Gadgetory

well this is David with the verge and this is the Samsung Galaxy s4 it's the latest in a series of insanely popular smart phones from Samsung from the note to the note 2 to the Galaxy s3 this borrows from all of those devices plus adds a lot of features and new technology let's start with what hasn't changed and that's most of the look and feel of the galaxy s4 it's almost exactly the same size as the GS 3 and it's actually slightly thinner which is a pretty impressive feat given that it has a bigger screen it feels a lot denser than the GS 3 though and the edges have been flattened slightly so it's much more comfortable to hold but here's the problem the GS 4 just flat out does not feel like a premium device it's still made of slimy slippery white plastic with silver edges and just feels gross to hold the device itself is nicely ergonomic and it's relatively comfortable to hold but I found myself constantly wiping my hands off thinking they were sweaty the plastic gets dirty and picks up fingerprints like crazy but the biggest problem is that it just makes the GS for look and feel far less high-end than a device like the HTC One or the iPhone 5 samsung success has proven that people will overlook that but it's really a shame Samsung didn't do better here it's mostly a shame because the rest of the GS 4 is actually kind of great it starts with the screen a 5-inch 1080p display that is absolutely gorgeous it's a Super AMOLED display which means it has slightly exaggerated colors and is a little over contrasted but it's so dense and so bright that it just looks fantastic the camera too is a big step up this is the best camera I've ever used on an Android phone period it's 13 megapixels sharp and accurate with great reproduction and just great photos but where the camera really gets wild is in its software features there are just so many things you can do with the GS force camera you can take a picture and attach sound to it with shot and sound mode you can erase photo bombers with the eraser mode you can take big beautiful panoramas or even create animated gifts within the camera app itself there's also a dual view mode that lets you shoot a picture with the front and back camera at the same time and superimpose them on each other it's pictures aren't quite as good as a dedicated camera but they're often close and the feature set is just ridiculous actually the feature set of the GS 4 as a whole is kind of ridiculous from a pure things it can do perspective no phone on the planet is close to this one and most of them are cool but you won't use them much there is of course NFC and Bluetooth and screen mirroring either wirelessly to a Samsung TV or via HDMI but there's plenty of new stuff to air gestures lets you wave your hand over the phone to scroll through pictures or down a webpage which is neat but the real use I found for it was waving my hand over the phone to answer it and automatically go into speakerphone which is really handy for when you can't pick the phone up yourself air view is the same feature we've seen on note devices before which lets you hover over a calendar date or email to see a preview without clicking into it but it now it works with your finger some of the other features you'll use even less and actually turned off a few of them they're a bunch of eye tracking features but most of them don't work all that well smart pause pauses a video when you look away from the screen but it's hit or miss too and I don't always want it to pause when I glance away from the screen anyway smart stay figures out when you're looking at the screen and keeps it on whether you're reading or watching a movie but you're probably better off just setting a slightly longer screen time out in settings you also get the multi window feature from no devices which is pretty handy for reading an email and looking up an address or texting and watching a video at the same time even if you want all these features it's a lot to learn and figure out Samsung startup wizard takes a while when you first turn on the phone and it's totally necessary the company's aware of how long it takes though so it offers an easy mode that basically strips everything away but big icons in a few favorite contacts it's for your mom or your grandma to use even with everything going the gs4 runs perfectly this is a ridiculously powerful phone and it shows it plays heavy games well and even basic things like swiping between home screens or launching apps is smoother than most phones I've tried it does stumble occasionally in weird places like the gallery which makes me think Samsung hasn't quite figured out its software but the vast majority of the time this phone runs Android as fast as I've ever seen I used a t-mobile version of the G s4 and though there is LTE on t-mobile I wasn't able to test it since I don't live in one of the small number of t-mobile's LTE markets still data performance is fast call quality is solid and reception is exactly what you expect unfortunately bloatware is also exactly what I'd expect you get a handful of to mobile apps and when you add it to all the extra Samsung software there's just a lot going on on this phone the worst offender is look out it's a security app that insists on scanning every single app you download to make sure it's safe and give you a bunch of popups letting you know whether it is or not and of course they were all safe because they all came from the Play Store the GS 4 also has an IR blaster and it's watch on applets you use it to control your TV and cable box plus search Netflix and other apps to find stuff to watch I like the app a lot and found myself using the gs4 as my remote control more often than not there's also a big list of apps that I rarely used but I guess or sort of cool group play lets you sync music among your friends phones as long as you all have GS 4s or all play a game at the same time which is pretty cool story album lets you create scrapbooks out of your photos which is alright I guess and on and on this list goes s-health is a particularly cool app giving you a step tracker calorie information and lots of other Fitbit style health info but it's gonna need some accessories before it becomes really useful those are coming though so there's a lot going on here but even with everything turned on and running the GS 4 gets pretty solid battery life I had no trouble getting through a full day and even partly into the next before the battery died though if you do have s health running plus all the crazy software features things can get a little hairy still though as long as you're cool with charging your phone every night you should never have any issue with the GS 4's battery so all of this leads me somewhere I don't really know I don't know how to feel about the GS 4 it's fast it has a great screen it has a huge number of software features and I even really like a lot of them but ultimately I don't enjoy using this phone as much as I do the HTC One or the iPhone 5 it feels cheap and chintzy and just unimpressive everyone I handed the device to had the same first reaction and it was never good all of the elements of a perfect Android phone are out there now but unfortunately they're still spread across two different devices I think I'd buy a one personally but I won't blame the millions of people who end up buying GS 4s and make no mistake there will be millions you