Galaxy S5 Active review: A military-grade rugged Galaxy S5 with a dedicated Activity Zone key.
The military-grade Galaxy.
The Galaxy S5 Active added MIL-STD-810G military certification to IP67, plus a dedicated Activity Zone key for outdoor tools — and this time kept the flagship AMOLED. It was the rugged Galaxy at its most fully-realised, popular with outdoors and trades users.
01Display
80/100At 80/100 this is one of the strongest display showings among flagship phones of 2014 — 8 points above the cohort average.
02Camera
64/10064/100 — right at the average for flagship phones of 2014.
03Performance
66/100At 66/100 this is one of the strongest performance showings among flagship phones of 2014 — 7 points above the cohort average.
04Battery
64/10064/100 — right at the average for flagship phones of 2014.
05Build
80/100At 80/100 this is one of the strongest build showings among flagship phones of 2014 — 12 points above the cohort average.
06Value
60/100At 60/100 this is one of the strongest value showings among flagship phones of 2014 — 7 points above the cohort average.
- IP67 + MIL-STD-810G military durability.
- Kept the S5's AMOLED this time.
- Dedicated Activity Zone button.
- Removable battery + microSD.
- Bulkier and heavier than the S5.
- Mono speaker.
- No fingerprint sensor (vs S5).
- Carrier-limited availability.
How this review is built: every section score, spec row and comparison on this page comes from SpecEagle's tracked catalogue — scores weight measured specs against the 92-phone cohort of flagship devices released around the same time. We don't publish invented lab anecdotes. Spot an error? .