The Samsung galaxy S4 is much more than an iterative update; with an improved camera, better connections with others, and health and wellbeing improvement apps, it simply makes life easier. First of all the screen has jumped from 4.8 inches and 1280 x 720 resolution to five inches and 1920 x 1080 while the S III’s quad-core 1.4GHz chip has been replaced by a Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600 SoC with four Krait 300 cores clocked at 1.9GHz. It also has 2GB of RAM, Android 4.2. That chipset makes the S4 the most powerful Smartphone on sale today.
Design /Display
The S4 brings an integrated feel to things while improving nearly every spec on offer. The outside is still plastic, but harks back to the mesh design. Colour wise you have a choice of ‘white frost’ and ‘black mist’, which adorn the device, which runs in with dimensions of 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm. The polycarbonate chassis is still in use, much sturdier and has a more premium build, creating a larger screen, but smaller chassis. The home button is roughly the same size and the same menu and back buttons remain from the prequel. The S4 is thinner than its predecessor. The S4’s Pentile-matrix 441dpi “Super AMOLED” OLED display with a Gorilla Glass 3.0 gives the S4 a tough face. The S4 is 3g lighter, 0.8mm narrower and, at 7.9mm, 0.7mm, thinner than the S III.
Interface
Samsung has added some clever upgrades to its innovation, for instance, the lock screen doesn’t have the water rippling any more, but does register your finger from up to two centimetres away, so a little beam of light will follow your digit as you unlock. The dock at the bottom of the display pervades, and there are more widgets to play with. With the Galaxy S4 running on android jelly bean 4.2.2 you’ve now got an addition in the notifications bar of a toggle in the top-right hand corner where you can turn on and off pretty much anything. About other features:
Smart Stay will track your eyes to tell if you’re looking at the screen.
Smart Pause will note if your gaze leaves the screen and will put the video on hold, and Smart Scroll will check when you’re reading a web page and scroll up and down as you tilt the device.
Smart Voice hasn’t been upgraded beyond improving the accuracy of the voice recognition and Driving Mode.
Smart Alert has been upgraded: now it’s joined by Air Gestures, which allow you to swipe the phone without touching the screen.
You can flip through pictures or music tracks, flick to the top of a list by wiping upwards on the screen.
Air Call Accept starts calls; it accepts a call without touching the screen.
The settings menu has also been changed to split into four sections, making it easier to play around with connections, your device settings, accounts for social networks or syncing accounts and more, for the likes of device information.
Messaging
The stock keyboard on the Galaxy S3 has now been replaced with Android’s best keyboard around: Swiftkey 4, which brings Flow for swiping out your words on top of the impossibly good prediction engine – the same algorithm that’s been partly used for the all new BlackBerry 10 keyboard.
Media / Storage
The video hub now contains both personal and downloaded content in one place. AllShare Cast is included as well, powering up the ability to stream to and from other devices.
Galaxy S4 can send content from the phone to a TV and receive from a PC in your home network. Another feature is mirroring, where you can send whatever is on the screen of your Galaxy S4 and have it show on a larger display, either through connecting your phone using a MHL lead or an AllShare Cast dongle / compatible Samsung TV.
Internal storage is available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, plus up to 64GB through a microSD card as well.
Camera
The Samsung Galaxy S4 camera is a step up from its predecessor, with a 13MP sensor on the back, which now has to bulge slightly from the chassis. You can get excellent low-light snaps from the S4. Cinema and Erase Mode are also available. Eraser mode works extremely well by noting an unwanted object moving in the background and erasing it by drawing a pink outline around said object and letting you delete. Cinema mode lets you shoot a short video and choose the part to keep static. You also get a 2MP camera on the front of the phone for some decent personal snaps – plus you can also get HD video recording too. The main camera has had a pixel count boost from 8Mp to 13Mp, while the webcam has been given a smaller bump from 1.9Mp to 2.0Mp.
Battery
Samsung has managed to lower the thickness of the Galaxy S4 compared to the S3 but upgraded the battery from 2,100mAh to 2,600mAh, promising a much larger capacity and therefore longer life. However, with all those extra pixels (1080 x 1920) to drive and more cores it is unclear if there would actually be a notable difference. The battery is still removable.
App and other Features
Samsung Galaxy S4, offer new features and elements like a more refined method of buying media to a dedicated S Health application. S Health is an interesting proposition too – it’s clearly taking the idea of wearable technology from Nike+ and FitBit and rolling it into its own ecosystem. The application is large and wide-ranging though – from a large database of food and drink you can tap into and note what kind of calorie intake you’re rocking, to a an app that lets you note how many steps you’ve taken that day (using the phone’s accelerometer / gyroscope as a pedometer) – and it can even tell when you’re running or walking. Obviously this gives Samsung the chance to pop out an official accessory as well, and with that they have a new Wireless Charging Pad. Samsung has also made the Galaxy S4 all wireless compatible using the Qi standard.
