Friday, March 15, 2013

The Samsung Galaxy SIV; The King of the droids

Samsung Galaxy S4
The galaxy s4 got unveiled a couple of days back and the whole world seems to be aware. I’ll get into details in a moment, but my overall sense of this phone is that it further pushes Samsung as a leading  beliver in google's dream of a worldwide android smartphone space.  Samsung came out with specs and features that we’ve never yet seen in a smartphone, not to talk of massive advertising gimmicks that makes other phones fel like useless rectangular pieces of metal. I'll pick a htc device anyday (having used a couple) thanks to build quallity and the sense UI but its sammy thats ringing all the beells presently.
True, the S4 runs Google‘s latest Jelly Bean Android software, but Samsung has done a lot to make it different from other Android phones, and it really is a lot.
Hardware specs
Like Apple, Samsung is a hardware company that innovates mainly through software. But the hardware specs are worth noting. (A detailed list is further down) The 5-inch full HD Super AMOLED; 1,920×1,080 screen, at 441 pixels per inch, is both bigger and higher resolution than the iPhone 5, although the HTC One has an equally high resolution — though smaller — (4.7 inch) screen.  Sammy also gave us a faster processor and also lets users expand the phone’s storage (internal storage ranges from 16 to 64 GB) to plug in a MicroSD card for up to another 64GB. And the phone has a mega-battery. Samsung didn’t say how long the battery will last, but it does have 2,600 mili amp hours  which should be pretty efficient.
The phone’s photo features beginning with its 13-megapixel, back-facing camera is mouth watering to say the least. With the S4 you can snap a picture of other people and place yourself — albeit in a little window or bubble — in the frame.  The camera also intelligently sorts your pictures into albums based on the background or the date and you can order picture books directly from the phone. There is also an “eraser” feature that takes a series of quick photos and lets you remove images of people who walk into your shot by deleting just those frames.
Multi-lingual voice recognition
The S4 comes with Samsung’s S Translator tool that enables you to speak in one language and have the phone translate to another. At the press event they showed someone typing a question in English and having the phone speak the words out-loud in Chinese.  When someone responded in Chinese, the phone typed out his words in English. It supports several other languages including French, Spanish, Italian and Portugese. I dont know if this is reliant on an internet connection buh we hope over here at naija it works (and understands us with our accents). The phone also has Siri-like voice recognition that outclasses Siri. You can ask it to read your email out loud and ask the phone to respond to a text message while you’re driving. It aso handles navigation and other phone features.
Knows if you’re looking
If you’re watching a video and look away, the video will pause automatically and resume when you turn your eyes back to the screen. You can also scroll by looking up or down and by slightly tilting the phone. It’s not the full-fledged eye tracking that was rumored where u can even browse the net with just your eyes — but it’s a step in that direction.
Another cool hands-off feature is “Air Gestures.” That allows you to control the phone by waving your hand above the screen. You can swipe left to right or up and down. You can even hover over an email or other item to get more information without having to touch it. Very very interesting i must say.I also love the S Health feature that turns your phone into a pedometer without any extra hardware or, when connected to other devices it can sense your blood pressure, blood sugar or other vital signs. There’s an option S Band that measures your heart beat.
The galaxy s4 will be out in stores in the Us and most of Europe next quarter and at our shores in like a month after that. Nothing concrete concerning prices has come up yet but it shouldnt cost more than say #120k, but until then we'll just keep expecting this piece of beauty and hoping our savings add up quickly. We dont want to be saying something and our oga at the top says something else. Shey?
(SPECIFICATIONS FOR THE GALAXY S4)
Also available with Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset (Quad-core 1.9 GHz Krait 300 CPU, Adreno 320 GPU).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 Coming soon. Exp. release 2013, April 26th
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; LTE, Cat3, 50 Mbps UL, 100 Mbps DL
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), USB On-the-go, USB Host
Camera Primary 13 MP, 4128 x 3096 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
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 recording
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, Adobe Flash
Radio TBD
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 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

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