Gadgetory

can Samsung's flagship which is almost a year old compete with Nokia's most recent flagship I'm Taylor Martin this is pocket now and this is the Lumia icon versus a samsung galaxy s4 Samsung's flagship sfrom the last few years have all been well rounded and appeal to a broad spectrum of users nokia is renowned for the quality of its handsets solid design build quality and great image sensors Samsung is the front-runner in the Android space and Nokia is keeping Windows Phone afloat almost single-handed so taking one of the best android phones of 2013 and comparing it to the latest top-tier phone from the leading windows phone maker how do the two phones compare let's take a look in this Lumia icon and galaxy s4 comparison to get it out of the way from the very beginning the Lumia icon has a clear yet very slight advantage and hardware the galaxy s4 unit we're dealing with is a CDMA model on verizon so it ships with the snapdragon 600 chipset made of a 1.9 gigahertz quad-core krait 300 cpu and adreno 320 GPU but it also comes in an Exynos 5 octa version overseas and a snapdragon 800 model and select regions it has a 13-megapixel camera ships with 16 gigabytes of thick storage and a 2600 milliamp hour battery the Lumia icon ships with a snapdragon 800 composed of a 2.2 gigahertz quad-core krait 400 CPU in Adreno 330 GPU it has doubled the inbuilt storage at 32 gigabytes but no microsd card slot a 20 megapixel camera and a 24 20 milliamp hour battery both phones have two gigabytes of ram Wi-Fi AC NFC and wireless charging if you count an official aftermarket back cover from Samsung both also have 5-inch 1080p AMOLED displays both panels offer the same side visibility very inky blacks high contrast and high saturation one is just as sharp as the other though the Lumia icons display does appear to be a tad warmer than the s4's frankly however we'd rate them equally and about those casings there stark contrasts from one another in almost every way Samsung's go with the galaxy s4 was extreme portability and thus the s4 is ultra lightweight and has this little wasted space as physically possible it measures just 136 point 7 millimeters tall 69.6 millimeters wide and seven point nine millimeters thick the icon certainly isn't much larger but it sure feels like it it's only 0.3 millimeters taller and 0.4 millimeters wider but it is one point nine millimeter sticker and the galaxy s4 weighs just 130 point 1 grams the lumia icon is a full thirty six point nine grams heftier and there's no forgetting it's in your pocket whereas the s4 is barely there but there are appearances especially or where the biggest difference is reside the galaxy s4 is curvy with wide radius corners and flowing lines this adds to the illusion that the s4 is much smaller when it actually isn't it's also made out of slimy super slick materials mostly classic with faux metal trim around the edges any fake texture too hyper glazed finish round back the Lumia icon on the other hand isn't made of any facade materials the trim is metal and the matte finished polycarbonate around back feels far more high-end and it also helps with grip the design is industrial and boxy while some may call that boring uninspired or understated we feel it's a much more beautiful device that feels far more substantial and sturdy in the hand based on appearances and touch alone it feels more worth premium pricing than it's all plastic fo the software situation is a different story it's much more back and forth the galaxy s4 and Verizon is currently running Android version 4 3 it received its most recent update back in December 2013 but the KitKat update began rolling out to the US cellular model yesterday and it will likely soon follow for other US carrier models other versions of the galaxy s4 received cake at long ago such as the google play edition though it doesn't feature TouchWiz and instead comes with a bone stock version of Android the icon ships were the most recent version of Windows Phone 8 out of the box update 3 with the Nokia Lumia black update which brings a host of features on its own like raw image capture support Samsung's and Nokia's ideas of value adding features are largely different however TouchWiz comes packed to the brim with dozens of features many of which few will ever use smart stay smart scroll smart rotate air gesture and many many more it comes with tons of pre-loaded apps and very useful multitasking software in the form of multi window none of this can be removed by default it's baked in an uninstallation is disabled the Lumia icon comes with all of Nokia's applications built in nokia camera care cinemagraph creative studio mix radio storyteller here an app folder if at any time you don't want any of this it can be removed quite easily the other difference here is outside the OEMs control ecosystem the Android ecosystem is infinitely vast with hundreds of thousands more titles games and other helpful apps the Windows Phone store is improving as we've seen more major third-party developers jump on board but it's still quite visibly in its infancy Android by nature is also much more accessible if you don't like the stock browser download another switching on Wi-Fi and toggling various settings is quicker and more simple on Android it's simply a more developed immature operating system in that same vein Windows Phone has the tendency to operate more smoothly than Android on various levels especially if we're comparing Windows Phone 8 to jellybean KitKat brings a far more pleasing Android experience and our galaxy s4 does not officially support the latest version of Android just yet being filled to the top of the features we rarely ever need or want doesn't help matters either the snapdragon 800 paired with Windows Phone provides one of the smoothest mobile OS experiences we've ever encountered it is the epitome of polish meanwhile the galaxy s4 isn't the worst experience ever it manages to hold its own in many situations but it's not immune to stutters and lag our time with the Google Play edition galaxy s4 was far more memorable at least in terms of performance but this current model with this version of software is a far cry from Android at its finest and benchmarks like the SunSpider JavaScript test you'll see the Lumia icon finish about twice as fast you'll see more checker boarding in the browser on busy web pages and you simply won't see the icon slow down no matter what you throw at it the s4 will sometimes begin to get sluggish through some heavier usage we still haven't quite used the icon long enough to have a great estimate of its stamina but the galaxy s4 has been extensively tested through and through on great days it should have no problem lasting an entire day on a single charge though you'll likely need to plug it in later in the evening the Lumia icon has a slightly smaller battery capacity faster and more powerful chipset but for all intents and purposes the same display so far we haven't had to plug it in to last through an entire day even through heavy testing data speeds and network performance have been much more impressive on the icon side by side the icon consistently pulls faster data speeds and appears to have a stronger connection its average downlink and uplink respectively were 13.4 megabits per second and 10.6 megabits per second the s4 on the other hand averaged 3.6 megabits per second down and 6.1 megabits per second up in the same areas on the same servers the galaxy s4 camera is no match for the icons image sensing capabilities the 13 megapixel shooter on the back of the s4 isn't bad though in fact it's a pretty decent shooter in its own right it can take pictures with a fair amount of detail but unlike the icons 20 megapixel camera it's not optically stabilized Samsung tries to boost its low light performance with software stabilization and it simply doesn't compare the icons low-light performance on the other hand is stunning or phone but it's even more balanced in great shooting conditions and while most of the pictures you take and share with the icon will only be five megapixels they will be clearer and more sharp than the s4 s default 9 megapixel images for one reason the 16 megapixel pictures taken with the icon or oversampled down into five megapixel images the 9 megapixel images from the s4 aren't oversampled and all and instead they're cropped from 13 megapixels this is immediately noticeable and viewfinder by the much more narrow field of view hands down if you're after superior image sensing the icon is your best bet out of these two so has Samsung smartphone held up against the test of time or is it no match for the Lumia icon if you want a super camera experience the Lumia icon is the clear choice OAS and higher res sensor paired with the nokia camera app make the icon a very tough image sensing competitor and its build quality and design are certainly more alluring than the cheap plastic ridden s4 but if you're after a more complete experience with a lot more flexibility and the ability to do with your phone as you please the galaxy s4 makes a compelling argument for it so overall it's a more well-rounded experience with a lot more content and over ten times the application offering if you can deal with the growing pains of Windows Phone we recommend giving the icon a try as it's one of the most impressive displays of Windows Phone we've seen to date otherwise the galaxy s4 is a nice obligatory recommendation oh that's going to do it for this video if you enjoyed it be sure to click the thumbs up button below to help us out and subscribe to the channel to see more videos in the future as well as more Lumia icon coverage be sure to follow us in all the usual places twitter facebook and google+ at pocket now i'm taylor martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time