Samsung Galaxy S 4 Review - Part 1
by Brian Klug on April 24, 2013 12:01 AM ESTCPU Performance
For our CPU analysis we're left with our usual browser based benchmarks. Again this isn't an ideal list of tests but it's the best we've got for now. Where necessary we'll show results using both stock and Chrome browsers. We did notice a single case of thermal based throttling under SunSpider 0.9.1 (the benchmark alone is ine, but running it after a bunch of others caused throttling), so we're once again presenting results in our standard test environment as well as inside of a freezer to show peak performance. Although the Galaxy S 4 managed to throttle in one of our tests, the device never felt all that warm to the touch. We could be seeing some of the same aggressively set thermal governors that we saw back with the Nexus 4. It's also worth pointing out that we're simply in an era of pushing the limits of just how fast you can go at 28nm LP in many of these smartphones. The mobile SoC vendors also need to do a better job of power management, enabling controlled bursting to these high frequency states vs. sustaining the higher frequencies until there's a serious enough thermal issue that the CPU cores have to throttle themselves significantly.
Under Kraken in particular we see a measurable improvement in performance over the 1.7GHz S600 used in the HTC One. Qualcomm still can't attain the peak performance of ARM's Cortex A15, but once again we're looking at a much lower power profile.
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Notmyusualid - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Exactly - mine won't see a case at all.I wanted to hold out for my removable battery & SD slot, but since my SGS2 had such poor audio, (thus meaning I often missed calls in a noisy communications / server environment), I gave in, and my new HTC One will arrive tomorrow.
I might have lived with the plastic though, I had no case on my SGS2, and loved how light it was.
A 4" version of either the SGS4 or HTC One with no skimping on internals would have me jumping for joy though...
Thegonagle - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
I usually put phones in a case when I'm going out (and definitely if I'm carrying my smartphone on the job instead of my flip phone), but I like using them naked at home. So design still matters.cdef - Saturday, April 27, 2013 - link
This phone really doesn't even need a case unless the owner is especially clumsy. Gorilla Glass 3 is pretty impressive. My Galaxy Nexus is unscathed after two years with it's "fortified glass" of unspecified brand. Naked phones FTW.sAiyAnstAr - Thursday, May 2, 2013 - link
I don't use cases anyway, so that point to me is not valid. I have the HTC Sensation and ONE X and have dropped them both numerous times on the face and back. The ONE X's plastic case is more worse-for-wear even though its newer than my Sensation.Diorarat - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
Gs4 is a cheap plastic phone. It is cheap because of the played out the design. When I shell out cash for a premium phone I want to feel that it is premium. When I hold a gs4 it feels like playing with cheaper variants that look the same. There is the galaxy note, galaxy s3, galaxy s3 mini, galaxy grand, galaxy mega, galaxy duos and a lot more. Don't get me wrong, i had a galaxy s3 and it was a beautiful phone when it came out. But Samsung abused it's popularity by making all phones look the same at the expense of the premium feel of the galaxy S line. Htc is by far the best designed phone you can get with the same price range. It packs the same punch as a galaxy s4 at the same price with better hardware. "build, sounds, and camera *depending on how you use it"blue_urban_sky - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
I believe that plastic is also chosen so it can be removable.dyc4ha - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
The Chinese version of the HTC One has a removable back plate with dual sim AND microsd expansiontheblueprint - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
I'm living in China now and I just found the removable back one quite disturbing, it boost the thickness to 10.2mm, and I have to give up theunibody aluminum, which is the only thing that one is superior to s4. In this case I would definitely go for a s4 with Exynos 5410blue_urban_sky - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
I'd like to see that it must be an engineering nightmare to pull that off well.Chloiber - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Right, because all removable backs up until now (including all Nokia phones from the last 10 years) have been plastic.Oh wait!