Samsung unveils watered-down Galaxy S5 mini, but it's missing S5's best feature

Samsung has announced the much-rumoured Galaxy S5 mini, a smaller variant of the flagship S5. The South Korean smartphone leader says the phone will launch in Russia this month, followed by a global release, though has not announced a price for the phone.

Samsung was the company that started the mini ‘flagship’ trend and has firmly stuck to its philosophy of watering down the flagship’s specs to reach a wider audience. However, as we have seen in the past this one too has its fair share of compromises.  The Samsung Galaxy S5 mini comes with the same software features as the S5 and also has the heart rate sensor, fingerprint scanner, and supports for the Gear series. It also sports a private and kids mode, along with the battery-saving Ultra Power Saving Mode, and also has the same dust and water resistant (IP67 certified) body, but it’s missing the standout feature of the S5 and that’s the camera.

The Galaxy S5 mini does not have Samsung’s awesome 16MP camera and instead sports an average-sounding 8-megapixel main shooter. It also has a 2.1MP camera on the front. That’s a real disappointment because we found the camera to be the best feature in the S5, along side its display. This one has a 4.5-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) Super AMOLED display. It is powered by a quad-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz and features a healthy 1.5GB of RAM. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS, 3G cellular data and an IR blaster.

Just like the S5, it runs Android 4.4 KitKat with TouchWiz on top, and comes with 16GB internal storage and a microSD card slot for expansion up to 64GB. There’s a decent-sounding 2100mAh battery, while the usual accelerometer, digital compass, gyro, proximity, and ambient light sensors are present as well.

While it looks like Samsung has tried to retain most of what makes the S5 such a good pick, the biggest omission is also one we would have wanted to see the most. But that’s not happening.