Manufacturer refurbished are perfectly fine, as they use OEM replacement parts for repairs, but the other refurbishments mostly available are not reliable, as they repair using non OEM replacement parts. So the phone may come with a non original replacement display, camera etc which will distort its performance.
Every phone camera has its limitations under certain conditions, but S5 has very good camera overall IMHO, if used properly. It has a lot more pros than cons, so its perfectly acceptable. Auto settings are not always right, which is why they have manual mode.
Minimum recommended distance for close up macro shots is atleast 4-6 inches. But many other phones also struggle with macros too. Using tap to focus helps.
Using "Tap to focus" adjusts exposure settings very correctly according to where the camera is focused, but still sometimes dynamic range is out, which is usually corrected by using HDR.
Using "tap to take pics" feature helps a lot in correctly focusing and adjusting exposure settings according to focus point and i mostly use that.
Moreover, there are manual settings "metering modes" that also help a lot in exposure related issues.
Great info you provided earlier, they are the solution to 99% issues of Android.
I9505 was better than I9500, but I9500 was not bad either. People thought I9500 octa core was faster, but in reality it was on big.LITTLE architecture, which was slower in responsiveness.
