An impressive piece of engineering:
powerful, innovative and despite having a larger screen than its predecessor -
still pocketable
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is probably this
year’s most anticipated smartphone, but after its glitzy New York launch in
March, Samsung has taken its time getting the handset to market. Alas, this
delay meant our official review sample hadn’t arrived at the time of
publication, although the phone will be in shops by the time you read this.
We did have the chance to get hands-on with
the phone at an event in London, however, and our first impressions are that
it’s going to give the current king of smartphones - the HTC One - a run for
its money.
Samsung
Galaxy S4
This is apparent from the first time you
hold it. Despite sporting a 5in Full HD display, the S4 is slightly slimmer and
lighter than the 4.8in S III. If you don’t believe us, take a look at the three
images opposite, which show the two phones side by side.
From the front, it’s tricky to tell the two
apart, with the only apparent difference being the marginally taller screen, a
smaller bottom “lip”, and a rearrangement of the sensors above the display. Look
closely and you’ll notice one extra black dot. That’s an infrared sensor, which
the S4 uses to power its gesture-control feature (more on this later).
What isn’t apparent from the photographs is
how the S4 feels in the hand; the difference between this and its predecessor
is palpable when holding it. The S4 feels more compact and pocketable - a
remarkable feat of design given its larger, Full HD display.
The
S4 feels more compact and pocketable - a remarkable feat of design given its
larger, Full HD display.
The sharpness and immediacy of that display
is something else that can’t be fully appreciated from our photos. The Samsung
Galaxy S III’s screen is still one of the best around, but the S4 edges in
front in terms of quality. It almost feels as if you can reach O First
impressions of the Galaxy S4 are promising: both power and battery life have
increased out and touch the pixels, and the glass layer on top of the S4’s
Super AMOLED panel feels as if it’s hardly there.
Flip over the Samsung Galaxy S4, and the
differences are more pronounced. It’s still plastic at the back and in this
respect lags behind the HTC One, whose chassis is milled from luxurious aluminum
- but the fine diamond pattern and cleaner white coloring of the S4 makes it
more attractive than its predecessor.
Beneath that plastic rear panel, and
squeezed into the S4’s ultra-svelte chassis, is a higher capacity battery:
2,600mAh versus the 2,100mAh of the S III. And although the new screen is
bigger, and sports many more pixels, Samsung claims it consumes 23% less power
than the old model. This should lead to a welcome improvement in battery life,
which we’ll report on when we carry out our full review.
Performance
European S4 handsets won’t feature the 1.6
GHz octa-core processor touted at the launch event; instead, our handsets will
sport a 1.9GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon. This may sound disappointing, but
since half of the eight cores in the more exotic version of the S4 are
low-power ones aimed at saving battery life, performance should still be good.
The
S4's camera boasts 13-megapixel capture - even more impressive than that of the
S III - and a host of new features
There was certainly no lack of
sprightliness on the handset we tested. As we’ve come to expect from top-end
Android smartphones, menus and web pages scrolled smoothly. In the SunSpider
JavaScript browser benchmark, the S4 put in a stupendously quick performance,
completing the test in 892ms, compared to the S III’s 1,280ms.
