Smartphone Rumble: Amazon Fire vs. Apple iPhone 5s vs. Samsung Galaxy S5

The smartphone market is full of handsets offered by various manufacturers. Now Amazon is also testing the waters of the smartphone industry with the launch of its first smartphone, Amazon Fire.

With the latest Amazon smartphone the company will have hope to give stiff competition to other smartphones such as the iPhone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S5. Let's see how the latest Amazon Fire stacks up against the iPhone 5s and the Galaxy S5.

Many of the smartphone enthusiasts are looking to buy a smartphone with a big screen. The latest Amazon Fire sports a 4.7-inch IPS LCD screen, which packs in a screen resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The iPhone 5s includes a 4-inch IPS LCD screen with a display resolution of 640 x 1136 pixels. Stealing the show in this category is the Galaxy S5, which has the biggest screen size at 5.1-inch and packs in 1080 x 1920 pixels.

A powerful Snapdragon 800 processor clocked at 2.2GHz powers the Amazon Fire. An Apple custom built A7 processor powers the iPhone 5s and a powerful Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.5GHz fuels the Galaxy S5.

The Amazon Fire includes a 2,400 mAh battery that offers 22 hours of talk time and around 10 days standby time. The Galaxy S5 has a 2,800 mAh battery that provides up to 21 hours of talk time and 20 days of standby time. The battery capacity of the iPhone 5s is not known but Apple claims that iPhone 5s offers usage time of up to 10 hours, which is slightly less than the Amazon Fire, and 10 days of standby time. Similar to the iPhone 5s, the Amazon Fire also does not offer a user replaceable battery. However, the Galaxy S5 battery can be replaced by its users.

The Amazon Fire is equipped with a 13-megapixel full HD video recording rear-facing camera and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing shooter to satiate all your selfie needs. The Galaxy S5 sports a 16-megapixel 4K HD video recording rear-facing and a 2.1 megapixel front camera. When compared to the Amazon Fire and the Galaxy S5, the iPhone 5s has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.2-pixel front-facing camera.

Taking pictures listening and watching to media files can take up a lot of storage. With growing media storage needs, memory capacity has become an important criteria for customers when choosing a handset.

The new Amazon Fire will be available in 32GB and 64GB on-board storage options. The iPhone 5s is available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB storage options and the Galaxy S5 with 16GB and 32GB storage capacities. However, an important aspect is the use of an external memory. Unfortunately, like the iPhone 5s, the Amazon Fire does not give the option to expand the memory. However, Galaxy S5 users have the option to expand the memory to up to 128GB using a microSD card.

While the iPhone 5s and the Galaxy S5 is available via all top four carriers in the U.S., the Amazon Fire is exclusive to AT&T. Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile customers will not be able to buy the Amazon Fire from their carriers until the company decides to launch the handset for other mobile network operators as well.

Many smartphones are available in an array of colors to entice more and more handset enthusiasts. Customers buy a smartphone to best suit their individual personality. Samsung offers four colors for the Galaxy S5: black, white, blue and copper. Apple, which previously provided just black and white options for its iPhones, has also introduced a new gold color for the iPhone 5s. However, Amazon Fire customers will have to stay content with one color option - black.

The Amazon Fire is slightly smaller than the Galaxy S5 but weighs 5.64 (160 grams), making it slightly heavier than the latter which weighs 5.11 ounces (145 grams). Being the smallest, the iPhone 5s weighs only 3.95 ounces (112 grams).

Amazon confirmed that it will extend the Mayday feature, which allows live video chat with an Amazon technical expert, to its Amazon Fire as well. The Mayday feature is quite novel and a similar feature is currently not available on iPhone 5s, Galaxy S5 or any other smartphone in the market.

The Amazon Fire will hit the shelves on July 25 and interested customers can buy the 32/64GB versions of the handset for $199/$299 from AT&T on a two-year contract. 

Source:

www.techtimes.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 10:40 PM in Amazon Fire, Apple iPhone 5s, enthusiasts, Galaxy S5 battery, HD video recording, latest Amazon smartphone, powerful Snapdragon, Samsung Galaxy S5, Samsung offers, Smartphone Rumble

Samsung Galaxy S5 (T-Mobile)

But that's the thing—the Galaxy S5 doesn't stand alone, and why it doesn't stand alone is telling. Samsung simply can't figure out premium design, at least from an American perspective. I spoke to the designers behind the S5, and they declared its plastic form to be "modern glam" with a "warmth and softness" (as well as a removable battery) that isn't available on glass-and-metal phones. But hold the S5 next to our other Editors' Choice on T-Mobile, the HTC One (M8)$199.99 at Amazon, and the S5 doesn't feel like the expensive one.

Physical FeaturesThe Galaxy S5 still has an uncomfortable relationship with its own materials. At 5.85 by 2.85 by .31 inches (HWD) and 5.1 ounces, it's a big phone, but that's par for the course nowadays. It's all plastic. The back is a stippled, textured faux-leather, borrowed from the Galaxy Note series, which is a major step up from the slick, fingerprint-collecting casing on the Galaxy S4. The back comes in black, blue, gold, or white. The design is almost ruined, in my mind, by a cheap chromed-plastic bezel. You'll learn to live with it, but I didn't learn to love it. Near the top, a useful colored LED blinks blue when you have a new message. On the bottom, a large micro USB 3.0 port promises fast charging and fast data transfer in exchange for needing to be covered by a silver plastic door. A physical Home button with dedicated, light-up back and multitasking buttons are a little more convenient than the purely virtual buttons on the HTC One.

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The S5 is water-resistant and just a bit rugged; it's about as tough as last year's Galaxy S4 Active$29.99 at Amazon. That means it's sealed against liquids and made from flexible materials, so you don't have to worry about getting it wet or dropping it on its edge. You can still crack the screen, though, so a screen protector would be useful.

Dr. Ray Soneira of DisplayMate Labs put it best: The Galaxy S5 has the best screen we've seen yet on a smartphone. It's brilliant, vibrant, and highly customizable, appearing brighter and punchier than competing displays in almost every circumstance. The trick isn't just the 5.1-inch, 1080p Super AMOLED panel, although the panel itself has better color representation and a more even subpixel layout than the S4's. It's software. Samsung's Professional Photo and Cinema Modes give picky viewers true whites, while Adapt Mode constantly alters the display color for maximum readability, and Super Dimming Mode makes the phone viewable in the dark without blowing out your eyes. Adapt Mode also deals very well with outdoor viewing conditions; I had no problem reading anything on my S5's screen through a week outside in Seoul.

The screen has a few other neat tricks, too: It works pretty well with styli, including using the tip of a graphite pencil on the screen as a stylus. While there was still a tiny bit of lag, the GS5 showed much better precision when tapping with a small stylus than other Android phones I've tried, except for the Galaxy Note line.

Call Quality and BatteryThe Galaxy S series have always been excellent voice phones and this model is no exception. The earpiece here gets really loud. If you need volume, you'll be happy. The earpiece tone can also be tuned to your specific hearing profile, just like on the Galaxy S4. Do that if calls sound a little muddy, which they might on the default setting. Transmissions in normal call settings come through clearly. The phone cancelled street and car noise very well, although some background chatter from a Starbucks came through under my voice.

The single, small, back-ported speakerphone performs perfectly adequately, but it's nowhere near as clear and powerful as the HTC One's front-ported BoomSound speakers. Transmissions through the speakerphone mic, on the other hand, are excellent thanks to Samsung's top-notch noise cancellation. I also had no problems with Bluetooth headsets.

Battery life looks very good. Because of SIM provisioning issues, I couldn't complete our standard single-long-call test, but the 2,800mAh battery was still at 41 percent after 11 hours, 15 minutes of calling. In a week's worth of use, it lasted out the day every time.

The new Ultra Power Saving mode delivers peace of mind: Kick it in when your battery is around 15 percent to limit the phone to calling, texting, Facebook,and Web browsing, and watch the phone report that it magically has more than a day's worth of standby time remaining. With the battery down to 2 percent, I managed to squeeze out several hours of standby, a few text messages, and even a brief phone call. That was magical.

Wi-Fi and LTEThe Galaxy S5 takes networking to a new level. Its Wi-Fi performance outdoes the HTC One significantly when 25-50 feet away from an 802.11n router. At a 30-foot distance from a router with a 30-Mbps-up-and-down connection in a tough environment, the HTC dropped to 7-10Mbps but the Galaxy S5 maintained 15-20Mbps. I saw a similar difference up to about 75 feet, when they both dropped off. That will make a serious difference when Web browsing.

Lousy Starbucks wireless connections could be further enhanced by Download Booster, a Samsung feature which combines Wi-Fi and LTE throughput when you're downloading files larger than 30MB. I'm worried about this one, though, because it was disabled on my phone. Samsung insisted to me that it would be enabled with a firmware update at launch, but this is just the kind of thing a carrier could kill.

Otherwise, the S5 comes in four different carrier LTE versions. We tested the T-Mobile model, which features the carrier's Wi-Fi calling. Radio-wise, the handsets all support various carriers' highest-speed networks but won't switch between U.S. carriers well. The non-T-Mobile models lack T-Mobile's main 3G band; the AT&T and Verizon models lack each other's 700MHz LTE, and the Sprint model won't work on anyone else's LTE network. So you need to buy the right model for your carrier and stick with it, like with the HTC One but unlike with the carrier-flexible iPhone 5s.

Annoyingly, both the AT&T and T-Mobile models lack LTE Band 12, which T-Mobile and some regional carriers are implementing at the end of this year to improve rural coverage—so far, only the HTC One has shown that band on its spec sheet.

The phone comes with 16GB of memory, with 11.5GB available (slightly more than on the HTC One). There's a microSD card slot under the back cover which took my 64GB card without complaint.

Source:

www.pcmag.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 10:49 AM in $29.99, Amazon, American, Galaxy S5, HTC One, LED blinks, Samsung Galaxy S5, T-Mobile, uncomfortable, USB 3.0