The dust raised by the ongoing smartphone war did not yet get a chance to settle and another new contestant has made its debut but rather a hush-hush entry. The coming of this phone did not grab much media attention unlike the other big launches in the last couple of months. This new star just got unveiled subtly without much trumpet blowing. But this is unlikely of the makers of this new smartphone.
Samsung (SSNLF, Financial), the company which has always managed to grab the spotlight either for positive news or negative news has launched the new Samsung Galaxy S5 Plus without much media fanefare. As we had mentioned earlier the fight between Samsung and another smartphone maker Apple (AAPL, Financial) has now become a saga. But no one expected Samsung to launch this new wonder gizmo so quietly. Samsung claims that this is the fastest smartphone yet made; upon hearing this, we started our postmortem from the information available to find out what the new Samsung offering has to offer in real.
The new Samsung Galaxy S5 Plus
Samsung Galaxy S5 Plus – Apple iPhone 6 Plus. Don’t the two names of the new smartphones look like mirror images? Though the entry was silent, a point definitely to be noted is that Samsung has not yet given up in its war with Apple, and the imprints of the war can be noticed even in naming the products. According to reports the S5 Plus shifts to the Snapdragon 805 chipset, Qualcomm’s (QCOM, Financial) fastest and most efficient chipset todate. This replaces the Snapdragon 801 in the original S5 and means the phone is running on the same hardware as the Galaxy Note 4 and the other latest smartphone dark horse Google’s (GOOG, Financial) Nexus 6 phablet.
Despite being visually identical to the S5, having the 805 chipset built in makes the Galaxy S5 Plus officially the world’s fastest Android smartphone to now. At least until Motorola (MSI, Financial) brings out the superfast Droid Turbo smartphone, which according to market buzz will also inherit the new chipset Snapdragon 805.
Going by the test report of the new chipset Snapdragon 805 as reported by Qualcomm, it has an enhanced memory bandwidth almost 70% more than its predecessor the Snapdragon 801. This would cut down system glitches occurring due to multitasking which requires simultaneous multi-processing of different datasets. To add to this the upgraded GPU, Adreno 420 compared to its previous version the Adreno 330 is much faster and power efficient thus cutting down on battery burnout rates and giving more battery life per charge. The new processor, Krait 450, also adds more zip compared to the currently used Krait 400.
Owing to the structural features and make of S5 Plus, Samsung has slightly down clocked the 805 chipset in the S5 Plus compared to the Note 4 and the Nexus 6. According to the chipsets specifications, its four cores data at the rate of 2.7 GHz, but Samsung had mellowed down the rate to 2.5 GHz in the chipset to match the holding capacity of the S5 Plus. This is likely due to the smaller form factor and better thermal envelope the larger phablets offer to run chips faster and dissipate the heat thus generated.
Apart from this, the Galaxy S5 Plus also has improved 4G performance compared to the original S5 which will also support LTE Advanced. This adds the potential of downloading at a speed of 300Mbps on the LTE Advanced networks being rolled out by major carriers across the world. In comparison to its latest protégé, the S5 supports 150Mbps download speed which dwarfs the current version in front of the latest version in terms of speed and performance. Upload rates are unchanged with both handsets offering a maximum of 50Mbps uploads.
Rest of the features remain unchanged as the Galaxy S5, which clearly states that the main focus towards bringing out this new avatar was to keep pace with the other latest smartphones in terms of speed and hold the lead in the smartphone market.
Samsung’s strategy for the new Galaxy
Though there is no confirmed news yet, there are speculations among the tech analysts as to whether Samsung will discontinue the Samsung Galaxy S5 and replace it with the new Galaxy S5 Plus. But that seems highly unlikely since the current S5 is not even eight months old since its much hyped launch.
The S5 Plus, however, is a pleasant surprise for the smartphone geeks if not a wholly unexpected one. Samsung announced the "Galaxy S5 LTE-A" in its home turf Korea back in June this year which showed that the company was contemplating the launch of a better variant of S5 and going by Samsung’s trends it is never shy of releasing alternative versions of its flagship handset with the likes of the rugged "Active" and photography-focused "Zoom." The Korean Galaxy S5 LTE-A handset sports a Note 4-matching 2560 x 1440 pixel native resolution and 3GB of RAM, features much higher than the regular S5.
Samsung launched the Galaxy S5 Plus in Holland; Europe is an unusual destination for such a launch. The smartphone bigwig has not yet announced the date when this new star will hit the shelves but expectations are that they will hit the shelves across the globe together.
Final understanding
Even though the current business results of Samsung has been eclipsed by other competitors, the message that Samsung has sent to the world is that the war is not yet over at its front, and it can still create tech mavericks and steer its business number ahead of its competitors.
The S5 Plus shows that Samsung is about to launch another scathing attack on the global smartphone arena in 2015 as it did with the first Galaxy launch. Samsung had already stated that it will bring in the S6 somewhere in the first quarter next year, and the tech eyes are all set on what the S6 will bring with it. So is the new silent entrant from Samsung an attempt to save its Q4 results from the disaster that was reported in Q3?
This is an alarming question for the investors since Samsung has just launched the Note 4 and now the Galaxy S5 Plus even though the S5 is not very old. This also raises a question on Samsung’s confidence on its new product line, and its fear of the intensifying smartphone war is quite evident from the sudden launch. For now it would be best to restrict ourselves from buying in any fresh positions in Samsung. Let the new S5 Plus hit the shelves and then let us watch its level of acceptance in the smartphone domain; also we will have to keep an eye on the recent Note 4 for some more time as it does not seem to move much in comparison to the other phablets launched alongside the Note 4. Post which we should decide on our stake positions in the company.
