Locked in serious competition with a number of other flagship Android phones that have been released so far this year -- the HTC One, the Sony Xperia Z, the LG Optimus G Pro -- the Samsung Galaxy S IV has a lot riding on it. The Android 4.2 Jelly Bean handset is equipped with some impressive hardware, including a 5-inch full HD, Super AMOLED display and a quad-core processor, but does it deliver enough to edge out its competitors? Let's have a look and find out.

Editor's Note: This review is for the U.S. version of the Samsung Galaxy IV. For our review of the international version, click here. 

Build and Design

When we first set hands on the GSIV at its launch event in New York City earlier this year, we praised the build for being so svelte, and this still stands true. The bezel is super thin, the chrome trim around the edge of the device is subtle but classy, and Samsung manages to keep the footprint as small as it can despite cramming a 5-inch display into the device. It's definitely more than a little reminiscent of the Galaxy S III build, which is unfortunate, but there are worse ways for a phone to be designed.

With that said, it's still too big. You can be as efficient as humanly possible with the space surrounding a 5-inch screen and it will always be too big. The thinness of the device (a mere 7.99 mm) makes it somewhat tolerable to slip into your pocket, but it's simply too big to actually use comfortably. For this reviewer at least, it just wasn't possible to reach with my thumb from one corner of the screen to its opposite without having to shift my grip on the device. And having to do that shuffle to slide the phone up or down in my hand to reach a different part of the screen is just awkward.

The phone is comfortable to hold in terms of its heft, though, as it only weighs in at 130 grams. Some may slight this attribute for making the phone feel cheap, but if there's any aspect that's making the GSIV feel cheap, it's the materials with which it's made. Sticking with the slick plastic build was a mistake, especially considering the fantastic, high-quality feel offered by the metal frame of its main competitor, the HTC One.

Display

The display of the GSIV is undeniably beautiful. The full HD (1920 x 1080), Super AMOLED 5-inch display is incredibly sharp thanks to a 441 ppi pixel density, with nary a rough edge in sight; seriously, it's amazing how crisp images look on the GSIV. Equally shocking is how bright the screen is, and it's easily viewable even in direct sunlight. The viewing angles are also impressive, with the screen looking just as clear and maintaining the same level of contrast no matter how the phone is being held.

Colors look fantastic, with blacks and whites that are equally deep and bright, respectively. If we really had to nitpick and find an issue, it would be that the white balance can look a little funny at times, with the display generally leaning towards warming tones. But other than that, the massive, dazzling display of the GSIV is definitely a selling point.

Other Buttons and Ports

Previous Samsung users will feel right at home here, with the typical set up of the power switch on the right edge, the volume rocker on the left, and the physical home button centered right below the display. Other than that, there's just the capacitive menu and back buttons (located on the left and right of the home button, respectively), the 3.5mm headphone jack and IR blaster on the top edge, and an array of sensors above the screen.

As for the shooters, the GSIV's 13-megapixel rear-facing camera is centered on the top of the device's back, while the 2-megapixel webcam is located in the upper right-hand corner above the display. The phone's charging jack is a micro USB/MHL 2.0 port located on the bottom edge of the device.

The one benefit of Samsung opting for the same flimsy plastic backing that was found on the GSIV's predecessor (and passing on a unibody build) is that it's removable. As such, users have access to the phone's 2600 mAh battery, a microSD card slot, and the micro SIM slot, all of which are found under the back cover.

Performance

With a 1.9 GHz quad-core chip humming under the hood, it's no surprise that the performance of the GSIV is superb. Both apps and the interface run smoothly, generally speaking, though we did find that TouchWiz would experience occasional dips in frame rate when performing tasks like unlocking the screen with the "water" animation enabled.

That aside, the GSIV's performance was flawless as we put it through its paces both online and locally with a handful of games and apps. For the sake of providing hard numbers and putting the phone's power into perspective, we ran the Quadrant benchmark five times. The GSIV produced an average of a whopping 12405.2 marks. For the sake of comparison, that's marginally higher than the HTC One, and noticeably better than the LG Optimus G Pro and the Sony Xperia Z.

Software

This was clearly where Samsung attempted to differentiate its phone from the competition, given how hardware specs are relatively similar across the board with flagship smartphones. Some of Samsung's additions are useful, some aren't, and some don't even work properly. But regardless of what you think of the quality of the software, there's no denying that there's simply too much of it, as the phone's 16 GB storage capacity is already knocked down to about 9.5 GB straight out of the box (an issue that Samsung is looking to fix).

Much of what Samsung has included on the GSIV are enhancements and tweaks to the TouchWiz UI. There are so many, in fact, that the pull-down notification shade now has a button in the upper right-hand corner that users have to tap to see all of the different toggles, as only five can be displayed at a time.

Samsung has made a concerted effort to promote many of these features, including Smart Stay, Smart Scroll, Air View, and Air Gesture. Smart Stay, which keeps the display on as long as you're looking at it, is easily the most effective of the bunch.

Smart Scroll and Air Gesture, meanwhile, are hit or miss; only some of the air gestures (like waving my hand over the screen to move through home screens while placing an app) seemed to work, while Smart Scroll comes in two different forms, with one more effective than the other.

One type is the much-hyped eye-tracking software, which automatically scrolls a page down when the phone has detected that your eyes have reached the bottom of a page. Needless to say, this is virtually non-functional and when the page actually does start scrolling, it's hard to get it to stop. The other version of Smart Scroll, which scrolls when the phone is tilted either up or down, works much more reliably (though still not flawlessly) and we actually found ourselves using it a decent amount. But we're just lazy; really, if you're holding the phone, how hard is it to just use your thumb to scroll at that point?

Air View, unfortunately, did not seem to work for us at all, which was especially surprising given that it seemed to work relatively well when we first saw the phone at its launch. It's supposed to give users a preview of certain elements (e.g. the contents of an email, a larger image of a photo from the gallery, etc.) when they hover their fingers over them -- much like with the S Pen on the Galaxy Notes -- but it never seemed to kick in.

One other new addition to TouchWiz is the multi-window interface, which allows users to have two apps open at once and freely adjust how much of the display each window takes up. Once you learn how to use it, it works well and is one of the few legitimately convenient and useful software additions.

The preloaded apps are, unfortunately, pretty useless across the board. Aside from Google's suite of apps (and the apps from whatever carrier provided your phone), there are a number of Samsung offerings like S Health (a fitness app that serves as a pedometer, tracks progress towards goals, etc.), S Memo (which some will recognize from the Galaxy Note series), S Translator, and S Voice (a Siri equivalent). There are also the Samsung Apps and Samsung Hub storefronts, the difference between which we could hardly discern, and Samsung Link. And finally, there are a few other third party apps that come on the device, like ChatON, Flipboard, TripAdvisor, and more, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The fact is, while some of the apps sound intriguing, none of them are selling points and chances are good that most users won't use them more than one or two times just to see what they're all about. S Translator does its job as well as an online translator -- an issue we noticed when we first used the GSIV back at its launch party -- and S Memo is not nearly as helpful without the use of the S Pen; who wants to take notes by mashing an inaccurate virtual keyboard? S Health could be useful, but the fact is that there are much better options, be they apps or sport watches/fitness bands, for this sort of thing. S Voice is probably the most helpful of the apps, but admittedly we don't use it all that often, either.

Camera

The quality of the 13-megapixel camera with which the GSIV is equipped is perhaps a little undersold, since Samsung spends so much time plugging its various shooting modes. To be honest, the shooting modes will probably go unnoticed by most users, since they're mostly on the gimmicky side. For example, the Eraser mode seen in the commercials, which allows users to remove certain aspects from pictures, isn't as handy as people are led to believe; the camera decides which elements can or can't be removed. Equally unimpressive is the ability to shoot pictures (and video) with both the rear-facing and front-facing cameras simultaneously. We can think of very few situations in which that's necessary or even remotely useful.

As for the pictures themselves, though they are occasionally marred by camera shake when pressing the shutter button (better image stabilization would have been welcome here), they generally come out very sharp with the right level of exposure. Colors look good but can be sometimes oversaturated, and pictures tend to lean towards the cool side of the spectrum (but otherwise the white balance is fine).

The low-light shooting of the GSIV camera is fine, but certainly not its strongest point. Compared to the likes of the Nokia Lumia 920, there's a little more noise in low-light photos, but it's definitely still serviceable.

Battery Life

When we first started using the GSIV, there was some apprehension about the battery life of the device; despite the fact that its capacity had been increased from the GSIII to 2600 mAh, there was a lot of talk about all of the phone's sensors and software being a real drain on the battery.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that those rumblings were somewhat exaggerated. Sure, there's a noticeably greater longevity to be experienced if users shut everything off, but even with a healthy set of options enabled, we found that the GSIV still has excellent battery life. Aside from our usual suite of battery-draining measures like maximum brightness, email push, location services, NFC, etc., we also kept a number of Samsung's proprietary software enabled, including Smart Stay, Smart, Scroll, Air View, and Air Gestures.

There was a pretty heavy amount of usage going on as well, including over 2 hours of streaming music, about a half hour of streaming video, 20 minutes of gaming, and a small dose of web browsing and photos shot. And yet, with all of these factors combined, we still managed to get two and a half days out of a single charge. For a top of the line smartphone with a massive, bright display and a wealth of software options that most users would assume leech the longevity, the GSIV really surprised and impressed on the battery life front.

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy S IV isn't perfect, but it's still an excellent phone. Though it was disappointing to see that some of the software kinks were not worked out prior to its launch -- though, admittedly, some were -- the hardware is still top-notch and there's a big enough helping of software to differentiate it from the competition. Yes, much of that software is an acquired taste and won't be for everybody, but at least the phone has a defining element to it. And there are some undeniably great aspects of the GSIV, including the battery life, the super-fast processor, and the dazzling display.

That said, despite how good of a job Samsung did with shrinking the bezel around the screen, the phone is simply still too big for us. It may be nice to have such a roomy display (especially when it looks this good), but it just isn't worth the massive footprint and how clumsy that makes the GSIV to use.

There's also the fact that Galaxy S III users may not find enough reasons here to upgrade, especially if they aren't interested in the software offerings, many of which are said to be on their way to the Galaxy S III anyway. But if you don't fall into that category and you don't mind the size of the phone, then the GSIV should definitely be on your radar for your next Android flagship.