Samsung Galaxy S5 release date, news and features

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is old news. Sure, it's a great smartphone - as you'll see in our in-depth review - but now all eyes are firmly locked on the Samsung Galaxy S5.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 was launched at MWC 2014, with Samsung's fifth Unpacked conference packed with journalists looking to see what the latest Galaxy device holds.

• Read our hands on: Samsung Galaxy S5 review

In Barcelona Samsung revealed that the Samsung Galaxy S5 was indeed its latest smartphone. It was never in doubt that the tech giant would deviate from the highly lucrative Galaxy S prefix. But given what happened with the Samsung Gear – anything could have happened.

So it launched with the GS5 monicker but is it the best phone in the world? Read on where we reveal all the specs you need to know and what we thought of the device.

If you're one of those interneteers that likes to skim read things in the hope someone will go through all the rumors and create a video render with them all thrown in together, well, you're in luck.

Samsung Galaxy S5 release date and price

All the big smartphone manufacturers are relatively entrenched in annual product cycles now, which means we can usually predict when they will launch their headlining products.

Early rumors did peg Samsung as bringing the Galaxy S5 launch forward to February after the S4 failed to sell as many as predicted - this could have also been due to the company being reportedly told to scale down its launches and make Android more of a star of the phone by Google.

And that was made official with the teasing invite for Samsung's "Unpacked 5" event on February 24 - and it's that "5" which has caught everyone's attention - that as we know now meant the Galaxy S5.

A 'toned down' launch was likely after the New York Times reported that Samsung was going to lose the theatrics for the next launch of its handset - something which would have made a lot of us very happy after the awful 'Broadway' unveil for the S4.

But we did have to sit through at least two songs by an orchestra, which was lovely but seemed to take forever.

And you will be waiting a little bit for the Galaxy S5 too. Samsung won't be doing an Apple-style one week turnaround. Supply chain sources originally claimed the S5 won't be ready until the end of the March at the earliest - and the official Samsung Galaxy S5 release date is actually April.

In terms of price there's no point hoping that Samsung might offer the Galaxy S5 at a more competitive rate than its predecessors. One report reckons Samsung will lower the price, but we'd be very surprised if this actually happened. Although the Samsung Galaxy S5 has been officially announced there is no word on pricing just yet.

The Galaxy S5 is crammed full of new tech and thus will carry a price tag which will see it sit right at the top of pricing tree - SamMobile has gone as far as to claim it'll set you back €800 (around £542, $888, AU$983).

Samsung Galaxy S5 design

There was talk of a whole new design language for the Galaxy S5 with some hoping that Samsung would break away from the similar styling of the Galaxy S3 and S4.

This hasn't happened as such. Design wise, well you can't call the Samsung Galaxy S5 ugly, because Samsung does know how to put a phone together well.

But at the same time it's the same tired story on the design front: taking some elements from the predecessor, adding in some bits from the current Note and calling it all new.

The 'metal' surround is almost identical to the Note 3, to the point I was looking for an S Pen to start poking out. But the back is the main change and we would go as far to say that it is lovely.

No more shiny plastic or laughable attempts to make it look like a leather notebook – while it is still plastic, it's a lot more grippable and feels a lot, lot nicer in the hand.

While there was some rumor of Samsung ditching the bezel altogether to make an edge-to-edge design that will really push the envelope in what a handset can really do in terms of design and power.

This wasn't actually the case but The overall construction is again more solid, but the device is markedly bigger compared to the Galaxy S3 and S4. There's a lot more Note DNA in the Galaxy S5 than ever before, that's for sure.

And then there is the little fact that it is waterproof. Last year we saw the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active turn up after the S4, adding a rugged dust and waterproof body to the design, and the Galaxy S5 has come with these features as standard - bringing it inline with the likes of the Sony Xperia Z1.