Samsung Unveils the Galaxy S4

adeelarshad82 writes "It's been leaked, teased, accused of being a copy of its predecessor, and celebrated as the likely champion of the mobile ecosystem for 2013. Samsung has finally unveiled the next in their line of globally available smartphones, the Galaxy S4. The phone carries a 5-inch Super AMOLED display with 1080p resolution at 441ppi, weighs only 130 grams and is no more than 7.9mm thick. On the inside, the Exynos based Octo-Core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz and the Snapdragon based Quad-Core 1.9GHz processor power this machine. Galaxy S4 is also packing 2GB of RAM and a 2600mAh battery, and its microSD slot is accessible though the removable rear panel. The S4 will include several new features, such as Air Gesture, Smart Pause, and Smart Scroll. Samsung's vice president of portfolio planning said many of the software improvements in the Samsung Galaxy S4 could make their way into existing Samsung Galaxy S3 phones."

Comments

Eh, that's it?

[Spy Handler]

incremental improvements and an overall nice phone, sure, but the ad I saw said it was gonna be the biggest revolution since the color TV.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sd4f]

Maybe they should have said biggest revolution since 3D TV.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[The Grim Reefer]

I have an S3 now and I'm planning on keeping it until it dies. Unless I can get a phone that has two days constant usage on a single battery charge, or uninterpretable signal. I don't see the point in spending $600 every year on a new phone for incremental changes. I probably would still be using my HTC HD2 if it hadn't died on me.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sayfawa]

I'm surprised by how many people expected it to be so much better than the S3. When does a phone ever completely change in less than a year?

More importantly, who buys a phone in less than a year after their last? This isn't for people with an S3, it's for everyone else. Like me. I can't think of any line of phones where I would want to have each iteration. But I'll get this, and then I'll happily skip the S5, whatever it happens to be. The S3 isn't outdated now, and the S4 won't be outdated for a couple of years when the S6 comes along.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sd4f]

It took me a little over a year to upgrade my samsung galaxy s 1, as it was complete load of fail, and needed to be replaced. It still works, but OS is so buggy and as a phone, it was very unreliable.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[viperidaenz]

You must have misread its the biggest resolution since colour TV. The first 1080p phone.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[viperidaenz]

What's the point in a wireless device with an uninterpretable signal?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[AmiMoJo]

The only thing I really want for mu S3 is wireless charging, otherwise as you say it is pretty much the pinnacle of phones right now. I suppose they new 1080p screen will be nice.

It will be interesting to see what Apple do. The iPhone 5 doesn't even have a HD (720p) screen or NFC, so an incremental update might not be enough.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[The Grim Reefer]

What's the point in a wireless device with an uninterpretable signal?

No dropped calls.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

More importantly, who buys a phone in less than a year after their last?

I do, or I'm about to.

So I had my smartphone stolen and I needed to replace it. Being the Apple fanboy that I am, I opted for a iPhone 5.

I hate my provider, and my plan is up in May. So I'm thinking about switching to Verizon. Which would necessitate a new phone. So I'm going to switch to a 5S when that gets released.

I agree though that the notion that every year needs to deliver NEW! NEW! NEW! is ridiculous. However, with the case of Samsung, they've dug into Apple and RIM for stagnating and what do they do...? Release a spec bump of their previous flagship model.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[viperidaenz]

I suppose if you can't make any calls, you can't drop any.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[The Grim Reefer]

This is Samsung & Android.

If you want innovative, you'll have to go with Apple. /ohsnap

Yes, innovations like not having to hold the phone a certain way to make calls? /ohsnap

Re:Eh, that's it?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I have apple's latest version of iOS (on my ipad,) and it already feels dated.

- Application icons get thrown about haphazardly upon install requiring manual sorting, even for an app you don't even use very much (whereas android stores them alphabetically so they are easy to find - even if you rarely use the app.)
- Changing any common setting requires switching apps followed by menu navigation, whereas on android it's just a swipe and tap without any navigation necessary (e.g. turning wifi on/off, muting, orientation lock.)
- Can't set application launch defaults, such as setting a default email client other than the stock one. (good lord...WHY? every other OS has done this since the 80's...)
- Although apple finally made notifications stop interrupting what you're doing by borrowing the notification bar system from android, the notifications it provides aren't ever good enough to tell you what you need to know without opening them.
- I'm not a heavy widget user, but I like having a brief display of my agenda visible on my smartphone desktop, as well as an RSS ticker on my tablet desktop. Apple offers no such capability without running an app. Every other OS, including (shudder) windows phone has managed to do this, but not apple.

The whole point of a smartphone is having access to information you need quickly, and iOS hasn't offered many improvements in that department in years. The ones that it has added (e.g. passive notifications) it ripped from android, and it didn't really do a good job of it.

It's kind of hard to give the "innovative" title to a company who hasn't really done anything other than incremental hardware updates. While android is also stuck in increment land at the moment, at least it increments both hardware AND software. Also android doesn't call each generation "the best iphone yet" or "the new ipad".

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tsotha]

That doesn't mean Apple users buy a new phone every year, just that apple releases one every year. Most people skip a generation unless there's something major they really want (like LTE).

Re:Eh, that's it?

[The Grim Reefer]

Damn mistyping and spell check. Oh well. Next time I'll look for a phone with an ineffable signal.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[mrbester]

A custom ROM would have helped.

Sent using my SGS i9000 running CyanogenMod 10.1 M2

Yeah I'll probably upgrade...

Re:Eh, that's it?

[NJRoadfan]

I guess the S3 doesn't have a wireless charge back available for it? My old and lowly Galaxy S Droid Charge even has one available.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[dugancent]

No they don't. They buy one every other year.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[shatfield]

441ppi is AWESOME, by the way! The "retina" display is only 326ppi! Your eyes will not be able to see individual pixels on that screen... it'll look as good or even better than print.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[amiga3D]

That's how boost mobile worked for me after they "upgraded" the tower in my area. No more phone calls from my house. I went and got service with AT&T and boost called me up and asked why I quit using them. They didn't even seem to understand that I could no longer make calls from my house. Where do they get their customer service people?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

Full HD screen, a 1.9GHz processor, and a 13 Megapixel camera. What exactly more did you expect from this phone? That it would cook for you and make your bed? All improvements are incremental improvements in this market, because the functions the device must perform do not change that much. That said, GS3 specs were already higher than those of the iPhone 5, now with GS4 Samsung leaves Apple far behind.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[amiga3D]

Is wireless charging that big a deal? I can't see why I'd want it but maybe there's some benefit I can't see.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[AK Marc]

(whereas android stores them alphabetically so they are easy to find - even if you rarely use the app.)

Android will let you sort them by install date, frequency of use, alphabetical, or user order (Apple's only choice). There may be others, but those are the only ones I remember from having moved things around.

The whole point of a smartphone is having access to information you need quickly, and iOS hasn't offered many improvements in that department in years.

That was the point if Siri. Whether it worked or not is not something I can speak to, but that's what it was there for.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[AK Marc]

Exorbitant cost? I paid more for my Samsung Galaxy S3 than my wife's iPhone.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[MMC Monster]

I have apple's latest version of iOS (on my ipad,) and it already feels dated.

Lucky you. I have an original Apple iPad and it won't let me update to the latest version of iOS. (Apparently it doesn't run on first generation iPads.) One of these days I'll get around to jailbreaking it and installing XBMC or something else that's useful on it.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sd4f]

I just didn't want to have to bother with custom roms, i wanted a good phone out of the box. It's good that android is able to get the community support like it does, but for me, it's just not worth the trouble. With stock firmware, it had battery bugs killing the phone in 4-6 hours while it was sitting in my pocket, it would be unresponsive at times, needing the battery to be pulled out almost daily. It had uninstallable bloatware. The hardware was fine, i'm not criticising that, by problems were purely software.

If anything, the fact that the only people who praised the were ones who rooted and ran cfw, says something. It's like buying a new car (yes obligatory car analogy), replacing the engine, the gearbox, the seats, the suspension and wheels, and only then saying it's the best car you've ever bought. It annoys me that, to get a good android phone, you have to do all the tinkering, researching; I just couldn't be bothered, so i bought a nokia lumia 920 instead, and while WP8 has its problems, i'm very happy with the phone.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Swampash]

oh yeah, apple's real innovative. After all, they release almost the same outdated hardware in a slightly different shape, increment the major version, then have droves of their L Ron Hubbard cult rejects rush out to buy it at exorbitant cost.

If you're worrying about affording it, you are not part of Apple's target market.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[R3d M3rcury]

I agree though that the notion that every year needs to deliver NEW! NEW! NEW! is ridiculous.

If you think about it, that's not really true. At least here in the US.

Most people don't think about switching phones before their contract is up. The people who do are either (a) raving fanbois, (b) exceedingly disgruntled with their phone, (c) have lost their existing phone due to some mishap, or (d) getting some kind of deal. But I would bet that a large majority of customers don't change their phones until their contract is up.

Now when you figure that it's a two year contract, figure that in any given year, half the people are coming out of their contract. You certainly want to sell them a phone that is the latest and greatest. That means that every year, there are people coming off a contract who are interested in NEW! NEW! NEW! and you want to have a device to sell them.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[viperidaenz]

like LTE or new shiny.

or iPhone -> iPhone 3G = 3G
-> 3GS = faster hsdpa and video recording
-> 4 = retina display, 'face time'
-> 4S = 4G, Siri
-> 5 = LTE

Re:Eh, that's it?

[alcmena]

To be fair, it's more like buying a new car and just replacing the software on the touchscreen computer. A custom ROM is just software whereas everything else you listed is hardware. The hardware for the S3 is fantastic. I'd love to get a S4, but I think I'll wait until Cyanogen, or someone else, manages to clear out all of Samsung's "awesome software". I know I may not be their target audience, but I would really prefer to have the option to get a vanilla Android install one of their devices. The Galaxy S3 has better hardware than the Galaxy Nexus, but the Galaxy Nexus runs just so much better than a stock S3.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[DragonTHC]

a marginal improvement over the LG Optimus Pro.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[interkin3tic]

Hell, I'm still using my S2 skyrocket. It's like the stone age.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

441ppi is AWESOME, by the way! The "retina" display is only 326ppi! Your eyes will not be able to see individual pixels on that screen... it'll look as good or even better than print.

Your eyes can't see the individual pixels at 326ppi either so all that extra ppi is just taking up processing power and battery and is worthless.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[MangoCats]

When phones do cook and make your bed, you'll definitely want that too...

All I want is a decent smartphone with a battery life comparable to my "dumbphones" that I have been carrying for the last 7 years - I can charge on Sunday and go until Thursday with heavy (3 hours a day talktime) usage without needing a charge - they will go over a week with light talktime - and these "dumbphones" have video recorders, voice recognition, bluetooth, etc.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[dudpixel]

That's how come the battery lasts two days

Re:Eh, that's it?

[PopeRatzo]

Next time I'll look for a phone with an ineffable signal.

There was a girl I liked back in college who I took out a few times, but it turned out she was ineffable.

After that, I tried to stick to only the effable ones.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[dudpixel]

IIRC they said your eyes couldn't see the individual pixels at arm's length or something like that.

My understanding was that your eyes could see the individual pixels if the retina display was held closer.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This stuff moves fast. My Droid Charge's 2 years isn't even up yet, and it was before the one before the original Galaxy S.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Most people don't think about switching phones before their contract is up. The people who do are either (a) raving fanbois, (b) exceedingly disgruntled with their phone, (c) have lost their existing phone due to some mishap, or (d) getting some kind of deal. But I would bet that a large majority of customers don't change their phones until their contract is up.

Yeah but those people tend to be journalists and tech bloggers who are beating on the drum that anything older than six months is boring.

The problem that causes is that when the mainstream press digs into mobile, they turn to these guys who are complete morons.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sd4f]

Every analogy has its problems, but the point i'm making is that, you had to change critical criteria to get good functionality, the phone i had, it wouldn't make calls reliably, it wouldn't get good internet connections at times, you could lock the screen and the SoC would keep on ticking away as before, sucking the guts out of the battery in 4 hours, the phone was very unresponsive. A reboot was required almost daily, just to get the phone to do something. Sometimes it would even crash when booting, and restart, other times, it would literally take 10 minutes to get out of the startup screen.

My car analogy works in the sense that, the touchscreen computer is a minor thing to a car, people don't look at the touchscreen and decide whether the car is the best thing made on the planet, it has to do its car functions well. Compared to the phone, data connection, battery life, and OS responsiveness are not minor things to a smartphone; to compare it with a car, it's the car equivalent of one which has very little power, poor fuel economy, uncomfortable seats, and poor handling. You can't patch those out with firmware in a vehicle, fortunately, you can with a phone, but that's irrelevant with what i'm saying, because it's criteria relative to what is being examined

Credit goes to where it's due, it's not samsung who made the phone a good one, credit belongs to the aftermarket community, who provide better firmware. I just couldn't be bothered dabbling with it, and thought better to just buy a phone from a competent maker. It was my first smartphone, and i more or less got the worst possible experience. Some people told me that google phones were better due to updates. I wasn't too fussed about updates, because if the phone worked, big deal, my previous phones never got updates, and they were fine. I was very wrong about that for two reasons, bugs, and the fact that the update platform is so woefully inadequate. Had the phone worked, i wouldn't have been as concerned that it was stuck on gingerbread, but being a buggy mess, coupled with no updates, really put me off samsung and to some extent android.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Sussurros]

Curiously in the 80s and 90s the type of girls known as Jersey Girls in the US were called Effies in Australia after a TV character called Efimea but known to all and sundry as Effie.

The different meanings of the words F-able and effable and their antonyms unF-able and ineffable often form an unholy symmetry when applied to particular women.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[shutdown -p now]

The really nice part here is that it's also AMOLED.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a 441ppi _PENTILE_ display.

A proper display LCD has 3 subpixels per pixel, which means a 326ppi display actually has 978 dots per inch.

A 441ppi pentile display has 2 subpixels per pixel, which is 882 dots per inch.

So strictly speaking, the Galaxy S IV still has less pixels per inch than the last 3 revisions of the iPhone. In fact, I think even the Galaxy S II might have had a better display than this new one.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Tough Love]

incremental improvements and an overall nice phone, sure, but the ad I saw said it was gonna be the biggest revolution since the color TV.

It's aimed at iPhone 4s owners whose loyalty is swaying.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Tough Love]

oh yeah, apple's real innovative. After all, they release almost the same outdated hardware in a slightly different shape, increment the major version, then have droves of their L Ron Hubbard cult rejects rush out to buy it at exorbitant cost.

Face it, the concept of innovation is truly lost on today's tech culture. Why innovate when you can stagnate at the top?

Underrated.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Tough Love]

Exorbitant cost? I paid more for my Samsung Galaxy S3 than my wife's iPhone.

Pretty cool that Samsung can command prices like that for a plastic body, hmm? Well, those margins are not going to last forever, but unlike Apple, Samsung knows how to go for the volume.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[spire3661]

I had it on my Palm Pre Plus along with 3 wireless charging docks. Its nice to have but i wouldnt make hardware moves over it.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Tough Love]

oh yeah, apple's real innovative. After all, they release almost the same outdated hardware in a slightly different shape, increment the major version, then have droves of their L Ron Hubbard cult rejects rush out to buy it at exorbitant cost.

If you're worrying about affording it, you are not part of Apple's target market.

Soon Apple's target market will be the empty set. Some aging nerdy kid with fadey jeans... oh wait, the kid switched to button down shirts years ago. And those Apple chicks are all getting wrinkles.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Thank you for "explaining" the too-too-subtle wordplay to us, Captain Obvious!

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm...I thought the retina display was so named because you can't see the individual pixels from the recommended viewing distance. My clunky old TV is a retina display if I sit far enough back from it.
What's the point in having higher res density than retina? It's a total waste of video RAM and GPU power.
Of course it makes sense to have a higher density on a mobile device if you're planning on sometimes viewing the screen magnified ala an Oculus Rift style device.
For the record, I'm not an Apple fanboi at all. In fact I'm anti-Apple...to the core!

Re:Eh, that's it?

[AmiMoJo]

A lot of major improvements just get quietly rolled out with no fanfare. Google Now has had some big updates already, for example, but the lack of new hardware or an OS version bump seems to make Google incapable of really marketing them.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[AmiMoJo]

Somehow I doubt it will shut the pentile haters up, but for the rest of us AMOLED screens provide much deeper blacks and more vibrant colours. My GS3 and plasma TV have really spoiled me when it comes to black levels, to the point where most LCDs look grey now.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Zontar The Mindless]

That was the point if Siri. Whether it worked or not is not something I can speak to, but that's what it was there for.

Am I really the only one who thought this was funny?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[smash]

2009 wants its meme back.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sootman]

How did you possibly get a +5 for that? EVERY phone with a display over 300ppi qualifies as "retina." Once you can't see the pixels, you can't see the pixels. 300, 400, 500, 1000 -- doesn't matter. (Unless you have really good eyes and hold your phone really close to your face, or if you look at your phone through a loupe.)

The identical phone with a 300ppi display would have better video performance and/or longer batter life, or could use a less expensive GPU. At 441ppi, there are more twice as many pixels per square inch to push around than there would be at 300ppi.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Zontar The Mindless]

This is ridiculous. How is the smartphone who most people (at least in US) own is a fashion accessory?

1. A smartphone is a "which" or a "that", but not a "who". (At least you didn't use "whom" as a nominative, thank random factors for small favours.)

2. Most people in the US wear shoes, which are highly functional and indeed in many circumstances necessary items, yet they too are often regarded as fashion accessories. Life is fraught with such mysteries!

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sootman]

> I'm surprised by how many people expected it to be
> so much better than the S3. When does a phone
> ever completely change in less than a year?

Well, everyone seems to get all wound up when each new iPhone is "only" incrementally better than the last...

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when amoled is nice?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Zontar The Mindless]

That's enough, kids!

No Clubhouse 22 for you today--you boys can just march right on past that TV set and straight to your rooms, and I'd better be hearing lots and lots of pages turning and pencils scratching from now until dinner...!

And I'd better not hear one blessed peep out of that damned Nintendo if you know what's good for you!

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously doubt that the CFW was the only reason why it was popular. Even the most popular ones only have 1-2 million users across all devices (CM), and Sammy as over 100 million devices. It wouldn't be this popular if it was a bad as you make it out to be.

Just because YOU ran into a lemon doesn't mean everyone else did. Did it ever occur to you that it might be one faulty device?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[clarkn0va]

My wife's i9000 is amoled and I don't like the colour at all. I have a Note II and a Note before it, and the amoled is very nice indeed. So much so that I can't pick up the Nexus 7 with its backlit IPS without noticing how much cheaper it looks.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Note to mods:

"My baseless claim contradicts your baseless claim" != "informative".

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

That is not a problem exclusive to smartphones. It is probably the most important problems mankind has at the moment. Finding an efficient way to store electric energy. While nobody finds out a revolutionary way to do that battery technology evolution can barely keep (if even that) with the increasing requirements of electronic devices.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

Well the GS3 came 6 months before the iPhone 5, and as I said in my previous post it already has better specs. GS4 will be far ahead, and unless it launches something with superior specs and soon it will stay far behind, maybe for good.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

* unless Apple launches...

Re:Eh, that's it?

[ephraimX]

That's... not how it works. The "penta" part refers to a prototype arrangement that isn't actually in use in any phones (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PenTile).

These phones are using the RGBG pattern, which has the greens 1-to-1 with the pixel map, which means each pixel is either a green-with-red or a green-with-blue. So the parent here did do the math correctly.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[rossz]

incremental improvements and an overall nice phone, sure, but the ad I saw said it was gonna be the biggest revolution since the color TV.

It's aimed at iPhone 4s owners whose loyalty is swaying.

It's aimed at iPhone 4 owners where are easily impressed by a cell phone that can make phone calls.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[thegarbz]

Plastic body? How about the far better screen, processor, ram, feature set (NFC, Bluetooth 4), external SD card, better sound quality.

Shit give me a plastic body with those features any day.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[gman003]

Agreed. I'm still on my Droid (not Droid 2, not Droid X, the original Droid). I desperately need an update, and have needed one for several... years, I guess. The Galaxy S4 is now one of the options I'm looking at. But if I had just upgraded last year, I wouldn't bother.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Sussurros]

Well there is a certain subtlety to it beyond the obvious. Take the women from any dynasty, The House of Windsor for example, from Queen Victoria to Princess Alexandra to Princess Elizabeth to her daughter Queen Elizabeth to Princess Diana to Duchess Camilla to Princess Catherine. Or perhaps Senior White House women. Any group of women who are newsworthy for other reasons create interesting patterns as the kaleidoscope changes with each change of generation.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Fallingcow]

and real time 3D maps

Whoa, am I the only one who has this 100% of the time, whether I'm using my phone or not?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[ArsonSmith]

Get Verizon, they charge me a lot for wireless.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[DrEldarion]

The screen is larger, but the overall dimensions of the phone are actually very slightly smaller.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[ArsonSmith]

I had my Droid X for almost 3 years. Really only got the S3 because I thought I should upgrade. Actually my Droid X does everything I do with my S3 except 4G....should have probably saved the money :(

Re:Eh, that's it?

[SpzToid]

Or innovations like GPS navigation and maps? http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/tim-cook-maps/

Or innovations like a free, standards-based web-browser financed by a non-profit organization? http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/03/firefox-is-out-of-the-ios-game-until-apple-changes-its-ways/

Is Adobe Flash innovative? I'm not sure, but for some it certainly might be, and worth having.

Personally I enjoyed my A2DP bluetooth headsets in the office, both for calls and hi-fi music, for several years before iPhone users could use something other than wired earphones. (Nokia N95)

Between you and me, I dig on how nice and easy it is to 3g-tether between my Nokia N9 and Ubuntu 12.04/ Gnome3 notebooks, wirelessly via bluetooth. Very low power and battery drain when doing so, much lower than otherwise using the included Nokia N9 802.11 wifi hotspot tool. Not sure if this qualifies as innovative or not, but it sure is mighty nice on a phone released in 2009. That team got it right.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tlhIngan]

That said, GS3 specs were already higher than those of the iPhone 5, now with GS4 Samsung leaves Apple far behind.

EVERY Android phone has had better specs than the contemporary iPhone of the day. This goes all the way back to the original iPhone. The HTC G1 had more memory and a faster processor than the iPhone or iPhone 3G.

This has always been true.The iPhone has never had specs that held one lick to the flagship Android phones. Hell, the iPhone 5 was the first to have 1GB of memory. Or even a 1GHz processo (the iPhone 4/4S had 800MHz processors).

All I want is a decent smartphone with a battery life comparable to my "dumbphones" that I have been carrying for the last 7 years - I can charge on Sunday and go until Thursday with heavy (3 hours a day talktime) usage without needing a charge - they will go over a week with light talktime - and these "dumbphones" have video recorders, voice recognition, bluetooth, etc.

I've never understood the need to have a phone last weeks on a single charge. Have people evolved beyond the need for sleep? After all, it seems like it's the perfect time to charge your phone. Heck, I always charged my dumbphones every night anyways - I never even bothered trying to run it for weeks.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[SpzToid]

Oops, a clarification, the Nokia N9 was released 29, September 2011, (not 2009 as I posted previously).

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Luckyo]

It's a widely known fact that apple's business model with phones works on bi-yearly cycle. This is supported by 2 year contracts that were originally mandated with iphone back when it came out, marketing, OS updateability (without major problems like lagging and user experience reduction), and other similar issues. Finally it is psychologically genius, having two releases ensures that every apple user gets his one year of "coolest" and one year of "cool, but not coolest anymore" envy buildup which makes him/her desire the newest not to become "stale" when second update wave arrives and his/her contract expires.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tsotha]

I would have skipped the 3GS and the 4S.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[SpzToid]

At first I thought to joke that you meant people don't buy iPhones annually, when they are actually renting them. But then I realized 'leasing to own' is a more appropriate term to use, for what is a highly depreciable purchase.

This is Guerrilla Economics 101 that should be taught so young people aren't so easily manipulated by The Shiny.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[stenvar]

All I want is a decent smartphone with a battery life comparable to my "dumbphones" that I have been carrying for the last 7 years - I can charge on Sunday and go until Thursday with heavy (3 hours a day talktime) usage without needing a charge

That's pretty easy: get an Android phone with a small screen, replace the battery with a high capacity battery, and disable data and sync by default (just turn them on briefly when you need to).

Re:Eh, that's it?

[hairyfish]

I don't see the point in spending $600 every year on a new phone for incremental changes.

That's nice, but did you ever think that not everyone has an S3 currently? Nor are S3 owners the only target market? I have an S2 and I'll be off contract next month so I'll be getting one, same goes for others I've spoken to with other older smartphones. By releasing even an incremental upgrade it keeps Samsung in front. Apple fanboys will have to wait a long 6 months (an eternity in the smartphone market)before they have something that competes, even then I doubt the next iPhone will due to their locked-in design. And if it does Samsung will have something else out a few months after it to steal its thunder.
In summary, a quick release cycle is much better than a slow one, as market share is demonstrating.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[blind biker]

The voice translator is pretty sweet, I think. That and the full voice control (if they are any good) will make it a hot item for a lot of people.

And I definitely can see myself using the feature of storing sound with pictures.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

If you like to play benchmarks I can show you that GS3's CPU overall performance is considerably better: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136291-iphone-5-benchmarks-slower-than-the-galaxy-s3-faster-than-the-nexus-7

Re:Eh, that's it?

[julesh]

At 441ppi, you should be able to resolve individual pixels at a distance of about 20cm. For the retina display the distance is about 27cm. For me, the natural distance I hold my phone from my eyes is about 40cm, so I doubt this will make much difference at all.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[crutchy]

i can just imagine iOS 8 now... a black screen with a prompt, or a big red glowing eye

Re:Eh, that's it?

[crutchy]

satellite map following is pretty good, but i'm waiting for the android naviation app with streetview following... horrible for data use, but awesome for showing up isheep :)

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, it's amazing - slightly larger display, slightly better battery life, slightly lighter, slightly thinner, and a new generation of internal chip.

No other competitor has EVER delivered ANYTHING like this, it's UNPRECEDENTED in the mobile phone industry - Apple, RIM, Nokia, HTC - nobody has ever released an improved next-gen version of their flagship handset!!

How the fuck do you get insightful mods based on THIS twaddle?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[skapaft]

Nope. Xperia Z has already been out for over a month with a 1080p display.

Re: Eh, that's it?

[madprof]

Must say it took a little while for me to work out that they meant to say "speak for" instead if "speak to". The English is so clunky any humour kind of got lost anyway.
"I can't say if it works or not" would.have been shorter and clearer.

Re: Eh, that's it?

[madprof]

You know, I don't even like Apple and their stupid lock-in, and I won't buy their products. But you are right.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[FireFury03]

I would have skipped the 3GS and the 4S.

I would've skipped the original iPhone - it was a major step backwards in functionality from most smart phones, and I can't think why anyone would want a smartphone _without_ 3G...

Re:Eh, that's it?

[ozmanjusri]

Wait 'till you see the indoor mapping...

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/03/google-launches-indoor-maps-in-australia/

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Dr Max]

Not all improvements are just incremental. I think Samsung are still trying, like the eye scrolling tech they are putting into this one seems like genuine innovation. Alot of this upgrade does seem incremental though, higher res, more power, more cores, more megapixels, bigger battery; If they made the phone flexible or a hud built into glasses, that would of been more than an incremental update (although as technology grows upon itself you can always argue it's incremental) but they aren't going to risk the "galaxy" on that.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[FireFury03]

441ppi is AWESOME, by the way! The "retina" display is only 326ppi! Your eyes will not be able to see individual pixels on that screen... it'll look as good or even better than print.

233ppi seems fine for me on my phone... can't see any staircasing artifacts, etc... I wouldn't really like to burn the extra battery to shift more pixels around for no gain.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Dr Max]

Graphene super supercapcitors to the rescue.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Vegemeister]

Seeing as human vision is capable of higher resolution in lumiance than chroma, why are you calling the inefficient RGB layout "proper"?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[FireFury03]

I've never understood the need to have a phone last weeks on a single charge. Have people evolved beyond the need for sleep? After all, it seems like it's the perfect time to charge your phone. Heck, I always charged my dumbphones every night anyways - I never even bothered trying to run it for weeks.

Which is all well and good if you have a power socket near by. Some of us go camping, etc. where there is no such luxury. Luckilly, my smartphone _can_ last over a week on one charge, but I have to remember to turn off all the background battery suckers.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[HuguesT]

Personally I don't like Apple's tactics or philosophy very much, but you would have to be fairly dishonest to say that the original iPhone was a step backwards. Sure it didn't have 3G, but it had the only reasonably usable browser of any smartphone at the time. Also 3G wasn't as widely available as it is now, so it was a reasonable compromise at the time. It changed the smartphone industry in a meaningful way.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Joce640k]

I have an S3 now and I'm planning on keeping it until it dies. I don't see the point in spending $600 every year on a new phone for incremental changes.

What about S2 owners? What's your advice for them?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[MaskedSlacker]

Same. I'll probably upgrade with the S5 (or buy an S4 when my carrier drops the price after the S5 is released).

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Bogtha]

EVERY Android phone has had better specs than the contemporary iPhone of the day. This goes all the way back to the original iPhone. The HTC G1 had more memory and a faster processor than the iPhone or iPhone 3G.

The G1 was released almost 18 months after the original iPhone - it wasn't a contemporary of the original iPhone, it was one generation later. And it may have had better specs than the iPhone 3G, but it was much slower - at the time, I had a G1 as my primary phone and my full-time job was developing for the iPhone, so I used both heavily every day. If the G1 had better specs, it certainly didn't show.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[CrashandDie]

There once was a man called PopeRatzo
Who got friend-zoned in college by some hoe.
So when he got to the dorm,
He took out his frustration on porn;
And forgot to update his nickname for the new pope, oh.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[kevingolding2001]

2010 called and wants its time machine back.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[pev]

Er... 441ppi would have been great if this was a thread about the occulus rift (250ppi ish IIRC) but the design of your eyeballs just means this is pointless....

Re:Eh, that's it?

[kevingolding2001]

Actually, I think that's a preview of some future version of Windows.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair it sounds like your phone was broken. Failed flash memory often manifests as random crashing and other weirdness, as does corrupt ram.

This is why anecdotes are largely worthless. I'm not calling you a liar, just saying that without further evidence of systematic faults with that model there is little to see here.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - no. Only on one axis do you have RGBG, ie 2/3 of subpixels. On other axis you have full resolution. So, you would have 294ppi and 441ppi giving approx 371ppi on diagonal (square, but the screen is not square so it would depend on whether the longer or shorter side of the screen has RGBG pattern - here is is the shorter side so resolution would be higher that 371ppi).

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Killjoy_NL]

And how about not being restricted to the Apple Walled Garden Appstore, the freedom Android gives me is quite a plus in my book :)

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

There was a girl I liked back in college who I took out a few times, but it turned out she was ineffable.

You dated Jaycee, the daughter of God?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sd4f]

It could be my carrier version. Ultimately, now, i don't care, but i do recognise, that it's incredibly easy to get badly burnt with android. Other people i'd spoken to, though, had much the same problems; they either went to CFW or bought a second battery and put up with it.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

What about S2 owners? What's your advice for them?

Throw away your ludicrously old-fashioned phone immediately and buy the new shiny phone before you lose all your friends, your wife runs off with the milkman (who has an S4 already) and your kids sue you for mental anguish caused by being unfashionable.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

I just couldn't be bothered, so i bought a nokia lumia 920 instead, and while WP8 has its problems, i'm very happy with the phone.

Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Burn the witch!

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

The only thing I really want for mu S3 is wireless charging

Until someone provides a Tesla style source of wireless electricity, there's no such thing as wireless charging. Plugging a charging mat/dock/whatever into the mains and then resting your phone on top of that is not wireless charging.

I mean, I've got a battery back up charger that charges my phone wirelessly if necessary, but I still have to charge the battery back up from the mains.

What is the big deal about having to plug your phone in to charge it? Is it just that it's so uncool to have a micro USB slot spoiling the phone's sleek lines?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

Note to mods:

"My baseless claim contradicts your baseless claim" != "informative".

At least in the UK most smartphone users are on 2 year contracts, paying quite a high monthly fee to get sensible data allowances. So almost everyone renews their phone on a "free" upgrade every 2 years.

Obviously, if you're a real fanboy/girl you can upgrade your phone once a year with each new version, but that works out to be relatively expensive (although high end phones do seem to depreciate quite slowly).

Re:Eh, that's it?

[jools33]

I will be happy if the only software innovation from Samsung is that touchwiz stops bloody crashing all the time!

Re:Eh, that's it?

[dunkelfalke]

I doubt it. I still use my HD2, and it is not enjoyable anymore because it is so slow. The only reason I still use it is that right now there are other bills to pay that are more important than a new phone.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[yoshi_mon]

Who is telling you that you NEED to upgrade your phone every year outside of marketing droids?

Unless you are hearing voices in your head via some Jedi mind trick suggestion. "This IS the droid you are looking for."

Re:Eh, that's it?

[nblender]

Not everyone is like you.

I have an iphone4. Had an iphone 1st gen that I bought used from a friend before that. My next phone will probably be an Android phone. But I've tried various and sundry Androids from work. The thing that has consistently killed it for me is battery life. With my current usage, I get about 6 days on my iphone. I go to my cabin on weekends and stick the phone in a cradle where it charges and acts as a hotspot. On Sunday afternoon I go back home. I don't charge my phone during the week. When I get to the cabin on Saturday morning, I'm at about 20% battery.

Out of all the Androids I've tried from work, with my existing SIM, and with my usual usage pattern, I'm hard pressed to get 2 days of battery. (Motorola Atrix2, GS2, GS3).

My iphone 2G still works fine and still has reasonable battery life. Probably because I didn't charge it every night when I was using it. Lithium batteries are limited by charge cycles. If you charge every night instead of once a week, you are drastically reducing the overall life span of the battery.. Which is good because iphone batteries are not easy to replace or impossible to replace (I've never had to bother).

There are small usability things that annoy me about Android but there are similar annoyances with my iphone. I can learn to cope. But I don't want to have to put my phone in a charger every night and I can't be bothered to check the screen all the time to see whether it needs charging.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

I can't (in normal use) see the individual pixels on my boring old 1368 x 768 15" laptop at home, so I seriously doubt I'd be able to on a phone with a 5" screen.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Ginger Unicorn]

I recently upgraded to an S2 from this which i'd been using for ten years. I thought I'd wait until smart phones had most of the functionality of a laptop and at a ~£200 price point, instead of caning money on incremental upgrades every year on immature technology.

I have to say I love my S2 and it does everything I could possibly want, so it will probably stay in service for years until something geniunely compelling emerges, whatever that might be.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[mrzaph0d]

I've never understood the need to have a phone last weeks on a single charge.

For me, usually when I'm having a really long day, it corresponds with using my phone a lot. Like a day stuck in the emergency room for a family member. I'd already had a full day's use of the phone, then spent the next 8 hours having to call family and friends about what was going on. My phone had already gotten normal use that day, so it was at about 30% when I left for the hospital. The brief charge it got on the way took it to about 40%, but with all the calls, texts, etc. by the time we were done the phone had been dead for 3 hours. I've taken to stashing a USB battery charger in the car. It stays plugged in, and can throw a full charge into my phone when needed.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

I've never understood the need to have a phone last weeks on a single charge. Have people evolved beyond the need for sleep? After all, it seems like it's the perfect time to charge your phone. Heck, I always charged my dumbphones every night anyways - I never even bothered trying to run it for weeks.

The problem with smartphones is that with any significant usage, the battery doesn't even last all day. I carry a spare battery and emergency battery charger with me most of the time. If I turn on (say) GPS and/or Bluetooth I can practically watch the battery level indicator moving down in real time.

I know that if you turn everything off and just make occasional phone calls a smartphone's battery life is OK, but then it's not being used as a smartphone.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[dfghjk]

"So the parent here did do the math correctly."

But the math doesn't say anything. 440 ppi is much finer than the eye can resolve. How it is subdivided says nothing about useful resolving power. Only morons would argue what is better based on subelements that, taken alone, mean nothing.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[YttriumOxide]

Do you really want to stand up and make the claim that people are buying iOS devices for any other reason than they enjoy the experience?

Oh, that one is very easy. I can confidently say that a lot of people are buying iOS devices as fashion accessories - because if it doesn't have an apple on the back, it's not considered one.

Or of course those who buy it because they're not aware of any other option. There's a surprising number of people who call all smartphones "iPhones" and all tablets "iPads". My father-in-law has a relatively new Galaxy Tab and STILL calls it an iPad. He got it as a gift from my mother-in-law and only ended up with that because she asked me what to buy him. I'm sure if he ever breaks it and needs a new one, he'll wander in to an Apple store and pick up an iPad; because that's the only name that seems to register with him.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[drinkypoo]

I'm using an Xperia Play, you insensitive clod! I could run CM10, but I hear it doesn't work very well on my poor little phone. And if I did, then the stock playstation emulator wouldn't work right.

Upgrading your phone with CM has up and down sides.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[narcc]

Except it's a pentile display -- fewer subpixels per pixel. It's basically a 294ppi display.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's a cell phone for fighter pilots.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[marsu_k]

Here. Not an original accessory, but works fine and includes NFC should you need it. Yes, it does make the phone a bit thicker and heavier - the weight I don't mind (I find the S3 to be too light), the thickness I almost mind, but going from 2100mAh to 4400mAh means I can get three days of my regular use.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Are you sure that *this* matters? After all, a pixel is not a little square, and by the time you take the perceptual issues into account, your "proper LCD display" turns out to be not such a good idea anyway.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[helix2301]

I like how you can use both camera at one that is very cool. This has been something people have been asking for, I know many people that use to be on skype and say let me show you what I am looking at and they had to flip there phone around. Not anymore.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

Plastic body? How about the far better screen, processor, ram, feature set (NFC, Bluetooth 4), external SD card, better sound quality.

Shit give me a plastic body with those features any day.

It just means you're pretty much forced to buy a back protector for the phone, but I suppose most people do anyway so it's no biggie. Personally, I went for an HTC because it looks and feels nicer, and gives you some hope of it not disintegrating if you drop it.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tehcyder]

Soon Apple's target market will be the empty set. Some aging nerdy kid with fadey jeans... oh wait, the kid switched to button down shirts years ago. And those Apple chicks are all getting wrinkles.

In case you hadn't noticed, when hipsters grow old and sensible, there's always a new generation of kids with whacky tastes in music, clothes, bodily mutilation and facial hair to replace them. Same goes for the guys too.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[sbrown7792]

I can't think of any line of phones where I would want to have each iteration.

Tell that to the Apple Fanbois

Re:Eh, that's it?

[JDG1980]

Full HD screen, a 1.9GHz processor, and a 13 Megapixel camera. What exactly more did you expect from this phone?

A hardware keyboard?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[kurt555gs]

All of my Symbian phones had great battery life. Maybe look on Amazon for a Nokia N8.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Pieroxy]

You forgot one important factor: The 3GS had the first half-decent camera. The 4S had the first decent camera which to this day still outperform the GSIII camera on any and every shot I tried. White balance, overexposed areas, underexposed ones, focus, panoramic abilities.... The GSIII has a camera at the level of my old iphone 3GS.

This is actually the reason why I upgraded my iphone 3GS to the 4S. The iphone 5 has the same camera for all practical purposes.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

Put yourself back in 2007. Many people were not in 3G coverage areas.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Pieroxy]

440 ppi is much finer than the eye can resolve. How it is subdivided says nothing about useful resolving power. Only morons would argue what is better based on subelements that, taken alone, mean nothing

Nitpicking much he? Dpi is as meaningful as how you define "d". In printing world for example, d means one dot of one color, either full on or off. Hence to have a decent quality you need to go up in the 3000 dpi or so. In a RGB screen, 300 dpi means a much more detailed picture because a d means a pixel that can take 16 million different colors, from black to white, including most of the visible spectrum.

So yes, the definition of d is of a great relevance when comparing two densities. If you do'nt use the same unit, your comparison is all but meaningless.

I guess only morons will assert blindly that 400 dpi is greater than 300 dpi when d in both units isn't the same thing.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

But the math doesn't say anything. 440 ppi is much finer than the eye can resolve.

Guess what? Laser printers didn't stop when they exceeded 440 dpi. They went on: 600 dpi, 1200 dpi, 2400 dpi. Each prints in visibly higher quality than the one before.

Just because you can't see individual pixels doesn't mean that higher dpi doesn't improve the detail of shapes.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

But you can't show us that the SIII had bigger market share than the iPhone 5.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[rwise2112]

I was blue and lonely, I couldn't sleep a wink
And I could only get unconscious if I'd had to much to drink
There was somehow, something wrong somewhere
And each day seemed grey and dead
The seeds of desperation were growing in my head
I needed inspiration, a brand new start in life
Somewhere to place affection, but I didn't want a wife
And then by lucky chance I saw in a special magazine
An ad that was unusual, the like I'd never seen
"Experience something different with our new imported toy
She's loving, warm, inflatible and a guarantee of joy."
She came all wrapped in cardboard, all pink and shrivelled down
A breath of air was all she needed to make her lose that frown
I took her to the bedroom and pumped her with some life
And later in a moment that girl became my wife
And so I sit her in the corner and sometimes stroke her hair
And when I'm feeling naughty I blow her up with air
She's cuddly and she's bouncy, she's like a rubber ball
I bounce her in the kitchen and I bounce her in the hall
And now my life is different since Sally came my way
I wake up in the morning and have her on a tray
She's everything they say she was and I wear a permanent grin
And I only have to worry in case my girl wears thin

Oh wait, you said ineffable!

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Andy Dodd]

Buy a Nexus or a Sony. Their older devices (from the S2 era) weren't so hot, but their newer devices are incredibly well built and the software is the most polished manufacturer skin I've ever used. (Fortunately, Sony Mobile seems to have a good deal of independence from their evil parent company...)

If you stick with Samsung, you'll be stuck with Touchwizz (poorly implemented gimmicky features on top of a bugridden poorly maintained core), you'll continue to be an alpha tester for their eMMC firmware (You know the secure erase problems encountered in their desktop SSDs in October? The eMMC chips put into nearly every GS2, which went on sale a year and a half earlier, have the same problems). Every GalaxyS generation has suffered from critical eMMC flaws - "encryption unavailable" (total chip failure for unknown reasons) in the GS1, Superbrick (wear leveller going into la-la-land if you issued a secure erase to the chip) in the GS2, Sudden Death Syndrome (wear leveller crashing on a null pointer leaving the chip totally unresponsive) in the GS3...

I was a loyal Samsung user for a year and a half, and also developed on their devices (I'm the CyanogenMod maintainer for the N7000, I777, and N8013) - I'm sick of dealing with their poor software quality control and their refusal to ever fix any bug in their device in a timely manner (such as the MAX17042 fuel_alerted wakelocks, which took one year and three months for them to finally fix...)

I have an Xperia Z now and it's an amazing device.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Cajun Hell]

I am shocked, shocked to learn that ads still hype products as being more significant than they really are.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[compro01]

Or if you really need lots of battery (and live in the USA, as they don't ship internationally yet), there's this massive thing.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[yakovlev]

My advice is to keep your S2, which is, in my opinion, the best phone ever made.

It had good battery life, was the right size (both screen size and thickness), had an awesome non-pentile AMOLED screen and a fast processor.

The only really compelling thing you get with a new phone is LTE, which isn't a big deal if you're on AT&T or particularly T-Mobile and have good HSPA+ coverage.

I hate that I had to trade my S2 for an S3 when I switched carriers. I like the resolution, but the phone is just too big. I can't understand why I should want a 5-inch phone like the S4.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[compro01]

What is the big deal about having to plug your phone in to charge it?

If you don't need a physical port for charging, you can seal the device completely to protect against dust/water and not need to put wear on the gaskets integrated into such cases to allow access to the ports.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[LordLimecat]

From reading the wikipedia on PenTile, it sort of seems like you cant compare the PPIs or DPIs of two different screen types and simply say X>Y therefore X is better.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[shutdown -p now]

Since you can set the darkness really low on it to read conveniently in low-light conditions.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the time 3G wasn't available in the US in 2007 when the original iPhone was released. Also, all smart phone web browsers were poop compared to mobile Safari.

Regardless of 2g vs 3g, Mobile Safari really was the killer back in 2007 when it was released.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Quila]

When does a phone ever completely change in less than a year?

iPhone 4S to iPhone 5 in 11 months. New case design, bigger screen, next-generation SOC (over twice as fast in reviewer benchmarks), 4G, 5 GHz WiFi, etc. Even the next-generation OS was released with it.

But even then I can wait. I'll probably get the iPhone 5S or 6 if there aren't any Androids I like better around that time.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[pruss]

I see no compelling need to move from my S2 running 2.3.6, and in fact I see some reason not to: the lack of a dedicated search button on the S4 (and S3). I like the idea of a consistent interface so that in every well-designed app where searching is relevant, I can search by pressing in exactly the same place. Plus, I like the fact that I can launch my favorite apps by holding down the search button for a second (though that does take an extra app). This is fairly minor, but from my point of view so are most of the improvements.

Plus I'd have to figure out how to legally root a new device. It took me months to figure out how to legally root my S2. (The standard ways of rooting of the S2 involved installing a custom ROM, but custom ROMs would contain copyrighted Samsung-copyrighted components, and hence downloading them is at least grayish.)

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

Oh, poor Basil. So full of hatred. Your owners will pat your head, rest assured, you have been a good boy.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tech.kyle]

I'm still on my $30 unlimited data plan. There was a small window where you could pre-order the S3 and be grandfathered in on unlimited data. Now, Verizon will force me off it if I upgrade and now and it looks like Verizon will try to force me on to a share everything plan if I upgrade any of the other lines.

The S4 is shiny and new and fast, but even ignoring the $200-300 it'll be to upgrade on contract, it's not worth losing my data. I regularly use more than 20GB per month since DSL in my area is slow (1.5Mbps), wireless internet is intermittent (due to trees), and if I place my phone in my window, I get about 8-10 Mbps on LTE and 2-4 Mbps otherwise. Recently, I had used my phone to download an Ubuntu server ISO to set up a World Community Grid client and played Counter-Strike on my low bandwidth, but low latency DSL connection while I waited for the download to complete. I find I end up doing things like this often.

As upset as I am at Verizon about this whole data thing, my faith in the network of other carriers (in my area) is minimal.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

Yes, no other competitor has ever delivered anything more than that between a release and another. It may not be a revolutionary gadget, but still it is more of an increment from the last version than anyone else has provided until now.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

Whereas your owners have put you in the dog house for making a claim you couldn't support.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[phorm]

Ditto. I actually bought my S2 outright and will probably hang onto it for awhile yet, but the S4 would make a nice upgrade. In particular: better battery life, better screen, and I've *really* missed having an IR transceiver ever since the old palm days.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

Oh my, he has teeth. How cute.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[FlyingCheese]

Yeah man, I like my phones to be made of glass so that the slightest little bump can crack the thing into billions of pieces. Not to mention the thing getting covered in fingerprints. Face it, Apple products look really great when you're first opening the box, and never again. It's the Apple way!

Re:Eh, that's it?

[knarf]

I get up to 7 days (~10 hours of screen time) on a charge on my Motorola Defy+, is that enough? It might not be a powerhouse with its ~1 GHz OMAP3 processor but it has a nice screen (3.7" 480x854), is waterproof (IP67) and has survived my handling for about 1.5 years without problems.

Of course you need to make some changes to the device to get this battery life... so the same might apply to your S3. It probably won't reach all the way to 7 days but it should be possible to get those 2 days of use out of it.

Re: Eh, that's it?

[Tough Love]

Go ahead and hold your clunky old iPhone any way you want to, I won't think very much worse of you, ifan.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Tough Love]

In case you hadn't noticed, when hipsters grow old and sensible, there's always a new generation of kids with whacky tastes in music, clothes, bodily mutilation and facial hair to replace them. Same goes for the guys too.

Oh I have noticed, and I noticed they're mainly running Androids.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[FireFury03]

Personally I don't like Apple's tactics or philosophy very much, but you would have to be fairly dishonest to say that the original iPhone was a step backwards.

Loads of really basic stuff like tethering, ability to run third party software, etc. was missing... It may have had a half decent browser, but most of what makes a "smart phone" smart was left out - it was more like a feature phone with a fancy touch screen display. (And hell, every phone I've ever owned has supported tethering, including the non-smart nokia bricks many years before the iphone was thought of).

Also 3G wasn't as widely available as it is now, so it was a reasonable compromise at the time.

It may have been a reasonable compromise in the US, but everyone in the UK was left asking WTF Apple thought they were doing since 3G networks have been pretty wide spread here since well before the iphone appeared.

It changed the smartphone industry in a meaningful way.

I'm unconvinced about that. Certainly, the smartphone industry has changed massively since the advent of the iphone (more specifically the iPhone 3G), but whilst Apple and their fanboys seem to think they invented everything you see in a modern smartphone, I remain very unconvinced - there were forerunners to the iphone from other vendors that looked _very_ similar, and many of the "iphone-alike" phones that came out not long after the iphone were in development for a long time prior to the iphone being released. I am inclined to think that technology had reached the point that suddenly allowed a lot of phone manufacturers to produce fairly revolutionary devices, and I think it still would've happened even without Apple.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[FireFury03]

Put yourself back in 2007. Many people were not in 3G coverage areas.

Maybe in the US... 3G coverage was pretty wide spread in the UK and across europe - a lot of people wondered WTF apple were smoking, trying to push a so called "smart-phone" that lacked 3G support into a market that was pretty dominated by 3G phones.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tech.kyle]

When camping with my S3, I made extensive use of airplane mode and it worked wonders. I haven't tried forcing it down off LTE, but I've heard that works well too.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[FireFury03]

When camping with my S3, I made extensive use of airplane mode and it worked wonders. I haven't tried forcing it down off LTE, but I've heard that works well too.

I have frequently heard people saying that switching to GSM instead of 3G (I don't have an LTE phone) saves battery. However, I'm not sure I understand this - the engineer's test specs for my previous phone (HTC Dream) put the 3G standby current draw lower than the GSM standby draw...

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Thomas Charron]

You DO know that it's 51% versus 49%, right?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

Sure and you do know that GS3 came 6 months before the iPhone 5, don't you?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[viperidaenz]

That's what I get for not doing any research whatsoever.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[krazy1]

Not to mention that metallic body might interfere with WiFi or 4G.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fbobraga]

It is changing: I think S series is "overselling" (or "outselling"?) iPhones, in recent times, as exposed in news like these * sorry by my bad English - I'm Brazilian

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fbobraga]

What about S2 owners? What's your advice for them?

Throw away your ludicrously old-fashioned phone immediately and buy the new shiny phone before you lose all your friends, your wife runs off with the milkman (who has an S4 already) and your kids sue you for mental anguish caused by being unfashionable.

+1 Informative

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fbobraga]

I can't understand why I should want a 5-inch phone like the S4.

Me too - it's almost a tablet that make calls...

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Thomas Charron]

The point is, Samsung has done NOTHING but gain on the iPhone. It would be ignorant not to acknowledge that fact.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[crutchy]

hahahaha.... whooosh.... :)

what a loser

Re:Eh, that's it?

[PiSkyHi]

The math is ok, but it fails to take into account that raw pixels are not we see at this level anyway - this class of pentile display produces the full resolution for luminence and a lower resolution for chroma - our eyes don't perceive the pixels, our brains process luminance and colour from different sensors and produce an image from that information anyway.

I don't know about you, but when a display is just blue, the precision is lost on my eyes - I can't see the same precision as I do with white at all - was the same for older LCDs and now on my galaxy S3.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[UnknownSoldier]

/Oblg. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple

OK, so it's not the exactly the same concept, but close enough. :-)

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

Now don't start crying again.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Randomoneh]

Well not really. There are different types of visual acuity - minimum separable, minimum perceptible, vernier acuity... If anyone is interested in this, there are many papers by Darrel Hopper from Air Force Research Laboratory on the subject of "perfect" display and human visual system (HVS).

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

a lot of people wondered WTF apple were smoking, trying to push a so called "smart-phone" that lacked 3G support into a market that was pretty dominated by 3G phones.

Some people did. Other people realised that they had to start somewhere, and there would be a second generation of iPhone. Lets face it, the benefit of hindsight has showed us the "WTF are Apple smoking" people were almost as wrong as Taco's "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

The point is, Samsung has done NOTHING but gain on the iPhone. It would be ignorant not to acknowledge that fact.

No it wouldn't, it'd be ignorant to say "Samsung has done NOTHING but gain on the iPhone".

Samsung has roughly doubled it's mobile phone since 2007. Apple has grown it's market share nearly every quarter since 2007.

Samsung's market share growth has come at the expense of nearly every manufacturer OTHER THAN Apple. That's the truth. Nokia, RIM, Motorola, Sony Ericsson. These are the companies that have had their market share taken by BOTH Samsung and Apple.

http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Screen-Shot-2012-11-14-at-11-14-3.15.16-PM.png

Far from Apple being the big kahuna that upstart Samsung has bettered with it's Galaxy SIII. The Galaxy S III is just another in a long line of phones that Samsung has been making since long before Apple was even in the business. And yet, for the one market sector that Apple plays in - the premium phone - Apple does better than Samsung.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

And yet you still can't demonstrate it has larger market share than the iPhone.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Thomas Charron]

The fact is, Samsung's GS3 and the iPhone 5 are the two top kahuna's as far as installed userbase is concerned. They are still neck in neck in competition. Your argument is, 'At least we have 51 iPhone 5s for every 49 GS3's!'. So basically, what IS your point, anyway?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[fredprado]

Wanna a bone?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

It's an in joke between myself and fredprado. A few days ago he made a claim that the Galaxy S outsold the iPhone. So I asked him for a citation. When he not only couldn't find one, but found out the reverse was true, he started making childish comments, rather than admitting it.

So I'm just beating him up about it. Nothing serious.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

Keep it in your pants, mister.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[thegarbz]

False. Well partially true. In terms of ruggedness the SGS3 is not as sturdy as the metal iPhone. However when my sister dropped hers (after owning it for a week I may add... *facepalm*) it cost a whole $10 for a replacement back. Furthermore the replacement back had an integrated cover which flips over the front of the phone and protects that so it would have likely been an investment regardless if the phone case broke or not.

Bottom line, cheap parts are cheap to replace.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[stenvar]

The G1 was faster, but its apps were mostly written in interpreted Java (no JIT) and hence appeared slower.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

So in effect you're saying his "pentile" is bigger than yours?

Re:Eh, that's it?

[tigersha]

Bollocks. The iPhone 4 s a VAST improvement over the iPhone 3 simply because it is much more responsive.

I have an Samsung S3, an iPhone 4 and an HTC Win8 Phone because I test websites and design Mobile UIs.

I really like the inter-app flow and general UI of WIndows phone 8. I think iPhone should have a fixed back button like Android
and Win8. What sucks in Android is the menu button. It is not obvious when things are there. On Win8 and iPhone every choice you make
is on the screen not sometimes hidden in a somewhat anonymous (and not lit on the S3) button. I also like the Tile with info concept in Win8Phone (on a desktop not so much).

Microsoft Metro is another issue. While their interaction design (the flow of the application, and how things WORK) is fantastic, the minimalist UI (as in how things LOOK) get old hat really fast. I think this is a bunch of fanatical minimalist designers who went too far with their minimalism. There is a reason the world went from black and white movies and TV to color. Win8 would run find on a Commodore 64 as far as the looks is concerned.

When it comes to physical handling the S3, which is much larger, is very nice. this is a matter of taste and not OS specific, but if Apple brings out a iPhone which is 30% larger than an iPhone 4 I would be all over it.

When it comes to "just work" with syncing, and general user interface the iPhone blows both phones out of the water. I still use
it as my primary phone. Win8 cannot display PDF's. You have to download an app from Microsoft and then the PDF file does not have working hyperlinks??!!
I still cannot read ePub files on Android or Win8. Using the phone as a tethered Bluetooth modem? No comparison. iPhone just works, the other two not really.
Lots of little things like that. Apple simply cares more about the small details. Microsoft is getting there, but Android always feels cobbled together, just like Linux desktops tend to. Win8 applications are all in a loooong list (except for the tiles ones). Folders? We don't need no steenking folders. iPhone/Android does this right.

Scoring the 3 phones:

Interaction design and Application Flow: Win8
General usability : iOS
Screen size and physical usability: Galaxy S3

I use iPhone all the time, when I want to read an ebook on kindle the Galaxy for the screen but I have a fascination and secret love affair with Win8 phone on the side.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[noobytoob]

Must..change...glasses...resistance is futile

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Shirley Marquez]

It's not the first 1080p phone; that would be the Droid DNA (built by HTC). It's not even the second 1080p phone; that would be the new HTC One. The Galaxy S4 is leading edge in other ways (eye tracking, octa-core processor), but it's following HTC on screen resolution. It is the first 1080p OLED screen on a phone; the two HTC-built phones both use LCDs.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[Shirley Marquez]

This is one of the few things that Motorola has gotten right recently. First they had the Droid RAZR, which was super thin and modestly successful. Then they made the Droid RAZR MAXX, which was the same phone except it was thicker and heavier and had a bigger battery - and it outsold the original version. There are also third party battery replacements available for a number of phones where you get a new thick battery and a replacement back to accommodate it.

The Galaxy S4 could get a battery replacement of this type since it has a removable battery. It IS a bit trickier for phones with NFC capability because the NFC chip is usually in the battery, but NFC replacement batteries are now readily available.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[MacDork]

commenting to undo mod

Re:Eh, that's it?

[wildstoo]

Run out of space on your iPhone? Too bad, delete stuff.

Run out of space on your GS3? Shift stuff to the external microSD card. If that gets full, pull the back cover off and swap in another microSD card.

Run out of battery on your iPhone? Too bad, find a power socket to plug your charger into. You brought your charger, right? Hope you weren't planning to go anywhere for the next hour or so!

Run out of battery on your GS3? Pull back cover off, take dead battery out, put charged battery in.

THESE were the features that sold me on the GS3 instead of the iPhone.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[hairyfish]

You're getting caught up in the Apple RDF, Samsung's goal is not to sell the most S series phones, it's to sell the most phones. It's why they have a whole range of devices aimed at different market segments. The Note series is a prime example, it is a flagship product, not an S series, but still contributes to hammering the competition in overall market share. Last time I checked Samsung are outselling Apple 2:1

Re:Eh, that's it?

[ncc74656]

The SD card slot's somewhat less useful now that you can't move apps to it. Being somewhat new to Android (picked up a Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and a 32GB card a couple months ago for my birthday), I didn't figure this out until after the fact. I can have file downloads go to it, and I suppose I could put movies on it before going somewhere, but the built-in 8 GB is all that's available for apps.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[thegarbz]

I never understood this. I have no where near 8GB and have some 215 apps installed without hitting my storage limit. This really sounds like complaining for complaining sake to me.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[BasilBrush]

And Apple's goal is to make a profit. And they are by far the most successful of the phone manufacturers at doing that. Samsung for example spends 10 times as much on marketing as Apple does, and that all comes out of the profit they make.

Re:Eh, that's it?

[anethema]

Actually while the 3GS didn't seem to bring much to the table, it was one of the more worthwhile upgrades in the iPhone line.

The 3G had the exact same specs other than 3G as the original iPhone. So it was really behind, especially on memory capacity. The 3GS was night and day, The keyboard was responsive, transitions very smooth, apps opened near instantly, etc. Far more difference than say the 4 and 4S.

Screen size

[sd4f]

While 1080p is impressive for a 5" screen, i think it's over the top. Can't see the additional detail so why give up battery life to drive more pixels. Also is the sub pixel layout pentile?

Re:Screen size

[R3d M3rcury]

What I don't understand is the IR port.

Don't like what's on TV in the bar? Change it!

Re:Screen size

[viperidaenz]

Apple stopped buying Samsung LCD's and moved to the second-rate LG ones. They have to put the best LCD's in the world somewhere.

IR port? It would be nice if I could get an app for my phone that controls my TV. Like a universal remote I don't have to look under the couch for all the time. My ancient Pocket PC can do that. Why can't current devices?

Re:Screen size

[night]

Higher yield, dead pixels are less noticeable.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't see the additional detail so why give up battery life to drive more pixels.

You're making an assumption which may not be valid. First of all, the primary driver of screen battery life is brightness, not resolution. Second, if you're not doing something graphics intensive on your phone, the battery will get you through the day anyway. So your concern is mostly applicable when doing things like playing games and watching movies. Now, if you're watching a 1080p movie on a smaller resolution screen, the phone's graphics processor has to downconvert the image. So the question becomes, which is more of a drain on battery life - downconverting a 1080p movie to a 960px screen, or playing a 1080p movie on a full HD screen? This I don't know the answer to, but I suspect that it's a close call.

smafti

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple uses Sharp's LCDs. Which are generally considered better than Samsung's. Not just my opinion; Samsung agrees. A couple months ago, they bought a 3% stake in Sharp.

Re:Screen size

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

If my entertainment depended on the entertainment at the bar, then my life took a wrong turn somewhere.

Re:Screen size

[sd4f]

I suppose you could see a difference, i like amoled screens because the blacks are incredibly good, and colours are quite vibrant, but i googled about it being pentile and there doesn't appear to be solid confirmation, but some sites are saying it's a pentile screen, which in effect means 2 sub pixels per pixel.

If you compare subpixel density, the SGS4 is 882 subpixels per inch, my lumia 920 is 1280x768 with a pixel density of 332, comprising three sub pixels and 4.5 inches, therefore the subpixel density is 996 per inch, therefore if it was pentile it would be 498 ppi. Both of them are really small, and not really a big difference, but i think it's a bit misleading to directly compare pentile screens with proper sub pixel layouts.

My old SGS1, that was obviously inferior with its pentile arrangement. It couldn't draw straight lines, and on a solid colour screen, one edge was green. Pictures were very nice to look at though, but web browsers and text, were not very good at all.

Re:Screen size

[Misagon]

The S IV's screen isn't LCD, it is AMOLED.

Re:Screen size

[sd4f]

I just look at it from a PC gaming perspective. Doing things at 1080p reduces frame rates somewhat more than 720p. There are 2.25 as many pixels, all requiring, data, so that's 2.25 times the data that needs to be sent, you need more bandwidth, and your processing, to be at the same level, clearly needs to be better. Yes screen brightness plays a major role, but that will only relate to screen size. Upscaling or downscaling is trivial computationally, maybe they just upscale things, but it would look awful.

Re:Screen size

[Entropius]

How are they awful? I have one in my Galaxy Nexus and it looks fine.

Re:Screen size

[viperidaenz]

Have you got an example of a high dpi Sharp LCD?

Re:Screen size

[viperidaenz]

same same but different. Uses less power. LCD's at those resolutions end up blocking 90% of the backlight.

Re:Screen size

[jon3k]

"Can't see the additional detail so why give up battery life to drive more pixels." Compared to what? The S3? It's a larger screen so the resolution had to be increased to try and keep a similar (or I assume, better) pixel density. Otherwise it would have looked worse.

Re:Screen size

[Solandri]

If you compare subpixel density, the SGS4 is 882 subpixels per inch, my lumia 920 is 1280x768 with a pixel density of 332, comprising three sub pixels and 4.5 inches, therefore the subpixel density is 996 per inch, therefore if it was pentile it would be 498 ppi.

No, because your eyes suck at seeing blue. Your eyes have very poor resolution in blue, moderately better resolution in red, and sharpest resolution in green. The whole point of a pentile display is not to waste subpixels on blue and red that your eyes can't even see. So you put in more green subpixels than red or green.

Put another way, even though the Lumina has 996 subpixels per inch, 67% of them are much higher resolution than your eyes can resolve, while 33% (green) are lower resolution than your eyes can resolve. So you're actually wasting a lot of subpixels. With a pentile RGBG display, the ratio of subpixels better matches your eye's resolving ability. 50% of the pixels are devoted to green, 25% for red, 25% for blue. So pentile can produce a sharper looking picture than RGB while using fewer subpixels. Pentile only looks bad if you unrealistically put your eye right up to the screen or take a magnified photo.

And before anyone starts rebutting that they can see the difference, no you can't. This trick is not new nor did it start with Android pentile displays. It's been used in NTSC TV broadcasts, color film formulation, and JPEG and MPEG compression. All of those store and display red and blue at a lower resolution than green. That you never noticed this before is proof that it works. It's just new to computer displays because until recently we didn't have spare computing power to waste on converting RGB data for a single pixel into a RGBG subpixel array millions of times in real time.

Re:Screen size

[dfghjk]

"...maybe they just upscale things, but it would look awful."

No reason to believe a 1080p 5" display with upscaled 720p data would "look awful" compared to a 720p 5" display driven directly. It may not be better but it's unlikely to look worse. Hard to imagine it would be noticeable at 440 ppi.

Re:Screen size

[Solandri]

Here's another link with a more detailed handling of what the link I included shows. Including the same pic with red pixels enlarged.

Re:Screen size

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Superamoled is the way to go. The colors are much richer that those other screens obviously manufactured in a former East German assembly line sometime during the early 1980s.

Re:Screen size

[shutdown -p now]

I can assure you that PenTile was very much visible when it first appeared - e.g. in Nexus One, which was 480x800 PenTile. The subpixels in those things are not small enough to be indistinguishable, and on thin white lines PenTile does produce a clearly visible jagged effect there. On Galaxy Nexus, which is 1280x720 PenTile, it is still visible on very small text, but the effect is already so minor it is not worth the bother. On a 1080p 5" display, I'm sure you won't be able to tell the difference without a magnifying glass.

Re:Screen size

[stephanruby]

What I don't understand is the IR port.

The IR port makes sense since Samsung is currently the largest manufacturer of Smart TVs (and perhaps even normal TVs) in the World (note that I'm not saying that it's a good idea, I don't know either way. I'm just saying that I can understand the reasoning behind their decision).

Between that and the stylus with the Note, it makes me wonder why Samsung wants to drag us back to the bad old days of Windows Mobile.

Sorry, but the resistive stylus of ten to twenty years ago is not the same as the stylus of today.

On a Samsung Note Phone/Device, it knows the distinction between your fingers and the pen. In other words, if you're reading an ebook on it, you can flip the pages with your fingers and at the same time use the pen as a highlighter, or use the pen to write, and then use your finger as an eraser. Not to mention, the pen technology is licensed from Qualcomm, so it's pressure sensitive and can also sense if the pen is just hovering over an item without touching the screen. The user experience is completely different from before.

It's just something that you must try for yourself before you can make a judgement on it (and not on a Note 1, but on a Note 2, the original Note 1 was good, but not great). Personally, I'm currently salivating for a Samsung Note 2 (or the next Note 3). The Samsung S4 however, I'm not too excited about if it doesn't have the pen technology. I already have a Galaxy Nexus that suits me just fine (and a Nexus 7).

Re:Screen size

[sd4f]

Thanks for that, it is interesting to see it, i knew eyes weren't as sensitive to blue (read stuff in target shooting books which deal with the science of sight), but, i had a pentile phone, and it failed drawing straight lines, photos, it was good, you couldn't see any problems, but text and any sort of browsers, it certainly didn't look right. It would be interesting if those tests were done to a picture of text, and then see the difference.

Re:Screen size

[dfghjk]

"You can see the additional details. You can't see the individual pixels, but text rendering will be MUCH crisper and I believe color reproduction gets better."

You believe a lot of things for no good reason.

Re:Screen size

[AmiMoJo]

That's hardly "agreeing". They just took the opportunity to buy a stake in a Japanese manufacturer and rival when they were short on cash. Sharp actually suggested the deal.

As for who is better, Samsung concentrates on AMOLED for quality and LCD for price in the small screen market. For larger screens they make retina displays for Apple, which are considered to be better than the LG ones.

Re:Screen size

[fredprado]

Which is considerable better than LCD in almost everything.

Re:Screen size

[thegarbz]

Which are generally considered better than Samsung's

[Citation Needed]

Re:Screen size

[SeaFox]

What I don't understand is the IR port. Between that and the stylus with the Note, it makes me wonder why Samsung wants to drag us back to the bad old days of Windows Mobile.

In Japan people often exchange their contact info via close-quarter IR transmission from phone to phone instead of verbally telling each other and having to manually enter it and ask what kanji make up the name, etc.
Not a bad feature.

'Course if the U.S. ever tried it they'd fuck it up by using a proprietary data format so you'd only be able to exchange info with people on the same brand phone as you.

Re:Screen size

[jrumney]

but I don't think it's that much better than finding a remote, which should be at least somewhere near the couch.

But between which cushions on which sofa? I have two sofas and an armchair in my lounge with a total of 18 cushions for the remote controls to hide under, between or behind, and many times have wished for the ability to make the remote controls ring.

Re:Screen size

[Jeremy Erwin]

1080p is obsolete. Where's my 4K phone?

Re:Screen size

[julesh]

IR port? It would be nice if I could get an app for my phone that controls my TV.

My samsung TV has a network-based protocol for that, no IR necessary. Or fiddly pointing of the device at the screen; I can just use it without picking it up from the arm of my chair.

Re:Screen size

[Dr Max]

Oh good lord i loved the IR port on my ppc. I bought one in high school and set it up to control the class room VCRs. When the teacher would press rewind i would press fast forward, i nearly sent her bat shit insane, and i got away Scott free.

Re:Screen size

[tehcyder]

A stylus on a small screen can be very useful for doing things like handwriting notes or drawing smiley faces, or even just accurately clicking on web links.

I know, I know...I'm old.

Re:Screen size

[tehcyder]

Lucky for you there's a statute of limitations on being an obnoxious little twat.

Re:Screen size

[Dr Max]

She actually started trying to press the opposite button thinking there was something wrong with the VCR, then she tried accusing the kid sitting in the front row.

Re:Screen size

[DocSavage64109]

Which is considerable better than LCD in almost everything.

Including image retention?

note: I don't have an amoled, so I don't know how common this is.

Re:Screen size

[viperidaenz]

But does that control your dvd player and stereo too? Can you turn off that annoying TV in the pub?

Re:Screen size

[tigersha]

The screen does not really eat more power because it has more pixels, but the CPU certainly does if it has to render all of those pixels.

Re:Screen size

[julesh]

But does that control your dvd player and stereo too?

Generally speaking, I'm using the media player built in to my TV for all my media-playing requirements these days, so while the answer is technically no, it does everything I need.

Can you turn off that annoying TV in the pub?

Generally speaking, I just tend to find a better pub. Works out best in the long term...

Smartphone?

[mcgrew]

With a five inch screen it's a small tablet! I wouldn't mind having one, but I'd still need a phone, my pocket isn't that big.

Re:Smartphone?

[fredprado]

If that is your problem at least with Samsung you have the mini models. With Apple you are stuck to a single model, and Apple is following the Galaxy S trend of increasing screen size.

Re:Smartphone?

[amiga3D]

Actually I find 5 inches to be about perfect. It'll fit my pocket okay and I can actually hold it. The nice thing is I can actually see the screen without a magnifying glass. Anything under 4 inches is to me unusable. Of course some people like tiny phones and it's nice for them as most of the phones out there are small. Don't bitch about those of us with larger hands having something we can hold.

Re:Smartphone?

[macshit]

...5" screen is too big and bloated...

If that is your problem at least with Samsung you have the mini models.

The problem is that the mini models aren't just smaller screens, they're lower-spec generally. I suspect that most people that don't like the current bloat-o-phone/phablet trend actually want a nice fast processor, high-resolution display, lots of memory, a good camera, etc, they just don't want the ridiculously oversized phones. I know I certainly don't.

It isn't just Samsung, this sort of simple-minded "bigger = better, smaller = old phone for kids" mindset seems very common amongst all the smartphone manufacturers. [Samsung perhaps deserves a bit more of the blame, though, as they're an industry leader, so other makers probably tend to follow what they're doing to some extent.]

Re:Smartphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I find 5 inches to be about perfect. It'll fit my pocket okay and I can actually hold it.

That's what she said.

Re:Smartphone?

[MangoCats]

Your pocket isn't that big? Sounds like a personal problem. I can fit a 7" tablet in my pockets.

Re:Smartphone?

[fredprado]

The GS3 mini specs are reasonably high, it has lower resolution and lower processor speed than the GS3, but higher resolutions for the same technology require bigger screens and higher processor specs are only really necessary for higher resolutions. The camera could be better, given, but for everything else it seems very reasoable.

But if you must have higher resolution for a smaller phone, the technology seems to be catching up to your tastes. With the GS4 441 dpi technology you will probably have a high enough resolution in the GS4 mini, and hopefully they will decide for a 8 MP camera too.

Re:Smartphone?

[niftydude]

With a five inch screen it's a small tablet! I wouldn't mind having one, but I'd still need a phone, my pocket isn't that big.

In terms of size - the S4 is actually smaller and lighter than the S3 - even though the S3 only has a 4.8" screen.

S3: 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm, 133 g
S4: 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm, 130 g

The screen runs closer to the edges, and the buttons at the bottom are slimmer. All in all, some pretty neat engineering.

Re:Smartphone?

[mlts]

Part of the reason why there is a move to bigger phones is engineering issues. The faster CPUs require more surface area to dissipate heat. So, the product designers might as well offer a larger screen size.

Re:Smartphone?

[Tough Love]

With a five inch screen it's a small tablet! I wouldn't mind having one, but I'd still need a phone, my pocket isn't that big.

Galaxy S4 is the exact same width as S3, all of 1 mm longer, and .7 mm thinner, for a total of considerably smaller volume. I call that a good deal, form factor wise.

The way they shoehorn the 5 inch screen into essentially the same form factor is, goodbye bezel. And good riddance.

Re:Smartphone?

[tompaulco]

I'm not sure if I could fit any phone in my pocket because a pocket is a horrible place for a phone.

Re:Smartphone?

[ArsonSmith]

I love my galaxy note. See I have a giant head so when I'm talking on the phone with my note it really helps make my head look smaller.

Re:Smartphone?

[macshit]

higher resolutions for the same technology require bigger screen

"Resolution" is pixel density, pixels-per-inch or whatever, not number of pixels.

So a higher resolution is actually a great way to give a smaller screen for a given display size...

One reason I mentioned that in particular was because the GS3 mini seems to have a resolution of 224ppi, which is significantly less than current high-end phones. There are also plenty of small high-resolution displays around; my current non-smartphone has like a 2.5" display with about 350 ppi...

Re:Smartphone?

[arkhan_jg]

Bear in mind, a big part of the screen increases is due to
a) much thinner bezels, and occupying that real estate with screen
b) (mostly) getting rid of the big row of physical buttons at the bottom, and going to soft buttons as part of the main screen that can be minimised away.

The rest is mostly making it longer.

Take the original galaxy S - 122.4 x 64.2 x 9.9 mm (often used as a benchmark for a 'real' sized 4" android phone)
The new htc one is 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm (and a beauty to hold, supposedly)

So that's a 4" screen going to a 4.7", for an extra 12% in length (15mm) and extra 6% width (a mere 4mm). The rest of the front is mainly speakers.

Or the galaxy S4 - 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.6mm - 11% longer, 8% wider, 30% thinner for going from 4" to 5".

For a 25% increase in diagonal screen size, I don't think a half a cm extra width is making it really that much bigger.

Re:Smartphone?

[narcc]

Your pocket isn't that big? Sounds like a personal problem.

Not everyone is a big fat slob. Normal-sized people have normal-sized pockets.

Re:Smartphone?

[Yogs]

We're pushing the limit on what's pocket-able, especially considering cases.
More room for growth requires more efficiency.
So when are we getting a pocket-able fold open tablet (that also happens to make calls). Bonus if it automatically operates in an intelligent voice mode.
The manufacturing tolerances on these are so precise, I think they could do a very, very decent job of this already.
Do they think people are that averse to a tiny line bisecting? Or maybe are they and I'm just crazy thinking it wouldn't bother me?
Seems like a small price to pay for the convenience of doing it all on a single device.

Re:Smartphone?

[amiga3D]

I should have seen that coming.

Re:Smartphone?

[fredprado]

Resolution is number of pixels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_resolution

Pixel density is another thing entirely. And exactly because pixel density is the same for the same technology, resolution is higher when the device is bigger. Period.

Re:Smartphone?

[ottothecow]

No, the problem with the mini models (is it really models? I thought the S3 mini was the only one) is that they aren't widely available. I *prefer* to buy my phone on contract. Yes, there is some stupid crap associated with it, but I've been with the same carrier forever and I don't foresee changing soon. If I did change, the ETF would probably be similar to the cost of the unlocked phone, so it wouldn't really matter (and its not like my gsm phone would still work if I switched to verizon). I can get a galaxy S3 for $199 (or probably $100 if I went to target and waited for a good price to come around) with a contract renewal. The same phone costs $500 unlocked on amazon. There is currently a random third party selling the S3 mini on amazon for a bit over $300. So I end up paying triple (assuming I can get a $100 S3) for a phone with a smaller screen and slightly lower specs. I see rumors that AT&T might start offering the S3 mini around the same time as the S4...but then the specs are starting to look pretty stale.

Maybe now that the screen size is only .3 inches away from the galaxy note (which just looks like a comical joke whenever I see someone using one on the train), they will actually have more incentive to combine the "big phone" lines and leave the rest of us a decent "pocket-sized" phone option. I don't even need the specs to be as good (the S3 to S3 mini performance dip is fine by me), but don't make it so hard/expensive to get a decent android phone in the same form factor that apple has managed to stick with for 5+ years.

Re:Smartphone?

[ottothecow]

Bezels are nice in this application. They keep you from hitting the screen with the part of your palm at the base of your thumb when you use the phone one handed (especially with giant screens where you really have to reach to make it to the other side).

There's probably a good solution to be had with OS-level edge-touch detection...then we can trash the bezel

Re:Smartphone?

[Tough Love]

What you need is a phone with all bezel. For me, I'll go with all screen.

Re:Smartphone?

[amiga3D]

I don't have any problems with one handed operation for a 5" device.

Tim Cook spread his fud

[viperidaenz]

Didn't he say yesterday the new S4 would come out with a 1+year old version of Android? Looks like 4.2.2 is only 1 month old.

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[viperidaenz]

Oops, my bad. It was Apple Marketing Chief Phil Schiller who said that

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[BasilBrush]

Save your celebrations. The S4 isn't out yet.

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? A chief of marketing named Schiller?

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[NJRoadfan]

Knowing Samsung, they'll release a x.1 Android ROM upgrade for it a year after it comes out and then EOL the device. It happens way too often with these phones.

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[mjwx]

Are you serious? A chief of marketing named Schiller?

No, he's quite serious and mr Schiller's entire job is to make false and inflammatory statements about Android.

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[csumpi]

What he didn't disclose is that Android from even 2+ years ago is a more capable and better OS than the current iOS. iOS and OSX both need a serious overhaul. Not just the incremental Apple lock ins (iTunes, iCloud, iTakeAllYourMoney), but real things like better management of the launcher, widgets, open document sharing between apps, multitasking (real one), access to the filesystem etc.

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[AmiMoJo]

They are still actively supporting the GS2 and 3. The GS3 has had multiple updates, and more are in the pipeline. Samsung are very good with updates, in a par with Apple for their high end phones.

Keep spouting the FUD though, someone is bound to listen.

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[Zontar The Mindless]

System.out.println( Slashdot.meme.invoke( THX_CAPT_OBVIOUS ));

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[FireFury03]

They are still actively supporting the GS2 and 3. The GS3 has had multiple updates, and more are in the pipeline. Samsung are very good with updates, in a par with Apple for their high end phones.

Keep spouting the FUD though, someone is bound to listen.

They're ok with _some_ of their phones... but you do take your chances. My Captivate Glide came with Gingerbread, and it was a loooooong time after Jellybean was released before Samsung released a firmware update to ICS... and when they did, that firmware update was extremely buggy (I've not upgraded since I've seen so many reports of regressions).

But this seems to be the same with all the Android phones - even the Nexus series devices have nowhere near the length of support I would expect for a £300+ device (my fiancée's Nexus-S is never going to get another firmware update, for example - Google announced that last year).

Re:Tim Cook spread his fud

[wywh]

Samsung is at again. They copied and just reversed the 4S from iPhone 4S hoping that no one would notice.

It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[treadmarks]

What does a "phone" need 8 cores for? Is it supposed to multitask many phone calls at once?

Re:It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[KingSkippus]

People used to ask why desktops would need multiple processors. Most software now takes advantage of multithreading capability, and trying to use a single core process is downright painful.

It may not need to multitask many phone calls at once, but it most certainly may need to multitask a whole bunch of apps at once, especially on a phone that can do things like instantly translate written or spoken text, record and composite two video sources at once and audio in real time, receive notifications such as texts, keep track of calendars, locations, temperatures (?), heart rates (!), etc. while you go about whatever it is you're doing, running a pretty sophisticated operating system with a pretty sophisticated user interface, and oh yeah, take and process telephone calls. And don't forget that it might have to do some of these tasks twice, given that the phone can be configured to be running an entirely separate virtual OS for your work stuff.

Never ask why any electronics device would need more resources, whether it's CPU cores, memory, storage capacity, network bandwidth, or anything else. It's a sure recipe for looking back in five years and say, "Wow, I sure was dumb back then. I never dreamed that devices today would be able to [insert amazing capability due directly to advancement in hardware specifications]!"

Re:It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[Electricity Likes Me]

Given that my plan for my next smartphone (which will probably be an S4) has been to install a full version of Linux on it to replace using a laptop when travelling, I'm pretty happy about the 8 core processor. It's too bad it doesn't have another 2gb of RAM.

Re:It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[geek]

Only 4 cores will ever be active at any one given time. 4 high power cores and 4 low power cores for battery efficiency.

Re:It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[stephanruby]

Given that my plan for my next smartphone (which will probably be an S4) has been to install a full version of Linux on it to replace using a laptop when travelling, I'm pretty happy about the 8 core processor.

I think you'll probably regret that decision.

An Asus Transformer, yes. That could replace a laptop, but an S4, I wouldn't think so. In my own personal experience, I find that a great smartphone is only complementary to a laptop (and not a complete replacement of it, even if you can run all kind of things on it).

Re:It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[stenvar]

It actually helps with battery life: you use 8 cores when you need the performance, but you can turn most of them off for day-to-day use.

Re:It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[Electricity Likes Me]

Given that my plan for my next smartphone (which will probably be an S4) has been to install a full version of Linux on it to replace using a laptop when travelling, I'm pretty happy about the 8 core processor.

I think you'll probably regret that decision.

An Asus Transformer, yes. That could replace a laptop, but an S4, I wouldn't think so. In my own personal experience, I find that a great smartphone is only complementary to a laptop (and not a complete replacement of it, even if you can run all kind of things on it).

I'm planning to try rolling with a pair of ST1080s for a wearable display and a foldable keyboard/wireless mouse so the whole kit can roll up into a nice little tube.

The S4 is nice because it's supposed to be able to do USB and HDMI out simultaneously, which would be required to make the setup work.

Re:It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[grumpy_old_grandpa]

> install a full version of Linux

Also known as "GNU/Linux" (as opposed to Android/Linux)?

Does it matter, you say? When you talk to your mom, probably not. When you discuss on geek forum, yes, it does make you come across a slightly more informed if you don't call it "half Linux", "full Linux" or "real Linux".

Re:It's time to stop calling these things "phones"

[Lost Race]

Never ask why ....

Correction: Always ask why.

The answers are usually pretty interesting.

Samsung Galaxy S IV teardown

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't wait for a more detailed one, here is a teardown.
http://micgadget.com/34139/chinese-tech-site-disassembles-the-samsung-galaxy-s-iv-before-it-gets-official-release/

Re:Samsung Galaxy S IV teardown

[AbRASiON]

Please note on the teardown:

The bastard phone is a 3G version.
Yes, 3G - there's still going to be 3G only models! - All in one products are better for Android mod developers, it's better for hardware manufacturers to support one SKU / assembly line.

Not good

Where's the Mini?

[MatthiasF]

I'm tired of huge phones. Why can't they give us a freakin' 3-3.2 inch phone for those of us that don't enjoy carrying around a small television?

Re:Where's the Mini?

[R3d M3rcury]

I dunno. I somewhat agree with you--I like the size iPhone 4S and it's 3.5" screen and I'm not sure about the iPhone 5's bigger screen.

That said, I understand the allure. One, video looks very nice on the S3 and I could see enjoying it on an airplane or for some other hunk of downtime. Two, having used an S3 and a Motorola Droid X for websurfing, the extra space is nice. For doing everything except using it as a phone, the larger size is probably much nicer.

Re:Where's the Mini?

[jbolden]

http://crackberry.com/blackberry-q10

Re:Where's the Mini?

[ozmanjusri]

They do.

http://www.kogan.com/au/buy/samsung-galaxy-s3-mini-white-android-phone/?gclid=CPmNxKPF_bUCFegWMgodA2gA3g

I'm sure there'll be an S4 version soon enough.

Re:Where's the Mini?

[shatfield]

My wife has an iPhone 4S and I have a SGS3... the screen on the 4S seems very tiny in comparison.

Re:Where's the Mini?

[rsmith-mac]

The problem with the S3 Mini is that it had almost nothing to do with the S3. It was a redressed version of one of Samsung's midrange smartphones. Even the Galaxy S2 was more powerful/capable in most situations, never mind the S3.

Re:Where's the Mini?

[amiga3D]

Isn't the size of the antenna for 4G the reason for the bigger phones? If you want a small one I know there are some 3g ones that are pretty tiny.

Re:Where's the Mini?

[AK Marc]

They make those too, but nobody buys them. I got a Chinese knock-off 6.0" phone (almost a tablet) and I love it, other than the build quality.

Re:Where's the Mini?

[dfghjk]

Those have existed for years.

Re:Where's the Mini?

[rasmusbr]

You'll probably have to wait until everyone has a 10" tablet on their coffee table and a 7" in a bag at which point the 4.5" phone will probably seem superfluous and clunky.

Does it run Angry Birds?

[martiniturbide]

..we all know that is the only important question.

Re:Does it run Angry Birds?

[corychristison]

Yes, it does.

Dilemma solved.

Re:Does it run Angry Birds?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt!

We're sorry, the *correct* question to the answer

We all know that is the only important question.

is...

Can I use it for viewing porn [and can anybody tell that I did, afterwards]?

Our lovely hostess Marlene will escort you backstage where you'll receive a nice consolation prize in appreciation for coming out here today... Thanks for playing!

Contract vs. Vendor

[phoebe]

The real question with Samsung's new phone is how the sales will perform. Samsung obviously think they're hot but that is ignoring the fact that the majority of purchasers of the S3 were iPhone 4 owners who finished their contract and the iPhone 5 was delayed. Now we are in a situation that the S3 purchasers are still in contract and not open to free choice and might not want another Samsung device.

Re:Contract vs. Vendor

[R3d M3rcury]

Now we are in a situation that the S3 purchasers are still in contract and not open to free choice and might not want another Samsung device.

You also have the iPhone 4S customers coming off their contracts this year and they might not want another Apple device with a tiny screen.

I'm not certain of this, but I believe AT&T has let iPhone customers get the latest and greatest iPhone with no penalty as long as they re-up for another two year hitch. Perhaps they'll make a similar offer for Galaxy S3 users.

Re:Contract vs. Vendor

[shatfield]

I'm a fan of the new Sony Xperia Z.. that's a pretty damned nice looking phone!

Re:Contract vs. Vendor

[thegarbz]

On the flip side there'll be droves of Galaxy S2 users who contracts are about to expire.

Re:Contract vs. Vendor

[Zontar The Mindless]

I bought an S3 while still having a perfectly good S1. It's true I got a really good deal, but I could have had an iPhone on the same plan at the same price if I'd wanted one. I think could have got a different Android phone as well under the same plan. For that matter I could have just stayed with the S1, but they were offering the S3 and I'd been mostly happy with the S1, so why the fuck not? I took the bloody S3, and now I'm mostly happy with the S3, thanks very much.

So, um, yeah. Whatever.

Re:Contract vs. Vendor

[RivenAleem]

My current phone is an S2, my contract up in a month and a bit. I'll get an S4. Anyone who got an S2 for Christmas 2011 on an 18 month contract may get this.

Re:Contract vs. Vendor

[tehcyder]

the fact that the majority of purchasers of the S3 were iPhone 4 owners who finished their contract and the iPhone 5 was delayed

I don't believe that for a second. Most existing iPhone users would just hold onto their phone a bit longer, or do your contracts mean that after 2 years you have to give the phone back regardless?

Re:Contract vs. Vendor

[Racerdude]

Really? You have statistics that show that more than 50% of the people that bought a SGS3 were people who used to own an iPhone 4? Source?

Battery

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to love that you can pop in a brand-new battery. The more the phone does, the more it will use up the power, the more recharge cycles, and the faster your battery wears out (note that battery running times become unacceptable long before the battery is actually gone).

Re:Battery

[olddoc]

Upvote this! Li Ion batteries are good for a year of daily charging. By the second year of phone ownership you will see less battery life and popping in a new battery will get you through till you get your next phone.

Re:Battery

[Gaygirlie]

You're going to love that you can pop in a brand-new battery.

Not me. I've never had the need to be able to exchange batteries even though I've always been a heavy user of whatever phones I've had and I've been using cell-phones since the early Ericsson NMT-ones that looked and weighed like bricks. I have had use for a removable battery in the sense that I've multiple times had to remove the battery in order to shut the phone down as it's gone and gotten itself completely locked up, not responding to even the power button, but aside from that..

Re:Battery

[Villain]

That is surprising. My GS3 has no problem getting through a day of streaming audio, light wifi tethering, email, and browsing. What does it say is using the bulk of the battery? Are you running a custom ROM?
I've used stock, JellyWiz, and currently Carbon 1.5. Had some battery life issues with one version of JellyWiz, but otherwise it's been great.

First 8 core phone

[Anonymous Coward]

The two biggy here are the 8 core Exynos, the 2 core one was the fastest processor in a phone, now it scales to 8 cores. And the insane resolution needed to put full 1080p in a 5 inch phone.

Oh and the gestures thing.

Here's the sad part, where Apple? It use to be, Apple would come out with a curveball and win the game, now they're just twiddling with screen aspect ratios. It's all a bit sad.

Re:First 8 core phone

[Swampash]

Seen the profits Apple is making from phones? Apple won the game a long time ago.

Re:First 8 core phone

[dfghjk]

"It" doesn't scale to 8 cores. It's a 4 core processor where each "core" has both a low power and high performance core that it selects between. Only 4 cores are operational at any given time.

Of course, that doesn't matter to the tech-savvy membership of /. 8 is greater than 4, that's what counts.

Re:First 8 core phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen the profits Apple is making from phones? Apple won the game a long time ago.

You do realize that you're boasting about how hard Apple fleeced you, don't you?

Re:First 8 core phone

[clarkn0va]

Seen what happens to companies that milk the cash cow too long ...

Yes.

Re:First 8 core phone

[pev]

Actually, it is only fleecing if customers aren't willing to pay the price asked.... If happy customers pay the retail price it's just good business!

Re:First 8 core phone

[tehcyder]

Actually, it is only fleecing if customers aren't willing to pay the price asked.... If happy customers pay the retail price it's just good business!

That's silly. Customers are by definition willing to pay the price, or else they wouldn't be customers. That doesn't mean they're not being ripped off.

Re:First 8 core phone

[domatic]

I want mine to go up to 11 cores.

Re:First 8 core phone

[knarf]

Don't bother. There is a specific term for this affliction:

Stockholm syndrome. Slightly reworded for this specific application it can be described as 'a psychological phenomenon in which customers express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their exploiters, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the overcharging or fleecing endured by the customers, who essentially mistake a lack of obvious abuse from their vendor for an act of kindness'.

Re:First 8 core phone

[tech.kyle]

Makes less sense than Tegra 3 to me. If we're going for low power, why are we using four cores? Why not one?

Re:First 8 core phone

[pev]

Not at all. Forget tangible objects with measurable profit margins and the mis-direction this brings.

Instead of a physical phone, imagine I have a piece of information (or intellectual property if you wish) that you want and that I am prepared to sell to you. Now, I *could* give this to you for free as it doesn't necessarily cost me anything to impart but I'm going to charge as it's my livelihood. At what price are you getting a bargain and at what price am I ripping you off?

If you can answer that then congratulations, the entire commercial world is in your hands to profit handsomely from.

WTF

[7-Vodka]

All I care about is whether you have complete control over the hardware you buy.

Is it like the galaxy nexus, I can do anything I want with it, or is it like most other phones: Locked and useless?

Re:WTF

[houbou]

Got a Nexus, if it wasn't for the battery life, I would give it a 10 out of 10. But if the S4 really does have a better battery life and does everything the Nexus does, then I'm flipping to S4.

Re:WTF

[lexman098]

What can't you do with a galaxy s3?

Re:WTF

[thesupraman]

IMHO you badly need to add 'lack of SD memory slot' to that list..
badly. Its unforgivable not to include one, makes developing for/backup of/etc the phone SO much easier/better.
Its not about the amount of storage, its about the removability.

Damn pleased S4 kept it.

Re:WTF

[AmiMoJo]

Galaxy phones are always well supported by Cyanogen, and Samsung doesn't do much to lock them down. The GS3 was supported about a month after release so don't expect to wait long to build your own kernel/rom for the GS4.

Re:WTF

[thegarbz]

While Samsung doesn't lock down the bootloader they do a few underhanded things to ensure warranty claims can identify phones which have had their firmwares played with. Flashing custom firmware on a Samsung Galaxy phone causes a yellow triangle to appear during boot. This is a feature in the bootloader firmware. Fortunately the XDA guys have figured out ways around it, but the phone is definitely not open in the same way a Nexus is open.

Re:WTF

[Tough Love]

Got a Nexus, if it wasn't for the battery life, I would give it a 10 out of 10.

Got one too. Don't forget the glued in battery and no flash slot. Half point off for each.

Re:WTF

[tehcyder]

I've got an HTC with a fixed battery, whereas my previous phone had a removeable one. However, if you're going to carry around a spare battery in a case (as I did) it's just as easy to get an external battery/charger and carry that around. Plus, you don't have to re-start your phone.

That doesn't help if the internal battery dies or becomes unable to hold a decent charge, of course, but I assume you would be able to claim under guarantee if that happened.

Re:WTF

[LordLimecat]

Are they denying any and all warranty claims with custom roms? If not, I dont see why this is a problem; certainly a bad rom (or the flashing process) could cause damage that would legitimately void the warranty.

Re:WTF

[Tough Love]

It's not just a matter of being able to carry around a spare battery. The big issue is, when the battery deteriorates (as they all do) you have a major repair issue on your hands instead of a simple swap.

Re:WTF

[thegarbz]

Are they denying any and all warranty claims with custom roms?

Yes. This is quite well documented and it most definitely is not a Samsung only practice. Even if the fault is entirely unrelated to the operating system.

Though in some ways I'm not surprised. There are documented cases of rooting / custom roms / buggy software causing physical damage to the device, specifically the old Samsung Galaxy S allowed rooted apps direct hardware access to the speaker. Turns out the amp in the phone is a bit bigger than the speaker and damage ensued if a bug suddenly caused it to crank up to 11.

Re:WTF

[GuB-42]

I don't know about the newer Nexus phones but for the Nexus One, the official way to unlock the bootloader and flash new ROM cause a padlock icon to appear the same way as Samsung's yellow triangle.

Excellent

[corychristison]

My contract is up on August 4th. Assuming the S4 comes out before then, perhaps the cost on the S3 will come down and I'll be able to afford it sans contract renewal. Doubly because I want to switch providers.

5 months old...

[mtb_ogre]

Jelly Bean was released in November, making it 4 months old, 5 months by the time the SIV is generally available. Jelly Bean will be obsoleted by Key Lime Pie at Google's I/O developer conference in May so you get a whole month to enjoy being on the current version of Android, that might be some kind of record. After which you get to wait another 4-5 months for Samsung to get the OS up and approved by US carriers.

Re:5 months old...

[viperidaenz]

Whats your point? iOS is 6 months old.

Re:5 months old...

[AmiMoJo]

Firstly it won't be obsolete, just lacking a few new features. It is going to be a point update and wont break app compatibility for 99.9% of stuff.

Secondly having to wait for carrier approval is your own dumb fault for buying from a carrier.

Thirdly Android is already so far ahead of ios 6 you are not going to be missing anything your rival iPhone owning Hipster possy has, so relax.

Re:5 months old...

[mosb1000]

The current version of iOS was released 3 weeks ago.

Re:5 months old...

[mtb_ogre]

How old was iOS when the iPhone 5 was released? More important, how long after iOS 6 was released was it available on the iPhone 4? The iPhone 4S? The iPhone 3GS? The iPad 2? Android has a lot of cool stuff, but updates are glacial and lots of products get left behind in a hurry. A big part of the problem with Android malware is because exploits don't need to attack the most recent version of Android, because so few people are using a recent version of Android. People are using Android exploits that are months or sometimes years old.

Re:5 months old...

[jareth-0205]

Jelly Bean was released in November, making it 4 months old, 5 months by the time the SIV is generally available. Jelly Bean will be obsoleted by Key Lime Pie at Google's I/O developer conference in May so you get a whole month to enjoy being on the current version of Android, that might be some kind of record. After which you get to wait another 4-5 months for Samsung to get the OS up and approved by US carriers.

What a ridiculous definition. It comes with 4.2, which is the current version, so not in any way old. When KLP is released, *then* you can start the clock saying it's got an 'old' version.

Re:5 months old...

[tehcyder]

Who cares? The older versions of Android don't suddenly stop working when Google release a new one.

Re:5 months old...

[LordLimecat]

4.2.2, however, was not released in november, and it would be kind of hard for Samsung to include an unreleased version of android on their phone.

Re:5 months old...

[viperidaenz]

and it bring with it.... no new features, just a single bug fix.

Battery life!

[houbou]

If it's got a superior battery life to my Nexus, then I'm sold..

Re:Battery life!

[MtViewGuy]

I believe it's got a higher-capacity battery, so battery life per charge will likely be better.

I believe that the US version will use a variant of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU SoC--the one that supports most 3GPP LTE radio/antenna systems.

What's interesting about the Galaxy S 4 is the fact the phone is almost the same physical size as the Galaxy S III.

Software improvements? Really?

[ilsaloving]

"many of the software improvements in the Samsung Galaxy S4 could make their way into existing Samsung Galaxy S3 phones."

You mean Kies will finally work? Samsung should be ashamed of themselves for releasing such half-baked crap. I certainly won't be buying another Samsung device. Maybe they need to spend less time coming up with cool new gee-whizbang features and spend more time making the existing ones actually work as advertised.

It's a feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky you. I have an original Apple iPad and it won't let me update to the latest version of iOS.

I have a first gen iPad that won't let me update to the latest version AND I have a newer one that would. But I haven't updated because I don't want Google Maps updated to Apple Maps ... be happy.

Re: It's a feature

[richard.york]

Um, you do realize that Google maps is in the App Store now, and far superior to the Apple built Google Maps? It has turn by turn, vector tiles, etc. You can have and use both. I do.

Where is Wireless Charging?

[bjwest]

Why in the hell is induction charging not a standard feature for phones yet? Battery life would be less of an issue if we could just set the phone down on a charge pad and not worry about having to plug the thing in all the time. I'd be more than happy to have several charge pads around the house and at the office.

Hell, toothbrushes have had this technology for years.

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[the eric conspiracy]

Hell I have seen vibrators with inductive charging.

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[tehcyder]

Why in the hell is induction charging not a standard feature for phones yet? Battery life would be less of an issue if we could just set the phone down on a charge pad and not worry about having to plug the thing in all the time. I'd be more than happy to have several charge pads around the house and at the office.

Hell, toothbrushes have had this technology for years.

Maybe I'm missing something, but don't the charging pads have to get their electricity from the mains somehow? It seems like a very marginal saving in time and convenience.

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[bjwest]

FTFA: Yes, it turns out the the GS 4 does in fact have Qi wireless charging capabilities. Provided its available in your region and your carrier chooses to support it.

Why the region limitations and carrier "stamp of approval"? This, in my mind, says the U.S. cell providers are looking for a way to charge for charging. I can see it now, $.02/hour while sitting on the charge pad. For an extra $20.00/month, unlimited charging via the charge pad.

After market battery covers are available for the S3 and many other phones. The connectors and software are built in, but it seems it's the carriers who are stopping this. I currently have a Droid Bionic. Verizon made available for a limited time an inductive charging system, but try to find it now.

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[bjwest]

Maybe I'm missing something, but don't the charging pads have to get their electricity from the mains somehow? It seems like a very marginal saving in time and convenience.

You don't have to worry about plugging in the phone all the time. When you want to use it, you just pick it up and there's no wire in the way. All you need is a charge pad on your desk, next to your 'lounging' chair, by the bed... wherever. It's as simple as setting the phone down and it's charging. No fumbling with cords or trying to align it just right in the dock.

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[cyberchondriac]

That sounds more like seductive charging..

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[LanMan04]

No fumbling with cords or trying to align it just right in the dock.

As soon as I read this, imagining one of those crappy infomercials with a lady (in black and white, of course) hopelessly fumbling with a USB cable while trying to plug in a phone, then she looks at the camera with a "there's got to be a better way" expression.

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[bjwest]

I have a dock for my Bionic, but it's not as simple as, say, dropping a POTS wireless phone in its cradle. The USB port is not designed for ease of connecting like is required for a doc and still needs to be aligned and a bit force used to connect and disconnect it. It still takes two hands and often 'sticks' when picking it up. Before you ask, no it's not a cheep dock either, its a Seidio. The micro USB port was not designed to be a docking connector, and with todays WiFi enabled phones, I connect to my home network when the phone is in range. I don't need a USB connector at all, I need power to charge and that's it.

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[bjwest]

It's not quite that bad, but I do often drop the cord while trying to plug it in, sometimes not pay attention and have it upside down or, again not paying attention, try to plug it in the micro HDMI port right next to the micro USB port. Read my reply below for my follies with the dock.

This is technology that was developed in the late 1800's early 1900's, and is little more on the phone than a coiled wire. There is no reason for this not to be incorporated in every smart phone and tablet on the market.

Re:Where is Wireless Charging?

[tigersha]

A cellphone has vibrator alarm built in, so this is the same...

The phone feature that I care most about

[Dracos]

A slider form factor with a physical five row QWERTY keyboard. Almost nothing else is a dealbreaker to me.

I've had a Samsung Epic 4G (Galaxy S1) for almost two years. It's one real flaw is that it only has 362MB of ram. However, Sprint doesn't have 4G of any kind in my area but still insist that I pay them $10/month for the vaporous privilege of having a 4G handset (which is always connected to my house's WiFi anyway).

Re:The phone feature that I care most about

[godrik]

I am pretty much sticking to my HTC G2 for that reason. I want my phone to have a reasonnable keyboard. The G2 has a 4 row qwerty keyboard, and that's really useful. I do not really have a need for a fifth row though. I am not going to write perl on my phone :) I am mainly using my phone to answer short text-based communications (emails, IM or text messages.) Acording to my phone logs, I make less than 3 phone calls a day. (1 of which I could make from my office phone and 1 of them I could make from my home phone if it was not ridiculously priced.)

Re:The phone feature that I care most about

[KiloByte]

After tweaking the keymappings, I use my N900 for coding. Sometimes including perl :p It's actually more comfortable than a laptop, and hugely easier to carry. Obviously, for real coding there's the desktop, but I can sit for several hours of productive work anywhere.

Too bad, N900 is so weak a machine it can't even run niceties like a decent browser (ok, unless you're REALLY patient), but a text terminal, a chroot with postgres, a compiler, etc, is fine for many tasks.

And I make 1-2 phone calls a month, and receive perhaps 10. e-mail works well.

Re:The phone feature that I care most about

[markus_baertschi]

Just install Hacker's Keyboard. It has a five rows and cursor keys (in landscape mode).

1 Month old.

[mjwx]

Jelly Bean was released in November, making it 4 months old, 5 months by the time the SIV is generally available. Jelly Bean will be obsoleted by Key Lime Pie at Google's I/O developer conference in May so you get a whole month to enjoy being on the current version of Android, that might be some kind of record.

That was 4.2, released in November, 4.2.2 was released on 11 February 2013. So just over 1 month old.

After which you get to wait another 4-5 months for Samsung to get the OS up and approved by US carriers.

If you dont live in the US (or do live in the US and buy directly from Samsung) this isn't a problem.

It's not an Android issue, it's an issue with your incompetent telco's.

Also, you've got the option of community ROMs.

Re:1 Month old.

[berj]

I don't know about Samsung phones.. but my Samsung tablet (a galaxy tab 2 7") was hideously out of date. I bought it in September.. it had 4.0 on it rather than Jelly bean (4.1) which was released in June. The software update to 4.1 *finally* came in January (making it over 6 months behind the times).. who knows when it will be updated to 4.2...

And there's no carrier involved on this... it's a wifi only device. The delay is *all* samsung.

And no. I don't want to install community ROMs.

Re:1 Month old.

[chasm22]

The first device to run Jellybean(the nexus 7) was released on July 13,2013. Why would you buy a device if you knew that it was hideously out of date? And why would you expect it to be running the most current software when it was probably shipped before that software was available? I can't remember ever buying an android product without knowing beforehand what version it was running.

Re:1 Month old.

[berj]

It was my first (and very likely) only android purchase. It seemed inconceivable to me that a device shipping 2 months after the OS was released wouldn't come with the current OS on it (or have an update readily downloadable at time of purchase). The idea that a brand new device would have to wait 5 months to get an update to an OS that shipped 2 months prior to purchase was an impossibility in my mind. There was no precedent in all of my computing experience to make me think it would have been something to consider before purchase.

Live and learn I guess.

Re:1 Month old.

[jrumney]

The idea that a brand new device would have to wait 5 months to get an update to an OS that shipped 2 months prior to purchase was an impossibility in my mind.

Ever heard of testing? Its something that manufacturing companies have learnt is very important to avoid costs associated with warranty claims. When you're developing your own software and hardware, it is easy to give the illusion that there is no effort in rolling out a new OS to all your product range that is still in the market. But when someone else is making the OS, and are not releasing to you significantly earlier than their public announcement, the lag is clearly visible. It was that way with Windows CE/Windows Mobile and is still that way with Android. If Windows Phone had a significant number of devices from multiple manufacturers using it, you'd notice it there too. Currently only Apple and Blackberry have the level of control required to manage the illusion of instantaneous update to all their shipping devices.

Re:1 Month old.

[berj]

It's not an illusion of instantaneous update... it *is* one. When a new version of iOS ships *all* devices that are announced to support the update get the update right away. What happens behind the scenes is immaterial (certainly there is alot of effort involved).. as a consumer I get it right away.

I can understand a couple or three months for a company as large as samsung to get everything working on a brand new device... but seven?! That's nonsense to me. We're not talking about a device they stopped selling a year prior.. this was (is?) the current product lineup. If that doesn't get top priority for software updates then I don't know what to say.

Re:Finally

[AK Marc]

I got an S3 on a good sale last week. Probably from someone ( a large company here) with better inside information that I have.

That's OK

[arielCo]

I've an S3 too, and we can't even accuse Samsung of wanting you to upgrade on every launch; you just buy whatever is fresh at the time you need it, so it'll last you as long as possible. I expect the S6 to be out by the time our S3's are severely obsolete.

Re:That's OK

[Zontar The Mindless]

My S1 still works great--I like my S3 just fine, but I must admit that the main reason I got it was the Yeah This One's Two Years Old But There's No Rea---Ooh! New! Shiny! factor--the other being that Telenor offered me a new contract that included the new phone *and* reduced my bill. (Believe it... or not!)

Might wipe the S1 and give it to my kid for her birthday. I feel a bit guilty at giving her a hand-me-down, but it still looks and works good as new.

Re:That's OK

[arielCo]

Is that S1 running CyanogenMod 10? If not, try it - I transmogrified one from exasperatingly sluggish museum-worthy Froyo into so-cool-JellyBean (the camera still lagged a bit, but oh well), with just the ROM from cyanogenmod.com and maybe a fresh bootloader.

Re:That's OK

[noh8rz10]

Might wipe the S1 and give it to my kid for her birthday. I feel a bit guilty at giving her a hand-me-down, but it still looks and works good as new.

dude, you can't buy your daughter a birthday present? "daddy, daddy, I really want your old crap for my birthday!"

Re: That's OK

[madprof]

Nice, but hand me downs aren't sold by Walmart. It is a good example of reuse of consumer goods.

Re:That's OK

[crutchy]

let me be the first to say... WHOOOOSH

if you don't want a "greedy, consumeristic whore" for a daughter, then why give her anything at all? she'll only grow up to expect something every year

Re:That's OK

[MaskedSlacker]

Someone's got a sense of entitlement there.

Re:That's OK

[tehcyder]

Might wipe the S1 and give it to my kid for her birthday. I feel a bit guilty at giving her a hand-me-down, but it still looks and works good as new.

dude, you can't buy your daughter a birthday present? "daddy, daddy, I really want your old crap for my birthday!"

He didn't say he was only going to give her his old phone for her birthday. No doubt she'll get a Ferrari, stable of ponies and a black Amex card too.

Re:That's OK

[noh8rz10]

C'mon man, birthdays only come once a year and it's a really big deal to kids. Indulge her, what's the harm? Get her an iShiny. Gift certificate to buy clothes, if that's whT she's into. Books are fun. It not your old tech that you don't want any more. Why not get her an S4?

Re:That's OK

[dcw3]

I feel a bit guilty at giving her a hand-me-down, but it still looks and works good as new.

Just my $.02:
Don't feel guilty. Unless they're paying for it with money they earned, they shouldn't be given new expensive toys. They need to learn the value of them, and working for what they get instead of expecting the latest fashion.

Re:That's OK

[crutchy]

my 4yo daughter is into barbie dolls and clothes, but luckily she's a bit of a tomboy so she also likes to play outside, get into fights and get covered in mud

Re:That's OK

[noh8rz10]

Why "luckily"? Are you projecting an image of who your daughter "should" be? Hw will she feel when she can't fit the mold you made for her? It can go one of three ways.

Re:That's OK

[crutchy]

i don't force her to be a tomboy. i said "luckily" in the context of this thread.... douchebag

Resting on their laurels

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that always true of companies resting on their laurels?

Their costs are in the past, their revenue is in the present, and the difference (their earnings) is the biggest number they will ever earn, because they're not making something new, and so not incurring the costs.

Sad really. Ballmer's the same, he ramps up the prices of products, hasn't delivered anything successful himself, and so its inevitable Microsoft will fail under him, yet he can point to the figures and say 'look, profits are up', as if raising the price higher and higher on fewer and fewer customers can go on forever.

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[GigaplexNZ]

Not on Android. There was no way to turn on WiFi with a single click until Android 4.2.2, and even in Android 4.2.2 is it a press and hold, not a tap.

I'm running 2.3.7 and I just hit the WiFi button on one of the widgets.

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[shutdown -p now]

Not on Android. There was no way to turn on WiFi with a single click until Android 4.2.2, and even in Android 4.2.2 is it a press and hold, not a tap.

Not in stock Android, no. However, stock TouchWiz, which is what you see on all Samsung phones, had a WiFi (and Bluetooth etc) switcher in the notification drawer for a long time now. And if you use a Nexus running 4.1+, you can install one of several apps from the Store that integrate into the drawer using the new APIs in that OS version, and provide the same experience (e.g. the clumsily named but nevertheless very nice "MoreQuicklyPanel").

Editors...

[Kawahee]

and is no more than 7.9mm think

I guess that makes my iPhone 5 7.6mm think different.

This is like the Ghz race

[OhANameWhatName]

Who needs a 14MP Camera with a ditzy little lense .. what's the point? 1080p display with more pixels than the naked eye can actually see .. seriously? Who cares. Picture in picture display for front and rear cameras, NFC and optical recognition gestures? Why in the hell would I want to watch myself while recording a video, touch my phone to someone else's phone to transfer data between them or swipe in another way other than on the glass panel? It's a laundry list of features, all pretty much useless.

If the OS is terrible to use, the battery burns out in 2 hours and the phone is loaded with endless crapware that can't be removed, well .. who would want one?

Re:This is like the Ghz race

[TwentyCharsIsNotEnou]

Who needs a 14MP Camera with a ditzy little lense .. what's the point?

I love the new HTC One for that reason - they reduced the camera to 4MP to improve low-light performance. As it should be.

Re:This is like the Ghz race

[arkhan_jg]

Much as I like the idea of the extra large pixels in the CCD in the One - and the hugely visible improvement with low-light snaps that comes with that - I'm a bit concerned about the amount of post processing it seems to do on normal light photos, making them rather smoothed and blurred out in reviews. Waiting to see if a 3rd party camera app avoids that, or it's done at a lower level. Other than that (and the non-removable battery, sigh) the One is definitely on the top of my list for next upgrade. The only one that might displace it now I think is a nexus 5 - if they can make the specs good, a decent body, and keep it half the price of the competition off-contract, I'll definitely be tempted.

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[csumpi]

"Not on Android. There was no way to turn on WiFi with a single click until Android 4.2.2, and even in Android 4.2.2 is it a press and hold, not a tap."

You have absolutely no clue of what you are talking about.

So where's Apple Curveball?

[Anonymous Coward]

My comment: "Here's the sad part, where Apple? It use to be, Apple would come out with a curveball and win the game, now they're just twiddling with screen aspect ratios. It's all a bit sad."

You didn't point to any curveball and that's what's sad.

And what's more you used misleading language, Android outsold Apple in the US market: "on every U.S. carrier that carried them".

Sad really, your words betray you.

Re:So where's Apple Curveball?

[SuperKendall]

You didn't point to any curveball and that's what's sad.

That's because that part was never true.

There never was a curve ball. Just a really good product people liked to use.

And that's what Apple is still doing, as evidenced by sales.

Samsung Unveils the Galaxy S4...

[tompaulco]

Samsung Unveils the Galaxy S4... and here I'm still using the S2 like a sucker. I'm going to run right out and buy an S4...as soon as the S2 dies. Of course by then, there will be an S15 or whatever is the latest model 3 or 4 years from now.

Re:Samsung Unveils the Galaxy S4...

[kangsterizer]

I'd say keep your S2.
It's light, square, and fast enough for all android apps.
I went from S2 to S3 and the S2 was a better phone. Not only that, but the S2 actually *feels* faster. Yes, seriously. The NAND of the S2 is fast, the NAND Of the S3 is pretty damn slow, and in Android, I/O actually does matter.. I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same on the S4 - because it's not in the specs, so nobody really notices. Til you start using it.

Samsung Tablet strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple dominates the tablet market and thus far no challenger has been able to best the Ipad (saleswise) in direct confrontation.

Samsung definitely wants to get into this market and has tried to challenge the IPAD with the TAB which I think more or less failed.

They are making inroads, however, by attacking this space between phone and tablet. Items like the Galaxy Note and the ever-increasing size of their phones. I've owned every Galaxy S phone from S1-S3. I was extremely happy with the S2--I think it is the pinnacle of design for a traditional smartphone. Note the dimensional similiariites between the S2 and the iphone 5.

The S3 I don't really consider a phone. It's a hybrid. It is just big enough to break into the space of tablets in that the screen is bigh enough for people to spend hours reading and watching video on it. I spend more time reading now on my S3 than I do on my Ipad because it's easier to download stuff on the go and my eyes are just comfortable enough with the size of things.

The real enabler is the AMOLED screen. While LCD does better with white pixel power draw, AMOLED is dramatically better for black pixel power draw. If you design apps well, the overall power draw of the screen is dramatically less than that for LCD screens. I can get two life on the S3 with moderate usage and around 6-7 hours of reading. For a phone, where you use it all the time and have LTE connectivity, I really feel the screen (~40% of your power draw) and battery are the limiiting factors. Samsung's AMOLED is a deciding factor in all this and I think will continue to be until someone invents a more battery efficient screen

Re:Found 'em

[sacrilicious]

Well, the last two quarters they were outselling all other smartphones on every U.S. carrier that carried them.

Even if this were true, what an incredibly misleading statement. Android has 75% of the smartphone market outright, and rising FAST. I have no idea if Apple somehow outsells every other *individual* model of cellphone (or however else your statement might be twisted to be "true"), but the raw numbers most definitely support the rhetorical asking/observation "where's Apple in all this".

And all those cores are of little use without software to use them. iOS still has a huge quality and power lead in apps.

I'd ask for substantiation, but this quote is too subjective to warrant it.

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[thegarbz]

Not on YOUR version of Android. This has been a standard feature of every Samsung phone dating back to Eclair. From what I've seen HTC phones have this as well. Failing that there are apps for the vanilla Android which put themselves in the notification system and keep their notifications fresh i.e. they are always at the top when you swipe down your notification list, and offer buttons for exactly this functionality.

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[thegarbz]

Screenshot of a Samsung Galaxy S notification screen running Android 2.1:

http://www.sizzledcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Galaxy-S-Screenshot-6.png

I don't know why vanilla Android doesn't have this feature but many manufacturers have added it.

why so large?

[glitch23]

This is supposed to be a phone I can carry in my pocket not a home theater in my pocket. I'm not an Android fan anyway but I wouldn't want any phone to have a 5" screen because I'm not going to use it to watch TV/movies. Granted, I watch youtube videos sometimes on my iphone 5 but I don't need a 5" screen to do that nor would I want one. It wouldn't fit comfortably in my pocket.

Re:why so large?

[Custard Horse]

Just get the Motorola Razr i or one of its iterations. Well built, small screen, good battery life. 'Smart Actions' is a nice inbuilt feature which I envy my girlfriend for as I have the Nexus 4 which is great (primarily due to the larger screen!)

garage band

[Chirs]

After looking for some time I have yet to find an equivalent to garage band on Android.

Re:garage band

[LordLimecat]

I think android users might remark they have yet to find an equivalent to Firefox, or emulators, or adblockers on IOS.

Re:garage band

[cyberchondriac]

or iMovie, for that matter.
But I think in just about every other category, the Play market is on par with the App Store.I have an iPhone 5, and a Nexus7, love 'em both. There are lots of good apps available for both platforms.
Most importantly though, the mere number of apps available doesn't mean squat. There are tons of horrible apps out there for IOS that suck, crash, phish, data mine, and/or mostly push ads (and ditto for Android too).
It's the quality of the apps that matters, not the quantity.

Re:garage band

[tigersha]

Google Chrome runs just fine on iOS.

And Garageband on iPad rocks.

If advertisement is an honest trade ...

[Taco Cowboy]

The S4 will be a rectangular OLED device that allows you to waste some time between re-charge, due to the 2600mAh battery which runs dry fairly quickly

Re:If advertisement is an honest trade ...

[Kartu]

Seriously, is there any info on battery life? You can't judge it from battery capacity alone.

Re:Found 'em

[stenvar]

And all those cores are of little use without software to use them. iOS still has a huge quality and power lead in apps.

Funny, the reason I gave up on iOS was the limited app selection: no keyboards, no launchers, restricted VPN, no widgets, no third party tethering, no file system apps, limited ssh and web servers, limited third party music and video stores, etc.

Re:Found 'em

[stenvar]

Apple Haters - totally ignoring Apple successes for twenty years and counting.

Twenty years? Apple nearly went out of business in the late 90s and their OS and Mac business was in shambles. And the original Mac, OS X, and iPhone were all basically rip-offs of other people's technology.

Size is just a trend.

[mosb1000]

It's just a trend. When cellphones first came out, they were huge. Everyone wanted the smallest possible phone, so manufacturers just kept making them as small as possible. At some point in the flip-phone era they got too small and they were actually an inconvenience for the average user. While you see some companies trying to find the optimum size, others are simply trying to stay ahead of the trends so they can capitalize on their user's fickle tastes.

For me the benchmark is whether I can touch the whole screen with my thumb while I'm firmly gripping the phone. I think I could do it with the GS4, but I'd be more comfortable with a smaller screen. I have pretty big hands, so most users would be in the same boat as me. A galaxy note user would certainly not be able to fully operate the phone with one hand (without risking dropping the phone). But supposedly the trade-off is worth it to them for the increased screen space, we'll know in a few years when the current note owners are due for an upgrade.

Some people are really underestimating this device

[dell623]

The sales will depend more on marketing as usual, but..

1) That display is awesome, AMOLEDs are getting better and we're finally beyond retina density for AMOLED displays (the S3 had a pentile display which lowers the effective dpi a bit)

2) The 5" screen is not what decides the dimensions. This is actually narrower than the S3. It's a milimeter wider than my Nexus 4, which I could live with. When I bought the Nexus 4 I was wary of a 4.7" screen but it's surprisingly usable and I don't have large hands. I wouldn't want to go back to a smaller display for anything. Narrower bezels are a long needed advance, and Apple hasn't caught up yet - the Motorola Razr M for example squeezes a 4.3" screen in an iPhone 5 sized device.

3) It is slimmer and fits a far higher capacity battery than the S3. The effect on power consumption from the screen and new processor/GPU isn't known yet, but I bet this will do better than the HTC One.

4) Forget the lame launch, there are some genuinely cool features in there.

5) Not launching a 4.3 inch S4 Mini with top of the line specs is a huge and stupid omission from Samsung.

Run out of ideas

[wesleyjconnor]

While its a shame to see that all the major producers have run out of ideas around hardware
It's nice to see Samsung doing some cool, if a little gimmicky, software ideas

The Gorilla in the Room!

[Tempest451]

So I know everything about the phone except, where's the Gorilla Glass?! I know there is a newer version of the Corning Glass, but I want all the goodness of the S4 to be well protected whether it's the new or old version.

Needs more RAM

[Vegemeister]

It seems to have fantastic specs in most departments, but why so little RAM? The most annoying issue on modern smartphones is the UI stalls that occur when you try to switch back and forth between more than 2 apps, or open more than 4 tabs in the web browser. 4 GiB would solve most of those problems.

Re:Needs more RAM

[dell623]

Huh what? My Nexus 4 with 2GB RAM flies through innumerable apps and tabs open, never seen even a hiccup, switches between apps and tabs instantly.

Re:Needs more RAM

[Custard Horse]

2Gb is still fairly rare for a smartphone isn't it? I thought the S3 was the first and the Nexus 4 the second. I guess everyone else will catch up but 2Gb is a fair amount - we're not running Windows here...

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[unl0rd]

I used to hit the WiFi button on one of the widgets all the time on my Android 1.5 HTC Hero, and every version since then.

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[Joce640k]

On mine you pull down the notification list and tap the WiFi icon.

OK, it's "swipe-tap", not just "tap" but it's not exactly a chore. I'm not sure I want a floating WiFi icon that's always on screen (which is the only way it could always be a single tap).

(PS: This is Android 2.2...)

Humbug. I want a real keyboard.

[CalRobert]

If only it had a hardware keyboard so one could type messages more than 28 characters long without massive frustration.

When apple released their Retina Display

[Anonymous Coward]

There wasn't much of this sort of discussion going on. It was hard to find the posts of people saying that the Nokia Phone had ~300ppi and was retina display, Apple having picked a value *slightly higher* than Nokia for marketing, not technical reasons.

And now that Samsung is going even higher, we find modded up statements about how this higher resolution is nothing special, Apple's retina display is just as good.

Re:S3 nice hardward but Android impementation suck

[mrpacmanjel]

I bought an S3 September last year - when it had ICS it felt quite nippy. However since "upgrading" to Jellybean I've noticed lags between switching apps and yes the UI is clunky and waayyy over-complicated.

It's still a damn good phone all I need is a stable version of cyanogen then I'll flash it.

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[Geeky]

I've got a stock Nexus 7 tablet, and wifi is on the power control widget, along with bluetooth, GPS, sync and brightness. Single tap to switch on and off.

Re:Some people are really underestimating this dev

[Custard Horse]

In relation to (5), it does make sense to push the most expensive version first then launch a cut down version for those that cannot afford its big brother. Did Samsung say there wouldn't be a 'mini'? If they did, i agree with wholeheartedly.

Granular permissive permissions

[Hyperhaplo]

So can we expect to see a granular permissive permission system where if an Application asks for Full Internet Access the user has option to install and use the Application and disallow access to the Internet?

Re:Granular permissive permissions

[Villain]

There are apps like pdroid that can do this (root required). In my experience, it broke basic functionality of the apps when you denied certain permissions so I wouldn't expect it to ever be standard part of android. Too easy for non-expert users to break things. App developers would need to account for it and build it into the app (don't hold your breath).

Re:tap to turn WiFi On/Off?

[csumpi]

How about a widget? If one tap wifi turnoff is your desire, just put a widget on the home screen.

Re:Some people are really underestimating this dev

[Gaygirlie]

4) Forget the lame launch, there are some genuinely cool features in there.

S Health: useless for anyone but fitness-nuts. Smart Pause: doesn't work for me because of the facial tattoo. S Voice Drive: doesn't work because Finnish. S Translator: see S Voice Drive. Audio in images: why not video instead, then?

Re:Some people are really underestimating this dev

[JDG1980]

That display is awesome, AMOLEDs are getting better and we're finally beyond retina density for AMOLED displays (the S3 had a pentile display which lowers the effective dpi a bit)

The S4 also has Pentile, though at 1080p on a 5" screen the effective DPI is still very good.

Samsung needs to crack down on crapware

[JDG1980]

Samsung's smartphone hardware is superior to Apple, and their own user experience is pretty good. But one of the big advantages of the iPhone, which Samsung hasn't been able to match yet, is the fact that the iPhone comes clean: no crapware installed by default, even if you buy it through a carrier (which almost everyone in the US does). Samsung lets the carriers jam their phones full of crap, some of which runs in the background, and it seriously degrades the experience and wastes your limited storage space. It's even worse than an OEM PC, because you can't remove it without rooting. Samsung may not have the heft to force all of their phones to come crap-free, but they should at least be able to enforce that on their premium lines like the Galaxy S and Note series.

Meh, I'll probably get one..

[caveat]

I have two contracts with Verizon that roll over a year apart; I need both lines for the foreseeable future and don't plan on switching carriers (I go to deep deep Louisiana and Maine, NO other service out there). I have a less-than-year-old S3 that has been in a rubber-baby-buggy-bumper and screen protector since day 1, absolutely mint condition; I can unload it on ebay and get an S4 on contract while quite possibly putting money in my pocket. Been at it for four years, it's really not a bad gig if you can swing it.

Re:Software improvements? Really?

[ilsaloving]

Because that's what comes with the phone, and should be the base method of backing up, syncing music, photos, etc.

Other tools are good for when you want to do something special that the base software doesn't provide. They shouldn't be necessary because the base software doesn't work at all.

Re:Software improvements? Really?

[ilsaloving]

I would rather have a 200mb monstrosity that works, than an 87mb pile of crap that isn't even good enough to be a boat anchor.

Plastic is far more durable.

[caveat]

Ligher and far more forgiving. I've seen one Sammy, a Galaxy Note, with a cracked screen...and it seems every third iPhone is shattered. My broke-ass friend got a 4 when they went up for free, put in in a OTTERBOX, and promptly dropped and broke it. We're both technically savvy dudes and decided that the undeniably beautiful seamless metal and glass construction, while aesthetically incomparable, is utter shite at absorbing shock - phone goes down, lands on a corner, frame transfers energy to glass, CRUNCH. My S3 has hit the ground many times, hell, I slipped and literally flung it to the sidewalk once...nary a scratch, and it just has a silicone skin and screen film.

How frugal!

[Cajun Hell]

Most people skip a generation

You say they skip a generation (rather than 4 or 5 generations) to convince us they're not idiots?

Nice job on the comic understatement. That's right up there with revising Earth's entry from "harmless" to "mostly harmless."

"My wife left me because she said I was cheating on her with a dozen women. I was outraged at the false accusation. I had only eight mistresses!"

"The slick car salesman tried to convince me to buy a $250k Ferrari. I was too shrewd for him, though, and avoided the extravagant waste by buying the $190k model instead,"

"It's unfair to characterize me as a crack smoker. All I do is snort a line now and then."

"The cops said I stole everything in the house. As if I really could have carried out that big heavy dishwasher."

Everybody, join in. Write one.

Re:Software improvements? Really?

[ilsaloving]

It takes a minute or two for Kies to just connect to the phone and display the status. The last time I (tried to) back up, I let it go all night and the next morning it was still at the beginning of the backup with no progress at all.

Several times I have tried to do something as simple as copy music to my phone, with nothing happening. Rebooting the phone seemed to help.

On the phone PTP mode fails completely. When I turn that on and load up Picasa, it detects the phone as a camera but then just sits there twiddling it's thumbs instead of showing me my importable photos.

The quality of Samsung's software is mindbogglingly poor. For the prices they charge for their devices, it's unacceptable.

Tardisphone

[DarthVain]

Apparently the new one will have a larger screen, but somehow be physically smaller. Seems like they are bending the rules of physics more than doctor who!

Battery

[DarthVain]

#1 new feature should be battery life.

Either A) make the screen more efficient, or B) use a larger/better designed battery.

About the only thing that bugs me about the S3 is the battery life. If I am actually using it during the day, I can't get a full day out of it.

Yes you can replace the battery which is good (and I just bought a back up recently), however I expect that replacing it using the back will be a pain in the ass, so even making it easier to change batteries might be a good start if there are no gains to be had with A or B yet.

Plastic body

[phorm]

My "plastic body" GS2 has been dropped several times. Once from height with the screen impacting the corner of a metal file cabinet.
Damage: a little scuff on the corner, and a dint to the film that was over the screen.

I'm actually very surprised at how well the phone has survived various brushes with destruction. The worst was being dropped partway into a bowl of chili... which took about a week to recover from (with cleaning).

Blue tint

[phorm]

This is something I've noticed on the GS2. It's most noticeable when viewing at an angle in dim light.
In normal light or direct-on the tint isn't very noticeable, but it's definitely there.

Re:AMOLED screens

[DocSavage64109]

Amoled sounds good and well, except for the reports of image retention / burn-in.

Re:Some people are really underestimating this dev

[ottothecow]

How about a smaller screen version for someone who could afford the big brother but would like something that can slip invisibly into a pocket (without wearing dad jeans or double pleated baggy trousers).

Laptop manufacturers do this all the time (and it seems like the tablets are this way too). It might cost less because you can use a cheaper display and you might have to lower the specs a little bit to fit the small size which might drop the cost, but asking for a mini is just asking for a smaller form factor. It has nothing to do with how much you want to pay for the phone.

Re:Found 'em

[Tough Love]

iOS still has a huge quality and power lead in apps.

I just love how Apple zombies never admit anything, they just grasp at the next straw.

Thug Apple made its bed, now it has to lie in it.

Re:Found 'em

[Tough Love]

Isn't it rather more "graspy" to deny Apple is doing something right when they can beat out a field of Android phones?

Huh, you're off your meds again. Apple isn't beating the field of Android phones, rather, Apple is getting the tar beaten out of it in the marketplace by the little green robot. Looking forward with breathless anticipation to the next quarterlies. Hint: bring your mop to swab the decks. There's going to be blood all over the place.

Wow, Apple spinmod astroturfers seem to have issues dealing with reality these days.

Re:Some people are really underestimating this dev

[dell623]

Not cut down. That's the point. Just smaller. A 4.3" 1280x720 screen in an iPhone 5 sized phone would be awesome,maybe clock down the processor and GPU a bit, that's the 'big enough' point for many.

Re:Software improvements? Really?

[herojig]

just buy syncmate and get over it.