Samsung GALAXY S 4 hands-on

The next big thing is here from Samsung. That being the often rumored and recently heavily leaked GALAXY S 4 smartphone. The specs and features have been hotly debated in the months leading up to today’s big reveal, and now we finally have all the details and our hands on the device. Just confirmed moments ago the S4 indeed comes with a 5-inch 1080p full HD display, a blazing fast 8-core processor and a quality 13 megapixel camera. It wasn’t the radical design change many wanted, but they’ve merged new features into improved hardware. Read on for our thoughts on all the new functions and features of the GS4.

Samsung certainly has a huge following and an impressive track record on Android. After all they are the number one smartphone manufacturer and show no signs of slowing down. While the HTC One

kicked things up a notch on hardware, Samsung chose to stick to a formula that’s already working for them. That being a very similar design, and durable materials. Only this isn’t plastic, this is a polycarbonate shell. Then focused on improving all the areas we use daily. Those being the screen, camera, and software.

The new Galaxy S4 isn’t too big, and actually gets a larger full HD 5-inch display while staying in nearly the same overall size as the previous generation. You’ll be working with the same 136.6mm tall, wider at 69.8mm, and actually a thinner 7.9mm frame. All this is housing a larger 1920x1080p FHD PenTile panel, bigger battery, and 8-core processor. Many might complain that the design is too similar to last years Galaxy S III, but they’ve made huge strides in what they’ve accomplished here. You get WAY more in your hand, in roughly the same size as before.

Real quick one more time lets talk the full numbers. Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean is happily on board, as well as a smooth TouchWiz UI we’ll get into below. The hardware is that 5-inch FHD display with 441 PPI. Then as expected and rumored we have a blazing fast 1.6 GHz Exynos 5 Octa 8-core processor accompanied by 2GB of RAM. Samsung isn’t being too clear, but appears we’ll get the Snapdragon 600 series quad-core in the US running at 1.9 GHz. Then storage comes in 16/32/64 variations, as well as a 13MP camera on rear and 2MP front.

As far as how the Galaxy S4 feels in your hand – it’s wonderful. Everything we love and made the Galaxy S III the best selling smartphone to date is present. The awesome design has been refined and improved without getting bigger. The bezels are slightly smaller allowing for the larger HD display, yet it’s still comfortable to hold thanks to the rounded back. That aluminum ring around the sides should also help keep the S4 safe from drops, and we know the drop tests will be coming soon. As far as the screen goes. It’s amazing. It truly is extremely crisp, stunningly bright, and a joy to use. It also is the worlds first with Gorilla Glass 3 for extra protection. Viewing angles are top-notch, but the HTC One SLCD3 seems a bit natural and more clear.

Flipping through homescreens, launching the camera or Google Now, and of course using the new ‘Hover’ feature (talk more on that below) all is as smooth as butter without a drop of lag. This thing flies. We haven’t been able to fully test out that camera or all of the features yet, but we’re getting there and will post all the details soon. So far the subtle changes to TouchWiz are nice, but nothing major or worth making headlines. It’s the added features inside the OS that are important, and we’ll get into those below.

Just as rumors and sources close to the situation suggested Samsung has focused on software innovation more than hardware innovation. We’re not taking anything away from the stellar design and beautiful screen, but the software received the share of attention. Software is the key here – and is what Samsung hopes will set their device apart from the competition. We’re happy to confirm it’s running the absolute latest Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean so you’ll enjoy lockscreen widgets, Google Now, and everything else but all of Samsung’s additions are make it truly shine.

Samsung focused on four main pillars and gave them fancy titles, and they are: Enjoyment, Creating and Nurturing Relationships, Everyday Convenience, then Health and Wellness. With new camera features to cover enjoyment and creating relationships. Scrolling, hovering, and air features for convenience, then tons of S-Band features for health and wellness.

Here’s the names: Hover, Smart Stay, Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, Air Wave, Air Browse, Air Jump and more are all brand new to the Galaxy S4. Hopefully most come to the SIII in an update too. They aren’t as confusing as they sound either. Hover will give you previews of images in a gallery, a sample of an email or text, calendar entries and much more all while hovering your finger over the area – without touching the screen. This feature will work in a brand new version of Flipboard for Android. It works wonderfully too! This will be one of my favorite features, that’s for sure. The Smart Stay and Smart Scroll is also brand new and truly an innovation in mobile devices. The Galaxy will scroll through an email or web page automatically for you based on eye recognition and tracking technology, and it works as good as you’d expect. It’s right on somehow. I’ll be disabling the smart pause because I don’t always look at the screen 100% of the time while viewing a video, but it’s a nice touch. Look away and it pauses. Fancy that!

Then the ‘Air’ features are all motion-based. Waving a hand over the phone when a call comes, switches songs with Air Jump while playing music, and in browser you can scroll up and down or left to right to jump between tabs. Just with a flip of your wrist. This same feature takes screenshots of the Galaxy S III, now it’s just improved for more functionality.

That isn’t all either. While HTC has the Ultrapixel camera and Zoe feature as selling points, Samsung’s done the same sort of thing on another level. They’ve thrown something unique into all aspects hoping that at least one new feature sticks to the wall for someone. This will be their way of getting anyone and everyone to buy the Galaxy S4. They’re predicting more than 100m sales, and we can see why. The Galaxy S4 has a IR-Blaster and a new WatchON remote app, but we’ll have to get time with that soon. They’ve added a business card scanner that converts it to a QR code, and their ChatON app has been overhauled too. ChatON will be a unified messenger and video calling feature, and even has a new feature called S Translator for different languages.

Samsung even has their own new accessory called S-Band and an app called S Health. And yes, it’s a band that syncs to your Galaxy via Bluetooth. This is part of the health and wellness pillar above. It’s a food and calorie tracker, comfort level tracker, and walking mate. It has a pedometer and huge database of nutritional information. Then the band is a body scale, tracks your heart rate and temp then will sync via Bluetooth. Looks like they are aiming for the Nike FuelBand with this optional accessory.

To be honest tons of these features like Smart Scroll or the Hover features are nice, but it’s almost as if they’re just throwing tons of ideas out to see what sticks. Almost too many features, if there’s such a thing as too much awesomeness. I’m a bit torn on what I think. It’s an overload, but awesome and many users will love it.

In the end the expectations for the Galaxy S4 are extremely high, and now we have all the details. Obviously the verdict is still out until we get a review unit, but so far we’ve come away extremely impressed with the level of polish and innovation to the software. This is clearly a show about software, while also upping the game in hardware. The Galaxy S4 is an evolutionary smartphone, and not an revolutionary step many wanted. Will that matter though? Probably not. Will users still flock to this stunning smartphone? Absolutely.

While the hardware has been vastly improved over the previous generation, most of the cutting edge changes (screen aside) are with software, which we’re expecting to eventually be updated and added to the Galaxy S III. So the question here is will you, or should you upgrade? There’s tons of features that will grab buyers attention and die-hard fans will certainly upgrade to have the latest and greatest. Most likely not all the features will be carried over to differentiate the GS4 from last years king, so that’s a thought. In the end we get a sense there’s enough hardware changes, and certainly software improvements, that there will be a little something for everyone to be excited about.

Stay tuned for all of our additional coverage as we break down the details, get hands-on with the accessories and S-Band, and anything else that appears here in NYC. For everything we know so far hit the timeline below.

New SAMSUNG Phone Can't Match The Competition

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is easily the most hyped phone of the year.

There was a Broadway-style launch event took place at Radio City Music Hall. The announcement made the front pages of newspapers around the country. People were drooling.

Now, a month later, the Galaxy S4 is here.

I've been using the Galaxy S4 for about a week. In many respects, it does live up to all that hype and is definitely one of the best phones you can buy today. But it's still falls short of its chief rivals, the iPhone 5 and HTC One, at least from a design standpoint.

Click here for photos of the Samsung Galaxy S4 >

The Hardware: So Much Plastic

Perhaps the most polarizing feature of the Galaxy S4 is its design and build quality. A lot of people criticized Samsung when it decided to make its new flagship phone out of plastic, and rightfully so. The Galaxy S4 simply isn't as beautiful or as fun to hold as the HTC One and iPhone 5.

And it almost feels cheap by comparison. The entire phone is covered in creaky plastic, not solid metal and glass. Just take off the flimsy back cover and you'll see what I'm talking about. It almost bends in half. Whereas the iPhone and HTC One designs scream quality, the Galaxy S4 design feels at least two years behind. It looks nearly identical to last year's Galaxy S III, with only a few minor tweaks.

Steve Kovach/Business Insider

The flimsy back cover on the Galaxy S4.

Now is the plastic horrible? Is it a deal breaker? Is the Galaxy S4 a total dud because there's no metal on the body?

Nope.

There are some benefits to owning a plastic phone over a metal one, and some will find the plastic construction a good thing, not a drawback. The Galaxy S4 won't scratch as easily as metal phones, and the plastic makes the phone feel slim and lightweight.

And there are plenty of other things to love about the hardware, most notably the screen, which is easily the best physical feature of the Galaxy S4.

At five inches, the Galaxy S4's display is bigger, sharper, and more impressive than the one on the iPhone 5. It can also play HD video, another feature missing from the iPhone. And a bigger screen doesn't mean the phone itself is so huge you can't hold it. Samsung was able to increase the Galaxy S4's screen size but still keep the phone's body nearly the same size as the Galaxy S III. As a result, the phone has a remarkably thin bezel, and the display feels like it's floating in your hand. Gorgeous.

The Galaxy S4 also has a removable battery and a SD card slot for extra memory, two features many manufacturers are starting to leave out of phones nowadays. Battery life is pretty good too. You'll easily be able to make it through a day with moderate use.

In the end, the hardware is all about tradeoffs. You get one of the best screens available on a phone, a removable battery, and expandable memory, but it's all encased in a plastic shell. I enjoyed the look and feel of the HTC One a lot more than the Galaxy S4, but it's all a matter of personal preference.

More Features Than You Can Count

The Galaxy S4 is still an Android phone at its core, meaning you get access to all of those great Google features like a robust selection of apps and games along with Google Now, a voice-powered assistant that's much better than Siri on the iPhone.

But Samsung has modified Google's basic Android operating system with a bunch of whiz-bang features of its own. In fact, there's so much stuff packed into this phone, that Samsung had to create a special settings menu just so you can toggle everything on and off.

This is how you toggle all the extra features on and off.

Normally, I wouldn't spend so much time on these features, but it's a big part of how Samsung is trying to differentiate the Galaxy S4 from other phones. It spent a few million dollars putting on that Broadway-style show to introduce them, after all.

There's way too much in the Galaxy S4 to go over without boring you to death, so here's an overview of the most important stuff:

• Air View: This feature lets you hover your finger a centimeter or two over the phone's display and view extra information or drop-down menus in apps. I found it the most useful in the email app, which lets you hover over a message in your inbox and get a quick preview of what it says. But it doesn't work with most apps, only a few that are made by Samsung and the specially designed Flipboard app. And it's still not as instant as actually touching the screen. There's a noticeable delay from the time you hover over the screen and when the action actually appears.
• Air Gesture: When you switch on Air Gesture, you can scroll through photos in your gallery, browse websites, or answer incoming calls by waving your hand over the screen. Air Gesture was one of the most talked about features when the Galaxy S4 was first introduced, but it also happens to be one of the most impractical. I could only think of one scenario where waving your hand over the screen is better than actually touching it, and it's the example Samsung gave me –– Air Gesture is great if you're in the car and you need to answer the phone without looking.
• Smart Stay: Smart Stay uses the Galaxy S4's front-facing camera to detect when you're looking at it and prevents the screen from going dark. Out of all the extras in the Galaxy S4, this is by the most useful. It solves a real problem with smartphones and tablets (How many times has your phone's screen gone dark while you were in the middle of reading an article?) and it's a feature you should always keep switched on.
• Smart Scrolling: You've probably heard that the Galaxy S4 has a special eye-tracking technology used for scrolling. That's not entirely accurate. Like with Smart Stay, Smart Scrolling can detect when you're looking at the phone. You then tilt the phone forward or backward to scroll through pages. But smart scrolling didn't always work well for me, and like Air Gesture, I found it easier just to touch the screen to navigate the old-fashioned way. There's no real advantage to tilting your phone to scroll.
• Camera: The camera software is really impressive, packed with a bunch of clever shooting modes that are easy to navigate to. (A lot of smartphone cameras tend to bury their extra modes.) My favorite mode is called Eraser, which can automatically detect people moving in the background and remove them to create a nearly perfect image. I also like Animated Photo, which lets you create your own GIF-like images. Other standard shooting modes like panorama and HDR are included too.

Air View on the Galaxy S4.

Got all that?

There are several more goodies hidden in the Galaxy S4's software, but hopefully you get the idea. Samsung has packed its new phone with more doodads than any one person could ever use. Some of them are useful, some of them don't work properly, and some of them are just plain gimmicky. But that's also part of what makes the Galaxy S4 an appealing phone –– it's versatile and completely customizable, able to adapt to your needs whether you're a smartphone pro or a novice.

All those extras are there if you want them, yet hidden if you don't.

Is It Worth The Hype?

Make no mistake about it, the Galaxy S4 is a great phone, and easily one of the best you can buy right now. You get an amazing Android experience on a big, beautiful display.

As long as you don't mind a bunch of plastic, you'll be perfectly happy with the Galaxy S4.

But is it the best phone? No. You're still much better off with the iPhone 5 or the HTC One if you like Android.

Pricing and launch dates vary by carrier, but you should be able to get the Galaxy S4 for around $200 starting this week. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular will be the first US carriers to sell the phone.

Sony Xperia Z

he Xperia Z is Sony’s latest, most advanced smartphone to date. However, in a world full of iPhones and Galaxys, does it really offer much to separate it from the competition? Keep reading as we lay it all out for you.

Design

The Sony Xperia Z is a ginormous bit of kit – there’s no getting away from that fact. However, it’s also amazingly slim, measuring just 7.9 millimeters thick and weighing in at a very respectable 146 grams, making it quite comfortable to carry.

Height-wise, however, it’s still quite a handful and may feel slightly unwieldy if you have small hands, as your thumb won’t easily reach some of the menu options located at the top.

While looks are subjective, we think the Xperia Z is a very polished and handsome looking device that will surely catch a few admiring glances for its slick, monolith form.

What really separates the Xperia Z from the competition, however, is that it’s certified water and dust resistant.

With Ingress Protection ratings IP55 and IP57, the Xperia Z can withstand being submerged in one metre of water for up to thirty minutes and won't easily get clogged up inside too.

The handset also features a Dragontrail glass front and back to keep scratches and scuffmarks to a minimum. We dropped the review unit numerous times for “test purposes” and the front panel received only the smallest of scrapes.

Suffice to say, these are all very impressive credentials for what is essentially a very high-end smartphone. Naturally, this makes the Xperia Z an ideal choice if you’re prone to - or even worried about - dropping your handset a lot – be it on the ground or in a tub of water.

Hardware

Display and processor

The Xperia Z has a five-inch full HD Reality Display with an eye-popping 441 pixels per inch density that’s over a 100 higher than even the iPhone’s Retina Display.

Better yet, it uses Sony’s latest Mobile Bravia Engine 2 video processor, offering a silky smooth framerate that really brings movies to life. The touchscreen itself is incredibly responsive, providing an enjoyable experience in every situation we’ve come across.

The only thing letting it down is a less-than-stellar viewing angle and a contrast ratio that we wish were higher to take advantage of those extra pixels.

Under the hood, Xperia Z straps a brawny 1.5GHz quad core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor that keeps things ticking over smoothly and handles both multimedia and multitasking with aplomb.

Camera

As with most Sony smartphones, the Xperia Z has a very impressive camera too. At the back it has a 13-megapixel autofocus shooter, equipped with LED flash and the new Exmor RS sensor that takes great snaps in low-light conditions. Basically, it’s perfect if you live in Britain.

We’re particularly impressed by how fast the autofocus is and how the lens is able to keep with up with fast movements without breaking a sweat.

Of course, like most high-end kits, the Xperia Z records videos in full HD and ups the ante with High Dynamic Range (HDR) video recording as well, which should please any keen videographer.

At the front of the handset is a 2.2-megpaixel webcam, which also offers 1080p HD recording and is great for making video calls too.

Connectivity and extras

In terms of connectivity, the Xperia Z is packed with options. Chief among these is Near Field Communication – aka NFC – which lets you use the handset to pay for low-ticket items – say coffee or travel – by simply swiping the handset over an NFC reader.

Although it’s still early days for NFC, with most major handset makers adopting the technology, it’s bound to become standard eventually.

There’s also Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n and Wi-Fi Direct for fast wireless data transfer. And there’s DLNA support and Wireless TV out too to let you wirelessly stream video on the handset to a compatible HD television.

In terms of storage, you have 16 gigabytes onboard to play with, plus a microSD slot to expand that further.

Last but certainly not least, the Xperia Z is 4G ready, which means it will work with the high-speed network standard out of the box.

Interface and software

The Xperia Z runs on the latest Jelly Bean version of Google’s Android operating system, which means it has all the newest features and improvements the platform has to offer.

It also comes with Sony’s bespoke user interface slathered on top, but a good thing is that this is not as heavily customised as proprietary skins on some other Android handsets and is much closer to what you expect from the vanilla edition of Android.

To unlock the screen you swipe upwards, which has a rather neat blinds-like animation. You also have two shortcuts, which you can tap and swipe sideways to jump straight into an application.

Inside, there are seven home screens, which you can personalise with a host of widgets, apps and themes to really make the handset your own.

Apps can be organized using folders, while many of the widgets can be resized as you see fit. You can also change the appearance of the homescreen using themes and wallpapers.

For the most part, the software on the Xperia Z is pretty much what you expect if you’ve used an Android smartphone before. However, it also packs some great Sony apps such as Music Unlimited, Walkman and PlayMemories – plus all the best Google apps and services like Gmail, YouTube and Maps installed out of the box.

Of course, the real action is at the Google Play store where you’ll find hundreds of thousands of great applications, as well movies and music to download - all of which should run with a real sense of snap on the Xperia Z thanks to its powerful processor and ample memory.

Verdict

The Sony Xperia Z is a brilliant handset. It’s crammed with cutting-edge technologies - not least of which is a gorgeous screen, a brawny processor and a fantastic camera.

Of course, the fact that it’s water and dust resistant too also deserves serious consideration when you’re thinking of spending a substantial amount of money on a new handset.

If you’re in the market for a truly high-end smartphone, you can’t go wrong with the Xperia Z.

Thanks to O2 for supplying the handset used in this review.