Samsung recently has released its latest product Samsung Galaxy S4, with a more elegant design and more features than the Galaxy S3.
The phone has software features such as Air Gesture, Smart Stay, and Smart Scroll, a 13-megapixel back camera, and a 5-inch (130 mm) 1080p display. The S4 has two major versions, one featuring a quad-core Snapdragon 600 and the other featuring an Exynos 5 Octa.
let's review a bit about this smartphone
Design better looking
Dimensions: 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm (5.38 x 2.75 x 0.31 in)
Weight: 130 g (4.59 oz)
At first glance you'd have to err towards an evolution. The S3 certainly isn't a phone to show off with; not that it doesn't look rather pretty, but more because it's almost unrecognisable from its predecessor unless you look up close. This is no bad thing in our opinion as it didn't attract any unwanted attention on the train home, unlike an iPhone 5 just after its release.
Camera Features
Rear camera: 13 megapixels 1080p Full HD Video Recording @ 30fps Back-illuminated sensor, Auto focus, Touch to focus, Digital image stabilization, Face detection, Smile detection, Exposure compensation, White balance presets, Digital zoom, Geo tagging, High Dynamic Range mode (HDR), Panorama, Scenes, Effects, Self-timer, Voice activation
One of the major attractions of the S3 was the quality of its camera, and the S4 moves this on a notch, with a 13-megapixel sensor and a host of new features.
There’s Dual Shot, which uses both rear- and front-facing cameras to shoot simultaneously and combine the two images in a montage. Sound & Shot records nine seconds of audio to accompany photos, while Drama Shot captures a series of images and superimposes them on top of each other, resulting in a collage action shot.
Eraser Shot takes five images, and can remove unwanted people from pictures, and there’s also Best Face and Beauty Face – the former attempts to pick the best faces from a group of shots before superimposing them onto one image, and the latter claims to enhance facial attributes during shooting.
Front camera: 2 megapixels 1080p HD Video Recording @ 30fps Back-illuminated sensor
Hardware
The S4 GT-I9505 includes a multiband LTE transceiver and both models feature an infrared LED that can serve as a universal remote control.
Built into the 2600mAh battery is near field communication (NFC) connectivity, which allows users to perform non-touch payments at shops that employ specially equipped NFC cash registers. The SC-04E model has a FeliCa secure element, unlike other models which contain an NFC-A secure element. The NFC-A secure element on the SC-04E is provided on the SIM card. The battery can be wirelessly charged using a Qi standard special charging pad (sold separately) that utilizes magnetic resonance to produce a magnetic field through which power can be transferred.
The Galaxy S4 supports the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video format.
In addition to the touchscreen, the S4 has several physical user inputs including a home button located near the bottom of the screen, at the bottom of the S4 is the primary microphone and the microUSB port for both data connections and charging; it also supports USB host and MHL 2.0. There are volume keys on the left side and a power/lock key on the right. At the top there is a 0.14-inch (3.6 mm) headphone jack, the secondary microphone, and infrared blaster. The backside of the S4 has the 13 megapixel camera lens and LED flash, and at the bottom left edge has the loudspeaker.
The S4 also uses the same Adreno 320 GPU as the HTC One. It's a powerful chip and a huge step forward over the S3. We hit 50fps in the recent 3Dmark Ice Storm test, and managed almost 30fps in the far tougher Extreme version of the same test. We doubt anyone will make an Android game in the near future that will trouble this hardware overly.
Processor
1.9 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 8064T quad-core (or Samsung Exynos 5 1.6 GHz octa-core in some overseas markets)
With a processor similar to the previous smartphone products, Samsung is consistent with the android operating system better.
Connectivity
Connectivity on the Samsung Galaxy S4 is well catered for, thanks to simply packing every kind of sensor under the sun in there. For instance, you've got low power Bluetooth (Bluetooth 4.0) which means you can connect to a wide range of sensors - like trainers - and have them send back up data without taking up loads of power and sucking the battery dry.
As you can imagine, S Beam and NFC are both present and correct on the Samsung Galaxy S4, with both working well in tandem to nab stuff off other phones which you've tapped the back of.
It uses a Wi-Fi Direct connection to make it easier to send items from A to B, and does do very speedily indeed. It might look odd, but we still believe massively in the power of NFC thanks to the plethora of speaker docks and headphones that now use it for easier Bluetooth pairing.
GPS and GLONASS are on board, as we mentioned above in the Maps section of the review, and combined offer a startlingly quick location time when firing up the mapping services. Seriously quick – we urge you to try it.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 supports all manner of Wi-Fi connections, and can hang on to the signal even when weak thanks to dual-channel bonding to preserve the data transfer.
We can't say that we noticed much of an upgrade over other models, but then again that's not bad thing as most of the top end smartphones will now manage to offer decent Wi-Fi connections given they're so crucial to the running of the phone.
Battery life
- 2600 mAh Standard Battery
- Up to 8 Hours Internet Usage Time (3G)
- Up to 10 Hours Usage Time Internet (WI-FI)
- Up to 11 Hour Video Playback Time
- Up to 62 Hours Audio Playback Time
- 2600 mAh battery
- USB Chargeable
- Up to 17 Hours Talk Time (W-CDMA)
- Up to 370 Hours Standby Time (W-CDMA)
If you can't be bothered to read why, just understand that Galaxy S4 = good battery life.
For one person the Galaxy S4 is a treasured beast, only brought out into the dappled light to check emails manually once an hour for most of the day. For the next it's an all-powerful media beast, one that will be streaming movies over a 4G connection while auto-updating every app under the sun.
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