Gadgetory

we're almost three months removed from the original release of the Galaxy s4 now I was there when it was unveiled at the unpacked media event in New York and I got a chance to review the new smartphone before it even hit store shelves and since then I've been using the galaxy s4 on the daily but do I feel the same now as I did before Hayek's Joshua card from Android 30 what's going on everybody and this is the Samsung Galaxy s4 after the hype let's begin with how I first felt and still feel about the s4 for a phone with a 5-inch screen it's one of the easiest to handle a replaceable battery and expandable memory are obvious pluses as far as all of the new features were concerned I thought they were all great new ways of doing tasks we've done before were they all practical well even back then I knew some of them were more like gimmicks than real game changers and when it came to TouchWiz I was never actually a fan of it as a user interface but on a bigger screen I thought it actually worked better so I had a phone that was both new and very familiar I've played plenty of games on it and haven't had any problems speed has never been an issue on the s4 and I've only counted two times total that has ever crashed on me okay a little bit of disclosure here I was never actually a galaxy s3 owner I was very familiar with it though so a lot of the stuff that might have returned in the s4 did actually seem somewhat new to me multi-window and some of the gestures all worked awesomely and along with the new stuff the s4 turned out to be a really jam-packed device and for a while I used all of those features especially hand gestures website reading was done in a better lazy fashion when I could wave my hand while it was on the table air view helped me zoom into elements on webpages and YouTube viewing was enhanced by the smart pause function especially when I got distracted but the rest yeah they lost their usefulness within the first few weeks the smart scroll especially a simple demonstration of it amazed my friends but otherwise it was never used that s4 commercial that shows people talking about the phone and asking about its features is actually true well half true when people realize you are using the Samsung Galaxy s4 they do get excited and ask a lot of questions which is great when they can tell that you're using the s4 are we Android users might be able to differentiate between the s3 and the s4 easily but it's become clear to me that the general user can't and without being overtly head-turning the s4 just looks and feels like the old s3 as tried-and-true as the design of the s4 is inside and out none of it matters if the phone can't real people in from the start as the exciting features were used less and less the more the phone felt older and without anything else that could turn heads it gradually felt less exciting and this is only after a few months now don't get me wrong I still think the galaxy s4 is a fine device it is still a great example of all the finest that Android has to offer I'm obviously in a bit of a special position because I do have access to all of the Galaxy s4's competitors there are a lot of them now and that is the rub look at it this way there's no doubt in anyone's mind how well the Galaxy s4 has been selling and will continue to sell it will get a refreshing boost by the release of a bunch of new accessories which will allow for further customization but how has it even been able to achieve all of that the answer is simple what the success of the original s3 but over a year ago the smartphone market was different while there were plenty of other Android phones worthy of praise the galaxy s3 basically had one gold content with the iPhone and it did a great job its skyrocketed samsung status in the smartphone market and made the term galaxy as ubiquitous as droid it paved the way for future Galaxy phones to enjoy the same kind of success but then the s4 was released without any real drastic changes to the general formula it focused on perfecting what was already started in the galaxy line at this point in the smartphone market though sticking to what worked might not always hold up to what other manufacturers are currently attempting it's no longer about just contending with the iPhone it's about keeping up with all those other players that more easily represent change I don't fear that the galaxy s4 will fade into obscurity that's quite impossible with how huge Samsung is what I can admit is that even as a big s4 supporter I soon started to experience phone Envy one year ago that might not have been as possible with the s3 but now it's not quite so lonely at the top the HTC One the Sony Xperia inline and even or known phones like the Oppo fine five are looming in the shadows so do I still love the Samsung Galaxy s4 well yeah I do it's fast reliable and it can still be a very exciting device I use it every day because of its familiarity and because it's as reliable now as it was when I first got my hands on it it's just that the extras don't really excite me as much anymore and when you strip all of that away what you get is a phone that you already know and may have already loved since the galaxy s3 and that's when you have to take a step back and realize that the galaxy line no longer stands alone ok I'm not telling you to go out there and buy multiple devices that's obviously not what I'm trying to do here but the takeaway here is play the field if the galaxy s4 offers you everything you need and it will keep you engaged in happy more power to you just remember there are a lot of other devices out there and that's a fact that's gotten truer every single year for the past half decade and you know what that's what's awesome thank you very much for watching and make sure you stay tuned to android authority for all of the best android coverage because we're your source for all things Android