A Brand New Star in Samsung's Galaxy

A Brand New Star in Samsung's Galaxy

Samsung's Galaxy series includes some of the best Android smartphones around. Now that the flagship Galaxy S4 is here, how does it compare and does it have the potential to be the new best? Hitesh Raj Bhagat & Karan Bajaj find out

Display 

The S4 has a 5-inch, super amoled display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. This gives the display a pixel density of 441 PPI (pixels per inch) — try as you might, you cannot see individual pixels with a naked eye. The colours are rich, blacks are super-deep, viewing angles are excellent and text and images in any condition are pin sharp. Plus, it uses Gorilla Glass 3 that is claimed to be three times more scratch resistant than Gorilla Glass 2. This is the king of mobile displays. 

Hardware 

The Samsung Exynos octa-core processor along with 2GB of RAM powers the internatinal (and India) version. Octa core combines a 1.6Ghz quad-core cortex A15 and a 1.2Ghz quad-core cortex A7 processor. At any given point, the phone uses only four cores — if you are using it for light work (calls, web browsing, music playback, texts), the phone uses the lower power A7 cores. For demanding apps and games it instantly switches to the more powerful A15 cores. This provides a great balance between performance and power efficiency. 

Samsung Hub + IR Emitter 

Samsung Hub provides a place to buy content (books, music, apps, games). It does duplicate the Google Play Store but you have both options. Signing up for Samsung Hub also gives you a 540 gift voucher. The infrared emitter works in tandem with Samsung WatchOn. You can configure it to work with any TV, set 

top box or DVD/Blu-Ray player but there is no programme guide for India yet. 

Camera 

The S4 sports a 13MP autofocus rear camera  with LED flash and a 2MP front camera. Both are capable of recording full HD video at 30fps. The camera has a revamped, simpler interface with one-touch access to effects and settings. It now features a scrolling carousel for selecting the various modes. Each mode is shown with an image so that it's easy to understand. 

Unique Shooting Modes 

Several new modes have been added to the S4's camera. Dual shot uses both rear and front cameras to take an image/record a video — this way, the person holding the phone can also be included. 360 photo mode creates a 360 degree spherical panorama. An Eraser mode smartly allows you to remove moving objects from the frame. Drama Shot takes several exposures and combines them into a single collage photo. Sound & Shot takes a photo and combines it with 9 seconds of audio to give the viewer a feel of what it felt like to be there when the photograph was taken.

BENCHMARKED PERFORMANCE

AnTuTu Benchmark 

AnTuTu tests memory, CPU, 2D/3D graphics, SD card read/write & Database IO. The S4 scores the highest here, with the HTC One coming in at 22,678 while the Xperia Z scores 20,794.

Quadrant 

Quadrant tests the CPU, I/O and 3D graphics of a device. It uses a data connection to submit the score and compare the device against others. Our Galaxy S4 with the Octa core Exynos processor clocked a very impressive 12,778, beating every device on the market. The HTC One comes close with a score of 11,800.

3D Mark Ice Storm 

A great cross-platform benchmarking tool, 3DMark is an industry standard test. The S4 scores 10,617 here, the Xperia Z gets 9,592 while the HTC One clocks in at 9,773.There is a lot to love about Samsung's blockbuster Galaxy S3 — and the S4 betters it in every respect. It couldn't have been easy, but the S4 shoehorns a 5-inch, full HD super amoled screen into a device that is thinner than the S3. It's also about the same width/ height as the S3, has a larger battery, improved 

camera, better hardware, infrared emitter plus additional sensors. The screen is breathtaking — rich, dark blacks, amazing viewing angles and eyepopping colours come very naturally to the super amoled screen. Add in the 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution and Gorilla Glass 3 and you get a screen that is one of the best on a mobile device. Samsung has pulled out all stops with the S4 — it does a bunch of new tricks (many of them firsts in the industry). It can pause a video if you look away, automatically scroll when you reach the end of a page and answer a call or move between images with a swipe of your hand in mid air. These do not work 100% of the time and may or may not find favour with everyone but a feature called Air View might. Following up from the same feature on the Note II (which works with a stylus), now you just hover your finger over the screen to pull up additional information like calendar entries, text within SMS/email, images inside a folder or video thumbnails. All this add-on software occupies a significant amount of space on the device. About 3GB of space is 'missing' from the internal memory, so of the 16GB internal memory, only 9GB is available to you. Luckily, you can easily pop in another 32 or 64GB card (`1500 or 3000, respectively). There are vast improvements in camera quality with many more tricks like erasing people from the frame, multiple images in one frame, animated GIFs and dual active cameras. Battery life was great too, with the phone lasting over a day easily. Probably the only area where the S4 really falls short of expectations is with the polycarbonate design. Granted, the polycarbonate back is flexible, strong, durable & most importantly, removable — it still doesn't feel as nice as a `40k device should. It seems that competitors have made huge strides in this area and Samsung, which also received flak for the extensive use of polycarbonate on previous flagships like the S3 and Note II, didn't learn from this misstep. Overall, the S4 is a great evolution of the S3. The easy availability and attractive finance schemes will only make it easier to own. It's the current performance king and comes very close to being ideal. Just consider all the options in the 'Also See' section before you put down the cash for it.

Samsung Galaxy S4 

SPECIFICATIONS 5-inch, full HD touchscreen (1080 x 1920 pixels; 441ppi), Octa Core processor (quad-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A15 + quadcore 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7), 2GB RAM, 16GB storage + micro SD, 13MP rear cam, 2MP front cam, Android 4.2, 2,600mAh battery, 130 gms High-quality full HD screen, blistering performance, great camera with lots of enhancements, great battery life, IR emitter to control TV/set top box, removable battery, expandable memory Polycarbonate shell doesn't feel as good as some of the competition, many of the improvements and new features are software based which are good to have, but may not always be used.

HTC One 

The HTC One primarily scores over the Galaxy S4 in terms of build quality. The unibody aluminium construction and incredible attention to detail makes it one of the best designed Android smartphones around. It also has a full HD display and the 4MP 'Ultrapixel' camera outperforms the S4 in certain low light situations. However, the HTC does not have expandable storage or a removable battery and the performance stops short of the S4 on every count. 

42,900

Courtesy : Techtonic, Times of India, dated: 01/05/2013