Samsung Galaxy S4: Rumors vs Reality

It is finally here. That’s right, Samsung finally unveiled its much awaited smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S4 yesterday in New York City at the official launch ceremony arranged for the smartphone. Here we are again, ready to analyze the hottest smartphone in the industry today. A few days back we talked about what we could expect from the Samsung Galaxy S4. Now that its here, it is time to reconsider all the rumors regarding the features of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and compare them with the official features that were announced by Samsung in the launch ceremony. Did Samsung really deliver? Lets find out.

Samsung has dubbed the device as “Life Companion”. It seems that the main focus had been for the device to contain more cutting edge features based on the gestures. Something that had never been done before on a large scale. Lets take a look at some of the major attributes of the newly launched device.

Design/Display

Perhaps the only disappointment is the overall design. Over the time leading up to its release, several different designs were being claimed to have leaked of the smartphone. None of them stood true however, as we speak. The phone doesn’t look much different from the outside than its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S III. One can compare it to the time when the newly released Apple’s iPhone 5  turned out to be a slightly taller version of iPhone 4S. The internal differences are a totally different story though. The Galaxy S4 flaunts a higher screen resolution than its predecessor. As expected, the phone is available in black and white colors respectively. The dimensions would be 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm and the screen display is 5 inches like we thought it would be. So here are some rumors regarding the design that turned out to be true.

Camera

The camera has to be one of the features that Samsung tried their best to improve. Its safe to say this because the camera of the S4 is a huge step up from that of the S III. The new smartphone comes with a 13 megapixel camera as the rumors suggested it would. Samsung has guaranteed that this camera would capture remarkable low-light snaps. The front has a 2 megapixel camera.

Processor/Storage/OS

It was believed that the Samsung Galaxy S4 would come with a 1.8 GHz quad core processor. The reality turned out to be much better, as it indeed contains the Exynos 5 1.6 GHz octa-core processor. That right there guarantees great speeds. The storage was exactly according to the rumors though. We reported earlier that it was expected to contain three versions in terms of storage. 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB respectively. The RAM is approximately 2 GB and the  microSD cards of up to 64 GB worth of storage would be supported. The device runs the latest Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.

Other Features

Like I mentioned earlier, Samsung raised the bar with more gesture based features. Remember that mind boggling eye scrolling technology we were expecting? It was indeed true as Samsung made it happen. The pages do scroll down using your line of sight. Another thing to note here is that while watching videos, if you look away from the phone, it would pause the video being played until you look back at the screen. Amazing.

Final Verdict

This post was a basic analysis of what we thought Samsung Galaxy S4 would be, and what it really turned out to be. I must say, Samsung did deliver on many accounts. Like I said before, perhaps the only major disappointment is the similar design to that of S3. The fantastic hardware, the latest software and the cutting edge, never seen before features are what put it over the top and make it a worthy flagship phone for one of the biggest manufacturers of the world, Samsung.