It’s no secret – despite humongous fanfare, nigh domination in the marketplace, and an insane amount of mindshare, the Galaxy S4 was a sales disappointment to the folks located on the top floor of the Samsung Headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. Samsung themselves admitted in October of 2013 that sales figures were about “15-to-20 percent lower than expected,” and South Korean press claimed that the Galaxy S4′s sales figures were so bad that Samsung is “engulfed in a shock” over the disappointment last December.
A Samsung executive recently claimed that disappointing sales were because consumers couldn’t tell the difference between the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy S4, which shared a very similar design, and that the company wouldn’t make the same mistake with the Galaxy S5. Expectations were high – this would be the change we’ve been clamoring for for two years now, this would be something wholly new that would immediately resonate with both the press and consumers. This would be the device needed to turn Samsung’s ill fortune around.
Well, today we got our first look at the Galaxy S5 – and, to almost universal shock and a fair share of disappointment, the Galaxy S5 resemble both the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy S III that came before it. Most of the tell tale signs are here – the plastic construction, the physical home button, large screen, the cheap faux-metal border that encompasses the entire body of the device. Sure, the company switched out the sickly plastic back for a smooth soft touch dimpled one, but if you were to look, and not touch, you’d say the phone has remained largely unchanged.
To make that even more disappointing, while the Galaxy S4 was revealed last year with a whole suite of innovative new software features, the Galaxy S5 forgoes that spectacle for moderately updated software and impressive hardware. We’ve got a 2.5 GHz quad-core processor, an improved camera, a fingerprint sensor, etc. and so forth – but these aren’t things that sell smartphones. It’s what we can do with a smartphone that we base our purchasing decisions on, as a whole, and the Galaxy S5 can largely do pretty much exactly what the Galaxy S4 can do.
So, the question remains – is the Galaxy S5 a disappointment? It’s probably too early to tell, as we haven’t even managed to get our hands on one and likely won’t until April at the earliest. But Samsung sure needed a reboot – a clean slate, a new beginning, something eyepopping and new. Was this it?
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