Samsung had really been building up the announcement of its next Galaxy S phone, and it finally took the wraps off it yesterday in New York.
The Galaxy S4 packs a 5 inch AMOLED 1080p display (441 ppi, more than the iPhone’s 326ppi), but importantly you can use it through gloves. You’ll also get an eight core processor depending on your region, otherwise you’re stuck with four cores.
A 13MP rear facing camera is on the menu, as well as a 2MP front facing one. They can both combine in ‘dual video capture’ mode, which allows to record on both at once. Drama Shot and Sound & Shot can create GIFs and record sound while taking the photo respectively. It’s also got the updated Android 4.2.2 on board.
The new device is also thinner and lighter than its predecessor, at 7.9mm (0.3mm thicker than the iPhone) and 130 grams.
The Galaxy S4 will be available on April 26, however pre-orders will start on March 28. It’s going to be launched in 155 countries on a huge 327 different carriers, which is pretty impressive. For the US, all four national networks will carry it, in the UK EE will carry and it and offer 4G capability.
In terms of software features, ‘Smart Pause’ will automatically stop the video playing if you look away from the phone, while Smart Scroll will scroll when you tilt and look at the phone. Those are pretty unique features, but it will be interesting to see how they work in the real world when lots of people are around you.
S Translator was also announced, which offers both speech to text and text to speech translation of 9 languages. However a service like Google Translate already does that and more, so it is a bit of a strange move on Samsung’s part.
We’ll have to wait and see to find out if the Galaxy S4 is going to entice any current iPhone users, but personally I think Samsung could have gone a lot further to really hammer home an advantage and hit Apple while at a low point. However that won’t stop it selling well, and it looks like a serious threat to iPhone superiority, along with a couple of other flagship phones.
Check out these hands on features from across the web:
- Engadget: ‘a flagship with some familiar roots’
- The Verge: ‘a bigger, faster update to the world’s most popular Android phone’
- CNET: ‘thinner and more powerful, with an even better screen’
- The Next Web
- Gizmodo: ‘everything new is old again’
- T3: ‘no doubt Samsung Galaxy S4 is a significant step up from S3’
