Samsung Galaxy S4: Features
The S3 was packed with features, some more useful than others, and the Samsung Galaxy S4 is no different. As rumours suggested, the Smart Stay function has been updated to include a Smart Pause feature.The S4 will know when you're looking at the phone and will pause a playing video if you look away and continue to play when you look back. It worked well with our brief time with the handset and seemed much more responsive than the previous iteration.
Along with Smart Pause, there's also Smart Scroll, that allows you to tilt the phone to scroll up and down webpages and left-to-right in a gallery.
Taking a few cues from the Galaxy Notes, Air View has been added to the S4 but without the need of a stylus. Hover your finger around 2cm from the screen and you'll get a preview of an email or video.
Another gesture-based feature is Air Gesture. This somewhat pointless function allows you to wave your hand up and down to scroll content or answer a call hands-free. It work very well during our play with the device, but we question its usefulness.
Group Play is another feature that's been loaded into the phone. It allows you to connect up to eight other S4 devices to play a game or listen to a track. We didn't get a chance to demo this, but it'll be interesting to see how it works with a game.
Samsung Galaxy S4: Screen
As with the Samsung Galaxy S3, the gigantic 5-inch screen is probably the phone's most striking feature. It trumps the HTC One (4.7 inches), iPhone 5 (4 inches) and Nokia Lumia 920 (4.5 inches).Along with the size, the quality of the screen has been upped too. It now boasts a 440 PPI. Specs never seen before on a phone, and we have to say, it's impressive. Menus, webpages and pictures are dazzlingly bright and pin-sharp.
Samsung Galaxy S4: Camera
The camera on the S4 is what Samsung is hoping will be its trump card. The rear-facing camera has a 13-megapixel sensor with auto-focus and the capability to record 1080p video and there's also a secondary front-facing camera at 2-megapixels. It's not just the specs that are impressive, there's also some natty new features.First-up is dual shot, which allows you to use both the front-facing and back-facing cameras simultaneously and creates a picture-in-picture image. There are various options that allow you to be creative on how the picture- in-picture appears from a postage stamp to a split screen. It also works as a video.
Other new features are Drama Shot, that stiches multiple burst shots together into one image, Cine-shot that creates a picture that's a mixture of still shots and video and finally Racer-shot that allows you to delete a moving person from a picture. Handy for those pesky photo-bombers.
Samsung Galaxy S4: Performance
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Samsung Galaxy S4: Battery
When it comes to battery, we're taking the stats Samsung quote as given as we only had a short time with the device; it's claimed that the S4 will last longer than the S3 and the specs agree with a 2,600mAH battery on board, a step-up from it's predecessor.Samsung Galaxy S4: Verdict
There's no doubt that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is a significant step-up from the S3. It's impressive that Samsung has managed to slim-down the device even though it's added a bigger screen and a host of new goodies.As with the S3, there are some innovative new features in there, some more useful than others but there's no doubt that stalwart Galaxy and Android fans will be impressed (not to mention the odd potential iOS defector).
The Samsung Galaxy S4 was the most hotly anticipated Android phone of 2013 and based on what we've seen, it's certainly living up to the hype so far. We'll bring you a full review as soon as we can...
Samsung Galaxy S4 release date: 26 April 2013
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