The reviews for
the Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung's next flagship Android smartphone, are out. The
company announced the device at an event in mid-March and boasts a
5" screen, a 1080p display that Samsung calls "Full HD Super AMOLED"
and more.
The overall
consensus is that the Galaxy S4 is a solid upgrade over the previous S3 but
that its plastic casing and minimal upgrades keep it from being great.
Here is a
collection of some of the early reviews:
- "I found
Samsung’s software often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in
some cases, only intermittently functional."
- "Its
screen and camera resolution beat the iPhone 5’s and I found its pictures to be
slightly better than those from the Apple phone, which is nearly a year
old."
- "Still,
compared with the iPhone 5, with its 4-inch screen, the S 4 is 30 percent
larger and 17 percent heavier."
- "It
retains the same rounded-rectangle look, with metal edges and a slippery,
finger-print-trapping plastic back that looks like it belongs on a far more
downmarket phone."
- "Battery
performance on the S4 is among the best we've seen from smartphones this year,
though it's still not anywhere near as everlasting as the RAZR MAXX HD."
- "Sound on
the S4 is another problem. It still has just one tiny, tin-can-sounding speaker
on the bottom back of the phone."
- Smart Scroll,
which tracks the movement of your head to scroll through pages, is a
"great idea" in theory but is "frustrating for several
reasons" including limited compatibility with apps and bad tracking in
badly lit areas.
- "Many of
[the new camera modes] are great for showing off at parties with little
usefulness elsewhere, but we found ourselves using a few of them on a more
regular basis."
- "In
general, the GS 4 performs amazingly well, but there's a catch: when Air View
and Air Gestures were enabled, we noticed the phone acting a little sluggish
even in the most basic of tasks."
- "The
GS4's 5-inch, 1920 x 1080 display is big, beautiful, and seriously
eye-catching."
-
"Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup has never wanted for power, and neither does
the Galaxy S4 — it’s an impressively fast and powerful phone, capable of
handling anything I threw at it."
- "For some
reason, Samsung has always had trouble with screen brightness settings — the
GS4 can never seem to decide how bright its screen should be, changing suddenly
and drastically often and without warning."
The Samsung
Galaxy S4 launches on April 26 for AT&T and a couple of days later for
T-Mobile. The 16 GB base model will retail for $200 with a two-year contract for AT&T and $149.99 down
with monthly payments on T-Mobile's unsubsidized smartphone pricing. The device
is also set to launch on Verizon and Sprint, but launch details for those
carriers have yet to be announced. [Source]
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