The port layout is smart: power button on the right, volume on the left, headphone jack up top and Micro USB on the bottom, with the SIM card, microSD slot, and battery accessible when you peel off the removable back.
It's very comfortable for such a large phone, but I can't get over the gross feeling I get holding it. Samsung's proven repeatedly that people don't care about build quality, or at least will overlook it in favor of features and performance, but the landscape's different now. Samsung's feature list has to be awfully long to overcome that — and it is, but I'll get there. Through my entire time with the GS4, I kept imagining walking through a store and trying to pick a phone. The answer's simple, and luckily for Samsung it's also immediately obvious.
It's the screen. The GS4's 5-inch, x display is big, beautiful, and seriously eye-catching. Those colors may not be accurate — reds and oranges absolutely explode off the screen, whether they should or not — but they certainly catch your eye. And with a ridiculous pixels-per-inch, even the PenTile display matrix I usually loathe causes no problems. For some reason, Samsung has always had trouble with screen brightness settings — the GS4 can never seem to decide how bright its screen should be, changing suddenly and drastically often and without warning.
I turned automatic brightness off very quickly. I tried to pick my favorite between the One's display and the GS4's, and wound up going back and forth a dozen times before giving up. Both are incredibly high-res, bright, and crystal clear; the One is slightly more accurate, but I still periodically forget my nitpicking and get lost in the GS4's vibrant colors.
You really can't lose, and that's pretty great. The lone speaker on the Galaxy S4 resides on its backside, in that wonderfully unconsidered spot where audio is both muffled by your hand and blasting directly away from your ears. Once again, HTC broke the curve by offering two big, powerful speakers pointed straight at your face — but the One aside, the GS4 offers surprisingly loud sound from rear-facing grille.
It's not very rich and is very compressed, but it's loud. Loud is good. While HTC is trying to convince buyers that megapixels don't matter, and that its so-called Ultrapixels are better anyway, Samsung went the opposite direction. I don't know if all the pixels in the Galaxy S4's megapixel sensor are the reason, or if I should credit Samsung's fast processor or the clear attention paid to its software, but the upshot is that the GS4's camera is the best Android camera I've ever used by a considerable margin, and in most cases it's every bit as good as the iPhone 5's camera.
The GS4's autofocus stumbles in low light, too; I learned quickly to take three shots at night, in order to get one that was properly focused. It's actually Samsung's experience with dedicated cameras that make shooting photos with the GS4 so nice.
The company borrowed a lot of the GS4's camera software from the Galaxy Camera , a concept car of sorts that clearly informed its ability to build a great cameraphone. The interface is much improved over the S III, from the scrolling Mode dial to the one-press capture of either stills or video. It's also simple and fast, two things many cellphone cameras are not. The GS4's greatest photographic achievement, though, is that it manages to be simple and fast while simultaneously offering the largest, most impressive feature set of any smartphone camera I've ever used.
If you're just turning the phone to Auto and firing pictures, you're missing out. Instead, you should try turning it to Eraser Mode, which detects moving objects in your photo — like the stranger that always walks by right as you take the shot — and automatically removes them. Or scroll up to Drama Shot, which takes a series of pictures as a subject moves and then shows a whole leap, or the soccer ball's whole flight path, in one automatically-overlaid photo. Animated Photo lets you take a few seconds of video, then choose with your finger whether a part of the frame is still or in motion — you can actually create and share animated GIFs without ever leaving the camera app.
Some of the more advanced features require some staging — and Drama Shot sometimes takes a couple of tries — but they're all pretty cool. All except for Dual Camera, which despite Samsung's heavy promotion remains a mystery to me. If you have set your lock screen with a pattern or PIN code, you can activate this option by going to Settings, then My device, Lock screen, Lock screen widgets, and selecting Edit personal information.
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Search close Search X Search. Sort by Sort by Recent Popular. OK Cancel. Multitasking with pop-up keyboard Do you dislike how cumbersome multitasking can be on a smartphone? Blocking mode for when you do not wish to be disturbed We have all lost a little sleep when our phones unexpectedly chime or ring in the middle of the night — or even more embarrassingly, in an important meeting. Optimizing in-call audio clarity Did you used to have trouble hearing the person on the other end of the phone when you were outside on the street, or in a busy shopping center?
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More on Latest. I don't like to evaluate top cameras in a vacuum. Come back later for the results of a photo shootout among top contenders, including the iPhone 5 and HTC One. Video quality Videos looked crisp and gorgeous when shot and played back in p HD quality. I tested out video capture in both a quiet indoor spot and also on a busy downtown San Francisco street. Outside, the microphone picked up San Francisco's famous wind, but also the sounds of a street singer and passersby, in addition to my own much closer and louder voice.
Interface controls Since there's so much going on in the camera app, any phone maker's challenge is to help you find the tools buried in the menus. Samsung incorporated interface elements from its megapixel Samsung Galaxy Camera , like the onscreen menu options at the top of the screen for dual-shot mode and for settings that include night mode and flash. There's also the onscreen shutter button, a video button to quickly toggle to recording mode, and the Mode button that calls up a lot of other options.
Press the GS4's capacitive Menu button for even more options to edit your quick onscreen choices, and to go deeper into the settings to pick things like a time, voice control, and shutter sound, as well as your photo and video resolution sizes.
Creative camera settings Of all of the Galaxy S4's five kooky new camera settings and modes -- out of 13 total modes including auto -- dual-shot mode is my surprise favorite. Like the same feature on the LG Optimus G Pro , dual-shot mode uses both the front- and rear-facing cameras to create a composite photo or video. To use it, tap the double camera icon from the camera's onscreen quick settings to start it up.
Then, tap the carat to slide out all eight configurations. Whichever one you choose inlays the front-facing camera image over the main camera photo.
One option, split, divides the screen in half. I wouldn't recommend swapping the cameras, but you can. Here's a pro tip: you can tap the smaller image to resize it. When might you use it? To personalize a shot or send a wish-you-were-here message. Also seen on the HTC One, Drama is the mode you want when you have a well-planned out action sequence you'd like to take from a distance.
If you position the camera right and keep it still, it compiles a series of still images into a single frame, keeping the background the same. You can check the box to add or remove which frames you'd like to include.
I failed the first handful of times I tried using this mode. It helps to back away from the subject and plot your shot for subjects moving in a single direction. I had the same trouble making the Eraser mode work. Again, an HTC One option as well, this mode compares five pictures and plays the game of "which of these things is not like the other.
As with Drama mode, Eraser mode requires a certain amount of premeditation to successfully use, and as of this review, I still haven't been able to make it work in real-world tests, even if someone deliberately walked through the frame. Sound and Shot is one mode I really warmed up to in theory; consider it an audio postcard you'll send to someone.
Instead of captioning the image, you leave up to nine seconds of a voice recording that's attached to the photo. Unfortunately, it's completely useless unless the person you're sending it to also has a GS4.
If you've ever wanted to turn your photos or short videos into animated GIFs, the Animated Photo mode is your tool. It lets you isolate any part of a mostly static video, which you "draw" on to select the part you'll want to animate or freeze.
If you keep your camera steady, as I did in a video of waving flags, the tool suggests areas to animate.
It looked cool and worked pretty well. Just keep in mind that you need to pick this mode first to use the tool, and that the Galaxy S4 won't save your original video in the gallery. If you're going for a humorous or stylized video, you can play around with high-speed or slow-motion video settings.
It makes sense that you can't convert a video you've already shot in another mode like standard , but how much fun would that be if you could? In addition to these newbie features, best photo for a group, burst shot, HDR, and panorama Tip: try it vertically to take in a tall building are other camera options, too.
Whether Samsung originated the extra camera feature or introduced it after a competitor, there's one Google Android goody that's conspicuously missing, and that's Photo Sphere , which lets you take a degree panoramic image. A Samsung representative suggested that there may be a conflict with the Galaxy S4's hardware capabilities, but we'll need to confirm that's the real reason for Photo Sphere's absence. I'll be testing the Galaxy S4's call quality on every carrier model I can get my hands on.
I made my starter calls, though, using T-Mobile's voice network inside and outdoors in San Francisco. Audio quality did not blow me away. Volume was a little low, even when I spoke from within a fairly quiet office building with the volume clicked up to the maximum output. Add the wind and road noise outside, and it became difficult at times to hear. Voices weren't fuzzy, but also weren't clear, and a layer of white noise crackled whenever my calling partner spoke.
Although my test partner sounded mostly natural, when I was indoors, I could tell his voice carried a harsh edge that made him sound a little unnatural. During one conversation, a spike of network distortion plopped a big blip into the conversation. Now, Samsung is well aware of the volume ceiling on its phones. To counteract it, its high-end handsets include a software audio boost button you can press to amplify sound. The Galaxy S4 takes audio correction a step further.
In addition to the boost mode, another button on the screen pulls up a list of esoteric audio options, including "adjust audio," a choice that requires you to tweak system settings, "soft," and "clear. My calling partner and I tested clear and boost modes thoroughly, seeing if we could reduce the white noise I heard whenever my caller spoke.
He repeated the same sentence over and over again in regular, audio boost, and clear modes. Clear seemed to make voices a little sharper, also stripping out a tiny bit of vocal warmth, but it did not abolish the background haze.
When used indoors or someplace quiet, the extra volume boost button does increase sound, but also all the flaws. During outside calls, boosting the volume didn't always seem to have a noticeable effect. A little bit of muffling and distortion on peak volumes were my calling partner's harshest critiques.
I sounded comfortably loud, he said, and didn't crackle. I sounded natural to his ears during inside and outside calls. The Galaxy S4's speakerphone was a solidly OK experience. It was pretty loud and not too echoey. Voices still sounded pretty natural, not hollow.
At maximum volume, the handset buzzed in my hands, but the buzz was controlled, unlike previous Samsung devices that I've tried.
I'd say there's been some smartphone speakerphone progress in this line. Rival manufacturers like Nokia still do a better job on the whole, but at the end of the day, I felt comfortable holding a speakerphone conversation in my relatively quiet office. I could see using speakerphone hands-free in my house say, while cooking , or in the car if I didn't have a Bluetooth hookup.
My test partner agreed that the GS4 has a pretty good speakerphone. My slightly muffled voice was his main complaint. Other than that, I sounded about the same, he said. One last note on call quality before we move on: the Galaxy S4 is one of T-Mobile's handsets that's equipped with HD Voice, an automatic setting that kicks in when conversation occurs between two HD Voice-enabled phones. A 4G LTE device with a 1. Data transfer speeds will, of course, depend on the network's strength at any given moment.
Speeds were completely expected in both real-world and diagnostic tests. Results on the Speedtest. In the real world, Web sites like CNET's and others opened pretty quickly, and faster if they were optimized for mobile use. Apps downloaded easily as well. I noticed that photos took much longer to send, but chalk part of that up to the fact that at the megapixel default, they're also much, much larger than 8-megapixel images.
As for the processor, let's get one thing straight. The U. Qualcomm makes some terrifically rapid-fire processors, and this is top of the line. As I explained before, a higher number of cores doesn't guarantee higher performance , and the same principles apply to the jump from four cores to eight as it does from two to four.
I played a ton of videos and games on the phone to get an eyeful of its graphical handling and speed. The Galaxy S4 uses transition animations as you move from, say, the home screen to an app, or when you exit an app and go back to the home screen. While attractive, these animations can make the phone feel sluggish. The good news is that you can disable them. The Galaxy S4 could also be faster when it comes to shot-to-shot times.
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