Samsung Galaxy S 4 hands-on

Taking 2012 by storm, Samsung catapulted all the way to the top last year, as the Korean based company delivered timeless devices over and over again with little pause for its rivals to combat its insatiable appetite. Claiming victory while looking down from the pinnacle of the mountain, Samsung as a whole transformed from being a competitor trying to emerge from a heap of hard rollers, to the one taking ownership of the crown in the smartphone kingdom. Today marks yet another triumphant push forward in retaining that prestigious crown, seeing that the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S IV just became official-official.

From a hardware standpoint, it doesn’t particularly come off so farfetched over other recent entrants in the Android space, but rather, it’s the incremental improvements in the experience that’s the focal point for this flagship. Are we disappointed by this shocking revelation? To an extent, yes, but that doesn’t mean that we should quickly look the other way – so let’s see if it can still make us salivate with anticipation.


We’re not going to cover this portion as extensively as some of you would like. Why’s that you ask? Frankly, there isn’t a drastic redesign seen with the Galaxy S IV. Indeed, some of you will be bummed by this known fact, especially when you take into consideration that good looking designs are what people take notice first with most things. Strutting the familiar design style of its processor, the appearance, choice of materials, and build quality of Samsung Galaxy S IV remains largely the same.

While metal bodies melt our hearts, plastic ones don’t normally get the same kind of love. We can’t say we’re totally going gaga over this plastic chassis, which is strangely is more prone to smudges and fingerprints than before, but we do appreciate the subtle sprinkling of a new premium element on its body – a brushed metallic bezel outlining. Beyond that, it’s indistinguishably a “Galaxy” smartphone, recycling some of its predecessor’s design choices.

Around the handset’s trim, we’re greeted to the same set of ports and buttons – these consist of its power button, volume control, 3.5mm headset jack, mic, noise-cancelling mic, and microUSB port. Just like before, the Galaxy S IV relies on the same MHL adapter to gain video-out functionality. However, they’re kind enough to discretely incorporate an IR blaster into the power button, which turns it into a universal remote. As for cameras, it’s carrying along a 2-megapixel front-facing one and a monster 13-megapixel rear snapper that shoots 1080ps videos. Thankfully, we’re given the conveniences of having a removable 2600 mAh battery and a microSD slot. Not surprisingly, the handset is going to be available in 16, 32, and 64GB capacities – with your choice of selecting it in either white frost or black mist.

No doubt we would’ve like to see something on a grander scale, but there’s consolation in the way Sammy has maintained the handset’s figure over its predecessor. We know it’s donning a larger 5-inch Full HD Super AMOLED Display, but remarkably enough, we’re most impressed by how they’ve kept its size the same. At 136.6mm x 69.8mm x 7.9mm in size, not only does it improve over the Galaxy S III’s already svelte figure, but it bests even some of the other recent heavy hitters new to the Android space – like the stylish HTC One. So yeah, it’s super thin and surprisingly easy to handle for something bearing a 5-inch screen!

On top of that, did we mention its weight is almost unrecognizable as we hold it, since it’s only at 130 grams? Overall, it might lack the stylish nature that we crave in getting our eyes affixed on it from afar, but at least they’ve been able to make the necessary iterative improvements in its size.


Oh joy! Needless to say, Sammy’s Note II showed us what the company is willing to experiment with in terms of screen sizes, but we get the feeling that they’re trying to do the same here. On paper, its 5-inch Full HD (1080p) Super AMOLED display pushes the envelope in making it phablet-like, but for some strange reason, we’re not as mesmerized with this display. We know what we were dreaming about in our sleep, you know, those flexible OLED displays and whatnot, but there’s nothing of the kind here on the Galaxy S IV. Rather, it’s the same Super AMOLED display that our eyes have been feasting on for a while now – with the exception that this is the first one to sport full HD resolution (1080 x 1920). Doing the math, its display produces a pixel density of 441 ppi, which is undeniably up there, but it doesn’t break any new ground. In comparison, the HTC One’s display delivers a slightly higher pixel density of 468 ppi.

Honestly though, it’s still detailed enough, to the point that most people would hardly tell the difference. And just like before, this display on the Galaxy S IV packs all of the lovable qualities we appreciate about Super AMOLED displays – like its iridescent color tones, wide viewing angles, and overall wow factor. Interestingly enough, it’s pretty impressive how they continue to chop down on the screen’s bezel, which translates over in giving the handset a skinny frame.

Although it’s not something that’s seen initially from a cursory glance, Sammy throws in one enticing new feature to the display that brings forth some useful functions. Remember how you can hover over things with the Note II’s S-Pen? Well folks, we have the same functionality here! However, instead of relying on a stylus, it’s done with nothing more than our fingers! With our finger hovering around 1 to 2 centimeters from the display, it’s able to register our finger’s movement. Quite frankly, it works rather well and it’s very accurate too, but we’ll explain more of the neat implementations of the feature later.

Sure, the design of the smartphone is rather underwhelming, and you’re probably thinking that there is little new with the experience, but that’s far from the truth. On the surface, the handset is running its bread and butter TouchWiz Nature UX interface on top of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Grazing over the homescreen, it’s undeniably TouchWiz that we’re dealing with here, which sadly still appears too cartoonish for our tastes. Just like before, the UI is inspired by nature, which is evidenced by the new droplet tone that’s played as we touch something on the screen, but beyond that, some people are going to be hard pressed to believe that this is an updated experience. So what’s new? Honestly, there’s a lot of surprises that ultimately tells us that it’s the experience that takes the most prominence with this device. Essentially, Sammy breaks it all down to four categories – fun, relationship, life task, and life share.

Let’s talk about the “fun” aspect of the Galaxy S IV, which is mainly directed at its insane, yet engaging new camera features.




Secondly, there’s the relationship aspect of the interface. In this category, it’s all about social interaction with the Galaxy S IV, so here’s the quick list of what’s new.



Third on the list is life task, which is without question where we see the greatest improvement in the experience. Thinking back to the Galaxy S III last year, it wowed us with cool features like S-Voice, Air View, Smart Stay, Pop up Play, and many others. This time around, however, they’ve splashed a little bit of Note to it. Let’s take a look shall we?




And finally, we come to the fourth aspect with the new experience – life care. Apparently, Samsung wants to keep its users healthy by providing them with tangible health oriented information. Some of you are probably aware about the various fitness accessories out there, like the Fitbit, Nike Fuel band, or the Jawbone Up band, but Samsung has integrated many of the features in those specialized accessories into the Galaxy S IV.


On one hand, we had such an immense amount of expectations for the Samsung Galaxy S IV, especially knowing that its predecessor seemingly set the bar high for many Android smartphones after it. What’s clear though, is that the design isn’t captivating enough to make it more prized than say, the HTC One. Regardless of that, Samsung has chosen instead to play its hot cards in the experience portion of the smartphone. As we’ve clearly seen, they’ve brought forth some considerable new features to the UI to widen the gap between its rivals.

Sensing some hesitation, there’s one piece of the puzzle that was left largely as a mystery to us. When asking about what’s powering this beauty under the hood, the Samsung folks weren’t as forthright in mentioning the details. Rather, they mention that depending on the market where it’s released, it’ll be running either its own home grown Exynos Octa 5 processor or a quad-core processor. Lacking some substance, it’s a safe presumption to say that the international version of the smartphone will be packing the Octa 5 chip – whereas the US versions will unceremoniously feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 SoC, which will undoubtedly give the handset LTE connectivity. With the units we checked out, it’s unclear what exact chips they were packing, and for the most part, their performances were swift with most tasks. However, they weren’t without some faults, as some meddling instances of choppiness intruded some processes – though, we’re reminded these are pre-production units

And finally, its pricing is still relatively unknown at the moment, but in this day and age, it’s pretty much a safe bet to assume that it’s going to land at $200 with a 2-year contract. Now that the cat is out of the bag, it makes for some interesting choices for many people who are fighting an internal struggle on which device to pick up next. Spending some decent alone time with this handset, the miniscule design changes don’t necessarily give it enough of an appeal to make it more attractive over the HTC One, but then again, the considerable improvements in the software experience merit enough recognition on its own. Also, some people will appreciate the fact that it has a removable battery and microSD card slot – two things that are increasingly becoming rare amongst top-tiered devices for some reason. At the end of the day, is this really the next big thing? To tell you the truth, we’re a bit skeptical about it. Knowing that we’re still in the early portion of 2013, we can foresee Sammy with another ace up its sleeve down.