Samsung Galaxy S 4 Review - Part 1
by Brian Klug on April 24, 2013 12:01 AM ESTCamera on SGS4
On the camera side Samsung is in an interesting position. The industry trend is overwhelmingly to go to more pixels and push the megapixel count up from 8 MP where most flagships sat last year to around 13 where they will sit this year. Samsung has to push that number to keep itself in a defensible and marketable position and at the same time deliver a camera experience that’s better than the previous year.
I published a table in the One review with the camera specifications from the previous generation. I’ve filled this in with confirmed information from the SGS4 review unit I have been taking samples with. With SGS4 Samsung does make some pretty considerable improvements, many of which undo some of the regressions that I described with SGS3. Focal length is now quite a bit longer, from the very wide SGS3 which was around 26mm in 35mm effective numbers, to 31 mm. This is a notable difference if you’re shooting with the two side by side, the SGS3 was always shockingly wide for a rear facing camera.
| Smartphone Camera Comparison - 2013 | |||||||
| HTC One | Samsung Galaxy S 2 | Samsung Galaxy S 3 | Samsung Galaxy S 4 | ||||
| Front Camera | 2.1MP | 2MP | 1.9MP | 2MP | |||
| Front Camera - CMOS |
OV2722 (1.4µm, 1/5.8") |
- |
S5K6A3 (1.75µm, 1/6") |
S5K6B2 (1.34µm, 1/6") |
|||
| Front Camera - Focal Length | ~1.59mm | 2.73mm | 2.7mm | 1.85mm | |||
| Front Camera - Max Aperture | F/2.0 | F/2.8 | F/2.8 | F/2.4 | |||
| Rear Camera | 4MP | 8MP | 8MP | 13MP | |||
| Rear Camera - CMOS |
ST VD6869 (2.0 µm, 1/3") |
S5K3H2YX (1.4µm 1/3.2") |
Sony/Samsung (1.4µm, ~1/3") |
IMX091PQ (1.12µm, 1/3.06") |
|||
| Rear Camera - Focal Length |
3.82mm (28mm eff) |
3.97mm (30mm eff) |
3.7mm (~26 mm eff) |
4.2mm (31 mm eff) |
|||
| Rear Camera - Max Aperture | F/2.0 | F/2.65 | F/2.6 | F/2.2 | |||
At the same time, F-number has improved dramatically, from the F/2.6 or 2.65 (I’ve seen both at times) aperture on the SGS3 to a much faster F/2.2. This dramatically improves the light collection abilities of the camera, by essentially a half stop. It’s difficult optical design to both keep the module thin enough to fit in the device without creating a huge bump (there’s a camera bump on SGS4, it’s there), increase focal length, improve F/#, and improve MTF for a better sensor all at the same time.
On the rear facing camera we see a Sony CMOS who continues to dominate the space, this time with an IMX091PQ sensor. On the front we Samsung’s own sensor, the S5K6B2 get used. Samsung also continues to go with a dedicated Fujitsu ISP inside the SGS4, this time it’s a new M10MO family which there isn’t a whole lot of information about. I suspect this continues to be done to mitigate the differences in SoC ISP between the APQ8064ab variant and Exynos 5 version and make tuning easier on Samsung’s camera team.
Imaging is increasingly a key differentiator for smartphones since it’s that device you always have on your person to take images with. For SGS4 camera is more of an emphasis this time around than it was with SGS3, which largely kept everything the same and just added software features. SGS4 brings better hardware and additional software features to do something with the hardware.
Outdoors in bright light the increased spatial resolution afforded from going from 8 MP to 13 MP helps. Samsung still does a lot of sharpening and there are halos around a ton of different features if you know where to look, but that’s the tuning they have opted for. I suspect we still are outresolving the sensor here, but I’m impressed with what I see with enough light. I took a lot of photos side by side with SGS3 and find SGS4 a notable improvement, but I’m not sure whether that’s just more damning commentary on SGS3 than anything else. I haven’t had time to put together many side by sides with buttons yet. I’ve been shooting with the HTC One on −2 sharpness since I prefer it that way, note that I accidentally left it this way with when making comparisons here since that’s still my daily driver until I can get an AT&T or T-Mobile SGS4 to use.
 |
| SGS4: 1/950s, ISO 50 |
In lower light unsurprisingly we see the SGS4 offer better results than the SGS3 but still not quite as good as the HTC One. Samsung recently introduced low light shot on the SGS3 and Note 2, this feature carries over to the SGS4 but gets renamed back to Night Mode, even though behavior appears superficially to be the same. The SGS4 also introduces an auto night mode toggle, although this ships by default turned off. The mode automatically switches on night mode when it senses that you’re going to underexpose using the auto presets, I would advise basically leaving this on all the time. Unfortunately night mode introduces huge shot to shot latency that seems to be on the order of seconds — tap the button, capture runs, then there’s a progress bar that pops up while multiple exposures are ostensibly recombined into one image. You also have to be exceptionally steady to get an image without blur since it appears that this mode takes multiple images to get to the end goal — a better exposed image without tons of noise.
 |
| SGS4: 1/15s, ISO 1000 |
In the end there’s really no free lunch for anyone — you can temporally oversample (Samsung low light shot, or longer exposures with OIS like Nokia), or increase the size of your sampling area (larger pixels a-la HTC One), or do nothing and just give up unless you’re in a bright outdoor setting.
Samsung has introduced a bunch of new photo modes in the software on the SGS4, a number of which are actually pretty functional and awesome. There's the ability to create animated gifs from right in the camera, for example, where users paint a mask around the region they want animated from a short capture. This is essentially the same as Nokia's cinemagraph Lens from the Lumia 920, but it's still quite cool.
There's also dual camera, which lets you include a small overlay of the front facing camera atop the rear facing camera image. It initially struck me as a bit gimmicky but actually can be hilariously fun to share your face atop images to friends. It is also quite possibly the stuff of nightmares.
Panoramas on the SGS4 also are nicely put together and integrate continuously rather than get combined from a number of discrete images. The result is quite nice.
The user interface on SGS4 is a departure from the interface which has been present on previous Galaxy smartphones, and instead takes much UI/UX from the Galaxy Camera. Gone are the customizable toggles on the left side, instead options are in an expandable menu at the very top, and then another separate window. I got used to it pretty quickly but do miss the ability to customize the quick settings buttons on the left side and used to think that Samsung had the most powerful camera interface around. Things are moved around generally in a logical fashion however and I can understand how much this works to make transitioning between Galaxy Camera and SGS4 easy.
Video
When it comes to video, the SGS4 is records 1080p30 video at 17 Mbps H.264 High Profile.
I've done the usual thing and uploaded a sample to YouTube as well as our own servers for your inspection.
Video quality looks really nice and sharp on SGS4 from what I can tell by default. Anti shake (EIS in this case) is disabled out of the box, enabling it pops up a box warning you that stills captured during video record will be a different field of view.
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CoryS - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
Eh, I actually think phones are getting too thin. I put a case on my GS3 because I kept fumbling it due to how thin it was.nerdstalker - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
What's with the QUALCOMM 4G sticker on the top bezel of the device? :sHaserath - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
They're using a Qualcomm Snapdragon SOC with integrated LTE (4g)modem, I believe.nerdstalker - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Going the Intel way. :PBrian Klug - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
There's been a Qualcomm 4G sticker on the top of Samsung phones since, hmm, T-Mobile SGS2 and AT&T SGS2 (Skyrocket). Even the Droid Charge/Galaxy Nexus VZW edition which had no Qualcomm parts inside did, ostensibly due to some part of the OFDMA/LTE stack being licensed for CMC221, but that was never made clear.-Brian
nerdstalker - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Interesting. Thank you for the info.ranblv - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Idon't care about removal battery, I do however care about expandable storage. carrying an extra 32GB micro sd card in my wallet saved the day many times when I needed to shoot video or transfer docs.Great review, I don't always care that much for the minor details but I like it that someone like you is making sure they deliver what they say they do.
janosch.from.afar - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
cannot understand why HTC cant simply add a tray to its smartphone side to insert a battery and sd card. Much like the iphones do it with their sim card tray.Besides, samsung could simply allow two sdcard slots, instead of one - but they should try to improve the SdExtcard mount first, so to being able install all software to it.
UpSpin - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
It adds further parts to the bill list, makes the frame less sturdy because you have to drill a huge hole in the side, you have to add some mechanism to lock it and you have to route all wires on the opposite side, because the battery tray side gets lost for antenna, wires, parts. With plastic it's easy because you can bent the back and remove the whole back, with aluminum it's more difficult, you have to use screws.But I agree, it's still possible. For example they could have used some screws to attach the back. It might have looked even better with screws than without them, but easy swapping won't be possible, so it has little use at all and few people really take advantage of battery swapping, so they probably just risked it with a fixed battery.
And a sd-card could have fitted easily, just as you can exchange the sim card. But here again, it's important for some (I would like one, too), but the majority gets confused with a second storage which is more likely to fail and which can't get used like the internal one, and few understand this.
holyanan - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
I have to say that the browsing time is really disappointing, i fail to understand why iphones provide with supposedly twice as much browsing time - which is one of the primary functions of a phone nowdays.