel had some kind of grip as there are dotted texture on it, but there is no grip, at all. The back is very slippery, the dotted textured is coded inside somehow. So I believe I should have gone for the Black or the Blue, I wanted one with that soft touch feel! Whatever!

Other than the size, I am loving it's performance. I won't play GTA V or Watch Dogs on it, so I don't really know what's the hardware, I think it's a Dual Core CPU, don't care. The optimization is at it's best. It's been 48 hours since I have received, played with it extensively, Gravity Box and Xposed along with Faux kernel is already been tweaked a lot, I mean I tried to make it bad :D but this thing does not slow down in any case. Coming from an S4, this thing just flies. Honestly it will feel like it has some Octa core CPU in it! Near Stock Android experience is clean, smooth (without any tweaks, and if you use Performance governor as I am using right now it is as smooth as iOS, yeah you heard that right. Even with default governor it's pretty near to the fluidity of iOS) and awesome. Samsung definitely deserves a reward to crap up TouchWiz that bad, God knows how!

It has fantastic call quality, the best in a long while, and that slight curve at the Motorola logo at the back makes calling a pleasurable experience as you can put your finger there. GPS locks just fine, in comparison with S4 it gets 1 or 2 less satellites outside, which is okay, accuracy is also slightly lower than S4, but almost on par.

Now the bad parts. First, and it's common, the camera. Honestly I always laugh at those persons who buy a mobile phone for camera, but still it's also true that you will carry your phone everywhere but you won't carry your camera. So for those who buy a device for mainly camera should wanna avoid this. I mean it's not terrible, but it's just not there. The problem is not with details, there are there, not at a good amount thought, but it's passable, the problem is with the inconsistency of it. You take a photo of red rose three times, and all three photos will come out differently! One might be underexposed, one highly overexposed and the other out of focus. The camera software also can't be any more worst to be honest. There is literally no option there. Minimalism is good, but not for camera interface, so that's a bad job by Google / Moto. I am using FV-5 now, it doesn't give you better photos, but the experience is better, as you can at least manually tweak the bloody exposure and WB, those are very basic stuffs!
But again, it will matter how you are using your photos. All my photos taken from my cell usually goes to Twitter or Facebook (for those ultra rare moments when I use those social crap) Instagram or Tapatalk, so for that purpose it's way more than enough. When the light is enough and if you can keep a steady hand with HDR then the photos should be enough for a 4x6" photo too, but when the light goes out, I mean at dark it's really bad. Way too many noise, way much loss of details! But again, if you take three or four shots then suddenly one shot will appear great, you will think it is coming from a different camera. So there it is, inconsistency is the main gripe about Moto X's camera. Other than that the camera is just fine.

Display, well coming from an S4 any display will look dull. But this one does not. It's a Samsung made OLED panel anyway, still. Unless you are highly obsessive about display quality and sharpness you are not gonna notice any bloody thing, other than the fact that this is a 0.4" shorter panel. The colours are punchy, the screen is slightly more over-saturated than Adapt display of S4, which might be good for somebody, but not for me. With S4 I always used the Cinema mode, so with the X everything looks a lot more over-saturated, if Moto could provide those Presets like Samsung I won't have any complaint, but they didn't. And as it's 720p the battery life is indeed better. Anything more than 1080p is an utter joke IMHO, just ridiculous, for 5-6" sized panels, a great selling point of G3 !

Storage space : Well out of the box I saw that 10.88 GB was available from my 16 GB model, which is pretty low IMHO. But well you can't do anything about that. You can always buy the 32 GB version if needed. Need to get one of those Dual OTG thing I guess. Someone please answer to my query about that in Mobile section.

By the way, the model which Flipkart sells is the Moto X XT1052 model, in case anyone wanna know. Which is an un-lockable bootloader model, so that's a huge plus. The bootloader unlocking process was smooth as butter.

And I knew I would hate this, but I think I am hating it more than I thought I would. SOFTKEYS. How on earth could some people like this is simply beyond. I can't think of a better idea to waste the screen real estate like this. Stupid. Anyway thanks to GMD Softkey app.

The speaker of this phone is beautiful by the way. I mean seriously they are as good as the M7 I used. I don't know, but this does sound like Stereo to me, without that Beats crap, even when it's actually Mono. But again, the speaker placement is not ideal. It should always be on the sides, like N95 or Nokia 1200 :D

The Active Display. Nothing to say about that. One of the best way to notify you IMO, it's almost impossible to back to that blinking LED now. However I like the stripe type notification of some Sonys. About the Touchless Voice Control, haven't used it yet, don't think I would. Camera twist feature, nice.

So in short, after using this for just 48 hours I can definitely say I can never go back to TouchWiz now, it's just impossible. It's like getting a Honda City from my A4, sorry not possible. So for me coming from an S4 i9500 to Moto X was an update in every category other than Camera, and a tiny bit of Display resolution and maybe slight quality too, but I can any day choose a far better optimized phone than a phone which has a horrible and bogus Android skin making it slow and stutter like hell. As I said, this is not buying a gaming PC, specifications do not matter. Unless you are a super heavy gamer who plays games on mobile phones, or have the sharpest eye to notice difference beyond 330 PPI, or thinks that camera is everything in a phone, the Moto X is for you. This might be the only Android out there which just works (along with Nexus 5, but with it's cheapness), for those straight forward people who don't know about root, customisation etc.

PS : Just for an additional info, Sony's UI is good. I liked it. It's not heavy, some stock like feeling is there. And I saw that on my friend's cheap Xperia L or something.
 
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Coming from an S4, this thing just flies. Honestly it will feel like it has some Octa core CPU in it! Near Stock Android experience is clean, smooth (without any tweaks, and if you use Performance governor as I am using right now it is as smooth as iOS, yeah you heard that right. Even with default governor it's pretty near to the fluidity of iOS) and awesome. Samsung definitely deserves a reward to crap up TouchWiz that bad, God knows how!

This is what I've been saying forever, both online and to my friends who think Android is laggy after using a Touchwiz device :) Congratulations on your purchase. One thing though, I hope you're not using Performance governor for anything other than testing purposes. As far as I know, it makes your CPU run at maximum clock speed a 100% of the time. Needless to say, it'll drain your battery very quickly.
 
Do you guys think I should get the S5? Has anyone moved to S5 from S4? Is TW little better now? I am only considering the S5 because it has a much better build quality now, if it were like S4 I would even think about it for a second.

There are no budget limitations, but honestly I don't feel that paying 45+k for Z2 is worth it, where I can get the S5 for around 38k, however doubtful that's worth it either. And if I get the S5 I am talking about the Snapdragon variant here, not Exynos.
I know you are happily married with your x now.

But just see the latest development. The geniuses at samsung india have decided they will launch a 4g capable snapdragon variant of the s5. Its a normal full hd screen with 16GB storage and they want a ridiculous 53k for it (!)

people that bought the s5 exynos at launch, shelled out close to 50k only to see the price drop to 38k a month or so later. Now samsung launches this device just over three months later.

Why the hell didn't they just launch this one to begin with !!

you break your head to pick the device you want and then they show you their hand. Not fair.
 
Well I upgraded to a HTC One E8 just one week back and I am loving it. Feels a lot premium while coming from Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S.Sense is super smooth compared to that POS of Touchwiz.Now if only I had an AMOLED on this.:(
 
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