Samsung Galaxy S4 Specs: Advantages and Disadvantages

Finally the monster has been released to public. The successor of the Galaxy series samsung Galaxy S4 is definitely the most anticipate mobile phone by public considering of the most success Samsung Galaxy S3 in the history. The launch of the Samsung Galaxy S4 was one of the most anticipated technology events in recent memory and it seems the smartphone will be able to live to the hype.

Super AMOLED fans will fall in love with the screen. Actually, the 5" 1080p Super AMOLED should impress everyone - contrast, viewing angles and sunlight legibility are top notch. And you can turn down the saturation if it bugs you so much. What's even more amazing is that Samsung managed to squeeze the Galaxy S4 in a smaller body than the Galaxy S III and even the HTC One, both of which have smaller screens and batteries. And that's without sacrificing the user-removable battery and microSD card slot.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Specs

General: Quad-band 2G/quad-band 3G/Optional LTE connectivity
Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
Dimensions: 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm, 130 g
Display: 4.99" 16M-color Super AMOLED HD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (441ppi)
Chipset: Exynos 5410 Octa / Snapdragon 600
CPU: 1.6 GHz Quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 / 1.9GHz Krait 300
GPU: PowerVR SGX 544MP3 / Adreno 320
RAM: 2GB
OS: Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)
Memory: 16/32GB/64GB storage, microSD card slot
Still camera: 13 megapixel auto-focus camera, face detection, touch focus and image stabilization, Dual Shot, Cinema Photo; 2MP front facing camera, video-calls
Video camera: Full HD (1080p) video recording at 30fps
Connectivity: Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, standard microUSB port with MHL features (TV Out, USB host), GPS receiver with A-GPS and GLONASS, 3.5mm audio jack, NFC, Infrared port
Battery: 2600 mAh
Misc: TouchWiz UI, Impressively rich video/audio codec support, built-in accelerometer, Smart stay and Smart rotation eye-tracking, Smart pause, Smart scroll, S Health, Air Gestures, humidity sensor, temperature sensor

The Main Advatanges

The Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with a number of advanced features and apps that are exclusive for now, but will make their way to older devices via updates. One of the coolest apps is called Group Play. It shares various multimedia across multiple devices in the same room but unlike DLNA it's interactive.

Group Play
One use case is to play a music track on the Samsung Galaxy S4 and use multiple phones as speakers. You can pick the role of each phone (e.g. left channel, right, all the way up to surround sound). This way you can control the music from one phone but use the loudspeakers of all.

Multiple phones turn into a multi-channel audio system
Of course, the other phones will need to support Group Play - the phones communicate over Wi-Fi (your Galaxy S4 becomes a hotspot that others connect to) and the pairing is done via NFC.
More useful are the options to share a picture or a document - you can have the same picture appear on everyone's phone and you can draw over it if you need to highlight a certain element of the image.

Sharing a photo and drawing over it
Finally, perhaps the coolest feature of Group Play is that it allows for multiplayer games to be played on several phones simultaneously. Of course, only supported games work - there was a poker and puzzle games preloaded on our unit with Asphalt7 and Gun Bros offered as other games that support Group Play multiplayer.

Group Play enables multiplayer games
Moving on, there's S-Link, another way to share content between devices. Unlike Group Play, S-Link is intended for personal use. You can link the phone to a computer that is synced with Dropbox, SkyDrive or SugarSync and remotely access content on that device.
 
S Link lets you access content from your computer remotely
Then there's S Voice - it has all the features we're already familiar with, but also comes with a car mode that simplifies the interface and makes text bigger. S Voice can be used to initiate a call, dictate text, play music, open an app, change a setting, make a memo (including voice memo), add a reminder, schedule an event, set an alarm or timer, check the weather, do a search on the internet, look for local listings (e.g. nearby restaurants) and even get an answer to a question.
 
S Voice has a car mode, plenty of features
S Voice does duplicate parts of Google Now, but it adds a lot of new functionality (it even has more features than Siri). Some of these features are available outside of S Voice too, so you can set the Galaxy S4 to answer a call or snooze an alarm by voice commands even when S Voice isn't running. The problem with S Voice is not nearly as fast or as accurate at recognizing your speech input as Now.
S Translator will help travelers - it can translate between two languages using either typed text or by using speech recognition. It can read out the resulting translation too, if you don't thing your Korean accent can cut it. S Translator supports all the widely-spoken languages - English, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and, of course, Korean.
 
S Translator can be invaluable when traveling
This app can work together with Photo Reader, which employs Optical Character Recognition so you can just snap a photo of the text instead of having to type it in (which can be quite a challenge, imagine typing Chinese if you've never studied it).

Photo Reader can read the text for you and sent it to S Translator
On our Samsung Galaxy S4 unit, the Cento OnTV was the one that works with the built-in IR emitter on the top of the phone. The app starts out by asking your zip code and pulls up a number of TV service providers in that area.

This is so that the app can show you a TV guide with shows currently on or upcoming on the channels offered by the service provider. You can read a description of the show, check out its popularity in up/down votes (and vote yourself, of course) and comments. You can also set a reminder for a show.
Anyway, the key element of the app is the IR remote control functionality. The app can control TVs, DVD and Blu-ray players, streaming media players and air conditioners. Devices are organized by rooms.
 
Adding a new room and a new device
One thing we really liked about the app is that it knows some home setups are messy - some let you change channels with the TV remote, others require you to use the set-top box remote for that. Same for the audio, you might be using the TV to output the sound or an AV receiver. The app will ask about your setup and present a unified remote control interface even if you have multiple hardware remotes to control all the devices.

13 megapixel auto-focus camera
We do like what Samsung has done with the Galaxy S4 camera, too - powerful features hide behind one of the simplest UIs yet. The Galaxy S4 packs the best ideas of several competing flagships into one, we'll spend more time on those later. For now let's just say the image quality looks promising.

The Battery: 2600 mAh
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is about the same size and weight as the Galaxy S III, except that the new model is slightly thinner. Even so, the battery capacity has increased by 500mAh to a nicely sounding 2,600mAh total.

Here is the battery result test done by GSMarena

Main Disadvantages

Design and handling
The Samsung Galaxy S4 design is the part that has changed the least compared to the Galaxy S III. The smartphone uses the same Hyperglazed finish, on account of which the predecessor was bashed for feeling like a plastic toy rather than a flagship proper. And the Galaxy S4 will most likely receive the same criticism. After all, it doesn't come anywhere near the premium feel of a Sony Xperia Z, let alone the HTC One.

Water and Dust Resistance
The Samsung Galaxy S4 come out without any new features of body resistance  It doesn't offer what the Xperia Z offer. From this we should be careful when we hold the device in order to hit the into the water.

Posted in: Reviews,Samsung,Samsung Galaxy SIV