Samsung’s Galaxy S5 will be debuting in just under a month now on April 11th, but until then you’re not likely to find one in stores or anywhere to demo until that day. In the meantime we’re getting plenty of vicarious hands-on time with the phone via Internet favorite Eldar Murtazin, a man who is a tech analyst in Russia and is well-known for his industry speculation and leaks. In this series of 6 videos Mr. Murtazin goes through the interface of the Galaxy S5 and compares Samsung’s newest flagship with a few other phones out there, including the Galaxy S4, Note 3 and iPhone 5S. While all 6 videos are in Russian, you really don’t need to listen to the video to get quite a bit of what’s going on, including him struggling to unlock the device with the fingerprint scanner, which was said to be a bit wonky at times in some hands-on time at Mobile World Congress where the Galaxy S5 was unveiled. What was rather refreshing to see is that the TouchWiz launcher finally seems to have received some improvements, with things like auto widget moving when you’re trying to place widgets on the home screen. Samsung’s My Magazine now seems to reside on the left side of the launcher a la the Google Now launcher that ships with the Nexus 5 and features Google Now prominently on the left side of the home screen.
You’ll also notice that the interface isn’t as drastically changed as just about everyone had hoped for in this “new” version of Touchwiz. While the icons have been flattened everything else still looks the same, including Samsung’s incredibly awful black and puke green color scheme. We’re not sure what happened to the more pleasant blues that were so prominently featured in the unveiling of the Galaxy S5, but we’ll hold further judgement until we receive the final build of the phone for ourselves. Mr. Murtazin also goes on to compare the size of the phone to the Galaxy S4 and the Note 3, showing how it is just a hair bigger than the S4 in all dimensions but not nearly as large as the Note 3. He also compares the back of the Galaxy S5 with that of the special edition Galaxy S4 with the pleather back, and it’s pretty obvious that Samsung changed materials with the S5 for the better. Comparing the Galaxy S5 to the iPhone 5s continues to make Apple’s phone look like a small child’s toy, but also makes us painfully aware of future complaints from buyers of the S5 because of the size of the device. While these videos will take some serious time to go through they are worth watching, or at least browsing through if you’re considering picking up a Galaxy S5 or are just more interested in seeing what Samsung has put together for its first big launch of 2014.