Samsung Galaxy S4 review

What is it? 
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the latest product aimed at topping the Android pile and essentially attempting to beat the iPhone.

What’s great? 
Stunning display, reams of innovations, lots of grunt and a great camera.

What’s not?
Some features are gimmicky, it’s very big and a bit plasticky.

The bottom line: 
Samsung’s flagship looks similar to last year’s S3 but is a solid upgrade in every way. There are innovations you may not like or need but there are enough standout features to make it well worth considering.

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Samsung Galaxy S4: Review

What a year it’s been: stunning phones from Sony and HTC, a new operating system and a smashing QWERTY phone from BlackBerry and a tremendous budget phone from Nokia (the Lumia 520). And it’s hardly Spring. Still, with Apple’s latest unlikely to materialise before late summer, the last big phone for the

moment, and the most anticipated of the year, was always going to be the new flagship from Samsung.

Samsung Galaxy S4: Design

The Galaxy S4 is a close relation of last year’s S3, sporting a similar but definitely improved styling, with fewer whimsical curves and a more businesslike feel. The joins are so smooth you can roll it in your hand and it feels like one piece, though this phone has a removable back and battery. It’s big, but no bigger than the S3. In fact, though it manages to include a 5-inch display, it’s noticeably thinner than last year’s model.

Samsung Galaxy S4: Display

And the full HD screen is quite the eye-catcher thanks to its super-sharp resolution, eye-searing colours and rich detail. This is Super AMOLED and nobody does it better than Samsung. Some will find it just too bright, though at least the over-saturated pinks and oranges of earlier screens are now softened to more realistic hues. It’s so sharp that text in an ebook looks as pristine as on paper. It’s a very pleasant screen to use, even if you may need sunglasses. Video playback really looks the business.

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Samsung Galaxy S4: Features

Which brings us to the first of the phone’s many, many features. Smart Pause is one of the technologies that uses the front-facing camera to watch you. It knows when your eyes are looking at the screen. So if you’re playing video on the phone and look away, it spots the movement of your head and your eyes. As soon as you turn, it pauses the playback, only starting again when you spin back. Sounds gimmicky? It is, but it quickly becomes an enjoyable extra.

The same system is used to help you read a web page, say. Smart Scroll knows when your eyes are at the bottom of the screen. Tilt the phone or – and this is cool – your head and the phone responds by scrolling down to the parts of the page you previously couldn’t see.

When the phone is in standby you can waft your hand above it (no touching required) and the screen gently turns on, shows you how many calls, emails or other notifications are waiting for you, tells you the time and the battery charge remaining before fading to black again. It’s a neat feature, though note that it does drain the battery a little.

Other ways not to touch the phone include gestures which pop open an email summary without having to leave the mail list screen, or showing a speed dial without opening a contact’s full details. These features are handy if your digits are dirty or covered in sun tan oil, for instance. Alternatively, if it’s not beach weather, you may be using your phone with gloves on. Usually you can’t but with some Nokia Lumia handset and the Galaxy S4, you can.

There are also what Samsung calls wellness features here – a pedometer built in to the phone counts your steps while thermal and humidity sensors can track if you’re getting sweaty palms as you move. These elements are not as good as having a Nike+ wristband, say, but are quite fun.

There’s also S Translator which lets you speak a phrase in English and it’ll speak it back to you in a range of other languages. It needs a decent data connection to do this and it’s important to speak slowly and clearly – or you can type the phrase in if you prefer – but this is a very satisfying app.

Samsung Galaxy S4: Camera

And the 13.1-megapixel sensor takes great shots but is also feature-rich. So if there’s nobody to take your photograph in front of that spectacular sunset, how about you put yourself in the picture anyway? By allowing simultaneous use of front and back lenses, you can merge the two images, even switching where the inset appears onscreen. It’s a feature that seems bizarre at first but it works well and you’ll come up with your own situations to make the most of it. The camera is not great in low light, which is the case with most cameraphones, of course.

Samsung Galaxy S4: Performance

If you’re looking for a speedy phone, look no further. There are other smartphones, like the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z which offer fast, responsive action but in pure spec terms, the 1.9GHz quad-core Qualcomm chip and 2GB of RAM on this phone are hard to beat. There's also an octo-core version of the S4 with Sammy's own Exynos chip inside, although that super-speedy handset isn't likely to reach these shores.

Unlike some handsets, you can expand the base storage (16, 32 or 64GB) with a microSD card. And the battery life on this phone is very strong: a big screen leaves plenty of room for a big battery. Of course, nightly recharges are still required, but it shouldn’t let you down by lunchtime.

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Samsung Galaxy S4: Verdict

This is a big, glamorous and enormously powerful phone, stuffed with so many features you may be lost as to where to begin. But once you’ve got to grips with it you’ll find much to enjoy. Though some innovations seem geeky or gimmicky, others are delightful. Like the way the screen lights up when you pass your hand over it. Or the video pausing feature that kicks in when you glance away from the phone. There’s a good camera here and even it has a bunch of extra elements, like shooting on both front and rear cameras at the very same time.

Though some will find the phone just too big for their hands and others will lament that Samsung has gone for a plasticky design once again, the benefits of the big, gorgeous screen, slim profile, powerful processor and expandable memory are likely to win many admirers. This phone is going to be big.