Is this the face of Samsung's Galaxy S5?

John Davidson

With every passing day, one thing is becoming clear about Samsung's Galaxy S5 smartphone: you won't be able to mistake it for its predecessor, something you can't say about the Galaxy S4.

Not only will the SGS5 (probably, hopefully, please!) be all metal, eschewing the tacky plastic aesthetic of its progenitors, it's beginning to look like it will also sport a brand new interface.

Photos purporting to be of the Galaxy S5's home screen have been leaked by @evleaks, one of the most reliable sources of leaked goodies on the entire Twittersphere.

What you see above are pics of the homescreen @evleaks posted a few weeks ago. Below is a brand new pic (it was the wrong shape to put up top), showing more details.

Source: @evleaks

What the pictures are telling us, in essence, is that Samsung is planning to do with the Galaxy S5 more or less what it did with the NotePRO and TabPRO tablets it launched at CES. Those tablets have what Samsung calls a "Magazine UX" (user experience), which presents data from your various sources - Facebook, email, you favourite websites etc etc - in one, fancy, magazine-like view. It's not unlike what HTC did with its One line of phones.

As you may be able to see from the above photograph, the new UX on the SGS5 (if indeed the picture is of the new UX on the SGS5) will bring Google maps, your Galaxy Gear smartwatch (if indeed you own a Galaxy Gear smartwatch), your music, your flight info and your home environmental controls, all into one long stream of graphic-heavy consciousness.

So now we know the what and the how about the SGS5. The big question remaining is when? There was some talk at the end of last year and early this year that the phone would be launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which runs from February 24 to February 27.

That would have made the launch earlier than last year, and the rationale for that was that Samsung needed to bring out a fresh phone, fast, to stay ahead of the pack. This gets back to the notion that the Galaxy S4 was too much like the Galaxy SIII, and sales weren't as strong as hoped.

But then Samsung went and threw cold water on that wish/prayer, putting the word out through channels back and front that the SGS5 would be launched in April, around the same time the last few models were launched. To help us get over the disappointment, Samsung revealed the phone might just have an eye scanner, allowing you to unlock the phone just by looking at it.

Still, Samsung seems to be preparing to launch something in Barcelona. The big question is, what on earth could it be?

The Australian Financial Review

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