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Hello everyone, due to various reasons
We haven't reviewed any Samsung S product since the late i9000 review 2 years ago.
And Samsung has in that time became a world leader in mobile technology.
They have became one of the few company that reliably make money from their cell division. (something about finding answer by using QR code)
Our objective today is to see if the S4 can extend Samsung's success for the past 2 years.
Ok, let's get started.
With high expectation, we are going to take a look at Samsung's 2013 flagship device, the S4
The packaging style has gone through some stylistic change.
Using wood-accented paper box this time that many would mistake for real wood.
But let's think about it, 10s of millions of S4 sold, if the boxes were all real wood, whole forests would be leveled.
We have the Chinese retail version, using the Exynos 5 Octa 5410 CPU. Priced at 5199RMB (850usd)
Package contains the usual: manual, headphone, usb cable and charger
The first impression is that the S4 isn't that different than the S3. Same giant plastic cover that has been around since the Reagan administration is very boring.
Thankfully, the size of the S4 and S3 is about the same.
Increasing the screen size and not the physical size has been a trend in Samsung S and Note series as of late.
We were a bit worried about the phone's physical size when we heard that the S4 will have a 5 in. screen, that worry is dismissed immediately.
The frame around the screen is noticeably thinner. Especially at the top and bottom. Increased relative screen size gives off a very good first impression.
The S4 has replaced the curves of the S4 with a more square design.
The curved glass of the S3 is replaced by a flat one in S4.
The more angular and square design might attract more male users.
Button distribution is basically the same, there is little learning curve if you have used a recent Samsung phone.
The S4 home button has been slightly raised which correspond to a significant improvement in feel.
There is a new IR blaster that can be used as remote. It is fitting that Samsung, with its suite of home theater electronics, is pushing this technology.
The material is classic Samsung: Plastics that don't look like plastic.
Metally plastic on the side, starry plastic on the back. Those are not my words, they are the words of Samsung designers themselves.
Unfortunately, plastic is plastic. I might be able to fool the eye but it can't fool your hands. The positive is that plastics hold up better after a drop compared to metals.
Even with the well sealed and made body. A metal phone just feels better in hand. S4's exterior feels about the same as the S3, look elsewhere for breakthroughs.
Another signature trait of Samsung phones is it's beautiful AMOLED screen. Choosing AMOLED was an important decision. It considers both the room for improvement as well as product differentiation to others (eg: LCD)
But AMOLED come with its limitations, it has its advantages as well as some technological challenges to over come in order to show the advantages.
LED has self lit pixels that does not need a back light like those in a LCD screen.
One challenge that LED face is the lifespan of the subpixels. Blue pixels has much lower lifespan than green and red. The other challenge is to arrange it in an optimized way.
Samsung must find the balance between market demand and its technical ability. They found that balance with Pentile display.
What is Pentile and how does it solve the technical issues with LED?
This is a standard RGB layout. Same subpixel size and brightness would result in ideal picture. Unfortunately the red and especially the blue pixel don't last long.
If the blue pixel was left to work at the same intensity as the green pixel, it will only last 1/4 as long. How do you get around the issue? By making Red and Blue subpixel bigger.
Which brought about another issue. There needs to be sufficient spaces between subpixels to prevent leaking and interference.
Samsung's solution is to decrease the number of R/B subpixels in half, and to make those that's left bigger.
With less subpixel, pentile has worse color presentation than standard RGB.
You may ask, how does it affect me? Of course it does. First issue is checkerbox effect, which is obvious with low PPi.
Next is jaggedness along the edges. Even at 720p, the S3 is noticeably worse than the One X at the edge.
Lastly, there is the colored border effect, it is much more obvious in a pentile arrangement. Those are the reason why pentile was unpopular.
Pentile display's issues were very obvious under 200ppi. With higher ppi, the issue should become more negligible.
So what's the dividing line? 300ppi? S3's 306ppi disprove that. Finally, with the S4's 441ppi, the issues with pentile has became negligible.
It's near impossible to tell that the S4's screen is pentile. Part of the reason is the improved grid along with improved ppi. Resulting in a very smooth screen.
S4's screen didn't solve all the issue with Pentile. The colored border effect has been augmented somehow. But it shouldn't make any practical difference on day to day activities.
The introduction of Pentile was to solve the lifespan issue of pixels. Samsung thought they had a solution with the RGB in the S2, but it was just in time for the pixel war.
It started with the iPhone and the retina display. So with internal technical difficulty and external ppi competition. If they can't produce a high ppi AMOLED screen, it doesn't bode well.
After weighting the pro/cons, the solution was pentile. Which gives Samsung more time to improve the technology.
There are other improvements to the screen, such as the brightness. S4 has improved on the S3's 210nits brightness.
AMOLED was famous for its warm color temperature. But it has gotten more neutral as of late. Getting closer to the Asian preference of 7000k.
Color accuracy has also been a problem in the past. The S4 has improved on green, yet it is still quite a bit off neutral. But it looks like there is hope.
Cellphone screen isn't just a viewing interface. The breakthroughs in screen interaction is also important.
Whether it was Lumia's supersensitive screen. Or S4's Airview. Both attempt to improve interaction with better touch interface.
S4 and Lumia 920 both use Synaptics touch interface.
(technical explanation of the touch screen that I don't quite understand)
The overall screen quality of the S4 is excellent. We won't know if Samsung has improved its screen lifespan for a while.
But one thing is sure, this is a high quality screen.
At this point, the need for better pixel density is not there. Samsung's next challenge would be to improve on the color accuracy.
S4's improvement in color temperature as well as color accuracy makes us believe that Samsung has room to improve in the future.
S4 is using a 13mp Sony camera component. It has also greatly simplified the camera menu operation.
S3's menus just seems generic while the S4's has a more direct feeling. Modes have graphic selections rather than words. Most things can be done within 2 steps. It is noticeably better.
This is a personal opinion, but it seems like we don't use a lot of the modes. Why? It's because a lot of the features are preventative measures. The erase distraction feature for example.
The user won't know ahead of time if there will be people walking across the picture. The natural reaction to someone doing that would be to wait for them to clear the screen, and not to adjust the phone.
Taking picture first, then offer options to adjust might be a more logical solution for real life situations.
The problem with feature logic in camera is common place. What we don't understand is that touch to focus does not also meter for that spot. Metering can only be done through the menu. Forcing you to choose HDR at times.
Performance in light is excellent. Easily beating the HTC One.
Android has come a long way in Camera quality. iPhone used to be the measuring stick of camera quality. But the advantage has been diminishing with all the camera improvements of other OEMs.
(White balance comparison)
We can say that the S4 has the best day time performance out of all 13mp cameras. Everything is excellent. Raising the mp count without raising the quality of the other parts is pointless. But Samsung has improved everything else along the way.
(Night time white balance test) S4 much worse than One Night mode helps a bit. Worse white balance but less noisy picture at night compare to iPhone.
White balance off, color spectrum flat. HDR might help with white balance and detail while sacrificing cleanness.
Night mode excellent software compromise. Takes a few different pictures, combine them, (similar to HDR?) Left: night mode off Right: night mode on. Recommend leaving this on at night.
3 solution to the "night problem" 1. Light sensor improvement. (HTC One, Lumia) 2. Software balance ISO and noise reduction. (iPhone) 3. Combine multiple picture (S4)
S4 picture quality at night: not great.
Front camera metering not great, no touch to focus/meter. 2mp camera does offer better picture than the usual 1.3 under ideal conditions.
S4 better in daylight, One better at night. One the better overall compromise. S4 significant improvement over S3. Best daylight camera tested. Very impressive.
S3 was nature inspired. S4 seems to aim towards simplicity. Issue with Samsung design choice is inconsistency and the host has the feeling that they are not optimizing the right thing.
Bad things such as this font, the widget icons, all seems a bit dated.
Of course Samsung isn't perfect everywhere. Where they excel is system optimization. Touchwiz has very high FPS and is very very smooth. Unless you install a lot of junk, very stable as well.
Operation is similar to past offerings, with the exception of JB style drop down menu. Some setting optimization as well. But that's about it.
S4's software value lies in the specialty S-features talked about in press conferences. We put those in 3 categories...
1. Things that works pretty well Multi window: easy to use, screen big enough Suspended finger preview: finger don't need to be that close, but single touch only. Flip page with hand.
2. Useful with significant flaws
Smart pause: rely on camera, camera in a location where people hold the phone to watch video. Problem. No 3rd party support.
auto disable rotation: doesn't work in low/no light, minimal distance requirement.
3rd category: looks great in promo, useless in reality.
Eye scrolling: nobody in his group can get it to scroll and stop when they want to...except that guy. (joke at the end was that the host is telling him to flip the page with his eye, which is not a feature)
Samsung's attempt to better use the sensors with its software is to be commended. Most of their sensors exist in other phones, just without equivalent software.
Unfortunately, most sensor features don't work reliably yet. Part of the problem is gimmicky features that don't solve problem. Eye scrolling is far more difficult than using a finger even when working correctly and goes against one's instinct.
Software limitation on those sensor features also a minus, cannot use a lot of them with 3rd party app.
Of course, some of it is current hardware limitation. What Samsung is doing with the sensor isn't necessarily new, jailbroken iPhone and unlocked Android has had the look away to pause feature.
Samsung needs to be commended on the effort, even if a lot of it is to just add to the feature list or to make good promos and have no real world application.
Samsung pushing the advancement of sensors definitely a plus. Possibly the next frontier in mobile technology. Other mobile techs will rely on sensors far more than phones (ex. Glass)
With that said, what we can do now is play with some of the features and just close those that don't work. But one day, sensor technology will get there and Samsung would have had plenty of experience with it.
(top s4 with sensor features turned off, bottom with them on) percentages are batteries left after test. HTC Butterfly is similar to One X.
8 hours standby performance.
Leave the features that you need on, not a huge drain on battery.
S4 with supposed heat issue. 2 peak temperatures are gaming and 3g twittering.
10 min tests, 5 mins of 3g web browsing, 5 mins of phone laying there. S4 heats quickly in use, that seems to be what's making people think that it overheat.
Absolute heat not much higher, but rate of heating much higher. Possible culprit the octa CPU.
S4 overall signal performance excellent (see HTC One review)
(Noise cancelling performance.)
Summary: Software: hit and miss, more miss but the hits are useful. Hardware: solid everywhere. But not huge upgrade over S3 compare to S2 to S3 upgrade. Overall likes the HTC One more than the S4.
But Samsung likely to keep its large market share due to better marketing and logistics. If you think your S3 is working fine, skip the S4.