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Samsung Galaxy S4 (new flagship Android phone from Samsung)

N

nib95

Banned
H_Prestige said:
Agreed. I never found the S3 to be comfortable either. My iphone 4 feels much nicer in the hand.
Click to expand...

Well, I have a 4S and an S3, and the feel and coolness (temperature due to the glass and metal) of the 4S is better, but in terms of actual comfort and weight, the S3 takes it. Instead of linear and ridged you get rounded and ergonomic.
 
Z

zedge

Member
nib95 said:
Well, I have a 4S and an S3, and the feel and coolness (temperature due to the glass and metal) of the 4S is better, but in terms of actual comfort and weight, the S3 takes it. Instead of linear and ridged you get rounded and ergonomic.
Click to expand...


Yep, I find the S3 very comfortable to hold. it just sits in the hand so nicely. Unlike my 920 which is like a brick.
 
W

Wads

Banned
.GqueB. said:
All these battery stories are worrying me about the One. It dies quickly AND it takes long to charge. I'm still on the fence (considering the One even comes to Verizon).
Click to expand...

Par for the course on a HTC phone. I will not buy another.

rc213 said:
Check tmonews they saw it on T-Mobile Facebook page and then was confirmed by T-Mobile.
Click to expand...

Also, wtf t-mobile.... I was eagerly awaiting plunking down my cash to get the S4 tomorrow. So so lame especially so close to release...
 
B

buhdeh

Member
920 feels like shit, so big, heavy and the edges are too sharp.

Didn't like the S3 either, thing was way too slippery. Everytime I took it out of my pocket, it felt like it was going to fly out of my hands.
Nexus 4 feels great in my hands
4S was also good but that was mostly cause it was small. I'll never use a small ass screen like that again so it's sort of a moot point.

Camera on the S4 looks amazing
 
The Faceless Master

The Faceless Master

Member
DAGGER -> http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/23/samsungs-galaxy-s4-a-crowd-pleaser-without-much-taste-review/

and in case anyone was wondering, just like the Sprint version of the HTC One, the Sprint version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a SIM slot.

Engadget said:
The Now Network uses a removable SIM and will unlock global GSM roaming after the first 90 days of service; we expect Verizon to offer international roaming as well, but we've yet to receive confirmation.
Click to expand...
http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/24/samsung-galaxy-s-4-review/
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
HTC keeps shooting themselves in the foot.

Every year its the same thing. Their flagship gets rave reviews, but the galaxy it competes again sells it 10 to 1.

Im sure one giant reason is the lack of removable battery on the HTC. At least thats how Ive convinced 50+ people not to get it.
 
The Faceless Master

The Faceless Master

Member
H_Prestige said:
But they did mention the comfort. But that lightness comes at the expense of premium materials.

And is removable battery really a big deal?

The only thing I found odd about the review (and a lot of galaxy reviews) is the weird impression people have of AMOLED looking "fake" and having too much contrast.
Click to expand...

especially when they have an option there for 'proper' colors. and they even made a big deal about it this year, unlike last year when they were silent on that feature.




jamesinclair said:
HTC keeps shooting themselves in the foot.

Every year its the same thing. Their flagship gets rave reviews, but the galaxy it competes again sells it 10 to 1.

Im sure one giant reason is the lack of removable battery on the HTC. At least thats how Ive convinced 50+ people not to get it.
Click to expand...

i'm sure that HTC will do better this year.
 
The Faceless Master

The Faceless Master

Member
Cipherr said:
The same design as last year was lazy as fuck too. I figured that would come back to bite them in some way with the reviewers. Apple gets away with that in reviews, but noone else is going to, not even HTC next year. They should have known better.

Samsung previously had to make as many as 4+ variations of the same phone (Galaxy S2) just to appease the U.S. carriers..... So I'm not willing to believe that they couldn't redesign a SINGLE device for the S4 launch. They were just lazy and cutting costs. They will still crush HTC in sales, but jimmies will be rustled, they won't try this shit again next year.

That too me was the dead giveaway. They subtracted 3 points from last year on design, when its the same design but a little better. That tells me that he was looking to make a point. He really did go on and on about the plastic in the video and written review.
Click to expand...

GS4 looks closer to the T-Mobile GS2 variant than it does to the GS3.



Polari said:
Um, no. I think on a list of reasons, the lack of a removable battery would be close to the bottom.
Click to expand...

some people are really into that feature.
 
The Faceless Master

The Faceless Master

Member
interesting review tidbits roundup...

We'll make brief mention of the next feature purely on account of its cleverness, despite the fact that it won't be available in any US models at launch (meaning, we couldn't test it). The app we're referring to is called Safety Assistance, a tool that you can break out if you find yourself in an emergency and need to broadcast your whereabouts (without using GPS, of course). Activating the service, which is done by holding down volume up and down for three seconds, will prompt the phone to take a picture from both cameras and automatically send them to a pre-determined contact. This will allow that person to see exactly where you're at. Hopefully it'll never have to be used, but something like this should be included on a large number of phones.
Click to expand...
oh snap!



The GS 4 even lets you do a split-screen effect, with half of the screen showing the front and the other half displaying the back. We know it's gimmicky, but it's one of our favorite features and we imagine plenty of people will find good use for it.
Click to expand...
apparently this split screen ability for dual camera mode was not in the preview firmware, and neither was the ability to swap between front and rear cameras as the main source on the fly.



Samsung’s SwiftKey-based keyboard (it uses SwiftKey prediction through the company's SDK but has its own skin) is good, but not quite as capable as the stand-alone SwiftKey app when it comes to straight-up text input. Samsung’s version is unique in a few other ways, though. It’s possible to detach it from the bottom of the screen and use it as a floating keyboard like the Galaxy Note 2’s. What’s more, there’s an camera typing mode, which allows you to pick out text from real-world documents using optical character recognition and bring them into any text field.
Click to expand...
OCR text pasting input? nice!


also saw air view magnifying text in the Samsung web browser.
 
V

Victory Red

Member
Just read a bunch of the reviews. No suprises here. Its hard not to mention the gorgeous-ness of the HTC at every chance.

The reviews did nothing to put me off and I'm still glad I chose the S4 over the One.

Tomorrow can't come soon enough.
 
B

Blackhead

Redarse
The Faceless Master said:
interesting review tidbits roundup...



also saw air view magnifying text in the Samsung web browser.
Click to expand...

I saw this too but no idea how the UI works. Wouldn't it conflict with the 'Hover as mouse' feature? Can you tap a target while magnifying part of the screen?

The Browser is the most used app on my phone and I wish one of these so called reviewers would go in depth on the improvements Samsung has made and features added.
 
S

sun-drop

Member
Winterfang said:
The GS3 has to be one of the most comfortable phone I've ever held.
Click to expand...

this.

for the size of the phone it never feels it, and while i find the back of my phone pretty uninspired design wise .... i actually worry about the S4 being more square... it wont feel as good in hand...

as far as looks go, i love the front of the phone. s4 the same ...i think the s4 does a better job of the sides ...back is slightly better but still pretty plain ...

never ever feels cheap though ... how could it with that screen? and being that slim .... and light ....
 
S

smokeandmirrors

Banned
I'm not too keen on the design of the 3 or 4 personally but I am not going to fault samsungs decision here. Having a recognizable phone style does help build brand recognition better IMO. It's a (how much is up for debate) thing apple had realized and done well. When you see an iPhone whether its the 3GS or 5 you still know it's an iPhone because while the design has changed, it hasn't changed too drastically. And I'd be willing to bet Samsung wants to have a phone design that people can immediately recognize ("hey is that the new galaxy?") just like how people immediately recognize an iPhone.
 
G

Gannd

Banned
jamesinclair said:
HTC keeps shooting themselves in the foot.

Every year its the same thing. Their flagship gets rave reviews, but the galaxy it competes again sells it 10 to 1.

Im sure one giant reason is the lack of removable battery on the HTC. At least thats how Ive convinced 50+ people not to get it.
Click to expand...

iPhone says that it's not. And if you're telling everybody not to buy the One because the lack of removable batteries you're doing them a disservice.
 
R

reKon

Banned
Gannd said:
iPhone says that it's not. And if you're telling everybody not to buy the One because the lack of removable batteries you're doing them a disservice.
Click to expand...

Yep, especially if it's doing fine in terms of battery tests. If HTC would have gotten a 2600 mAH battery in their though, I think that I would have for sure picked this phone. Decision is still hard for me right because I'm trying to figure out what's important. For me I guess it's coming down to the little things I use a lot: developer friendliness (will probably be a tie between both), software features that are useful (multi task for SG4 is something that I envy compared to my Galaxy Nexus), the notification light (I love being able to have custom colors, very nice and useful), and battery life (most important feature).

Also size is important here and the SG4 is smaller than the HTC One, yet having a bigger screen. That's the trend I want to continue seeing - bigger screen on a smaller body.

I know both preform well and no matter what I choose, I'm running Nova Launcher over it and eventually I'll probably get CM 11 running KLP.
 
The Faceless Master

The Faceless Master

Member
reKon said:
http://anandtech.com/show/6914/samsung-galaxy-s-4-review
Click to expand...

*starts reading*

" I like to start with aesthetics and hardware. There's no doubt that superficially the SGS4 shares almost all of its industrial design language with SGS3 and the Galaxy Note 2, which themselves are iterations of the design path that Samsung started down arguably with the T-Mobile SGS2 (SGH-T989) and AT&T SGS2 what feels like an eternity ago."
Click to expand...

who's been saying that since forever? yep, me.
 
N

nib95

Banned
reKon said:
http://anandtech.com/show/6914/samsung-galaxy-s-4-review
Click to expand...

Fantastic and detailed write up. Getting very different results from some of the other sites though. Especially with respect to battery life and screen measurements. Anandtech has the iPhone 5 as closest to 6500k, (S4 second closest), whereas in another test it was the S4. Both very close here. Also with respect to battery life, I'm guessing their web browser test is very white page heavy and less on darker sites, darker videos etc, and does not include standby times, which might explain the large difference compared to measurements from GSmArena, PhoneArena etc.
 
The Faceless Master

The Faceless Master

Member
quick charging supported! was guessing this was the case since the Note 2 also has it.

2AT7bD0.png
 
poppabk

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Gannd said:
iPhone says that it's not. And if you're telling everybody not to buy the One because the lack of removable batteries you're doing them a disservice.
Click to expand...
You can't buy an iOS device with a removable battery so how do you compare? You could use your argument for absolutely any feature that the iphone doesn't have.
 
Nemesis_

Nemesis_

Member
Probably grabbing this on Saturday (Australian launch) though wondering if I should go white or black. I like the pattern but I hear it's really overbearing on the black model, so I am not sure what to do.

My S3 is white, and I always wanted a blue ;_;
 
V

Victory Red

Member
Nemesis_ said:
Probably grabbing this on Saturday (Australian launch) though wondering if I should go white or black. I like the pattern but I hear it's really overbearing on the black model, so I am not sure what to do.

My S3 is white, and I always wanted a blue ;_;
Click to expand...

I went with white. It bothered me that it wasn't a true black. And my last two phones were black.
 
Nemesis_

Nemesis_

Member
Haha, the two responses are both different :p

I know there are images everywhere, but I just want to see it in person and I doubt my store will be willing to open both and let me look (and typically the dummy model is always just in one colour)
 
D

Dr. Feel Good

Banned
Girlfriends birthday is this Saturday and was hoping to pick this up for her, but that's looking really unlikely. She's a US Cellular user, is she screwed for a long time to get this thing??
 
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