Samsung announced the Galaxy S4,
since the South Korean giant had to
better its very own offering, the
Galaxy S III, which not only ruled the
Android world, but also went on to
become one of the best selling
smartphones of all times.
The company unveiled the Galaxy S4
amidst much fanfare and did not
disappoint in terms of upping the
game in terms of hardware
specifications, which included an octa-
core processor and a big bright high-
definition screen. It also endowed the
phone with some unique 'smart'
features and added all sorts of sensors
and motion detection controls.
However, the phone doesn't look much
different from its predecessor; though
it fits a larger screen in an even more
compact form factor and comes with
a more refined build. Some believe
that the lack of cosmetic changes may
harm the phone's prospects. So is the
Galaxy S4 the best phone that money
can buy? Is it a worthy upgrade if you
already own a Galaxy S III? We try to
answer these and other questions.
Build/ Design
As we mentioned earlier, the Galaxy
S4 looks very similar to the Galaxy S
III. Someone may even take them for
the same phone from a distance.
However, if you compare the two at
close quarters, you'll notice that the
S4 is thinner and sleeker.
Just like its predecessor, the phone is
built from polycarbonate (read plastic)
materials and doesn't feel alluring
when compared to the likes of the
iPhone 5 and HTC One. In fact, the
plastic doesn't compare favourably
with Nokia's Lumia range either.
From the front, the Galaxy S4 is not
beveled above and below the screen
and is flatter compared to the Galaxy
S III. The phone's front panel is
surrounded by a chrome frame, which
gives a premium feel to the otherwise
staid form factor.
The phone is available in two colours -
Black Mist and White Frost, and we
got a Black Mist phone as our review
unit. The phone doesn't feel bulky and
for a device that packs in a 5-inch
screen, the Galaxy S4 feels more like
a phone and less like a phablet thanks
to its narrow frame and thinner bezel.
The front of the phone still features a
physical Home button and two
capacitive touch buttons for Menu and
Back controls. The different sensors,
front camera, notification light and
earpiece grill sit above the screen.
You see a power button on the right
side of the phone, volume rocker on
the left, a 3.5mm headset jack and
Infrared receiver on the top and
Micro-USB port at the bottom. We like
the fact that Samsung has placed the
power button on the side and not on
the top, in line with other large screen
phones.
The back of the phone features the
13-megapixel-camera lens, with the
LED flash right below it. The back still
has that pseudo textured finish on the
glossy plastic surface that attracts a
lot of fingerprints. The Indian version
of the Galaxy S4 doesn't feature the
Galaxy S4 branding at the back.
There's a small speaker outlet towards
the bottom.
The back is removable and
unfortunately you actually get to
experience how flimsy the build is
when you remove the back cover. The
SIM card, microSD card slot, NFC
module and battery are hidden inside.
Samsung has been able to please
people who advocate the use of a
removable battery and memory card
slot, but we must confess to be fans
of the unibody designs.
Display
The year 2013 has seen phone
makers like HTC and Sony offering HD
screens with their flagship
smartphones. So how could Samsung
stay behind? The Galaxy S4 comes
with a 5-inch full-HD Super AMOLED
display with a resolution of
1080x1920 pixels packing 441 pixels
per inch.
While we weren't too impressed with
the Galaxy S4's build, the moment we
turned the phone on, we were smitten
by its vibrant display. It's among the
best displays we've seen so far.
While AMOLED displays are usually
known to render a little over-
satuarated colour, Samsung offers
what it calls, Adapt Display, to
optimise colours according to ambient
light conditions. You can choose
between four manual modes
(Dynamic, Standard, Professional
Photo and Movie) and seven
automatic modes if you select the
Adapt Display option.
We found that text, images and icons
appear extremely sharp. Reading text
and browsing the web was a joyful
experience. Once you get used to an
HD display, it's hard to go back.
The display was not very reflective
and under sun visibility was great. The
viewing angles on the phone are
excellent.
While the HTC One offers more pixels
per inch on its display, we couldn't
notice much difference between the
displays of the two phones on that
front.
Software/ User Interface
The Samsung Galaxy S4 runs Android
4.2.2 Jelly Bean, the latest iteration
of the OS and TouchWiz Nature UX,
Samsung's own UI that includes
custom apps in addition to a skinned
interface.
While some people prefer stock
Android to any kind of skinning,
Samsung's TouchWiz UI has been
panned for employing big, glossy and
cartoon-like icons and menus. The
intent might be to make the UI user-
friendly, but it ends up looking
anything but pleasant. The Galaxy S4's
HD screen, however, makes it look
tolerable.
Thanks to Samsung shipping the
Galaxy S4 with Android 4.2, the phone
gets lock screen widgets. Although
these are not enabled by default,
users can place select third party
widgets, in addition to a choice
between access to their favourite apps
and camera. Users can also enable
lock screen shortcuts that allow them
to unlock directly into their respective
apps. The phone offers a choice
between the familiar Ripple effect and
the new Light effect for the unlock
animation.
The phone offers up to seven home
screens that can be populated with
widgets and app shortcuts or folders.
The pinch-in gesture lets you add or
remove home screens.
The app plus widgets drawer lets you
arrange app shortcuts as per your own
preference or alphabetically.
The drop down notification tray
features a settings shortcut and a
clear all notifications button, along
with expandable notifications
(expanded with the two finger pull
gesture). Toggles for 20 settings are
also located on the tray - which makes
it look rather silly albeit very
convenient - and you can choose to
scroll through them horizontally or
expand to get a grid of all the settings
on one screen.
One can navigate the phone through
the Back and Menu capacitive touch
buttons and the Home physical key.
The Home button on long press takes
you to the app switcher and you can
fire up the task manager, kill all apps
or access Google now through the
shortcuts offered with the task
switcher. Double pressing the Home
key launches S-Voice, Samsung's voice
assistant. Long pressing the Menu key
also launches Search.
Samsung also offers some of its pre-
loaded apps including S Planner, Voice
Recorder, ChatOn messaging app,
Samsung Apps app store, Samsung
Hub content store, Samsung Link for
transferring and syncing content to
other devices via cloud services like
Dropbox, WatchON - a universal
remote control software that also
offers program guide functionality, S
Translator, Optical Reader, S Memo, S
Health, Story Album and Group Play.
Samsung Hub is a content store that
offers video, books, games and
learning content (in the Indian
market). All content stores are
integrated in one central Samsung
Hubs app as well as available through
individual Video Player and Music
player apps.
S Health is a fitness-tracking app
where you can create your health
profile, set goals and keep count of
your workout regimen. It also detects
the ambient temperature and
humidity through the phone's built in
sensors.
The WatchOn app allows you to use
the phone's IR blaster as a universal
remote. You can configure it to work
with televisions, set top boxes, DVD
players and other AV equipment. We
were able to use it with Samsung and
Toshiba TVs and Dish TV's Zenega and
Tata Sky's HD+ set top boxes.
The S Translator supports speech to
text and text-to-text translation for
English, French, German, Chinese,
Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese
and Korean.
In our usage we found that Samsung's
voice assistant app, S Voice, works
well with Indian accents and offers
good functionality.
The Group Play feature allows you to
transfer and instantly view or play
documents, music files, photos, and
other content to other Galaxy S4
handsets with just a simple tap. All
phones need to be connected to the
same Wi-Fi network.
But the major attraction of the Galaxy
S4 is its motion and hand gesture
driven controls. The Air gestures
include Quick Glance that lets you
glance at information like missed calls,
time and unread message count when
you move your hand over the phone,
Air Jump that lets you move up and
down web pages and emails when you
move your hands, Air Browse to
essentially browse the Gallery, web
pages, music tracks and memo notes,
Air move to move icons or S planner
events with one hand while you're
holding them with the other, and even
accept calls with the wave of your
hand. Motion gestures allow you to tilt
your phone to zoom in while looking at
an image or turn over the phone to
mute while receiving a call.
The Smart screen features include
Smart Stay which keeps the screen on
as long as you're looking at it, Smart
Pause that pauses a running video
when you look away and Smart Scroll
that scrolls webpages or emails
according to the angle at which you tilt
your head or the phone.
Another similar feature is Air View
that lets you preview text inside
emails and SMS or images inside a
folder when you hover your finger
over the screen. This even works for
speed-dial contacts and for tracking
progress bars while watching videos.
It's worth pointing out that Air
gestures can track the user's hand up
to 7cm and only native apps support
them, for the time being. We might
see some developers bringing support
for these gestures in the future,
though.
In our experience of using the phone,
we observed that at times you have to
try a little longer for the gestures to
work. This might be because the
phone's sensors take time to initialise.
It does display an indicator when the
phone's ready. Features like Smart
Scroll are a hit and miss and don't
work if you're wearing spectacles.
We've said this before, the gesture
controls are gimmicky at best and
you'll probably not even remember
them after a week or two of showing
them off to your family, friends and
co-workers.
The phone also offers voice
commands for accepting and rejecting
calls, taking pictures and controlling
music. In our use we observed that it
worked intermittently.
Camera
The Galaxy S4 features a 13-
megapixel rear camera that takes
great shots in day light and artificial
light. We found that pictures clicked
with the phone had good amount of
detail and looked very close to life
with accurate colour reproduction.
While it excels at daylight shots, low-
light shots are the Galaxy S4 camera's
major weakness. Pictures come out
dark, distorted and noisy if it's dark. If
you throw in some light and use the
night mode, the camera manages to
click shots that are bester but come
out grainy and still can't match the
low-light performance of the HTC One
and the iPhone 5. That being said, the
Galaxy S4 takes much better pictures
than the HTC One in good lighting
conditions, while it matches up with
the iPhone 5, which is still one of the
best camera-phones around.
The Galaxy S4 also adds lots of new
camera tricks including Cinemagram
like Animated photo mode, an Eraser
mode to delete moving objects from 5
consecutive photos, Drama shot that
takes multiple photos of a moving
object and merges them all to denote
action, and Best face that allows
selecting the best face shot in group
photos, in addition to the usual Burst
mode that takes 20 continuous shots,
HDR mode and Panorama mode. It
also allows you to shoot through both
the front and rear lenses
simultaneously and put a stamp-sized
photo of yours in a photo that you're
clicking with the rear camera.
We believe that the new tricks would
not find much use beyond the initial
phase of the consumer's purchase but
the best face and eraser shot could be
handy at times. We've already seen
this in the Nokia Lumia phones
through the implementation of lenses.
The Galaxy S4's front camera does a
decent job when it comes to video
chats but takes grainy pictures
indoors.
The phone is capable of recording
1080p video and performs well. It
also offers video stabilisation to let
you take steady shots.
Performance/ Battery Life
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is powered by
Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa processor
which is essentially a set of two quad-
core processors- a 1.2GHz Cortex A7
quad-core processor and a 1.6GHz
Cortex A15 quad-core processor that
work together to optimise processing.
It has 2GB RAM onboard, and a
PowerVR SGX 544MP chip for
processing graphics. Our review unit
had 16GB of expandable internal
storage out of which 8.89GB was
available for our use.
With Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, the
overall experience of navigation
through the interface was extremely
impressive, thanks to Project Butter
and all the power under the hood. We
did not experience much lag except
while launching the camera app and
getting back to the home screen.
Other than that, we had no issue while
launching apps, playing games,
scrolling web pages or switching
between apps. Performance wise the
Galaxy S4 is a power horse, compared
to the other Android flagships in the
market at this point in time and even
the HTC One trails behind if one looks
at synthetic benchmarks.
The Galaxy S4 offers Chrome in
addition to the default browser. The
default browser does not offer Adobe
flash. It also offers a reader mode for
reading text heavy web pages.
We were able to play full-HD clips,
though some formats including .mov,
were not supported natively (this was
easily fixed by the use of third party
apps). The speaker outlet on the
phone delivers good quality sound at
average volume levels.
Call quality was great and the phone is
able to latch on to cellular networks
even in weak signal areas.
The phone lacks FM radio functionality
( read here why), which will surely
disappoint many, especially in our
Indian audience.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with a
2600mAh battery, and in our usage, it
lasted us a full workday. We charged
the phone in the morning (at around
9am), and with medium to heavy
usage, including 1-1.5 hours of phone
calls, two email accounts with push
notifications, playing some music,
taking some photographs, Twitter
notifications and WhatsApp chats, the
phone lasted a good 9-10 hours. It's
worth pointing out that we had turned
off Wi-Fi and auto-brightness, and the
phone was hooked to a 3G network
with the screen brightness at the
highest level. Altering these settings
might help in running the phone for a
longer duration, depending on your
usage pattern.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is undeniably
the most powerful Android
smartphone available in the market in
terms of hardware. It's got a great
camera if you discount the low-light
shots, and it runs the latest version of
Android. All this along with the
gorgeous Super-AMOLED HD screen
makes the Galaxy S4 a great package.
It's also ahead of the competition if
you consider synthetic benchmarks.
Having said that, we're not really
impressed with the sensor based
motion and air gestures that are one
of the USPs of the phone and found
them to be a gimmick to pull potential
customers and give them another
reason to pick it up over other options.
We're sure you'll not be using them
when you're in a crunch situation and
just need to get work done. In fact,
you'll be better off disabling them.
At a price of Rs. 41,500, Samsung
has priced the phone well, keeping in
consideration the pricing of some of
the recently launched flagships
including the HTC One, its direct
competitor, which, unfortunately, is
still not available in the market at the
time of writing this, despite the
company having announced it weeks
before the Galaxy S4.
We prefer the One over the Galaxy S4
when it comes to design, build quality
and the materials used in the
construction of the phone. But without
any marketing push and retail
presence, it looks like the One is
already lagging behind as far as
capturing the market is concerned.
Combine all these factors, with
Samsung's strong marketing push and
retail network, and you get a winner
as far as sales are concerned.
So should you upgrade if you already
own the Galaxy S III? Well, if you're
someone who likes owning the best
phone, no matter what, and wish to
use to a smartphone that has an HD
screen, we'd surely recommend that
you make the switch. However,
existing Galaxy S III owners are likely
to get some of the phone's software
features via an update and the sensor
based gimmicks are not really worth
it. Also, you won't notice the power
boost in day-to-day tasks. So you can
perhaps skip this one and wait for the
next generation Galaxy (or some other
better option).
If one compares the Galaxy S4 to
non-HD screen flagships, the price is a
bit steep, though. You may consider
other flagships like the Samsung
Galaxy S III, which are now available
at attractive discounts compared to
their launch price. Large screen
enthusiasts may also prefer the
Galaxy Note II.
If you're willing to look at non-Android
phones, the iPhone 5 is still the best
smartphone available in this price
range.
Price: Rs. 41,500
Samsung Galaxy S4: First look
Pros
Brilliant HD screen
Great performance
Decent battery backup
Good camera (except low-light shots)
Cons
Same old design that doesn't feel
premium
Camera is not good at taking low-light
shots
No FM radio
Major portion of internal storage taken
up by Samsung apps (read bloat-ware)
Ratings (Out of 5)
Design: 3.5
Display: 4.5
Performance: 4.5
Software: 4
Battery Life: 4
Value for Money: 4
Camera: 4
Overall: 4
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