With Apple releasing the slightly improved iPhone 5S last fall, the door was open for Samsung to make a big splash with their flagship Galaxy series. Instead, the S5 pulls a 5S and just makes a few incremental improvements over the much-loved Galaxy S4 smartphone. Still, it’s an impressive piece of kit.

The S5 looks pretty familiar if you’ve seen the other members of the Galaxy family of products. The shape is the same classic Galaxy shape with the metal surround that has been featured on the recent Note 3. The biggest aesthetic difference is the indented plastic back that almost looks like a leather backing (except vibrantly coloured). There’s also a cover over the USB port on the side of it to make the phone water proof.

From a hardware stand point, not much has changed. It’s slightly larger with a 5.1″ Super AMOLED display that has the expected 1080p resolution. The processor gets an upgrade to a 2.5 GHz Snapdragon CPU while the RAM remains the same of 2 GB. The camera, however, is quite impressive. It weighs in at 16 MP and is capable of recording video at 4K resolution. That’s nothing new to Note 3 users but still pretty cool.

Like the iPhone 5S, the Galaxy S5 gets a fingerprint scanner. This requires a vertical swipe to scan rather than just placing a finger on the scanner as is the case for the Apple device. Samsung says that they’re currently working with PayPal to use your fingerprint as a password to authorize PayPal payments from your phone. When you use fingerprint scanners as a proper added layer of security like this, I like the idea. When it’s just to unlock your phone, it’s a bit of a wasted gimmick.

Speaking of biometrics, the back of the S5 will act as a heart rate monitor and that will integrate with Samsung’s S Health 3.0 app. As long as said heart rate monitor doesn’t work in conjunction with horror games like one indie dev is working on for PC, I think I can live with that. The heart rate monitor and S Health will use a special high sensitivity camera to also examine blood flow under the surface of your skin. I don’t know what info that will provide but given my blood pressure, I’m not interested in this S Health thing reminding me to exercise, watch what I eat and de-stress.

There are a few new software tricks for the S5. It will release with Android 4.4.2 (which is currently rolling out to Android phones) and use Samsung’s TouchWIZ user interface. In addition to the planned PayPal integration, Samsung is including a Private Mode on the phone that’s unlocked through the fingerprint scanner. The S5 will also get a special Ultra Low Power Mode that is said to allow the S5 to stretch 10% of battery life over 24 hours if in standby mode by going to a black and white screen and cutting connectivity.

The Galaxy S5 is being release in April and will launch worldwide. It will be available in the standard white, black and blue as well as the classic iPhone 5S gold.

While sometimes it seems that Apple would rather compete in a court room rather than on store shelves, it’s nice that the flagship iOS device and the flagship Android device release roughly six months apart. It gives each a chance to answer the other and show off their next level tricks to put themselves ahead of the competition. When companies compete, it’s the consumers who win. Who doesn’t want that?

Sources: Mobile Syrup, Tech Radar