Samsung Galaxy S4 Announced Ships in April

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/15/2013 09:25 AM | Source | 29 comment(s)

Samsung announced the Galaxy S4. Revealed at an event in New York City, the Galaxy S4 will take the mantle of the Galaxy S III as Samsung's new flagship smartphone, sporting a massive 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display with a pixel density of 441ppi — a significant leap over the Galaxy S III's 306ppi display and the iPhone 5's 326ppi retina display. The design has undergone some notable upgrades, including a thinner bezel around the new display and sleek metal trim around the sides. Models in certain regions (like here in the Netherlands), however, will ship with only a quad-core processor.

But perhaps the most exciting new features, however, are Samsung's suite of user-tracking functions, including its new Smart Pause, Air View, and floating touch controls. The Galaxy S4 uses its front-facing camera to detect when a user looks away from the video they're watching and automatically pauses playback. Air View, on the other hand, allows users to scroll through pages with a wave of their hand. Floating touch takes Samsung's S Pen concept and applies it to your fingers, allowing you to point and hover over an item to view it.

Samsung has also made vast improvements to its camera technology. The Galaxy S4 has a built-in 13-megapixel camera, up from the Galaxy S III's 8-megapixel sensor, which uses new camera functions Dual Shot, Eraser, Drama Shot, and Sound & Shot. Dual Shot allows you to capture images from both the front and rear cameras simultaneously, while Eraser captures multiple frames so that you can remove unwanted subjects, Drama Shot composites moving objects for action shots, and Sound & Shot captures five seconds of images and audio before the capture button is pressed, not unlike HTC's Zoe technology.

The phone runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, but Samsung has developed a suite of its own new software as well. For one, the GS4 will ship with a photo album publishing service, like Apple's greeting card service, which allows you to design a custom photo album directly from your phone that will be shipped to your home. What's more, the Galaxy S4 ships with S Translate, a baked-in realtime translator that supports 9 different languages, while S Voice Drive improves GPS driving capabilities. It also sports a built-in IR transmitter for controlling your TV and other devices in your entertainment center.


	Apple iPhone 5	HTC One	Samsung Galaxy S 3	Samsung Galaxy S 4
SoC	Apple A6 1.3GHz	Snapdragon 600 1.7GHz	Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz	Exynos 5 Octa (1.6/1.2GHz) or quad-core Snapdragon (1.9GHz)
DRAM/NAND/Expansion	1GB LPDDR2, 16/32/64GB NAND	2GB LPDDR2, 32/64GB NAND	2GB LPDDR2, 16/32GB NAND, microSD	2GB LPDDR3, 16/32/64GB NAND, microSD
Display	4.0-inch 1136 x 640 LCD	4.7-inch SLCD3 1080p, 468 ppi	4.8-inch Super AMOLED 720p, 306 ppi	5-inch Super AMOLED 1080p, 441 ppi
Network	2G / 3G / 4G LTE Cat 3	2G / 3G / 4G LTE Cat 3	2G / 3G / 4G LTE Cat 3	2G / 3G / 4G LTE Cat 3 (depending on region)
Dimensions	123.8mm x 58.6mm x 7.6mm	137.4mm x 68.2mm x 4mm - 9.3mm	136.6mm x 70.6mm 8.6mm	136.6mm x 69.8mm x 7.9mm
Weight	112g	143g	133g	130g
Rear Camera	8MP	4MP w/ 2µm pixels	8MP	13MP
Front Camera	1.2MP	2.1MP	1.9MP	2MP
Battery	Internal 5.45 Wh	Internal 8.74 Wh	Removable 7.98 Wh	Removable 9.88 Wh
OS	iOS 6.1.2	Android 4.1.2	Android 4.1.2	Android 4.2.2
Connectivity	802.11a/b/g/n, BT 4.0, USB 2.0, GPS/GNSS	802.11ac/a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC	802.11a/b/g/n, BT 4.0, USB 2.0, NFC, GPS/GNSS, MHL	802.11a/b/g/n/ac (HT80) + BT 4.0, USB 2.0 NFC, GPS/GNSS, IR LED, MHL 2.0

The Galaxy S4 is powered by Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa processor, which was introduced at CES in January as the 'world's first' 8-core mobile processor. Models in certain regions, however, will ship with only a quad-core processor. It comes with 2GB of RAM — double that of the iPhone 5 —and 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of on-board storage. The Galaxy S4 comes with a large, 2,600mAh battery, roughly 23-percent larger than the Galaxy S III. It's also three grams lighter and a millimeter thinner.

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kanej2007
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#4553915 Posted on: 03/15/2013 09:38 AM

Looks identical to the Note II, awesome spec nevertheless!

Speed Weed
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#4553939 Posted on: 03/15/2013 10:29 AM

Managed to survive an hour of that streaming rubbish from Times Square very late last night/early this morning.

Really painful to watch.

Lane
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#4553951 Posted on: 03/15/2013 11:17 AM

Managed to survive an hour of that streaming rubbish from Times Square very late last night/early this morning.

Really painful to watch.

I had cut the sound and just watch the "text" of the specifications when it was coming,

nicugoalkeper
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#4553956 Posted on: 03/15/2013 11:24 AM

I don't know way you did it, is better to wait for some real reviews , hoping Hilbert will do one to !

hallryu
Don Altobello

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#4553958 Posted on: 03/15/2013 11:26 AM

The new Sony phone looks much better.

Chillin
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#4553970 Posted on: 03/15/2013 11:48 AM

Galaxy 3S

Seriously, there is nothing here for the most part that can't be backported to the Galaxy S3 or that apps can't do for any modern android phone. The field is wide open for Motorola and Google with their "X-phone" and Apple to finally make a new modern interface and continue to take the lead. Absolutely no one I talked to was anymore excited for the S4 than they were for the S3.

That being said, props to Samsung for the replaceable battery and Micro-SD.

In addition, that was the corniest presentation I have perhaps ever watched, it was almost painful. No one wonder why Anand just cut his liveblog short; I would have also just done a hands on and left when I saw that show.

Chillin
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#4553978 Posted on: 03/15/2013 12:05 PM

One of the things I also can't understand is why the rear camera can't record at 60 FPS, the hardware is certainly powerful enough...

eclap
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#4554032 Posted on: 03/15/2013 01:30 PM

Denial
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#4554038 Posted on: 03/15/2013 01:36 PM

The conference was terrible, they basically said nothing about the hardware. US variant is getting the S600, which at this point I think is better than the octacore, especially considering the A15's are clocked at 1.2ghz.

The LTE version isn't shipping till later this year too, so who knows when that is. At the point I think I'll end up getting something else.

Vinnie
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#4554044 Posted on: 03/15/2013 01:42 PM

And.. It is still made of plastic.

Denial
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#4554059 Posted on: 03/15/2013 01:56 PM

And.. It is still made of plastic.

I prefer the plastic as long as it's well constructed and isn't the slippery garbage that is the back of the S3.

Vxheous
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#4554379 Posted on: 03/15/2013 08:59 PM

Just because it looks like a S3, doesn't mean it would run like one. Expected better from all the posts here considering this a tech site. Exynos 5 Octa vs a Snapdragon S4, 1080p 441ppi vs 720p 306 ppi, the specs are pretty impressive.

Denial
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#4554393 Posted on: 03/15/2013 09:17 PM

deltatux
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#4554511 Posted on: 03/15/2013 11:08 PM

I think most people know/knew the specs were going to be improved. It basically brings the S3 up to par with current generation phones. There is nothing really special about the hardware. A15's at 1.2Ghz probably will come in at around what Krait cores perform at anyway.

The biggest complaints about the S3 were the button layout, aesthetic and the interface. Samsung did absolutely nothing to remedy any of that, despite the fact that the korean guy got up on stage and said like 15 times that they designed the phone around consumer feedback. Last time I checked no one wanted to play 7 songs synced at the same time.

Ummm, the Cortex A15s run at 1.6 GHz and the Cortex A7s run at 1.2 GHz in the same chip for the Exynos 5 Octa. It runs in the big.LITTLE configuration that ARM designed. Honestly, I'm more impressed by the big.LITTLE design than Qualcomm's design. The Cortex A7 kicks in for most tasks like browsing, texting and video playback, and then the Cortex A15 will kick in when absolute performance is required, say when you're gaming. Personally, i don't understand why Samsung opted to put 4 Cortex A7 cores since programs that will trigger the Cortex A7 wouldn't need 4 cores, a dual core Cortex A7 would make more sense but I guess Exynos 5 Hexa wouldn't sound as sexy as the Exynos 5 Octa. When either the A7 or A15 is on, the other is powered down, so it'll help save battery. Qualcomm doesn't have a similar design. Even NVIDIA's Tegra architecture has a similar design (Tegra 4 relies on all A15s but the companion core is built on a different process than the rest of the performance cores).

Plus, pure clock speed doesn't really make much difference since the experience is still smooth, hell, I underclocked my Nexus 4 as I really didn't see a performance hit, yet I got a lot more out of its battery life.

deltatux

Chillin
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#4554512 Posted on: 03/15/2013 11:09 PM

Here is the first official benchmark of the Exynos 5 version:

http://youtu.be/zPaIA16VqQI

Numbers are decent, but it looks like the Snapdragon 600 will blow past this easily. I wonder how the Adreno 320 stacks up to the 544MP3.

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