Samsung Galaxy S4

Last week, Samsung officially lifted the curtains off its latest flagship phone – the Galaxy S4 at Samsung’s Unpacked event in New York City’s famous Radio City Music Hall. The company wants its newest Android phone to be a ‘Life Companion’ by adding a host of new smart features to assist you in your day-to-day life. Let’s find out what the phone has to offer.

 

Design:

As far as design is concerned, there’s not much to differentiate the phone from the Galaxy S3. It also sports a polycarbonate body, but is slimmer, stronger and slightly smaller than its predecessor in spite of having a larger display. Samsung has achieved this by reducing the size of the bezel around the display. In terms of dimensions, the phone measures 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm and weighs in 130 grams, making it easy to handle and slip into your pocket.

 

On the front, you get an edge-to-edge 5.0 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1080 X 1920 pixels, leading to a density of 441 pixels per inch. That’s a bit lower than the HTC One’s 469 ppi display, but you’re not likely to notice any difference in sharpness. The display is protected by a layer of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 which has the ability to withstand damage and scratches.

 

Camera:

Samsung has introduced an improved 13 megapixel autofocus camera with a single LED flash on the back and a 2 megapixel camera on the front. Both of them are capable of HD video recording of 1080 pixels at the rate of 30 frames per second. The company has also ramped up the camera interface to offer features like dual shot, best face, burst mode, face detection, smile shot, panorama mode, HDR mode and much more. You’ll also be able to video chat in HD resolution and share your screen with multiple users using the front-facing camera.

 

Hardware:

The Samsung Galaxy S4 will be available in 2 models – one with its own Exynos 5 Octa-core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz and another one with a quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1.9 GHz. Both the models will have a PowerVR SGX 544MP3 graphics processor, 2 GB of RAM and a microSD card slot to expand memory by up to 64 GB. In terms of internal storage, you’ll get three options – 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. The company didn’t allow users to run benchmark tests at the launch event, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see how the phone’s hardware perform in comparison to the other devices in the market. However, it’s sure to offer a fast, smooth and slick user experience. On the battery front, you get a Li-Ion 2600 mAh unit which can be accessed by removing the back panel.

 

Software:

The S4 ships with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with a dash of Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface over the top. Along with the standard Android features, Samsung has also included its own set of apps and features to provide a unique experience. These include Smart Rotate, Smart Scroll, Smart Stay, Smart Pause, S-Voice Drive, S-Translate, S-Health, Air View and much more.

 

Availability:

According to the details provided at the event, the Galaxy S4 is expected to arrive in stores starting from the end of April. Users will get the option of two colors to choose from – White Frost and Black Mist. However, there is no official word on the pricing yet.