Gadgetory

Samsung's Galaxy line is the single most significant force in Android smartphones today and now it's time to put the newest member of the family to the test I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is our Samsung Galaxy s4 review last year's galaxy s3 stretched the bounds of what a smartphone could include Samsung went out of its way to cram as many features as it could into a compact elegantly designed package and in large part it's succeeded with this year's Galaxy S flagship the company has tamed that ambition somewhat samsung says it wants the galaxy s4 to be a device you can recommend not just to a tech enthusiast but to your mother as well it balances amped-up specs like a 13 megapixel camera with new tutorials and an easy mode for first-time smartphone users and from hardware to software it aims to alienate no one this device is much less aspirational much more iterative read our full review at pocketnow.com and follow us on the social feeds for all of our exhaustive galaxy s4 coverage but before you go anywhere we've got a review to do let's jump in the galaxy s4 hardware incorporates touches of its immediate predecessor with those of the galaxy note 2 and the older Galaxy S 2 resulting in an aesthetic that's vintage Samsung the real innovation here isn't in a revolutionary new casing design but in Samsung's ability to pack so many improvements into a smaller package the screen is larger than last years and stocked with improvements five inches on the diagonal Super AMOLED and 1080p with the pixel density of 441 pixels per inch in person it's stunningly beautiful sandwiched between it and the removable 2600 milliamp hour battery on our American review unit is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor clocked at 1.9 gigahertz backed up by the usual 2 gigs of RAM as some global versions of the Galaxy s4 will ship with samsung's new Exynos 5 octa cpu and our unit here is not one of them the power pack isn't the only thing that's removable Samsung has stayed true to its style and included support for micro s d cards to augment the on board 16 32 or 64 gigs of storage depending on your carrier and how deep your pockets are also included are added sensors radios and transmitters in addition to the usual accelerometer compass and gyroscope there's a barometer thermometer and hygrometer aboard in addition to an IR blaster for remote-control duties our sprint unit here features CDMA and LTE support as well as Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 and AC wireless charging is not supported out of the box but an optional back cover is due this summer to enable that functionality it's all packed into a housing that's thin at 7.9 millimeters and which feels even lighter than its 130 grams would suggest it's got a more refined appearance than last year's Galaxy s3 with a shinier mid plate and very thin bezels but the hyper glaze coating detracts from the nice stippled texture on the underlying polycarbonate the glossy coating is a fingerprint magnet and unlike the gorilla glass 3 protecting the display it's also very easy to scratch you might want a protective case if you're planning on keeping the galaxy s4 for the long haul while the hardware is familiar from 2012 this software is almost identical our demo unit arrived running Android 4.2.2 but aside from the galaxy s4 s sharp 1080p display and a few tweaks the experience is just like using any other high-end Samsung smartphone running TouchWiz some of those tweaks are useful like the added toggles in the notification area and the lock screen widgets that come with the new version of jellybean others like the confusing tabs settings menu and the brightened up dialer are not as welcomed Samsung is making a renewed push to embed itself into your media consumption with the Samsung hub a Content store and aggregator for an inconsistent selection of books video and music the books catalog is beyond anemic but the music and video categories have a fairly wide array of choice unfortunately there's nothing really special about the UI and the feature set doesn't particularly standout unless you're an avid user of your Samsung Account if you already use Spotify Netflix Google Play or a combination of those to manage your media there's not much reason to switch to Samsung's ecosystem on the plus side the Peel powered watch on home media and remote control application works well and it offers a ton of features for those who get most of their entertainment from the living room Samsung is also baked a galaxy note feature into the s4 air view this allows a user to hover a finger over the screen to trigger previews of specific content or to magnify text it works well in apps like the gallery and the special build of Flipboard but it suffers elsewhere like the email and messaging apps where some threads just refused to provide previews at all the companion air gesture feature is much the same useful in a few circumstances but not reliable or far-reaching enough to justify its inclusion at best it's a gimmick at worst when it misinterprets a hovering hand as a gesturing one it really interferes with the operation of the device we're not sure if we have these added features to blame for the occasional lag or stutter that we see in TouchWiz but whatever the case it is occasionally there and we don't like it a device with hardware this powerful should exhibit no lag whatsoever there are nice flares here like the inclusion of s-health out of the box so you exercise aficionados can stay fit and story album to collect your photos and print them using a third-party service if you like there's also a helpful suite of tutorials and descriptions for each of the new device features but this year even more than last it seems like Samsung is just aimlessly tossing new features at the user without first perfecting the experience of each one it's hard not to wonder how many of these new features are going to wither on the vine over the course of the coming year anybody remember s voice fortunately there's one area where building features on top of features has resulted in a very compelling package the camera while the sensor has been boosted to 13 megapixels over last year's 8 that's less impressive than the addition of new shooting modes like drama shot animated photo and even dual shot all of which helped the galaxy s4 maintain camera parity with competing offerings from Nokia and HTC the viewfinder has also been cleaned up and augmented with software ripped right from the galaxy camera resulting in a simple bright and fun shooting experience there are some downsides we don't love the reduced field of view of the new camera compared to others on the market or the default setting of 9.6 megapixels out of the box and we wish this shooter featured improved low-light performance also photos and challenging lighting situations can get a little too noisy for our taste but for a smartphone camera the galaxy s4's module does a nice job of walking the line between user-friendly and powerful we tested the galaxy s4 over the course of seven days on Sprint's CDMA and LTE networks between New York and Boston reception during the review period was solid outperforming the HTC One and indicated signal strength speeds on Sprint's LTE network were good not as good as some competitors but averaging around 10 megabits down and around five up Sprint's 4G build out is very spare at the moment lagging behind AT&T and Verizon and 3G speeds on evideo are quite slow we sometimes had real trouble maintaining a connection to either sprint network including a two hour stretch of no connectivity whatsoever in New York City's Upper East Side so you'll want to make sure to research Sprint's coverage situation thoroughly where you live and work if you spring for the Sprint version of this device the galaxy s4's voice performance was fair during our review with callers rating our audio consistently around seven out of ten but the phone's noise cancellation underperformed a stiff breeze easily disrupted our calls fortunately Samsung has improved the loudspeaker for speaker phone calls we wish the speaker were around front as on the HTC One and Galaxy Note 10.1 but at least it's louder Samsung is known for good battery life and that holds true for the s4 that if I scored a 470 on the antutu battery test placing it above the HTC One score of 408 what that means in real life is that we're usually able to get a solid day of moderate to heavy use out of the galaxy s4 your results as always will vary but heavy users can always bring for a spare battery due to the swappable design the galaxy s4 can't be considered in a vacuum the landscape might be less crowded these days but there still significant competition out there from other manufacturers some phones feature prettier hardware than the s4 and others offer better design software but few of them pack as much power and expandability in such a Savelle casing while we'd have liked to see Samsung blow us away with a groundbreaking smartphone in 2013 the way it arguably did in 2012 the simple fact is that that can't happen every year and more importantly it doesn't have to Samsung's 2013 flagship is a competent well balanced fully featured smartphone no it doesn't really inspire us and we might not recommend it to mom or dad just yet but for the tech-savvy and even the average user it's a very good choice we give the Samsung Galaxy s4 an eight point eight out of ten folks we have much more on the Samsung Galaxy s4 including a full written review at pocketnow.com you can also check out our other galaxy s4 videos here on YouTube but before you go drop us a like if you enjoyed this one leave a comment if you have a response and thank you as always for watching we'll see you next time