Exploring the Galaxy S5's features (pictures)

The Samsung Galaxy S5 may be a smaller upgrade than the Galaxy S4 was from the S3, but it still follows Samsung's pattern of throwing in almost every software feature it can manage -- including a fingerprint scanner, heart rate monitor, and ultra power-saving battery mode.

Here, you're looking at the lock screen on the phone's 5.1-inch 1080p HD AMOLED display. Colors are bold and bright. From here, you can take a photo (even if you enable a password), check the local weather, and see alerts like missed calls.

Editor's note: This gallery was originally published on February 25, 2014.

As with other Android phones, you can personalize the home screens with widgets, shortcuts, and app folders.

One area that has changed in the TouchWiz layer is the Settings menu, which gives you circular icons, a grid, or tabs on a black background.

You'll pick that ellipsis in the upper-right corner to choose among the various Settings display options.

The notifications tray is another area that gets a tiny visual redo. In addition to showing important notifications, you can adjust the display brightness, mute the sound, and turn wireless and GPS features off and on again. Two new buttons launch the phone's content finder and help you easily connect to other compatible devices.

The quick-settings menu expands to make it easy to toggle features on and off, and even reorder them.

The Galaxy S5's app tray looks just about the same as the S4's, but with a few revamped icons, such as for Samsung Apps in the bottom left.

Slight changes to the home page menu button make it easier to manage apps.

The S Voice app gets a visual touch-up.

You can secure your Galaxy S5 with the fingerprint scanner, which resides in a swipeable area of the phone's display.

It only takes a few minutes to set up a profile, and you can have up to three of them. Check out CNET's deeper dive of the Galaxy S5's snappy fingerprint scanner.

And if the fingerprint sensor is too newfangled, you can still opt for a pattern, a PIN, or an alphanumeric password. Even if you do set up a fingerprint scan, you'll have a backup password regardless.

The Galaxy S5's heart rate monitor is another hardware addition, and one that's unique to cell phones. You start the process through the S Health 3.0 app, which also includes a pedometer and exercise tracker.

Tips walk you through the process. To use the heart rate monitor, press your finger to the sensor just below the camera lens on the phone's rear.

CNET's Luke Westaway gives the heart rate monitor a go. An LED glows red when the monitor is active.

You'll need to hold still and keep quiet while it's measuring.

The Galaxy S5 measured Luke's heart rate at 96 beats per minute. You can blame that high result on the stress of covering a Samsung press conference.

The S Health app also makes it possible to track your heart rate over time. For an even deeper dive, check out the Galaxy S5's heart rate monitor in action.

Samsung made a few important changes to its native camera app. You'll notice new icons pop out in the camera settings, which makes it easy to select the modes you want. You can also add often-used modes as shortcuts.

Samsung has condensed a few modes into one, now called Shot & More, and has added Virtual Tour, which stitches together a 360-degree view.

The Shot & More Mode bundles five previously separate modes into one. After you take a photo, it'll let you choose how you'd like to process the shot.

Selective focusing is also a new feature for Samsung that artistically blurs either the foreground or background.

Editing tools also get a visual redo in the Galaxy S5's camera app.

As always, you can organize your photos in folders and set security options for how the images can be used. Learn even more about the Galaxy S5 camera capabilities in this hands-on, complete with photo tests.

Taking a page from the Windows Phone book, Samsung has added a Kid's Mode for tykes' games.

The kid-friendly camera lets young'uns take a photo, switch to video recording, and access the image gallery.

A password lock makes it harder for kids to exit the profile on their own.

Toolbox is a new shortcut that pops up in the Galaxy S5. Enable it, and you can access a fistful of tools from a floating, movable, collapsible menu.

Look closely and you can see Toolbox on this home screen.

Private Mode is another new feature; it will hide personal content when you loan your phone to a friend or use it to distract your kid.

Samsung is very proud of its Ultra Power-Saving Mode, which turns the screen black and white and strips down functions to the bare minimum to give you up to 24 hours more juice if need be.

Another behind-the-scenes enhancement, the Download Booster promises to dramatically amp up your download speeds for large files by using both Wi-Fi and LTE.