MOBILE

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review (Part 3)

8/7/2013 6:31:49 PM

New features

The new premium Galaxy device comes with a wave of new software. This won’t surprise anyone who’s familiar with Samsung; the company always creates a wave of features based on the new gesture and movements – along with many other apps and services – with each new version. Some of them are useful, but most are the tricks which seem to be designed as for their impressive factor.

The new premium Galaxy device comes with a wave of new software.

The new premium Galaxy device comes with a wave of new software.

Maybe the most noticeable feature is Smart Scroll. The front camera detects your eyes and tracks the movement of the head, following the same style of most of other Smart features. If you tilt you head down, the page you’re watching will scroll down; tilt your head up and the screen will scroll up. It’s theoretically a good idea, but after all we see that it causes disappointment for some reasons. First, it only works on special apps. For example, the available internet browser supports it, but not for Chrome, and we can’t scroll though the menus of Samsung by using this method. (it’s unknown whether this feature will be combined onto a SDK for the third-party developer, but we’re optimistic about that).

Maybe the most noticeable feature is Smart Scroll.

Maybe the most noticeable feature is Smart Scroll.

Second, it won’t work in a lowlight area as it has to find your eyes. Third, your face can’t stay too close or too far – you will have the best result in the distance of 2 to 3 feet. We also quickly become tired for nodding our head up and down to perform an act which we can easily do with a finger tap. Finally, it always doesn’t works as promise. In some cases, hold your head up doesn’t result in anything, despite how smooth or stutter your moves are. Sometimes, the screen scroll down even when your face is our of the camera visibility. There’re times the screen stops scrolling at the middle of the page, regardless of the fact that we don’t even move or blink. (to be clear, we only review the T-Mobile model, so may be the experience is different on the unbranded GS4. We will update this review if we find different experiences with other models).

Stand out from the noisily advertised GS4 services is Group Play feature, the tool bringing expanded P2P on the introduced features in Group Cast last year. In this mode, your phone sets up a special WiFi hotspot. When one or many GS4 devices are within the range, all of them can connect to each other, giving them the ability to share music, images, docs, even game together. While sharing images and docs in this way is what people are waiting for, Group Play adds some interesting changes for the music and game armory. Instead of sharing a song with a friend, this feature allows each phone act like a different surround speaker, with the unit being in charge of the played songs. With game, the feature gives you and a friend a change to go head to head, though this is not what we’ve seen before.

Stand out from the noisily advertised GS4 services is Group Play feature, the tool brings expanded P2P on the introduced features in Group Cast last year

Stand out from the noisily advertised GS4 services is Group Play feature, the tool brings expanded P2P on the introduced features in Group Cast last year

As the GS4 models are pretty rare at this moment, we haven’t checked this special feature except for some minutes we received the device at the press. Throughout that experience everything worked exactly as the advertisement and we had no problem when sharing music. Based on the certainty that you don’t have many friend choosing GS4 at this moment, Group Play is a feature that’s hard to recommend; after a flood of exciting customers starting to overflow, of course it will be more practical.

The next “smart” feature that Samsung boasts on GS4 is Smart Pause. The phone pauses video or movies you’re watching whenever you take your eyes off the screen. This is another feature that seems not very popular: it works well in preloaded YouTube and Samsung Video apps, but it doesn’t work in Play Movies and the third-party player which are downloaded from Play Store. This feature runs well in normal light, but if you want (or must) to see a long movie in the dark – you know, the favorite environment for watching movie – certainly it won’t work pretty well. Of course, we don’t love the idea of having video pause whenever we close our eyes or temporarily leave the screen, so it’s good because the feature is off by default.

The next “smart” feature that Samsung boasts on GS4 is Smart Pause.

The next “smart” feature that Samsung boasts on GS4 is Smart Pause.

Finally, S Translator app may be the most useful one in the group. Speak a sentence in one language and the phone is capable of translating and reading the translated sentence in a completely different language. If the app has trouble in understanding what you’re saying, you can choose to type it in text to have the same result. If it doesn’t work either, the program has a large library including the predetermined sentences which is already saved. Choosing the category you’re interested in – for example, you need to get to the airport and the app can teach you how to call a cab (or you can tell it to call one for you if that’s the way you want). There’s a special sentence that you ask throughout the trip. Why learning it when you can mark it your favorite so that you can access it quickly later.

Finally, S Translator app may be the most useful one in the group.

Finally, S Translator app may be the most useful one in the group.

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