What's new in the Galaxy S4?
S Translator
It’s not quite real time translation, but
if you speak into your phone it can translate it into another language as soon
as you stop talking. Get the person you’re holding a conversation with to do
the same and you can understand the response, letting you have a full
conversation without language barriers.
It’s
not quite real time translation, but if you speak into your phone it can
translate it into another language as soon as you stop talking.
Air gestures
There are times when you can’t touch your
phone to make or receive a call or send a text. When driving or if your hands
are full of paint after a decorating session, make use of air gestures and
Smart Call Accept.
Air View
Similar to Air Gestures, Air View is not
unlike the mouse-over effect you’ll be familiar with on your PC. Hover your
finger over a specific item and you’ll get a small preview of that item -
contact details will be briefly expanded to reveal more information, or
thumbnail images will blow up to give you a better look.
Thinner with better processor
The S4 is only 7.9mm thick. It is 137mm
tall and 70mm wide and this is an improvement on the S III, even though the
screen is an extra third-of-an-inch larger from corner-to-corner. There are two
versions of the phone with top-notch processors in both, with the Snapdragon
version supporting 4G.
The
S4 is only 7.9mm thick. It is 137mm tall and 70mm wide and this is an
improvement on the S III, even though the screen is an extra third-of-an-inch
larger from corner-to-corner.
Sensitive screen
Not quite a first for smartphones but the
extra sensitivity given to the screen to enable the hands free gestures also
means the device can be used when you’re wearing gloves. It’s only a minor
point, yet for those of us in colder countries it is likely to become the kind
of feature we take for granted.
Dual camera
The S4 enables you to capture photos or
videos using the rear-facing 13-megapixel camera and the two-megapixel
front-facing camera. Most interestingly of all, you can use both at the same
time, letting the person behind the camera appear in those family snapshots
after all. Gimmick or genius? Only time will tell.
Innovative camera features
The camera app is packed with interesting
features. The most interesting is Drama Shot, which can shoot a burst of up to
100 images in four seconds, then create a composite of the action shown within
them. There’s also Sound and Shot, which adds real audio to your still photos,
and Story Album, a feature that can turn your images into a rich album of
information.
Smart pause
The phone knows what your eyeballs are
doing. Look away from a playing video and the video will pause. Look back again
and it will start playing once more.
Smart scroll
The S4 recognizes how you hold your device,
and the way you are looking at it, and will subsequently scroll text-heavy
pages accordingly. Coupled with the stay awake feature first introduced on the
S III, the device moves into fully hands-free operation for eBook and webpage
reading.
The
S4 recognizes how you hold your device, and the way you are looking at it, and
will subsequently scroll text-heavy pages accordingly.
Group Play
If you have lots of friends who own Galaxy
S4s you will be able to connect them together for the Group Play function. You
can combine the speakers on multiple devices for vastly improved audio output,
or join them for a session of multiplayer gaming online. All wireless, of course.
Need for speed
Will your S4 processor have four or
eight cores, and does it matter?
The Galaxy S4 will be available in two
different variants, with different processors in each. The I9500 model will
feature Samsung’s own Exynos 1.6GHz octa-core processor, while the I9505 will
have the 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 CPU (the same as used in the new HTC One, albeit
clocked faster).
The octa-core processor is quite
interesting, and since more cores have been adopted by spec enthusiasts as a
good thing, would appear to be more desirable than the Snapdragon variant.
However, it’s not quite as simple as that. First, the octa-core CPU might
actually be more accurately described as a dual quad-core CPU - rather than a
straight eight cores - it features four cores for high-power functions and four
for low-power usage, with the aim of finding the perfect balance between
performance and battery life, so speed improvements over the Snapdragon may be
negligible and nonexistent. Secondly, the Exynos processor doesn’t currently
support 4G LTE networks, meaning the Snapdragon variant has greater future
proofing.
Will
your S4 processor have four or eight cores, and does it matter?
The phone will launch initially in the UK
with the Snapdragon processor, and be compatible with 4G networks, although it
is widely rumored that the Exynos version will be available in due course. Most
other markets with established 4G networks will also have the Snapdragon
offering at launch, with some markets having both.
Early benchmark tests of the Snapdragon
variant of the S4 put it way ahead of the competition. Primate Labs, the
company behind the Geekbench benchmarking software, has analyzed the initial
tests of the processor and found that it beats all the competition on all
platforms by some margin. This includes the iPhone 5 as well as last year’s
Galaxy S III.
Primate Labs founder John Poole commented
on his company’s blog: “It’s clear that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be the
fastest smartphone available when it is released in April. What’s not clear is
how the Galaxy S4 will handle the increased power and cooling requirements that
generally come with faster processors.”
