Last night, Samsung revealed the Galaxy 4S, its new flagship smartphone. It was a rather painful release event, filled with skits and bad jokes, but nonetheless the S4 is a formidable piece of technology. (Recap the event on our live blog.) Of course, the reviews are pouring in already. We’ll walk you through the specs and major features of the phone below, and link out to some of the best reviews available so far.
But first, check out some photos of the phone and of last night’s event:
Specs
For this we turn to Gizmodo, which gives the S4 an overall fairly negative review:
At least the 5-inch “Full HD Super AMOLED” is very good-looking. It’s a full 1080p, which gives it 441 pixels per inch (PPI)… We know that the S IV will be packing a flagship-standard 2GB of RAM and a hefty 2600mAh battery, which is certainly welcome news. It will come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB options, with a micro SD card slot allowing for expanded storage. Naturally it will also have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4, and NFC. The rear camera is 13MP and the front—which is also capable of 720p video chatting—has a 2MP sensor. It’ll also have LTE (duh) with p to 100/50Mbps, which is quick.
The thrust of the Gizmodo review is essentially that this is closer to the SIII than to a truly revolutionary device. TechCrunch also has a good run through of all the specs, hardware and software.
Look Ma, No Hands
While the S4 might not be a revolution in mobile computing, the touchless interactivity it introduces is pretty cool. You can hover your hand above the screen and swipe through the air as if you were touching the screen. (Sunscreen on your fingers was offered up as just one possible use case.) The S4 can also tell if you’ve turned your head away and so will pause a video when you look away. Finally, you can scroll by tilting the phone back and forth.
More Sensors
The S4 has added a couple of interesting sensors, and was billed as a health tool thanks to the existing Samsung S-Health app suite. The S4 has a pedometer, and works with a variety of accessories to track caloric intake, exercise, and more. But new to this device are a couple extra sensors, including temperature and humidity. Perhaps it’s just the energy nerd in me, but there’s got to be some interesting energy applications here.
vs. Apple
There are a ton more features that were mentioned last night that I won’t get into, but since we’ve reported on the speculation as to how the S4 will play in the developing Samsung-Apple rivalry, I recommend this piece in Quartz:
The Samsung Galaxy S4 will be available on 327 carriers in 155 countries—that’s 36% more carriers than the iPhone 5 and 55% more countries. It’s also even wider availability than what was announced for the Galaxy S III, which debuted in 296 carriers in 145 countries.
That’s big.
Put all this together and you have a great phone that’s going to end up in a lot of people’s hands around the world. Is it similar to the SIII? Yes. Is it going to single-handedly crush the iPhone? No. But like the SIII, it’ll give Apple a run for its money.
