Heaven knows what The Verge would have rated the S5 if the fingerprint sensor actually worked, or if the system wasn't a "confusing mess".

This is a theme with the S5. Samsung says it refined its focus, but that's not really true: there are still too many features, too many options, too many weird ideas about how we want to use our phones. It's just all been tossed in a pile, thrown under a blanket, and swept into the corner where we hopefully won't notice. The S5's settings menu is 61 items long, and shows by default a grid of all-but-identical circular icons. Good luck with that.

The notification pull-down menu has 20 different options, from Airplane Mode to Toolbox (which toggles a button that toggles a list of apps you might want to open, which is not to be confused with the multitasking view or the multi-window view or the app drawer). And for all the "simplification," there are still 27 options in the camera menu. Samsung's latest version of TouchWiz is layered on top of Android 4.4.2, and it's a lot more cohesive in appearance than before, but it's still little more than a junkyard full of 11 ways to do the same thing you’ll never ever want to do. Samsung says all the right things about cleaning up and simplifying the experience, but the S5 bears few of the fruits of those promises.

Imagine if they'd thought iOS 7 to be a pile of mind-boggling options, and then ask yourself if you can imagine them rating the iPhone 5S this highly. No, me neither.