Samsung is facing new criticism over the amount of available actual user space found in its 16GB Galaxy S5. The issue is the same one the company faced last year with the Galaxy S4.
Samsung has made it clear to the world that it does not see Android in the same way that Google and other licensees see the mobile operating system. The Korean company has taken an approach to its Android-based smartphones and tablets similar to the approach taken by Amazon and HTC. It offers users a simplified experience that takes advantage of the hardware it's running on and adds some cool new functions.
This year's Galaxy S5 is both water and dust-resistant, making for a tougher exterior while maintaining its thin and light build. It also has a high-end 16-megapixel camera.
The Galaxy S5 is more of an evolution from the Galaxy S4, it adds some nice refinements, features, and tweaked design. However, the Galaxy S5 also brings over a criticism the company faced last year with the 16GB Galaxy S4. The Galaxy S4 smartphone shipped with usable storage that was far below its advertised amount. Samsung first told consumers to use the microSD card slot with the Galaxy S4 to alleviate the problem, but after facing criticism, the company released a software update to address the issue and free up more storage space.
This year's 16GB Samsung Galaxy S5 has 8.65GB of user available storage, far below its advertised 16GB drive. The extra space is taken up by Samsung's TouchWiz skin and its own exclusive apps. The company has also preinstalled many of its own software applications, like S Health and S Translator, which apparently take up a bunch of space. The company has not announced if it plans on releasing an update to address user space like it did last year with the Galaxy S4 at this point. The company, however, has a jump on working on a fix, since the device isn't expected to hit carrier's shelves until sometime in April.
Apart from the poor usable stroage capacity size, Galaxy S5 is actually an impressive device. It features a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a pixel density of 432 pixels per inch (ppi). It's powered by a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 800, an Adreno 330 graphics processing unit (GPU), and 2GB of RAM. It will be offered in both 16GB and 32GB models, and it also includes a microSD expansion slot that will support up to 64GB microSD cards, which will come in handy for this storage issue.
The Galaxy S5 will ship with Android 4.4.2 KitKat and an updated version of Samsung Touchwiz UI on board. Its camera capabilities include a 16-megapixel rear camera that has the ability to record Ultra HD video @ 30fps, HDR rich tone, selective focus, and more. It also has a 2-megapixel front facing camera for video chat and selfies. The smartphone includes an update to S Health 3.0 and ships with a removable 2,800 mAh battery.
Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile have all publicly gone on record that they will offer the smartphone in April.
