Samsung's Galaxy S 4: Introduction & Hands On
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 14, 2013 7:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy S 4
Software - Camera
Samsung spent comparatively little time talking about the Galaxy S 4 hardware and instead chose to focus mostly on software. While Android 4.2.2 is the underlying OS, Samsung’s customizations are very visible and present throughout the Galaxy S 4 experience.
The user interface and experience is distinctly Samsung. The Touchwiz icon stylings and water sounds that permeate the experience remain intact and mostly unchanged. UI performance is finally at the point on most of these modern devices where it’s just amazingly smooth throughout everything. The Galaxy S 4 is no exception here.
Samsung spent a lot of time adding functionality to its camera app, which now includes the ability to shoot stills and video out of both cameras simultaneously. This is similar in nature to an LG feature we covered last month at MWC, Samsung calls it Dual Camera.
Dual Camera is very easy to activate (there’s a dedicated button in the top left of the camera app). Once activated you can choose from various filters/effects, including a basic split screen mode.
As a way of enhancing stills, Samsung includes support for Sound & Shot - a feature that captures up to 9 seconds of audio alongside a still image.
There’s a new mode dial that allows you to switch between shooting modes, including some new ones like drama shot which lets you take multiple stills in a burst mode and combine them all together to show character progression in a still frame.
Burst shooting can also be used to erase a photo bomb with eraser mode, a feature we’ve seen before (highlight and remove a character from a scene).
On the video side, the Galaxy S 4 introduces Cinema Photo - a feature that lets you shoot a video, highlight areas that you want to continue in motion and have the rest remain static - resulting in an animated gif.
In its final new camera feature is the ability to create, group and stylize albums of your photos. You can create albums locally on the Galaxy S 4, style them with templates, and send them off to print via Blurb. There’s Trip Advisor integration to pull in highlight information about the locations you’ve taken photos at.
The camera software features are aimed at bringing as much of the photo processing/organization experience onto the smartphone as possible. Samsung clearly has the point and shoot market in its crosshairs and it is leveraging the fact that modern smartphones are sophisticated computing platforms in order to go after that market.
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tommydaniel - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
The S3 does have a stripe around it that is made to look somewhat metal-ish but is indeed plastic..CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 16, 2013 - link
The iPhone4 is a lead weight - if belongs in an auto mechanics tool chest, not as a portable phone, and it's tiny screen is a health hazard.That's "quality" to our retard drooling monkeys, though.
Then they drop it, it shatters front or back or both, and they say " Damn! that really felt good, it's a high quality build !"
RETARDS.
RETARDED.
RETARDS
RETARDED
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 16, 2013 - link
You and all the appl wouldabee fanboys need to feel good when they rub their phone, it's their only companionship after all. The only hardware they will ever be holding in their hands.How it feels matters because they can't use it, they just drool on it while they stare at it's "feel", then they buy a cover anyway.
It's how retards function, which is too say, they are tamponic.
kpb321 - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Interesting. If the A15 cores are only clocked at 1.2ghz max the Qualcom quad core will probably offer higher max performance. The Exynos 5 Octa may offer better battery life if it can spend most of its time using the A7 cores especially at lower clocks. I'd bet the US will get the Qualcom processor as that has been the trend lately.Aenean144 - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Yeah. A 1.2 GHz Cortex-A15 doesn't sound all that competitive to a 1.5 GHz Krait or Swift, and it appears 2013 Kraits will be in the 1.6 to 1.9 GHz range. If 1.2 GHz is truly the max, either Samsung has put something extra in the Cortex-A15 to make competitive or they are going to be crushed by Kraits shipping at about 50% more clock frequency.sleepeeg3 - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
Clock frequency is a meaningless comparison between different architectures. I can't believe that's still being brought up on this site, of all places.Aenean144 - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
It's not meaningless if you have a sense of the performance per cycle for the different architectures.Krait is about 3.3 DMIPS/MHz. A15 is about 3.5 DMIPS/MHz. Cortex-A9 is about 2.5 DMIPS/MHz. Cortex-A7 is about 1.9 DMIPS/MHz. Work it out from there. I got this info from this site.
lmcd - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
3.3 was an exaggeration, 3.5 an underestimate. See the A15 versus S4 Pro with the Nexus 10 v 4.Krysto - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
Did you see any of the benchmarks for A15 yet? It gets much higher scores than than 7% more that those "official" DMIPS would let you believe. Why do you think Samsung underlocked the A15's to 1.6 Ghz? They didn't want the international version to be much faster.Aenean144 - Friday, March 15, 2013 - link
Ok, are the A15 cores in the SG4 clocked at 1.6 GHz or 1.2 GHz? Anand is saying 1.2 GHz as of the original publishing of the article.Of course the DMIPS could be off by a bit, it's saying the Cortex-A15 is about 5 to 15% faster. Will it be off by 50% if the A15s are only clocked 1.2 GHz? Seems like a whole lot of performance to make up. I'm sure there are specific ops on an A15 that outperform a +50% clocked Krait, but on average? I'm kind of doubting it right. Wait and see.