Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini: The affordable S5
In this article you will find the review of Samsung's all new flagship phone and the newest member of the Mini family along with some tight comparisons with its competitors. You will also find the price and availability of the S5 Mini in India in this article.
Samsung has not discontinued its mini series of its ultra premium smartphones. The all new Samsung Galaxy S5 mini is here. The most outstanding change here is that unlike the cheap Mini's previously provided by the company, the S5 Mini has most of the features available with the S5.
Power
Samsung has not provided the S5 mini with the Snapdragon 801 chipset found on S5 but has provided a 1.4GHz quad core Exynos 3 Quad 3470 chipset and a 1.5GB RAM. This exceeds the soc found in HTCs One Mini 2 which has a 1.2GHz quad core processor and just 1GB of RAM. Even so this is not enough to rise above Sony's Xperia Z1 Compact which hosts a hefty 2.2GHz quad core soc backed by a massive 2GB RAM.OS
The Samsung Galaxy S5 mini comes with Android 4.4 Kitkat onboard. It is as usual covered with Samsung's TouchWiz UI. The good news here is that the Mini exactly matches the S5's screen visuals.Camera
The rear camera on the S5 Mini is a slight disappointment as it is no better than that available with the S4 Mini, which is an 8MP camera. Furthermore, it does not show any sign of the 16MP camera found in S5. This does not come at par with those found in the One Mini and Z1 compact which boast a 13MP and 20.7 MP respectively. But Samsung has hiked the front camera from the 1.9MP found in the S4 Mini to 2.1MP, that means only one thing, better selfies!Design
The structural design of the S5 Mini closely resembles the S5, also its 4.5 inch display means that it is bigger than its predecessor, the S4 Mini. This one really changes our perspective of the future of the Mini series. The S5 Mini is smaller than One Mini and at just 120g it is also lighter than One Mini and Z1 compact. Besides its looks, the S5 Mini is waterproof and sports a fingerprint scanner just under the home button, along with a heart rate monitor under the camera button. Display
The S5 Mini has a larger super AMOLED 4.5 inch display as opposed to the 4.3 inch display found in the S4 Mini. The S5 Mini also has a crisp 720p display whereas the S4 Mini has qHD display. This puts it at the same level as of the One Mini 2 but ahead of Z1 Compact as it has a smaller 4.3 inch display but with the same HD resolution, which means more crisper images at the loss of size. But none of these match the 5.5 inch full HD display on the S5. Graphics
The graphics onboard the S5 Mini is very much disappointing. It comes with a Mali-400 GPU which does not match the performance offered by Adreno 330 or 305 found in the Z1 Compact and One Mini 2 respectively. It is behind the S5 which also has an Adreno 330 GPU. But it is on par with that found in its predecessor the S4 Mini.Price and Availability
The S5 Mini will be available in the Indian market at the end of July, 2014. The S5 Mini will be priced around Rs.33,000. It does blow a big hole in your wallet but it is really worth it.Final Verdict
The S5 Mini does pack all the features which distinguishes the S5 in the market, these include its looks, waterproof build and the presence of the fingerprint scanner. It is above its predecessor, the S4 Mini in all aspects except in case of the GPU, in which case they are identical. It is better than One Mini 2 but lags behind Z1 compact in almost everything. So for Samsung fans who can't simply afford an S5, the S5 Mini is the best buy.
Isn't the processor Exynos ?