Samsung on Thursday officially took the wraps off the Galaxy S4, a 5-inch smartphone coming to all the major U.S. carriers during the second quarter.
Journalists packed Radio City Music Hall tonight for the big reveal, which – as expected – was brought on stage by Samsung's pint-sized pitchman, Jeremy. Samsung's mobile chief, JK Shin, touted the Galaxy S4 as "a life companion for a richer, simpler life."
Shin said.
"We are committed to innovation, we are always listening to learn from people around the world about what kind of progress they really want."
The smartphone will roll out with 327 mobile operators around the world in 155 countries starting at the end of April, he said.
The revamped smartphone, which follows last year's Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II is "slimmer yet stronger, less to hold yet more to see, [and] it is simply amazing," according to Shin.
The new Samsung Galaxy S4 (Click Image To Enlarge)
Design and Specs
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is 136.6 by 69.8 by 7.9mm and 130g, the same height but slightly slimmer both in width and depth than the Galaxy S III. The edges are a little squarer than the GS3's, but the phone is still made of plastic. It comes in two colors, "black mist" and "white frost."
There's a 5-inch, 1920-by-1080 Super AMOLED screen on the front with a very tight 441ppi density. New software on board alters the screen's color temperatures based on what kind of content you're looking at, for the best possible view.
The processor inside is either a 1.6-GHz Samsung Exynos 5 Octa or a 1.9-GHz Qualcomm S4 Pro, depending on the country. The phone has 2GB of RAM and either 16, 32 or 64GB of storage, plus a MicroSD card slot. It runs Android 4.2.2.
There's a 13-megapixel camera on the back and a 2-megapixel camera on the front. The cameras can actually be used together to shoot picture-in-picture photos and videos.
For networking, the GS4 has EDGE, HSPA+ 42 and LTE; there will also be a CDMA/LTE version. Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, GPS, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and MHL are all on board as well. An infrared transmitter lets the phone work with the built-in WatchOn software to function as a TV remote and electronic program guide. The phone will support wireless charging if carriers demand it, the company said.
Tons of New Software
The Galaxy S4 has a huge amount of new software and features beyond the Android baseline.
Samsung's director of product marketing, Ryan Bidan said.
"We wanted to give users a device that really understands what's going on around them."
Samsung groups the new features into four categories.
- "Fun" features include a bunch of new camera modes including dual-camera picture-in-picture, time lapse, and animated GIF, and a "sound and shot" mode which lets you record nine seconds of audio with any image. The built-in "Story Album" app lets you combine pictures with location information from TripAdvisor and then print it all as a paper copy through Blurb.
- "Relationship" features include Group Play, which lets multiple Galaxy S4 phones play the same music track, show the same photos, or play multiplayer games over Wi-Fi Direct; Asphalt 4 and Gun Bros 2 will be the first two multiplayer games to be supported, Samsung said. S Translator builds language translation into both the email program and Samsung's ChatOn chat program, automatically translating between nine languages.
- "Convenience" features include WatchOn, a universal remote control app which works with the phone's IR emitter. It combines data from the Peel electronic program guide along with streaming choices from Netflix, Blockbuster and Samsung's own media store, although it can't access DVRs. Smart Pause pauses videos when you look away. Gesture control lets you scroll the screen or fast-forward music by waving at the screen. Air View lets you preview items like e-mail messages by hovering your finger over them, like you can do with the S Pen on the Galaxy Note. An OCR program reads business cards.
- "S Health" features take on Fitbit and its ilk with a built-in pedometer, environmental sensors and diet guide. Samsung will sell Fitbit-like bands for people to wear when they aren't carrying their phones with them, and the biometric data will sync back to S Health, the company said.
All of these features interact with the new Samsung Hub, a unified app, movie, video, book and music store that will appear on Galaxy S4 phones.
No Samsung event would be complete without a theatrical performance. Samsung showed off the Galaxy S4's camera functionality with a scene at an Upper West Side dance studio, where Jeremy's mother was all set with the GS4, but his classmate's dad was out of luck. Then, of course, Jeremy tapped danced – all captured by the new Galaxy S4.
Flash to two friends traveling around the world, which gave Samsung the chance to show off S Translator, as well as photo album options. In concert with blurb, Galaxy S4 owners will be able to order hard copies of their albums for $10-$30 for a 20-page album.
To cut down on the distracted driving, meanwhile, S Voice Drive features bigger fonts and bigger text to speech for drivers. It's intended to serve as an in-car personal assistant, and allows users to respond to texts, calls, and other messages by voice.
For those in cooler climates, meanwhile, the Galaxy S4 works for those wearing gloves.
Availability and Carriers
The Galaxy S IV will come out on all four national U.S. carriers plus U.S. Cellular and Cricket between April and June of this year; Samsung didn't cite a price.
T-Mobile has set up a pre-registration page, but the other carriers had few other details about the Galaxy S4 at this point.
Jeff Bradley, senior vice president of devices of AT&T said.
"AT&T was the first to deliver Samsung's Galaxy series and we are excited to bring the Galaxy S4 to the nation's fastest 4G LTE network. We continue to offer our customers a broad choice of devices and features to fit any mobile lifestyle, and look forward to growing our family of Samsung Galaxy devices."
Fared Adib, senior vice president of Product Development at Sprint said.
"Sprint is excited to bring the benefit of Truly UnlimitedSM 4G LTE data to the U.S. variant of Galaxy S 4 in the second quarter of this year. Our customers will appreciate the ability to use Galaxy S 4 to surf the Web, share pictures and videos, and use this smartphone as much as they want without worrying about throttling or overage charges on their monthly bill due to data caps."
COMMENTARY: Let's take a look at a Specifications Comparison between the new Samsung Galaxy S4 versus the iPhone 5, HTC One and BlackBerry Z10 to determine how Samsung's new Galaxy S4 measure up against three major competitors:
Specifications Comparison - Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Apple iPhone 5 vs HTC One vs BlackBerry Z10 (Click Image To Enlarge)
As you can readily conclude from the above Technical Specifications comparison between the Samsung Galaxy S4 and three other leading smartphones -- Apple iPhone 5, HTC One and BlackBerry Z10, the S4 is clearly superior in every major technical specification.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 (left) and the HTC One (Click Image To Enlarge)
The latest slick software accoutrements give the S4 a continuation of the bragging rights it gained when it released the S3. Of special note are the S4's four software features:
- "Fun" features, which now includes dual-camera picture-in-picture, time lapse, and animated GIF, and a "sound and shot" mode which lets you record nine seconds of audio with any image. Very cool indeed.
- "Relationship" features, which allow users to interact with others by sharing content like multiplayer games, music and photos. This includes Group Play, which lets multiple Galaxy S4 phones play the same music track, show the same photos, or play multiplayer games over Wi-Fi Direct; Asphalt 4 and Gun Bros 2 will be the first two multiplayer games to be supported, Samsung. The S4 comes with Samsung’s S Translator tool that enables you to speak in one language and have the phone translate to another. When someone responded in Chinese, the phone typed out his words in English. It supports several other languages including French, Spanish, Italian and Portugese.
- "Convenience" features, provide a storehouse of intuitive and automatic features to help improve the overall S4 owner experience. This includes WatchOn, a universal remote control app which works with the phone's IR emitter to faciliate video stream from Netflix, Blockbuster and Samsung's own media store. My favorite convenience feature is Smart Pause which pauses videos when you look away. The Gesture control lets you scroll the screen or fast-forward music by waving your hand over the screen. The Air View control lets you preview items like e-mail messages by hovering your finger over them, like you can do with the S Pen on the Galaxy Note. An OCR program reads business cards. The S Voice Drive voice recognition feature outclasses Siri. You can ask it to read your email out loud and ask the phone to respond to a text message while you’re driving. Now that's cool.
- "S Health" features, provides a built-in pedometer, environmental sensors and diet guide. Samsung will sell Fitbit-like bands for people to wear when they aren't carrying their phones with them, and the biometric data will sync back to S Health, the company said. That's a neat medical device that is sure to attract the attention of athletes and the health conscience.
Although Samsung lost a patent infringement suit against Apple in 2012, and demonstrated stone cold audacity and defiance by paying the settlement in coins -- $2 billion worth -- and delivered by several armored trucks in front of Apple's HQ, it now has the last laugh. It is now giving those arrogant bastards at Apple lessons in innovation and oneupmanship.
It remains to be seen whether Samsung's S4 has climbed to the level of a "super-smartphone" or "best in class," but from what I have seen and read so far, there is no doubt in my mind that Samsung has "raised the bar," finally supplanting Apple when it comes to new smartphone product innovation. Apple's iPhone 5 clearly looks drab, tarnished and very ordinary (albeit with a few differentiators like SIRI), for it is now Samsung that has "put a dent in the Universe" and will make S4 customers "lust" over their new smartphone when they go on sale in April 2013. Makes you kind of wonder "what Steve would've done", doesn't it.....
Courtesy of an article dated March 14, 2013 appearing in PC Magazine and an article dated March 14, 2013 appearing in C|NET
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