Hello everyone. So here we are with our Samsung Galaxy S4 review.
We've spent quite a lot of time with the Galaxy S4 this isn't a first blush review by any
stretch of the imagination.
Quite a lot of time and effort has gone into using the S4 in lots of different situations
and really taking a good look at what Samsung are bringing us.
So first off spec wise,
this is by far the most powerful smartphone ever created.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor is backed up with great GPU,
a 1080p 5in display, 2 gig of system ram...
it flies. Let's face it, this is the fastest smartphone ever created.
But it's let down in a few areas which we'll come on to during the review. Now,
first off, the style of the Samsung Galaxy S4
is striking
but maybe not the most progressive of designs we've ever seen.
Certainly when placed against something like an HTC 1
this does look a little bit out of date, let's say, a little bit too close to the Galaxy S3
and the Note 2 with only
really minor updates to the general look and feel of the hardware.
However, one massive change that Samsung have made is the in-the-hand feel.
Now, the Galaxy S4 feels great.
And I mean really great in the hand.
With the Note 2 and the S3
at times you could feel your finger starting to strain a little bit
because of the kind of
curved back wasn't quite as curved as it could be.
And now, though,
the feel certainly in my hands is very very good. The weighting as well has been distributed
much better so at no point do you quite feel the device is tipping.
You know, top end or bottom end
the way they did with the S3 and Note 2.
A much much more solid feel in my hand.
But that said,
the continued use of these plastics
polycarbonates as it were
on the Galaxy S4
does make you feel that the device is little bit cheap. It
feels like a Nokia Lumia
Actually no, that might be a bit unfair to a Nokia Lumia because the Lumias
actually feel quite good.
This does feel shiny
and plasticky and a little bit nasty
which is a shame because the weight is brilliant,
in the hand feel is perfect, you know, it's comfortable to use
but it just feels a little bit plasticky and cheap which is such a shame.
Maybe Samsung could look at doing something different in future
rumours have it they won't.
And that plastic, these polycarbonates is where they stand.
We can argue all day long which is better - aluminium, polycarbonate, again
this is one of those personal choice moments.
If you're someone who wants aluminium, you feel that gives you more durability
then the S4 is not going to be for you.
If you're someone who's willing to trade off the polycarbonate for the replaceable battery and
more spec
for your money
then the S4 may very well be a good choice.
And these are really the choices we have to make,
It's aluminium and
less spec for our money
no removable battery
or polycarbonate plastics
removable battery
and a higher clock
and higher spec overall.
So, we have our trade off.
I won't comment on which is better. My personal feeling is I like removable
batteries and that probably answers the question.
So, on the software side of things. Samsung have thrown everything in the kitchen
sink into the Galaxy S4.
You've got everything from an
optical character recognition system which can also do translations
so you can point it at an object which has text on it
and it will translate that text in real time for you
either into English or into other languages.
Quite cool.
You've got things like
S Voice which I still wish Samsung would dump!
It's not a patch on Google Now,
S Translator, S Planner and S Memo.
S Translator being one of the new items which allows for
near real-time translation between two languages
so if you're travelling into a foreign country or something
or you meet somebody from a foreign country and you're having trouble having that conversation
you can use S Translator to assist you.
For the most part it works well.
It does require you to speak fairly slowly
and quite deliberately
but it gets there in the end.
S Health though, is
by far the
shining example on the S4
and it makes you wonder why all of Samsung's apps can't be of this quality.
With the S Health app
it tracks your day-to-day life.
It monitors how many calories you've burned
how much weight you've gained
and helps you stay fit and healthy.
And as you can see the app is beautifully designed.
I mean in comparison to some of the other Samsung apps it's like they've got somebody
else to build this for them.
It's beautiful and
just a quick note there you can just see
for a second there there was some interface lag which I'm going to talk about in a little bit.
There does seem to be some problems with interface lag but
just back to the S Health app it's phenomenal,
maybe not the reason to buy the S4 in its own right
but if you're a fitness fanatic or if you're someone who's looking to get fit,
the S Health app might be a tipping point compared to other handsets on the market.
S Memo and S Planner are unchanged from the previous editions, they've been given a few tweaks
here and there
but the basic functionality is still the same.
If you use them on the S3 or on the Note 2
effectively these are Samsung's versions of a note taking app and a calendar app.
I'm afraid to say Google does it better.
No lies there, Google does it better and with better integration. The problem I always found with
S Planner is
it very rarely seems to automatically update my calendar yet Google always manages absolutely fine.
For some reason it just doesn't work with the syncing reliably.
Samsung Link is the new name for the Allcast and Share application I believe.
This allows you to link up multiple different devices including PCs and
other phones
and share information wirelessly between them.
They work quite well in practice. We were able to pull graphics and video footage from a local PC
over wifi and display them on the S4 with
very little time delay and
it all felt very fluid and easy to use.
However it was quite a chore setting up the Samsung software on the PC.
It took several attempts, a few reboots and a bit of magic
possibly some Google actually and eventually Samsung's website and servers
recognised the computer.
It was strange, we couldn't work out exactly why it wasn't working
it just seemed to be a bit glitchy.
Next up is kind of the applications that Samsung have pre-installed for us
yea, Samsung thank you, from third parties.
This includes Tripadvisor, Dailymotion
and Watch On which is kind of a Samsung app but they've licensed it from a company.
Tripadvisor as you know is Tripadvisor, let's not
bother going into any detail in that. You can remove it if you'd like to.
Watch On however is a slightly different beast.
What you do
is you set this up with some basic information about
you and where you live.
Once it has that information it will then
profile your TV as it were within the local area
so if you have regional television or national television etcetera.
And from there
it will allow you to pick what types of shows you enjoy watching.
It will then make suggestions to you about what shows you might like to watch
and if you want to watch the show you
simply tap the show's name
and the infra red port on here will automatically change the channel for you
to the correct channel.
Likewise, you can set up all of your audio video equipment in here
and by doing so you can then control your television your audio video equipment
Blu-ray player,
all from your smartphone.
For me, that is a bit of a killer feature and it kinds of puts the S4 heads and shoulders above
any of the other smartphones out there.
It's a very nice implementation, I would have preferred an
application built solely by Samsung because this one is a bit ugly in places
and feels well
not very modern
and not very Google, Androidy, Holoey
which is a shame because it's a great app let down by its rather lacklustre GUI.
Samsung have also seen fit to put their own app store on there
which is not as good as the Play Store but
it has a reasonable attempt.
There's a few design language issues with the Samsung store which are just baffling
considering it was updated specially for the Galaxy S4 yet the banner images at the top don't stretch
all the way across the screen, they appear to only be 720p.
A few little things like that that kind of just make you say
well that was a nice attempt Samsung but your polish and your finishing off leaves a
lot to be desired.
The standard Google apps are all included as well, so
you'll find Gmail here. You'll find Google Chrome, Google Maps
play music play movies play books
all of the usual things you would expect on any Android device is here.
Samsung have also seen fit to include their video app and a few
other little bits and pieces.
They're pretty much a muchness
and whilst they work very very well
they're not going to set the world on fire and they're not going to be a reason on their own for anyone to actually buy this device.
What Samsung have kind of done really is improve the sensors remarkably
in the Galaxy S4. There's a lot more sensors, including things like barometers
temperature gauges
tilt control, gyroscopes it's all available in here
and also things like Smart Scroll, Smart Stay
Air Gestures and Air View
and these are all something you can tweak in the settings.
Once you've got them tweaked and turned on
they allow you to interact with the device in new ways. So one of those is to be able to
pick up an icon
and then instead of having to try and move the icon to the edges of the screen
you can simply wave your hand over one of the sensors, oops, go the right way
and then drop the icon where you'd like.
So there I've dropped it there. If I press and hold
and flick
you can see I'm moving across the entire screen
but I've only had to press and hold one icon.
and I'm then able to move.
And this works in quite a few different applications including things like the app drawer.
It works well,
it doesn't work reliably all of the time, some of the features using the S Sensor
the S Camera sensor etcetera, things like the S View and the Smart Stay and all of that,
don't work brilliantly in low light. It has to be able to see your face.
And for instance the one that allows you to
scroll up and down in the web browser only works with the Android browser
and not with the Chrome browser.
So there's a few things there which are kind of like, well all right great. You've got this brilliant
feature here
now enable it for every single application going.
It's not like this is the first time we had some of this software appearing on the Samsung devices.
They've not really moved the promise
forward yet in my opinion.
Just having stuff locked down to the defaults, a bit like having the
.
multi window option
enabled, multi window by default only works with
stuff that Samsung have
predefined
which is not much good if those aren't the apps you kind of want to use
with multi window. Multi window allows you to
have two applications on screen
at the same time
which is cool
we like that idea
but it would be nice if it could be two different applications at the same time
just picked
from your app tray.
So overall we really like the Samsung Galaxy S4.
While we've had quite a lot of teething troubles with it,
the overheating issue the headphone jack issue
and the general manufacturing,
and as we've got used to the S4 and we've found a few workarounds to some of the problems, we
found it to be a very competent device,
one of the better smartphones on the market.
We will be taking a look at the HTC 1 and we'll also be comparing it to the S3
and the Note 2
but overall I think if you're in the market for a new phone now,
the S4 is the one to go for.
If you already have an S3 or a Note 2
I think I would say there's not quite enough here to justify it.
Not unless you need
the bigger 1080p screen
or the faster processor.
If you don't need either of those two things
really what Samsung have offered here
is not enough to justify
selling your S3 or Note 2 or trading in
you know, biting the bullet and just buying an S4.
It's a great device
it's got a lot of rough edges.
And the extra stuff that we're getting here is mostly software.
There is not really enough to justify dumping
a device like the S3 or Note 2 that's barely a year old.
Those are great devices, so is the S4
and realistically for me,
this device sits in between the S3 and the Note 2
and it's kind of like
The S3 now becomes the mid range model
the S4 becomes the high end smartphone
and the Note 2 is still the daddy.