The Galaxy S III was the top selling Android smartphones and established Samsung’s dominance within the Android market share and penetration of Apple’s hold on it. To the point where the majority of consumers were either picking up an iPhone or a Galaxy device (S III or Note II). Well, Samsung is back with the fourth rendition of its flagship Android device with the Galaxy S4 and is ready to do it again. Can Samsung improve an already great device? Will this new Galaxy outperform the latest efforts from HTC? I’ll get into the ins-and-outs of it to see if this can be your next smartphone.
Super AMOLED goes full HD and it is marvelous.
The 4th-generation Galaxy sports a 5inch HD Super AMOLED display w/ 1080p resolution + 441ppi. Samsung took things a step further from the GS III by upping the resolution to full HD. The AMOLED screen works better as a pixels hard to find to the naked eye as you still get dark blacks & bright, colorful tones – you won’t miss the accurate colors. You still get great viewing angles expect when in direct sunlight, You need the Brightness at max to see anything on the screen. Other than that, no true complaints on the GS4’s display.
The Galaxy S4 is another lightning-fast & responsive Android smartphone experience. The internals responsible for keeping it running so smoothly are a 1.9GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 CPU w/ 2GB of RAM. Mind there are a lot and I mean a lot of software features (I’ll get into to that later) that can bog down the performance as it still goes strong. Samsung gives you 16GB of internal storage (but with all of the software only gives you about 9.15GB) that is thankfully expandable up to 64GB via micro SD. So no relying strictly on the cloud for extra storage.
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| AT&T + Verizon Galaxy S4 LTE speed tests |
Between several locations in northern NJ and NYC, I got great data speeds on both AT&T and Verizon’s networks. I got the highest download speeds w/ Verizon as AT&T had better uploads. Check with your carrier’s coverage to see which one would be best for you.
Speedy with a great battery life.
Inside the GS4 keeping it powered up is a 2600 mAh battery. Like all things Samsung, it is removable and can be upgraded to an extended battery if need be – but I doubt you will have to. This is easily an all-day battery inside of the latest Galaxy. I pushed its limits by rocking out with Google Play All Access for a good 6 hours along with 2 hours worth of phone calls, and the frequently checking/responding on Twitter & Gmail to give me around over 11 hours. Sparring usage should last around almost 2 days as we tested both AT&T and Verizon models on LTE. Job well done.
Samsung was one of the few manufacturers to step up to a higher megapixel camera lens. Instead polishing up another 8MP or going to a 10MP – they opted for a 13MP rear-facing shooter. Combined with the new CPU, the GS4 warrants you lightning-fast photos. From hitting the camera button to processing your photos + videos, its damn-near instant. Back to the sensor, it is easily one of the best Android smartphone cameras out there. It produces great, crisp photos w/ bright colors low-light situations are its Achilles heel. You get noisy photos after the sensor struggles to focus as well. On the video side of things, you get great results in 1080p HD at 30fps but it would have been nice to have a built-in stabilization to help out shaky videos. Great shooter but not without flaws.
A great camera but it feels more like a strong 10MP instead of a 13MP one.
You do have a ton features & shooting modes attached to the GS4. Many of them are carried over from the Galaxy Camera software. So you now have several newly-added modes like: Eraser – remove unwanted photobombers, Drama – catch subjects in motion, Animated Photo – a GIF-creator of sorts, Sound & Shot – records a few seconds of audio along with your photo, and Dual Camera – allows you to use both the front+ rear-facing cameras at once which keeps the picture-taker in all of their photos. All to help create better photos and boost creativity within your photographs as well.
The GS4 sports the latest version of Android w/ v/ 4.2.2 underneath an updated TouchWiz UX. For the most part, it is essentially the same as on the Galaxy S III – from a visual standpoint. Of course, that is far from the case. TouchWiz now has more features than you will probably ever need or use.
Starting off with the Clock/Weather widget is more minimal but equally effective. Next up is the Notification shade, Samsung wanted to make it easier to enable/disable certain settings with just a swipe down and a tap. You have a total of 18 toggles: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, Screen Rotation, Multi Window, Screen Rotation, Airplane Mode, and more. You have the option to customize the toggles to fit your personal needs.
Air Gesture takes advantage of the GS4’s built-in motion sensor near the device’s earpiece where you can scroll up/down on a webpage by waving your hand in that direction. As seen in the commercial, you can answer your phone with just a wave as well in case your hands are dirty. You can use it by navigating through your Photo Gallery too. Effective and easy to use. Air View is an interesting spin on what they created using the Galaxy Note II + S-Pen. This feature uses your finger like the S-Pen where you can hover over icons to reveal more information. For example you can hover over emails to get the time stamp or hover over calendar to check your schedule. Very cool stuff.
“(The GS4) has more features than you will probably ever need or use.”
Smart Pause and Smart Scroll working hand-in-hand with each other as it also utilizes the GS4’s many sensors. The phone recognizes when you are looking at the display in order to follow your eyes to scroll up/down by just looking in that direction. This works as well to know when you have looked away from the screen while watching a video to know to automatically pause it. In essence, both are similar to the Smart Stay feature on the GS III. This doesn’t work all of the times so as interesting as this may sound, it may wind pissing you off at times.
Group Play is Samsung’s proprietary way to share to photos, documents, and music by turning your GS4 into a mobile hotspot to share only with other select Galaxy devices (Note 8.0, Note II, Note 10.1, & S III) for sharing. Nicely done but if you don’t know anyone with any of these devices, you can’t use it though. S Translator is Samsung’s native version of Google Translate as it works well. But it requires you to have Samsung account to use it and to note Google Translate supports 51 languages over only the 9 Samsung’s app does.
The S Health app is great approach that turns your GS4 into a fitness tracker. You can measure your steps, food intake, and calories burned during exercise. It uses a combination of a built-in pedometer and sensors that track the temperature & humidity. This is a great feature for the health conscious consumer but you can cheat with the app a bit by simply swinging your arms with the device in-hand to get more steps. The app is compatible with Bluetooth-enabled fitness equipment (like blood-pressure monitors, fitness band, etc.) for a more accurate reading.
The WatchOn app is powered by Peel and makes use of the GS4’s built-in infrared sensor on the top of the device that turns it into a universal remote. It works with your cable box, Netflix, etc to offer channel guides, recommendations, & reviews/bios courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes. Now when your remove gets stuck within the couch, you don’t have to rush to find it as your GS4 becomes your replacement.
“This is a great Android smartphone that many consumers will love.”
Samsung has crafted a beautiful and powerful Android device in the fourth iteration of their flagship Galaxy line. The company has worked hard in adding the plethora of new software features to have at your disposal. The problem is that many of them more than likely won’t be used on a regular basis. Other than that, this is a great Android smartphone that many consumers will love. And for you GS III owners who are still stuck inside of your contract, it’s nice but not enough to buy at full retail pricing. Besides,
some of the features will eventually make its way down to you guys so have no fear. While the HTC One is my personal preference and this is more of Levon’s preference, either way, you can’t lose.
This is one of top two Android devices you can buy right now. The HTC One being the other one. The pricing is the same more or less so it comes to plastic or aluminum, Ultrapixel or Megapixel, Sense or TouchWiz. That is entirely up to you.
