Samsung Galaxy C5 review: Safe Ride

Gallery

The TouchWiz gallery orders photos by time, but you can switch to folder-based Album view. Thumbnail sizes can be resized with a pinch gesture and the album selection pane on the left can be hidden.

Sharing options include wireless printing, Android Beam and Wi-Fi Direct, but no DLNA (or any other way to send an image to your TV).

Gallery

Several image editing tools are available - from basic cropping, to collage making, to a more capable editor (which supports image correction, effects and drawing).

Powerful editor

Music player with advanced EQ features, FM radio

Google Play Music is the default player for your tunes on the Galaxy C5. The app was treated to the Material design a while ago, and its functionality remains unchanged - it can play your local files, as well as stream music from the cloud.

The Samsung sound enhancements are available, of course, you can access them from Play Music, too, as they are system-wide and reside in the Settings menu. They include the SoundAlive tool, which has an intuitive interface to tuning the equalizer (a manual 7-band equalizer is available for more knowledgeable users).

Google Play Music

Adapt Sound is even simpler. It tunes the EQ to your hearing and your particular pair of headphones by playing multiple frequencies and asking how well you hear them. Smart Volume automatically adjusts the volume of tracks from various sources.

UHQ sound resolution enhancer is available, Surround sound emulation and Tube Amp Pro simulator are onboard, too.

Equalizer and other settings

The Galaxy C5 also has an FM radio built in (something many Galaxy flagships do not). It can record radio broadcasts (though this feature may be disabled in some regions). The Settings menu suggests there is RDS support as well, but it didn't work for us for some reason.

FM radio

Video player

There is no video player app pre-installed and the Gallery handles the videos by default. At least, that appears to be the case, as the Video player does not have a separate icon of its own. If you want a dedicated app, you can grab the TouchWiz Video player from the Galaxy Apps repository. The default video player supports pop-up window, a feature dating back to the Galaxy S III.

It has full subtitle support with advanced features to modify their appearance. The app lets you play only the audio (if you just want to listen to a music video) or you can play the audio via Bluetooth (if you have a BT-enabled speaker handy).

Video player

There's an "Editor" option too though that may be overstating it - it just lets you trim the video. If you want a more capable video editor, you can download more in the Galaxy Apps store for free, courtesy of Samsung.

Both Video apps were once part of the TouchWiz package, but Samsung decided to get rid of as much bloatware as possible and left the choice of apps to you.

Audio output has a shaky start, finishes on a high note

The Samsung Galaxy C5 didn't quite impress in the active amplifier portion of the audio quality test. It didn't quite match its C7 sibling and only posted volume levels just above average and it had plenty of imperfect readings to its output.

Luckily, things improved significantly when we plugged in a pair of headphones. All the clarity issues were gone and the volume remained above average (this time tying the Galaxy C7), so it was a very good showing by the mid-ranger.

Samsung Galaxy C5 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.