Compared to Galaxy S III, which sold over 50 million units, the new Samsung Galaxy S IV has advanced absolutely every detail when it comes to the hardware and software. With a full HD, 5-inch Super AMOLED screen, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, either an eight-core or a quad-core processor, 2 GB of RAM, a bigger battery, and Android OS 4.2.2. modifications, Galaxy S IV is, at least on paper, a serious upgrade in relation to Galaxy S III.
Inspired by the exceptionally stiff competition which has already revealed its top models of the year, Samsung has presented Galaxy S IV only ten months following its predecessor, responding as expected with a device which proves itself a well-touched up and well-rounded product, even in practice. It represents the very pinnacle of technology at the present, and it's very hard to find a flaw in it. However, flaws do exist and boil down to a feature of the device that Samsung has not worked on at all in these ten months while the competition definitely has -- design and craftsmanship.
It is probably this shortcoming which might prove to be dangerous for Samsung: anyone who tries the Galaxy S IV will not find a reason to replace their Galaxy S III with it because, despite all advancements offered by the newer model, both devices provide an almost identical premium experience in practice.
NOTE: Depending on the market, the Samsung Galaxy S IV has two different chipsets. The model marked Galaxy S IV I9500 has a 'home-made' double quad-core Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chipset, while the model marked Galaxy S IV I9505 comes with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 with four Krait cores. The device I tested is the Galaxy S IV I9505, i.e. the one with Qualcomm's chipset. This is the version that will be available on the U.S. market.
Build & Design
Just as it resembles its predecessor too much in photographs, the Galaxy S IV does not seem to be any different from Galaxy S III when held in the hand, either. It's unimpressive and doesn't do justice to the most prestigious Android smartphone series. The non-innovative design is dominated by the fishnet pattern engraved in the plastic under the hyper-glaze, but this does not help such a disappointing impression.
In reality, of course, Galaxy S IV is much more solid, robust, and resilient than it seems. Scratching the casing is significantly harder than the one on the Galaxy S III, thanks to the glazed plastic and Gorilla Glass 3 which covers the screen. Despite this fact, when held in hand Galaxy S IV does not even come close the premium feeling offered by aluminum HTC One and iPhone 5, or the glass Sony Xperia Z.
The only praiseworthy feature regarding the design of of Galaxy S IV is the fact that despite a bigger screen compared to its predecessor (5 inches instead of 4.8 inches), bigger battery, and greater amount of sensors, its dimensions are slightly smaller and its weight is less than the Galaxy S III (136 x 70 x 7.9 mm and 130 grams compared to 136 x 71 x 8.6 mm and 133 grams). The device offers the best ergonomics and the most natural feeling among smartphones with a 5-inch display. The Samsung Galaxy S IV is by no means a beautiful phone, but it is frequently pleasant to use.
Display
The 5-inch 1080 x 1920-pixel Full HD Super AMOLED screen is undoubtedly the most impressive feature of this smartphone.
Image sharpness is fantastic and despite the usage of the PenTile matrix due to the vast pixel density (441 ppi), it is impossible to feel its disputed, 'unnatural' subpixel pattern in practice. All edges of objects look perfectly sharp, even when exceptionally slim and sloped lines are in question, regardless of whether they are static on the screen or moving. Even the tiniest, slimmest fonts look beautiful and are legible.
This is greatly aided by the outstandingly good display contrast, as blacks are very dark and whites are well-lit, snow-like whites at the opposite side of the spectrum. No other rival model looks this good, and the perfect viewing angle is also praiseworthy; irrelevant of the position the Galaxy S IV is held in, the contrast remains the same, just like the imaging sharpness and the excellent display brightness, which is improved compared to the Galaxy S III.
All this results in pleasant color saturation, and the only issue is with the slight loss of contrast sustainability when the display is exposed to direct sunlight. Despite better screen brightness, the Galaxy S IV does not offer an improvement in this regard in relation to the Galaxy S III. And the display is remains poorer than the one in the iPhone 5. Still, just like Galaxy S III, if we limit our search to Android OS devices, it is still the best smartphone when it comes to display visibility in the sun.
Full HD resolution on a 5-inch diagonal, however, does not reveal an easily spottable difference to the average human eye compared to HD resolution on a 4.8-inch diagonal. So despite the good impression made by the Galaxy S IV's display, the superlatives it deserves will not be enough to motivate Galaxy S III owners to go for an upgrade.
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Buttons and Ports
There are two capacitive keys under the screen (Menu and Back), with the physical Home key situated between them. A long press of the Menu key will activate the Google Now application which comes with Android OS while a long press of the Home key activates the task switcher. Similarly, a long press of the Back key activates the Multi-Windows option (if enabled), making it possible for two separate applications to work in two separate windows, while a double click of the Home key runs the Samsung S Voice, a voice assistant which matches Apple's Siri.
Apart from the earpiece, the ambience and proximity sensors, the IR Air gestures sensor (for managing the phone by waving the hand in front of the display), the area above the screen also includes a 2.1-mega pixel frontal camera and an LED indicator.
The Power key is located on a natural spot in the upper half of the right edge of the phone, while the left side includes the volume control. Unfortunately, there is no designated camera key. The upper edge includes a 3.5 mm audio jack, a secondary microphone, and an IR transmitter, allowing the phone to be used as a remote control. The lower edge includes the primary microphone and a microUSB port with MHL 2.0 support. The back-facing camera comes with a LED flash, while the back cover also includes a loudspeaker. The microSIM slot is situated under the battery cover.
Performance
The version of the Galaxy S IV that I tested comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset with four Krait 300 cores running a 1.9 GHz clock with Adreno 320 graphics. With 2 GB of RAM, this is a hardware platform which has yielded record results on almost all synthetic benchmarks. AnTuTu has provided the score 23604, which is roughly 40 percent more than Galaxy S III and a little higher than HTC One (22680) and the Sony Xperia Z (20797).
With just about the same difference, Galaxy S IV wins with all other benchmarks as well, which it proves in practice: lags, glitches and waits...all of these terms are unfamiliar to this device, no matter how complex the task at hand is. Of course, just like the case was with the display, the fact is that in practice, other top of the line smartphones -- including Galaxy S III -- offer equal speed in everyday work, even if they use less powerful hardware.
Samsung representatives are clearly aware that by improving the processor performance, the user can no longer be presented with additional, realistic value which might be felt in everyday work, so they have designed new software options that take advantage of this vast hardware potential. One example is the multi-window mode on Galaxy S IV, where two active applications are simultaneously present on the display. The size of the space they take up on the screen can be altered as well (by decreasing the size of one window, the other increases), however, only some of the preinstalled applications are supported.
In similar fashion, videos can be watched in a special, "floating" window (just like on Galaxy S III) and can be zoomed in during playback. All of these are quite nifty things, but in reality, the user experience provided by Galaxy S IV has not been advanced enough in relation to Galaxy S III in order to motivate those users to upgrade.
Software and TouchWiz
In times when diversification among top models is difficult to achieve with hardware, manufacturers try to make their devices different with software. Samsung succeeded in this regard with its previous flagship and has applied the same formula to the Galaxy S IV. The new TouchWiz UI includes an incredible, almost endless line of novelties, which make sense more or less. Independent of the practical value they bring for the user, some are well-realized, while others are not.
As far as the lock-screen goes, the welcome note can be altered, which is a likeable feature and the notifications screen has been given a useful addition, where 20 toggles can be displayed instead of 5 and these turn certain options on and off. They can be rearranged, while the five that are set up in the first of the four rows will be visible automatically when the notifications screen is pulled down from the edge of the phone (the display of the remaining 15 will have to be additionally activated by a touch, every time).
Air View and Air Gestures are the biggest novelties. We have had the opportunity of seeing the former on Galaxy Note II, but instead of S Pen, Air View is now activated as the finger approaches the screen. When the finger is just a millimeter away from the display, a cloud can be activated which shows details of a text message, e-mail or any other similar object. Air Gestures, meanwhile, enable users to manage contents on the screen by literally making hand gestures 7 cm away from the display. Thus, web sites can be scrolled if the user waves up or down in front of the display.
It sounds nice and useful, but performs poorly in practice. I have not learned how to navigate with this feature in such a way that my gestures are understood correctly, even after several days of usage. Whether the Galaxy S IV actually performs how we want depends on an endless line of factors: the speed of the wave, ambience lighting, the distance between the hand and the phone, the phone's angle. After a few days, everyone will realize that Air Gestures is a useless feature and, as it consumes a lot of battery power, they will turn it off for good.
Smart Stray has been equally poorly implemented (it enables the screen to be locked as the user is looking at it), just like Smart Rotate (rotates contents on the screen depending on the position of the user's head), Smart Scroll (scrolling texts by tilting the device upwards or downwards), Smart Pause (pausing video playback while looking away from the screen) etc.
Applications that are delivered exclusively with Galaxy S IV have been much more successfully realized, like S Voice (personal voice assistant), the S Translator (a translating application with several global languages) and S Health (an application for monitoring the user's health). Great news is that apart from Google Play, a special Samsung online store application is also included, which offers software developed exclusively for this device.
Photo and Video Quality
The Galaxy S IV comes with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera that can record video and take photographs at the same time, and the software it uses for recording is almost identical to the one Galaxy Camera has. Images taken by this camera are above average when it comes to their quality; the exposure is right and there is hardly any noise, even if users are taking pictures at night. The colors are precisely interpreted, although slightly oversaturated. Just like all previous Galaxy models, thus Galaxy S IV offers white balance somewhere between neutral and cold.
All this goes for video, except it should be pointed out that the camera has a narrow field of view. The shortest focal length is somewhat greater than on Galaxy S III and much greater than on the HTC One with a wide field of view.
Battery Life
It is important to mention that using the phone's demanding options for the processor significantly affects the battery life of the Galaxy S IV. Its capacity has been increased in relation to the previous model to 2600 mAh, which results in great longevity...during stand-by. As soon as the device's antennas are activated, especially its sensors (particularly those for managing phone movements), the battery starts rapidly "leaking". If all of the options that the phone offers are used (or at least most of them), the user will have to recharge it every night. If it is used much less than average, which does not make much sense for a flagship, it will last twice as long before it needs to be recharged.
Conclusion
Evolution, rather than revolution compared to Galaxy S III is the shortest conclusion after a detailed inspection of Galaxy S IV's options. One of last year's best smartphones with Android OS now has an even bigger display with a greater resolution, a better and faster processor, a more powerful battery and a ton of new software options, though it is almost identical to its predecessor when it comes to appearance.
While it could be said that the Galaxy S III was, without any doubts, one of the best Android OS smartphones at the time, Galaxy S IV has tougher competition to fight. Competitors are offering, for the first time, features that Samsung does not, like a fantastic design (HTC One) or a waterproof build (Sony Xperia Z). Without a doubt, Samsung Galaxy S IV offers the pinnacle of technology at the moment according to every criterion, and anyone who purchases it will be very pleased with their decision. However, this does not mean that they should not consider the option of being even more pleased with a rival's model.
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