 |
| It's finally here and it looks very similar to its predecessor S3 |
It's hard to know where to start with the Samsung Galaxy S4. After months of
rumours, leaks, hyperbole and more than one launch event, this is undoubtedly
the most lusted after Android smartphone to date. In fact, we'd say that
interest in the phone before launch was at least as high as for upcoming Apple
phones, including the
iPhone
5S and
iPhone
6.
Now we finally have an S4 to review, just two simple questions remain. Most
importantly, is this the best smartphone you can buy today? But also, has
Samsung taken a big step forward over last year's S3 or is this more an
evolution of that handset?
At first glance you'd have to err towards an evolution. The S3 certainly
isn't a phone to show off with; not that it doesn't look rather pretty, but
more because it's almost unrecognisable from its predecessor unless you look up
close. This is no bad thing in our opinion as it didn't attract any unwanted
attention on the train home, unlike an
iPhone
5 just after its release.
The new handset appears to retain the same white plastic finish, but look
closer and you'll see a fine diamond pattern beneath the gloss surface. It's a
nice touch, and one subtle enough to avoid accusations of unnecessary bling.
Given its big 4.99in display, the S4 is surprisingly svelte. It measures
just 136.6x69.8x7.9mm and weighs only 130g. That makes it both smaller overall
and lighter than both its immediate rivals, the Sony Xperia Z and our current
favourite, the HTC One.
From the front the most obvious change is the thinner screen bezels, both
down the edges and at other end. This puts the screen just 2.5mm away from the
edge of the device and it's becoming hard to imagine this distance getting any
smaller without seriously compromising the survivability of the handset when
dropped. The sides have been squared off, compared to the S3, which makes it
easier to grip though it looks a little chunkier for it.
The areas above and below the screen are now far smaller, which has
significantly reduced the amount of space for the physical home button and
touch sensitive menu and back commands. This could have made them awkward, but
the button needs an appreciably lighter press and we had no trouble hitting the
touch sensitive controls.
Despite the back being removable, which has advantages we'll discuss later,
the S4 doesn't suffer overly for this practicality. The rear panel fits snug
against the body with no flex or shift. When in place, the handset feels like a
single piece of tech.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is among the best-looking plastic phones we've ever
seen. It's a decent evolution from the S3, ironing out plenty of the minor
flaws that its predecessor had. These include a USB port that didn't look very
well cut out and a rear case that had quite a loose fit; with the S4, it feels
that much more finished and as though more attention has been paid to the
detail.
Having said that it's a very conservative design. Purely from a look and
feel perspective we prefer the aluminium HTC One. The curved back and sharp
corners make it look far more striking that the rather amorphous blob of the
S4; plus HTC has squeezed in a pair of front mounted speakers onto the One, as
we'll discuss later. However, as a piece of practical engineering the S4 is
simply superior, because it fits a noticeably larger display into a similarly
sized handset. You simply can't get more screen than this in your pocket for
the size or weight.
The S4 is better designed from an ergonomic point of view. The HTC One's
power button at the top of the phone is beautifully designed, it doesn't stick
out but it responds reliably when you press it (once you've got the hang of
where it is). The problem is its position, having pressed it with your
forefinger, you can't then reach the buttons below the screen with your thumb.
The S4's right-hand-side power button has a far more traditional and boring
look, but at least you can use the handset one handed without having to shift
your grip constantly.
DISPLAY
This is the first smartphone to use
an AMOLED display with a Full HD resolution. Measuring 4.99in across this gives
it an on-paper pixels-per-inch figure of 441, up from 306PPI on the Galaxy S3.
As always, it's worth noting that the display uses a pentile arrangement of
subpixels - with two colours per pixel, rather than three – which means its
actual resolution is less than equivalent LCD displays.
This is less of a problem on a Full
HD display than it was previously. The incredibly high number of
pixels-per-inch makes the lack of refinement, usually apparent on the edges of
text, practically unnoticeable. Furthermore, the incredible contrast you get
from an AMOLED display more than makes up for any small perceivable loss of
detail.
In practical use there's far less
difference between this and the LCD HTC One than their technology would
suggest. The pentile pixel arrangement doesn't seem to noticeably effect detail
on the S4, while the contrast on the HTC One was also excellent. The colours on
the S4 are a little richer at any given brightness, but then the HTC One is far
brighter at its maximum setting, handy on sunny days - although run it that way
all the time and your battery life will be severely diminished.
Speaking of brightness, Samsung's
controls are far better, with a brightness slider always present on the
notifications drop down menu. This also lets you tweak the auto brightness
settings, allowing you to have it a few steps brighter, or dimmer, than the
variable default. By comparison the HTC One makes you dig in the menus to
adjust it and offers no such tweaking of the auto setting
Having said all that, the biggest
difference is simply that the S4's screen is bigger. It's not a huge deal when
using apps day to day, sending texts, or hammering out a quick email, but for
browsing desktop website sites, playing games and watching video clips it's a
big plus.
SPEAKERS
The S4 may have a bigger, higher resolution screen than its predecessor for
enjoying such content but the audio from its speaker hasn't improved by the
same degree. The speaker is still a rear-mounted, mono design and so you have
to carefully position your hands to avoid muffling it accidentally. Sound
quality isn't bad for such a speaker, but if you like to entertain yourself and
friends with your handset then the HTC One's front stereo speakers are far
superior.
While we're talking audio, the HTC One (and Xperia Z) also have FM Radios,
which is missing from the S4 for the first time in the series. A
disappointment, and one that may sway some radio fans.
HARDWARE
In the run-up to the launch of any exciting new smartphone or tablet, much
is made of the exact nature of the hardware contained and its processing power.
For the Samsung Galaxy S4 the talk was of an eight-core CPU, though the reality
turns out to be far more complicated than that.
Yes, there's an S4 (the GT-I9500) with a Samsung designed and produced Xynos
eight-core CPU, but that actually consists of a four-core main CPU and a
four-core low-power CPU, which the handset switches between in realtime to
maximise performance and battery life. It's an idea that's been around a while,
ARM calls it big.LITTLE, but it's good to see it finally implement on a quad-core
flagship device.
But, and it's a big one, that eight-core Galaxy S4 isn't the one you'll be
buying in the UK. Instead when you turn on your shiny new S4 the first thing
you'll see is that it's a GT-I9505 handset, which uses a Qualcomm designed quad-core
chipset instead. This is because the other model doesn't include 4G/LTE
support, something that Samsung obviously feels is key for a new handset
launching in the UK.
The S4's version of Android is bang up to date
Given that there's no option to buy the eight-core S4, unless you import one
yourself and pay full price for it plus a hefty import duty, there's little
point in comparing the two in detail. We haven't been sent an I9500 for
testing, but looking at reputable sources online it appears to be a little
quicker with slightly improved battery life.
We'll be looking forward to seeing a big.LITTLE device released in the UK
then, but the Qualcomm chipset in our version of the S4 is no slouch. It uses
the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset as the HTC One, though the S4's runs
at 1.9GHz rather than 1.7GHz. We couldn't detect any noticeable change in
browser speed in real-world testing, but the GeekBench 2 benchmark showed the
faster S4 edge ahead by 3,227 to 2,688. In use, everything feels incredibly
slick, apps launch quickly and everything flows along, very impressive stuff.
The S4 also uses the same Adreno 320 GPU as the HTC One. It's a powerful
chip and a huge step forward over the S3. We hit 50fps in the recent 3Dmark Ice
Storm test, and managed almost 30fps in the far tougher Extreme version of the
same test. We doubt anyone will make an Android game in the near future that
will trouble this hardware overly.
BATTERY
Beneath the removable rear cover is a rather large-looking battery, with a
hefty 2,600mAh capacity. That's over 10% bigger than the 2,300 and 2,330mAh
examples in the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z respectively. The results though were
even more impressive than that figure might suggest.
The S4 retains the S3's highly practical design
In our continuous video playback the S4 managed an impressive ten hours and
43 minutes, a score we'd largely attribute to its more power-efficient AMOLED
display. The Sony Xperia Z has a 5in LCD display and it only ran for five hours
and 48 minutes, while the smaller-screened HTC One put in a much more
respectable eight hours and 32 minutes.
If battery life is a big concern for you then the S4 stands well above its
main rivals then. In addition to this its removable back means you can switch
out the battery if required. Samsung sells spare batteries and an official
charger for them too, so if you fear running out of power, the S4 is the phone
for you.
STORAGE
Also behind the cover is the Micro SD slot, which can take a card with a
capacity of up to 64GB. Such a card will cost you about £35, with a 32GB card
costing around half that. The Sony Xperia Z also has this option, but it looks
to be another point scored over the HTC One which is internal storage only.
However, the HTC One comes with 32GB of storage as standard, of which around
25GB is available for you to use. Comparatively, the S4 only comes with 16GB as
standard, of which only a measly 8GB is immediately available for your use, we
managed to quickly clear another 1GB, but we still reckon a memory card will be
a good idea for most users.
Of course, many people prefer to store much of their data in the cloud now,
and Dropbox is Samsung's preferred partner. The handset comes with two years of
free storage with a huge 50GB limit. Disappointingly for anyone who's making a
quick upgrade from an S3, buying the new handset doesn't reset the two year
time limit on this offer. The S4 handily backups all your camera shots to your
Dropbox account automatically when a Wi-Fi connection is available.
CAMERA
Samsung has opted for a 13-megapixel backside-illuminated sensor and the
resulting images are excellent. There was plenty of fine detail to be seen in
our still life tests and exposures were consistently well judged throughout the
varying light levels. It was notably crisper than the HTC One's four-megapixel
camera, you won’t notice on Facebook, but even a Full HD TGV they were
noticeably sharper, with better refined lines. The extra resolution also helps
when cropping images without resulting in too much pixellation.
Taking the camera out and about in the spring sun also
produced good results. Its exposures dealt with the strong contrast created by
the sunshine, and colours looked accurate. It also has a 20-shot burst mode
that's activated by simply holding down the shutter button. The front camera
has a 2-megapixel BSI sensor and takes pretty decent little snaps too.
PHOTO MODES
There's lots more to Samsung's new camera than good image quality and
specifications, though. With a raft of playful extras that should provide at
least momentary amusement and possibly a lot more than that.
DUAL SHOT
By far our favourite of the various fun photography modes is dual shot. The
concept is actually quite simple, the S4 uses both the front and back cameras
to simultaneously capture two images, which it combines into a single image.
Now you might just ask why not just take two shots and fit them together
later, but that would miss out on the immediacy of Samsung's take. This way you
take one picture, hit share and get a great shot up on Facebook, plus your
smug, smiling mug in one easy step. It's the next logical step for the
much-beloved 'Selfie' style of photography, and unless Samsung has a patent we
can see this appearing on every other smartphone by next year.
Now Samsung's take on Dual Shot is to put proud parents in the shot with the
mewling darlings – not a bad idea given that one parent is often noticeably
absent from a whole holiday's worth of snaps. In practice though we found it a
great little creative tool, the ability to juxtapose two images together on the
fly is great fun and can create some quite striking compositions.
You can change the size and shape of the second, superimposed image, with
various shapes or just a plain box. It will even take the two full images and
tag them side by side into a super-widescreen effort – good for more serious
efforts or adhoc vistas. You can also switch the cameras around at a tap,
making you fill the screen with just a small image of your surroundings to add
context.
Best of all, it just works, what you see is what you get. It can be a little
hard to line up at first, but you soon get used to it and then you're away. It
even has its own shortcut, so no messing with the mode menu to activate it.
The fun doesn't end there though, as Dual Shot can also be used with video.
You get all the same options as to how it combines the two images and the
ability to switch. It really adds something to short clips and could be great
for those who love to shoot and talk to camera. And there is so much more this wonderful phone has to offer.
