Vodafone Ghana, in their quest to always bring “Power
to You”, was the first telecommunications company to launch the Samsung Galaxy
S4 in the country. This launch was done with two experience zones at their Cantonments
Office and the Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel here in Accra, on the 26th
of April.
Vodafone wanted their valued customers to experience
the uniqueness and quality of the new device and also to encourage them to
pre-order. I believe anyone with the means would know the device is worth the
buy.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been the world's
best-selling smartphone this made the expectations for the sequel sky
high. Amidst all the “small chops”, the “bone
cracking” dancers and friendly people, I got the chance to take a look and feel
the Samsung Galaxy S4. First impression,
very light weight, smooth navigation though applications and functionality, 5-inch 1080p Super
AMOLED screen, a superfast quad-core 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB RAM,
LTE, NFC, and a 13MP camera , takes
solid, sharp photos and videos. For someone, like me who pretty much likes to
be connected all the time and also be able to capture content anywhere and
anytime, I was already in love with the device. Sesky! Solid! Sweet! And
Ultimately, Smart! Anyway,
since I didn’t have the device all to myself long enough to carry out a
technical review, I would just like to make available the technical review from
Gizmodo.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Specs
• Network: All major U.S. carriers
• OS: Android 4.2.2 with TouchWiz UI
• CPU: 1.9 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600
• Screen: 5-inch 1920x1080 Super AMOLED (441PPI)
• RAM: 2GB
• Storage: 16 or 32GB + micro SD up to 64GB
• Camera: 13MP rear / 2MP front
• Battery: 2600 mAh Li-Ion
• Dimensions: 5.38 x 2.75 x 0.31 inches
• Weight: 4.59 ounces
Design
If you're familiar with the Galaxy S III, the
S4 will look strikingly familiar. It retains the same rounded-rectangle look,
with metal edges and a slippery, finger-print-trapping plastic back that looks
like it belongs on a far more down market phone. It's at least functional,
though; the back is removable, so you can swap out the battery or expand your
storage capabilities with a micro SD card.
One place Samsung does manage to score design
points is growing the screen from 4.8 inches on the Galaxy S III to a full 5.0
inches on the S4, while still making the phone thinner, narrower, and easier to
grip. The side bezels are shrunk down to nearly nothing, and the screen takes
up almost the entire front of the device. Speaking of the screen, it is easily
the nicest Samsung has ever made. The colors (especially blues and greens)
really pop, and the 441 pixels per inch ensure that text is super-clear. It's
also bright enough to be clearly readable on a bright, sunny day, and the Super
AMOLED screen makes the blacks like staring into the abyss.
While Nexus phones are moving away from
physical buttons for navigation, Samsung has opted to include three of them
here. The S4 has capacitive buttons for Menu and Back, and a physical,
clickable button for Home. It's wasted space. But worse, the capacitive buttons
don't light up until you actually touch them, so if you forget which side is
Menu and which is Back you might end up closing out of something
unintentionally. Annoying!
The final touch: on top of the device is a
super tiny IR blaster for controlling your TV. You'd never even notice it if
you weren't looking for it, and you won't look for it.
Using It
As we noted in our original hands-on, the S4 comes packed
full of "features." There's Air View, which allows you to hover your
finger over the screen to see some information without actually clicking.
There's Air Gestures, which allows you to wave your hand over the phone to
change between tabs or photos. There's Smart Scroll, with which you tilt your
device to scroll, instead of using your finger. There's Smart Pause, which will
pause a video when you look away from the screen. And there's Group Play, which
lets you play a handful of selected video games with friends on the same Wi-Fi
network, or use several S4 phones as Sonos-like speakers.
The most important thing you need to know
about these features is that you will never use any of them. Ever. Never ever.
The end.
Why not? Oh, lots of reasons. Air View only
works with Samsung's customized apps—not Gmail, not Chrome—and even then it
doesn't work very well. Air Gestures are less accurate and less convenient than
just touching the screen. Smart Scroll is totally unreliable, and Smart Pause
is totally useless. The only, only justification for any of
these features is that you can wave your hand over the phone to answer a call
while driving, or, again, maybe if you're addicted to buffalo wings and have an
aversion to moist towelettes.
Make no mistake. These "features"
are nothing more than gimmicks, case studies in why different doesn't
always mean better, and can often be worse.
The good news is that you can turn off and/or
totally ignore most of these extraneous "features," and when you do,
there's a very good phone underneath. It's generally very fast, and HD games
like Temple Run: Oz, Inertia HD, and Naught all ran smoothly. The pre-installed
sliding keyboard is better than most manufacturer keyboards (looking at you,
HTC), with plenty of space between keys and a dedicated number row, but
auto-correct has a lot of issues, and we still prefer the keyboard on stock
Jelly Bean or SwiftKey 4. The unit we tested was on T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 network
(no T-Mobile LTE in NYC, yet, though this phone will work with it when it rolls
out); data speeds were good, and it connected reliably.
There will be a cadre of S4 accessories
available (TV adapters and such) at some point, but the only one available at
launch is the S View Flip Cover. It's a good-looking cover that adds almost no
thickness to your phone by completely replacing the back. The phone can sense
when the cover is closed, and it will only light up one little (plastic) window
on the front, which should save you a little battery power (when an AMOLED
pixel is black it doesn't use any power). You can swipe to accept or dismiss
calls even when the cover is closed.
All of which sounds handy, but it makes the
phone more cumbersome to use. It means you have to use two hands when you first
pull your phone out, and when it's folded back, there's an extra piece of
plastic your camera has to shoot through. It also makes the volume rocker way
harder to access. In general, not worth it. Especially for the $60 price
tag.
Camera
In decent lighting, the camera is among the
best shooters out there. Images are very sharp and there's a surprising amount
of depth of field. Colors are rich, though they border on over-saturation, and
video quality is excellent. You can check out plenty of our sample shots here.
We've also included a few comparison images
below to give you a sense of how the S4's shooter performs relative to the
competition:
The camera app's mode selection wheel, which
was lifted from Samsung's own Galaxy Camera, is the most intuitive method for
switching between shooting modes on any smartphone we've tested. It has photos
showing you exactly what you're getting, underneath clear text, which eliminates
any guesswork.
Battery performance on the S4 is among the best
we've seen from smartphones this year, though it's still not anywhere near as
everlasting as the RAZR MAXX HD. It's important to note, though,
that our testing took place on T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, and not the more
power-hungry LTE of Verizon and AT&T. With that advantage, it slightly
edged out the HTC One by an hour or so on average (which itself does pretty decently).
The S4 did, though, make it to the end of the
night without additional charging fairly often, thanks to both the larger
battery (2600mAh vs. 2300mAh on the One) and the more economical AMOLED screen,
though the processor's higher clock speed taxed it somewhat.
Speaking of which: that screen really is leaps
and bounds better than the one on last year's S III. It's very sharp, pretty,
and easy to read. The camera app is laid out very nicely, and the included OCR
(optical character recognition) software, which can translate written words on
the fly, are both examples of app actually done right. Overall, the S4 is
definitely a sizable upgrade over the S III.
If you are
located in Ghana and interested in acquiring one. Just contact any Vodafone
Ghana retail shop and make an order.
