Samsung Galaxy S4 review: Supernova

GSMArena team, 28 March 2013.

Introduction

As the Galaxy S series counter flips another digit, Samsung has hopes of getting an even tighter grasp on the smartphone market, and expand its Android dominance in the process. With two of its main rivals enjoying a head-start to the market, the Samsung Galaxy S4 would need to be something special to become the dominant force its predecessor was. But from what our first impressions showed, that might be not be as tall an order as it sounds.

Samsung Galaxy S4 official photos

The new Samsung flagship improves on just about every aspect of its predecessor, coupling more powerful hardware with a ton of new software features. The Galaxy S4 aims to be your best life companion and has even got itself a few new sensors that should make it even more useful in your daily routine.

Here's the full cheat sheet for our Samsung Galaxy S4 review:

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; quad-band 3G with HSPA; LTE


• 5" 16M-color 1080p Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass 3


• Android OS v4.2.2 Jelly Bean with TouchWiz UI


• Quad-core 1.9 GHz Krait 300 CPU, Adreno 320 GPU; Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset/ Quad-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A15 & quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7, PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU; Exynos 5410 chipset


• 2GB of RAM


• 13 MP autofocus camera with LED flash,1080p video recording @ 30fps, continuous autofocus and stereo sound


• 2 MP front-facing camera, 1080p video recording


• Dual shot and dual video recording, Drama shot, Shot and sound


• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA


• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS


• 16GB/32/64GB of built-in storage


• microSD card slot


• microUSB port with USB host and MHL 2.0


• Bluetooth v4.0


• NFC


• IR port for remote control functionality


• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack


• Accelerometer and proximity sensor


• Barometer, thermometer, hygroscope


• IR gesture sensor for Air gestures


• Smart gestures: Smart stay, Smart pause, Smart scroll


• Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic


• Ample 2600 mAh battery with great endurance


• 7.9mm thickness


• Smart volume and Adapt Sound features for the music player

Main disadvantage

• Design is a bit played out by now


• Hyperglaze finish doesn't feel as premium as aluminum on HTC One or glass on Xperia Z


• No FM radio


• Video recording is slightly worse than on the Galaxy S III; FOV in video is pretty narrow


• Shared camera interface makes framing tricky

So, there are several major wows, many minor ohs and just a few oh wells - not a bad achievement when you are succeeding the most popular droid of all time. The Samsung Galaxy S4 was always expected to aim for the top, but its announcement still got many by surprise. The fact that the Koreans squeezed a larger screen, bigger battery and more power in a chassis smaller than the Galaxy S III is impressive enough in its own right, but the novelties certainly don't end there.

Samsung Galaxy S4 at ours

We got the chance to familiarize ourselves with only a few of the Samsung Galaxy S4 exclusive software tricks when we did our preview, but we'll be testing the full set this time around. The new camera also showed promise and we'll put it through all the motions to find out if it can really live up to its potential.

The hardware inspection starts right after the break, with the battery and display test following right after that.

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