Samsung Galaxy S4 I9500
Samsung on Friday launched the fourth-generation of its Galaxy range of phones, S4 in India at Rs. 41,500.
The phone, packed with newer imaging features as well as gesture-control technology will be available at the company’s premium brand stores in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai from 12 noon onwards tomorrow (Saturday), while pan-India availability will be in a couple of days.
“At Samsung, we are committed to innovation and to our consumers...we are proud to announce the launch of our flagship device and the much-awaited, Samsung Galaxy S4,” Samsung Electronics President and CEO (South-West Asia) B.D. Park said.
The S4 features a five-inch full HD super AMOLED touchscreen, 13-MP back and 2-MP front camera and supports 3G networks.
A new feature included in phone is ‘Smart Pause’, where users can pause a video just by looking away from the screen.
It also has ‘Air View’ feature, which allows users to hover with their fingers to preview the content of an email, S Planner, image gallery or video without having to open it by just gesturing in air.
The S4 has new imaging features like ‘Dual Camera’ and ’Dual Video Call’, allows users to click pictures and make video calls using both the front and rear cameras simultaneously. It says a lot about how far Samsung has come when the launch of its latest flagship smartphone attracts the same feverish levels of interest from tech-heads as the release of the next iPhone. The Korean manufacturer has taken Google's often-unfashionable Android operating system and given it the world-leading device it so badly needed to assert its dominance over iOS; tellingly, many consumers now get more excited about the next 'Galaxy' rather than the next 'Android'.
Last year, Samsung shipped twice as many smartphones as Apple, cementing its position as the company to beat - and therein lies the problem; when you're top of the pile, you're the one everybody is mercilessly gunning for. With the Galaxy S4, Samsung has perhaps given its rivals the best opportunity yet to bring it down a peg or two.
While the phone boasts amazing specs, a great camera and an almost peerless screen, it feels over-familiar, too keen to innovate for no good reason and bogged down unnecessarily by its irksome TouchWiz user interface. Of course, some of these faults could quite easily be directed at its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S3, and we happened to think that handset was pretty special. Does the S4 do enough to keep the likes of the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z at bay, or has the tide finally turned?
At first glance, you'd be forgiven for mistaking the Galaxy S4 for last year's model; the design changes made over the S3 are so subtle that they could go completely undetected to the casual observer. In terms of size and weight, the phone is an almost exact match for its direct ancestor, measuring 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm and tipping the scales at 130 grams. Despite the similar dimensions, the S4's screen has been bolstered, expanding to a whopping five inches.
Much has been made of the fact that the European version of the Galaxy S4 has a quad-core Snapdragon 600 chipset, while the "international" edition boasts Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa-core chip. In reality, the difference between the two is less dramatic than you might imagine. Despite the eight-core marketing spiel, the Exynos 5 is only capable of running four cores at any given time. Using ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, a quartet of energy-efficient Cortex-A7 cores are included for low-level tasks, while another four super-fast Cortex-A15s are on-hand to cover more demanding work. Those more powerful cores only switch on when they're needed, disabling the weaker cores in the process. Benchmark tests show that the Exynos 5 has an edge over the Snapdragon 600, but it's not enough to make you're thinking you're being genuinely shortchanged with the "inferior" model.
| Galaxy S4 | Nexus 4 | HTC One | HTC One X | Galaxy S2 | Galaxy S3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quadrant Standard | 12346 | 4906 | 12488 | 4870 | 3920 | 5127 |
| AnTuTu Benchmark | 23578 | 10580 | 24374 | 11065 | 10270 | 11950 |
| Geekbench | 3109 | 2263 | 2816 | 1455 | 1133 | 1716 |
| GLBenchmark Egypt On-Screen/ Off-Screen | 41fps 41fps | 39fps 31fps | 31fps 34fps | 22fps 14fps | 11fps 11fps | 16fps 16fps |
| GLBenchmark T-Rex On-Screen/ Off-Screen | 15fps 15fps | 19fps 12fps | 13fps 15fps | 5fps 8fps | 3fps 5fps | 4fps 6fps |
| 3D Mark Ice Storm 720p/ 1080p | 10454 6730 | 11019 6400 | 10054 6297 | 5878 3350 | 1702 1212 | 3225 2321 |
| GENERAL | 2G Network | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
|---|---|---|
| 3G Network | HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 | |
| 4G Network | LTE (market dependent) | |
| SIM | Micro-SIM | |
| Announced | 2013, March | |
| Status | Available. Released 2013, April |
| BODY | Dimensions | 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm (5.38 x 2.75 x 0.31 in) |
|---|---|---|
| Weight | 130 g (4.59 oz) |
| DISPLAY | Type | Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 1080 x 1920 pixels, 5.0 inches (~441 ppi pixel density) | |
| Multitouch | Yes | |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 3 | |
| - TouchWiz UI |
| SOUND | Alert types | Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones |
|---|---|---|
| Loudspeaker | Yes | |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes |
| MEMORY | Card slot | microSD, up to 64 GB |
|---|---|---|
| Internal | 16/32/64 GB storage, 2 GB RAM |
| DATA | GPRS | Yes |
|---|---|---|
| EDGE | Yes | |
| Speed | HSDPA, 42.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps | |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot | |
| Bluetooth | Yes, v4.0 with A2DP, EDR, LE | |
| NFC | Yes | |
| Infrared port | Yes | |
| USB | Yes, microUSB v2.0 (MHL 2), USB On-the-go, USB Host |
| CAMERA | Primary | 13 MP, 4128 x 3096 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality |
|---|---|---|
| Features | Dual Shot, Simultaneous HD video and image recording, geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection, image stabilization, HDR | |
| Video | Yes, 1080p@30fps, dual-video rec., check quality | |
| Secondary | Yes, 2 MP,1080p@30fps, dual video call |
| FEATURES | OS | Android OS, v4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) |
|---|---|---|
| Chipset | Exynos 5 Octa 5410 | |
| CPU | Quad-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A15 & quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 | |
| GPU | PowerVR SGX 544MP3 | |
| Sensors | Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, temperature, humidity, gesture | |
| Messaging | SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM, RSS | |
| Browser | HTML5 | |
| Radio | No | |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS support and GLONASS | |
| Java | Yes, via Java MIDP emulator | |
| Colors | White Frost, Black Mist | |
| - Wireless charging (market dependent) - S-Voice natural language commands and dictation - Smart stay, Smart pause, Smart scroll - Air gestures - Dropbox (50 GB storage) - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - TV-out (via MHL 2 A/V link) - SNS integration - MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263 player - MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player - Organizer - Image/video editor - Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) - Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa - Voice memo/dial/commands - Predictive text input (Swype) |
| BATTERY | Li-Ion 2600 mAh battery | |
|---|---|---|
| Stand-by | (2G) / Up to 370 h (3G) | |
| Talk time | (2G) / Up to 17 h (3G) | |
| Music play | Up to 62 h |
| MISC | SAR US | 0.85 W/kg (head) 1.55 W/kg (body) |
|---|---|---|
| SAR EU | 0.42 W/kg (head) 0.54 W/kg (body) | |
| TESTS | Display | Contrast ratio: Infinite (nominal) / 3.352:1 (sunlight) |
|---|---|---|
| Loudspeaker | Voice 70dB / Noise 66dB / Ring 77dB | |
| Audio quality | Noise -95.9dB / Crosstalk -96.4dB | |
| Camera | Photo / Video |
