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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
335 Comments
View All Comments
Exodite - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
The screen I'd imagine.The iPhone 5 has a screen that's ~65% the size, and ~35% of the resolution, of the one used by the Galaxy S4.
Its not the only reason of course but the screen matters a lot.
gnx - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Also a weakness of AMOLED. Since it needs to lighten up all subpixels max to get to white (and turns off all subpixels for gorgeous black). So web browsing, with so most sites having white background, really cranks up the power consumption of the display, hence the unexpectedly shorter battery life compared to other scenarios.sigmatau - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
I have a Nokia 900 with a Samsung sourced AMOLED plus which is beyond terrible outside on full brightness. I wonder how this one compares.lopri - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
In that chart, iPhone 4S is leading Nexus 4. I have both and I call that bogus. Not sure what kind of iPhone 4S they've got.kmmatney - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
We have mostly iPhones at my work, but a few SG3s. It's pretty easy to compare the real-use battery life at a conference, where we have to be on battery all day, and use are phones for normal stuff like email, texts, some web browsing, etc.. Without fail, the iPhones are all still going strong at the end of the day, while the SG3s have dead batteries. I was hoping the SGS4 would fix this, but I can't tell from the review. I hope the Note 3 increases the battery life.RealityMonster - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
Apple has consistently refused to put tech in their phones unless they can still get 10hrs of battery life out of it. That's why the iPhone 5 is the first one to have LTE--the 4s just couldn't keep a charge long enough. Part of it is the form-factor, since a smaller phone means a smaller battery. Like other people have mentioned, though, the smaller screen is also a smaller power draw.So while you're never likely to see an iPhone that has a substantially better battery life than 10hrs under browsing conditions, you'll never see one that has a substantially lower life, either.
Gorgenapper - Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - link
That's a nice thing about Apple, they have a MUCH tighter control on their design and execution than Samsung ever could. People love to bash on Apple, and I admit that I'm not a big fan of many of Apple's decisions and products, but at least they know what they want to do, and go after it.Samsung, on the other hand, is more concerned with features, and less concerned with the quality of the execution of their overall product plan. I also get a vibe that Samsung caters more directly to the 'buy and throw away' mentality of most consumers, as OLEDs degrade at a faster rate than LCD (particularly blue subpixels), which was a reason why Samsung said that they used a pentile arrangement on the S3.
As for me, personally, I think I'll wait to see how the next gen iPhone looks like (rumored 4.5 ~ 4.8" screen), or more likely I'll wait to see how the next gen Nexus is. Assuming that I can't score a cheap 32gb Galaxy S4 after the big hype dies down.
mike55 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
I'm definitely torn between this and the HTC One. I'm also a bit disappointed that 32 GB of NAND isn't the standard minimum for flagship smartphones these days.Toss3 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Both are great phones, but I'm buying the S4 because of the larger screen and smaller bezel. I also cannot stand the button layout of the HTC One. Was very surprised to see that the HTC One was very fluid, whereas the S4 stutters a bit. Especially considering the latter runs the SoC at a higher clockspeed. I also believe the camera of the S4 to be superior; even if the HTC One takes better night-shots, they're still not good enough for print or even watching on a 1080p TV(lots of noise and weird white-balance). The daylight shots from the S4 look pretty good, and are among the best of any phone right now.UpSpin - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
4MP (2688x1520) translates to 22,76x12,87cm (8,96x5,067in) @ 300 DPI print resolution, I think that's enough. It's also above 1080p. People also forget that the HTC One contains a simple OIS!http://www.htc.com/www/zoe/stabilization/
But you're right, at best lightnig conditions, the S4 is superior, but I mostly never take pictures at best lightning conditions, but outside on a normal day, indoors poorly lit or indoors to scan documents.
According to other reviews the S4 stutters because of the gimmick features, once you turn off those advertised stuff, it should run better.