If you were to be given the privilege of designing your dream smartphone with the technology available today, and load it with whatever software you want, most probably you would end up with something resembling the new Samsung Galaxy S4.
It could have had better finishing for a model of this calibre
This smartphone falls into the category of those few models that are the most powerful, most iconic and, obviously, most expensive smartphones in the market.
It would take us a few weeks to truly test the S4 and then write a full-length review and account for all the bells and whistles. Without this luxury, we can only pick and chose what we think are the most important features and comment on them.
The model in our hands is the white model with the five-inch Full HD Amoled screen, Android 4.2.2, an eight-core Snapdragon processor, 13-megapixel auto focus camera and a two-megapixel secondary camera, support for 3G and 4G (LTE) up to 42 Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 16GB of storage upgradable to 64 with a microSD card, support for contactless payment with NFC (near-field communication), and loads of apps.
For this review, we tried to resist the temptation to compare it to it nearest rivals, i.e. the iPhone 5 and the HTC One. It was a hard task.
One of the (few) weaknesses of the S4 is that it feels as if it is made of cheap plastic. It could have had better finishing for a model of this calibre.
The five-inch is the best real estate you can get for a smartphone. It’s big enough to do anything and bigger than you end up into the tablet territory. The screen is crisp, colours are vibrant and the touch is very good. Indeed one of the features of the screens is that it does not only obey your gestures but also follows your eyes and you can stop video playback by moving away your eyes. This is called ‘smart pause’.
Another nifty feature is the IR Blaster, with which you can turn your S4 into a remote control for TV sets, DVD players etc. through the Watch On app.
The 13-megapixel main camera let you take pictures and video in HD quality. In the hands of users who know how to tinker with settings, the camera can act as a replacement for the semi-professional photo cameras. Battery life is good with the 2600mAh battery, which, needs to power a hungry processor and a big screen, but it’s larger than the battery of other smartphones.
3G and Wi-Fi performed well. Maybe some users would expect special phone call audio quality, but it is comparable to cheaper phones, and not much better.
Android 4.2.2 is highly customised with a lot of Samsung stuff. Other apps include a health-and-fitness monitor, a translator and group play to enjoy games with friends.
In the short time at our disposal we couldn’t test the NFC features and LTE is not yet available in Malta, so these are features which can only be tested extensively broad.
Which bring us to an important issue: the Galaxy S4 is fully loaded and is a contender for the place of the most advanced smartphone at the moment on the market. If you really need all these features, if you are ready to pay the hefty price tag (which however is comparable to other top smartphones and not higher), then go for it. Otherwise consider the smaller S3 brother or another model.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 was made available for review by Vodafone Malta.