Ah, nothing like getting two of the strongest Android smartphones around and staging a cage match between them! Thankfully, that's exactly what we do for a living these days, and with manufacturers continuing to present us with such mind-blowing powerhouses like the just-released Motorola Droid Turbo, it seems like there will always be worthy, new contenders for us to put in the ring.
Speaking of the Droid Turbo – this new product from Motorola and Verizon can really be seen as one of the most powerful smartphones ever made. Equipped with a state-of-the-art specs configuration, the Droid Turbo can easily challenge pretty much any other smartphone for a quick face-off in the arena. This time, however, we've found a fearsome opponent for it, in the form of the venerable Samsung Galaxy S5. Samsung's flagship has ruled the Android land throughout most of 2014, but it's grasp on the throne appears to be waning these days. Too many challengers, too many months have passed since the S5's advent, and it will all come down to this duel, in which the Motorola Droid Turbo is going to try and take over the champion belt.
Design
Ballistic nylon meets... plastic
Design has never been the strongest side of Samsung's Galaxy line, and while Verizon's army of Droids isn't particularly impressive in this area as well, it's had a certain appeal for tech-savvy consumers. All in all, we wouldn't go so far to say that one is decidedly better than the other; successfully crossing the "good enough" line, neither appears to be particularly fancy in the 'outer beauty' department. However, it's worth pointing out the interesting materials employed in the Droid Turbo's construction. One of the phone's variants features the so-called metalized glass fiber material (that one's also available in red), which is further reinforced by DuPont kevlar. It makes for a characteristic appearance of the back panel, but its feeling isn't particularly new – it mostly feels like a rubbery type of finish. Alternatively, there's also the 'ballistic nylon' version, which looks very cool and has a characteristic feel to it. The Galaxy S5, as you probably know, comes in three color versions (black, blue, and gold), all of which are made of fairly ordinary plastic material with a dotted pattern to shake things up.
There isn't a massive difference between the Droid Turbo and the Galaxy S5 when it comes to dimensions. The Turbo is just slightly bigger, but not quite as big as something like the G3. Still, Motorola's proposition is significantly thicker with its 0.44" (11.2mm), compared to the S5's way slender 0.32" (8.1mm). Overall, the Droid Turbo definitely feels like the chubbier phone, but that's supposed to have some positive effects that we'll discuss later (hint: battery capacity).
In terms of construction quality, we'd side with the Motorola Droid Turbo, seeing that it feels a tad sturdier and more solid in the hand, compared to its Samsung rival. However, the Galaxy S5 does have a useful trick up its sleeve, and that's IP 67 certification for water and dust resistance. The Droid Turbo, on the other hand, has to do with a water-repellant nano-coating, which will protect the handset from light water splashes or rain, but not from submersion.
Two AMOLED screens. One is Super AMOLED, the other is superb AMOLED
Arriving multiple months later than the Galaxy S5, the Droid Turbo's benefits from a higher screen resolution – 1440 x 2560 pixels, versus the S5's 1080 x 1920 pixels. With the screen on the Turbo being just marginally bigger at 5.2” vs 5.1”, it all means that Moto's handset will deliver a much higher pixel density: the astonishing 565 ppi vs the S5's 432 ppi. And before you ask – no, there isn't any major difference in terms of clarity between both – the QHD resolution of the Turbo only a subtle improvement over the already super-sharp picture quality of the Galaxy S5.
Where these guys differ is in the way they reproduce colors. Both the Droid Turbo and the Galaxy S5 make use of AMOLED screens, but their color balance tends to be different most of the time. The Droid Turbo comes with fixed color settings that cannot be altered by the user. Its colors tend to be very oversaturated and way off from their reference values. It's a vivid and eye-catchy screen, but one that will rarely display images the way the artist intended them to be seen, so to speak. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S5 gives the user a choice between a bunch of screen modes. Most of those deliver a striking, overly-punchy image with inaccurate colors. There are some modes that try to tone things down to an extent, but nothing to really bring those AMOLED nuances to something that we could call natural – something like the Note 4's Basic screen mode, for example, which does a good job of normalizing the colors, but is missing from the S5. Even though the Galaxy S5's display benefits from the added flexibility of the screen modes, we tend to prefer the Droid Turbo's AMOLED panel, because it maintains a more realistic color temperature of about 6600 K, compared to the GS5's predominantly cold (8100 K in Standard mode) and greenish appearance.
Outdoor visibility, on the other hand, is excellent with the Samsung Galaxy S5 – Samsung's phone is among the best offerings out there in this category. The Motorola Droid Turbo could definitely be better when it comes to its readability under the glaring sun.
The numbers below represent the amount of deviation in the respective property,observed when a display is viewed from a 45-degree angle as opposed to direct viewing.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
TouchWiz will need all of its unique features to battle the Turbo's clean Android UI
Currently running Android 4.4, both the Droid Turbo and Galaxy S5 feel up-to-date and contemporary with their features and software experiences. However, they couldn't be more different with the way they go about delivering their goodies. The Motorola Droid Turbo comes with customized Android software, but one that's very, very close to the stock one, except for some custom widgets and additional features. We really like that type of approach because it tends to maintain a good balance between the performance and polish of Google's stock Android software, and the need to add some differentiation to a product by implementing bonus features such as Moto's turbo charging, unique take on notifications.
On the other end of the spectrum is where the Samsung Galaxy S5 resides. Samsung's TouchWiz UI comes with a drastically different interface from that of stock Android – with generally more colorful and considerably less consistent graphical elements. In addition, it packs a ton of software features that you may or may not need, depending on the type of user you are. Samsung's built-in apps are generally more versatile than those of stock Android, but often at the expense of consistency and polish. So, choosing between the software offering of the Droid Turbo and the Galaxy S5 will be a question of philosophy rather than simply siding with the better one: should you want a more mature and reliable software solution, the Droid Turbo is the phone that can give you that; should you find joy in having a feature-packed and versatile everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink approach, the S5 may be better for you. Just don't fall for misleading checkbox features like the Galaxy S5's heartbeat monitor, because you can easily obtain an equally accurate monitor by installing a third-party app on the Droid Turbo.
Processor and Memory
Snapdragon 805 vs Snapdragon 801. Need we say more?
Being the newer device, the Motorola Droid Turbo appears to be the more desirable product of the two, when it comes to its internals. While the still-powerful Snapdragon 801 SoC was state-of-the-art at the time of the Samsung Galaxy S5's introduction, the Turbo's Snapdragon 805 has since arrived and pushed the envelope in the hardware race. That said, it has to be kept in mind that the Droid Turbo's QHD screen definitely requires more power than the 1080p one of the Galaxy S5, so we do have to take a look at the synthetic benchmarks below in order to see how these two gladiators compare.
As it can be seen from the benchmarks, the Droid Turbo manages to outpace the GS5 in almost all of the system benchmarks, regardless of its higher screen resolution. That comes to show that the Krait 450 CPU + Adreno 420 GPU combo manages to deliver much more processing power than the Krait 400 CPU + Adreno 330 GPU of the S5. Both handsets run very fast, but the Samsung experiences delays from time to time, even when executing some trivial tasks, while the Motorola doesn't have such problems.
Memory-wise, the Turbo once again turns out to be the better spec'd device, thanks to its luxurious 3 GB of RAM (the GS5 has 2 gigs, which is still fine). When it comes to internal storage, the Droid Turbo offers you a 32 or 64 GB configuration, while the Galaxy S5 sticks with the more conservative 16 and 32 GB options. However, Samsung's handset makes up for this by featuring a microSD card slot, which is missing with the Turbo.
While Chrome is the default web browser on the Droid Turbo, the Galaxy S5 comes with not one, but two browsers rigth from the start: Samsung's own browser, and the mandatory Chrome. Overall, browsing is a joy with both handsets – the QHD resolution of the Turbo makes it just a tad easier to look at text, but of course, the Galaxy S5 is still perfectly detailed.
These handsets are packed to the brim with connectivity features. LTE Cat 4 is supported on both, allowing data speeds of up to 150 Mbit/s down and 50 Mbit/s up. GPS and A-GPS will take care of your navigation needs, though only the Galaxy S5 has Glonass. The GS5 also beats the Galaxy Turbo in the USB department – both devices have microUSB ports, but the S5 has a USB 3.0 port, which enables faster data transfers. However, we wouldn't be surprised if Samsung decides to leave this feature out in the next Galaxy S smartphone, just as it did with the Note 4. Meanwhile, NFC and Infrared connections are present on both devices, but only the S5 sports MHL. Overall, the Galaxy S5 seems to be a bit more versatile in this department, due to the plethora of goodies it offers.
Camera
Certain checkpoints are particularly difficult to capture, even for a powerhouse such as the Droid Turbo
Equipped with a 20.7 MP camera, the Motorola Droid Turbo delivers a higher megapixel count than the Galaxy S5 with its 16 MP. However, with its native aspect ration of 16:9, the 16 MP camera of the S5 take photos that are just as resolution-packed as those of the Turbo, which shoots in 4:3 aspect ratio at 20.7 MP. The Galaxy S5 has proven to be an excellent camera phone – one of the best out there, and its versatile camera applications seems to try to accentuate this proficiency in photography with a wide array of features and settings. In comparison, the Droid Turbo's camera interface is much more simplistic, offering only a few essential modes, such as slow-mo, 4K recording, and some other settings. This is a good thing if you value simplicity, but the Galaxy S5 appears to be the more versatile camera phone out of the box.
Thankfully, both handsets capture impressive outdoor, daylight photographs. Exposure and details are good, and there are many occasions where the two handsets achieve almost equally good-looking results. The GS5 tends to take sharper, more detailed photos. As we said, don't be fooled by the fact that its camera maxes out at 16 MP – its native aspect ratio is 16:9, whereas that of the 20.7 MP Droid Turbo is 4:3. This means that if you just cut some of the vertical resolution and start shooting in 16:9 with the Turbo, you'll end up with 16 MP photos. The result of this is that the Galaxy S5's images have the same resolution quality as those of the Droid Turbo – the limitation is that it can't shoot in 4:3 at the same resolution quality.
In terms of color balance, both are once again pretty similar, with the Galaxy S5 photos appearing just a tad warmer than those of the Droid Turbo in most situations, though not always. As a whole, images taken with both look natural, without any weird-looking examples.
Indoor pictures seem to be better exposed with the Galaxy S5 – it adds some brigthness to its low-light photos to make them look better, and at the same time, there's more noise in the Droid Turbo's pictures, so Moto should really work on its image processing algorithms. The same is valid for indoor pictures, though we like the Droid Turbo's LED flash better, because it's stronger.
1080p video footage of the Droid Turbo is surprisingly lame compared to that of the Galaxy S5. Basically, the GS5's video looks way more detailed and usable, while that of the Turbo appears to be rather crude, not to mention its troublesome audio recording.
Multimedia
With AMOLED displays of almost equal size, it's difficult to pick a definite winner in the multimedia category. However, the Droid Turbo's QHD resolution support and more natural color balance, as well as better chipset, make us see it as the better option when it comes to watching video or playing games, even though the Galaxy S5 is no slouch either.
With regards to audio, the Galaxy S5 brings Samsung's own take on the music player, while the Turbo sticks with Android's stock player. We'd say that it's purely a subjective matter which one you're going to prefer, as both do a good job of managing and playing your music. Unfortunately, neither handset has stereo speakers, but still, their mono loudspeakers sound well, with that of the Galaxy S5 being a bit louder.
Thankfully, neither handset suffers from any serious issues when it comes to call quality. The Galaxy S5 manages to deliver slightly more powerful output through its earpiece, but its relatively muffled tones don't exactly outshine what you hear on the Droid Turbo.
Outgoing sound quality tends to be a bit better with the Droid Turbo, as it manages to maintain more naturally-toned voices, in comparison with the Galaxy S5.
Battery life
A monstrous battery capacity helps the Turbo set new standards in smartphone battery life
Sporting a thicker body and a juicier battery, the Motorola Droid Turbo comes out ahead in the battery life race against the Samsung Galaxy S5. Comparing the capacities of the two, the Droid Turbo's battery is much more generous with its 3900 mAh, versus the 2800 mAh of the Galaxy S5.
This difference in capacities shows in our battery life test results, where the Droid Turbo has a definite edge with its spectacular result of 10h 42 min. The Galaxy S5, whose battery life is generally considered to be pretty good, has managed the significantly shorter 7h 38 min. This comes to show that while users certainly have a price to pay with the thick design of the Droid Turbo, Moto's phone makes up for it by packing a bigger battery that will allow you to do more with the phone, before it has to be connected to a charger.
We measure battery life by running a custom web-script,designed to replicate the power consumption of typical real-life usage.All devices that go through the test have their displays set at 200-nit brightness.
Motorola has done a great job with the Droid Turbo – this phone is a terrific package that packs all the cutting-edge technology one can think of right now. What's more, the software experience with the phone is also great – it's very close to stock Android, which we consider a good thing, while Motorola's additions are useful and meaningful in the context of the Droid Turbo.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S5 is starting to show its age. Don't get us wrong – it's still a very powerful and versatile device, especially in terms of camera, where it tends to beat the Droid Turbo most of the time, but considering most other aspects, it's simply overshadowed by the Turbo and its more balanced screen colors, higher resolution, newer and faster chipset, bigger battery and more streamlined software
Galaxy S5 owners wondering whether an upgrade to the Droid Turbo would be a good idea can safely stay with their current device, seeing that it'll be more than adequate for the foreseeable future, but if you're absolutely on the market for a new device, you have more than one reason to side with Motorola's offering, instead of Samsung's flagship.
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Rad Slavov is the Editor-in-Chief at PhoneArena. He joined the media in 2008, right on the cusp of the modern smartphone revolution. Through time and perseverance, he amassed a great deal of knowledge and industry know-how, allowing him to guide and organize the company's growing line-up of talented content creators and ever-expanding content portfolio.
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