With the Galaxy S3 proving to be such a success, Samsung hasn’t changed the design of Galaxy S4. The rounded edges and lozenge-shaped home button at the bottom of the phone are all instantly recognizable. The new Galaxy S4 has a polycarbonate case, but it’s now slimmer (7.9mm) and lighter (130g) than S3. Two versions of the phone will be available: Black Mist and White Frost.
Talking about the display of Galaxy S4, it has a 5 inch Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) Super AMOLED screen. That’s a stunning 441ppi, making this one of the highest-density phones that we’ve seen. Samsung’s Super AMOLED technology is power efficient, helping to save battery life.Samsung has added a number of new features to its display i.e. Air View and Air Gesture. Air View lets you hover over content, such as an email or photo, to preview it without having to open it. Air Gesture, lets you change tracks, scroll through a web page or answer a call with the wave of your hand. Gorilla Glass 3 helps make the phone durable, although it is still recommended to use a screen protector or case if you’re going to keep your phone in a pocket with sharp items, such as keys.
Samsung hasn’t let us down with the Galaxy S4 camera, with a 13-megapixel rear camera, complete with Flash and a high-speed shutter mode. At the front is a 2-megapixel camera. The front camera also serves a purpose in controlling the phone with Smart Pause. This technology knows when you’re looking at the screen so it can, for example, pause a video when you turn your head and look away. As soon as you look back, the video continues. It’s a neat way of using the cameras for more than just still images and video.
The new Galaxy S4 will be available with two different types of processor, depending on where you are in the world. There was much hype before the launch about the new 1.6GHz Octa-Core Samsung Exynos 5 chip. The new chip’s eight-core design is based on ARM’s big. LITTLE architecture. This means that there are four powerful Cortex-A15 cores for the phone’s most power-hungry functions, and four lower-power Cortex-A7 models to take care of simpler tasks. When the phone isn’t needed to do anything fancy, the more powerful cores shut down, extending battery life.
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However, at the launch Samsung confirmed that the UK version of the phone will have a measly four cores. The good news is that the UK S4’s Snapdragon 600 chipset will run at a faster 1.9GHz, which will hopefully go some way to making up for the cores shortfall.
Speaking of battery life, the new handset will use a 2,600mAh battery. That’s 500mAh bigger than the one in the S3 and should be big enough to cope with the slightly-enlarged screen, and the greater demands of 4G, while still running all day. For use at home there’s also better Wi-Fi support, with the new 802.11ac standard supported. We’ve seen this networking standard deliver speeds well over 200Mbit/s, so using super-fast broadband speeds on your phone at home is going to easy. NFC makes an appearance, so the phone will be compatible with Google Wallet, so you can pay for goods in compatible shops using just your phone. It will also support Visa’s payWave, widening the choice and range of places that you can shop in.
In addition, Samsung showed some other ways that NFC can be used. One of the most different was Group Play. By tapping your Samsung Galaxy S4 to another one, you can share music and pictures. Samsung has also promised that the technology will support multi-player gaming and it’s opening up the SDK to encourage other companies to develop for it.
No great surprises on the storage front, with 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models announced. However, it’s good to see that there’s still a microSD card slot, so you can add up to 64GB of storage. Depending on the prices, it may even work out cheaper to buy a lower capacity model and then upgrade it when you need to with a memory card.
With fitness accessories apps being big business, Samsung clearly doesn’t want to miss out and has launched S Health with the Galaxy S4. Using your phone a variety of accessories, you’ll be able to measure your weight and health.The new S4 also includes a number of new features. If all of that wasn’t enough, the Galaxy S4 also has an IR transmitter, which you can use to control your home entertainment kit via the WatchOn app. There’s also S Voice Drive, which puts up a simpler interface for when you’re driving and recognizes voice prompts. Finally, when you’re abroad the translation services let you type in a message and have the phone read it out in a different language; the spoken reply is then converted back into your language on the screen.