Excellent 367 REVIEWS July, 2013alaTest has collected and analyzed 367 reviews from magazines and websites. People are impressed by the design and battery. The responsiveness and camera also get good feedback. Comments about the reception and sound are mixed, and there are some less positive views about the social networking functionality and reliability.
Driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.9GHz quad-core processor, the 5-inch Samsung Galaxy S4 runs on the Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean platform, and includes a 13-megapixel camera along with proprietary features such as Group Play, ChatON, and S Travel.The Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom has full telephony features (unlike the Camera), but it's not the most comfortable phone around. Photography is the full-time job here.
A 10x zoom lens with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) sits in front of a 16MP sensor. At the wide end, the lens is the very wide 24mm in 35mm equivalent, the aperture goes from f/3.1 to f/6.3 and there's a mechanical shutter. The Galaxy S4 zoom has a control ring around the lens like some high-end point-and-shoots do, a xenon flash and LED light.
That's just the camera specs, the rest is a full-featured Galaxy S4 mini hardware, including the IR blaster, which can control a projector (the one, most likely, you'd use to show off your photos).
More power, a better screen, a host of new exclusive software features and a larger battery to keep it going longer - the Samsung Galaxy S4 has all the right boxes ticked to be considered a worthy successor to what many considered the uber smartphone. It also has a key advantage over its direct rivals in running on the latest Android 4.2 platform.
The second Jelly Bean release isn't an incredibly massive upgrade, but offers some cool new features that take the user experience up a notch. Of course, Samsung will be more than keen to direct your attention to its home-baked goodies like Eye-scroll and Auto pause, which surprisingly or not, work pretty well.
Let's cut the teasing here - join us on the next page for the rest of our first-hand impressions of the Samsung Galaxy S4, garnished with a bunch of live photos.
Let's cut the teasing here - join us on the next page for the rest of our first-hand impressions of the Samsung Galaxy S4, garnished with a bunch of live photos.
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Samsung Galaxy S4 at a glance:
- General: Optional 2G/3G/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