Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S5 back at Mobile World Congress in February, and today the company announced that its new flagship smartphone and its Gear wearable devices have gone on sale in 125 markets across the world.
Samsung says that the products are available to consumers in the “US, Europe, Middle East, Latin America, and most Asian markets,” and there’s no doubt it’s hoping to emulate the success of its predecessor — the Galaxy S4 — which racked up 10 million shipments within its first month of launch.
As we said in our review of the Galaxy S5, Samsung has continued to improve the product line with the latest device. The phone sports a 5.1-inch full HD (1080p) Super AMOLED display, which makes it slightly larger than the Galaxy S4. It comes with a new heart rate sensor fitted under the rear-facing camera, which has also been upgraded from a 13-megapixel to 16-megapixel sensor. The S5 runs on a quad-core 2.5GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, a 2800mAh battery and either 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage.
Samsung has made more significant changes to its Gear smartwatch family, after announcing two different models and switching the operating systems from Android to Tizen.
The new Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo feature a 1.63-inch AMOLED display and 4GB of internal storage. Samsung has upgraded the single-core 800MHz processor from the original Galaxy Gear to a dual-core 1GHz version, and equipped both smartwatches with a 300mAh battery and 512MB of RAM.
The Gear 2 Neo is the cheaper of the two, since it ships without the 2.0-megapixel camera found in the Gear 2. Samsung has also fitted the optics just above the watchface this time around — which is a welcome improvement over the bulbous strap found in the original Galaxy Gear.
The Gear Fit, Samsung’s first foray into wearable fitness devices, also goes on sale today.
The exact prices will vary locally, but the recommended retail prices are as follows:
- Galaxy S5 LTE 32 GB — US$855
- Samsung Gear 2 — US$320
- Gear 2 Neo — US$240
- Gear Fit — US$215
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOIGUfAlMY0
Recap: Samsung Galaxy S5 review: Incremental is the new cool
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.