Samsung Announces New Flagship Galaxy S 4 Competitor to Apple's iPhone

[HenryDJP]

The Samsung keynote was horrible to say the least. Where do I start? Over produced just to showcase a phone. The comedy was corny and received very little response. No need for all that broadway nonsense including the over-the-top orchestra. It was very sexist and borderline racist and the kid tap dancing was completely unnecessary. Also they put down the GS3 in order to make the GS4 look good. How stupid was that? Good job Sammy, upset your customers that just bought the GS3 and signed a 2 year contract.

I did like the voice translation. Not sure how useful that will be to many people or how often anyone would really use it. The new design was lackluster. You have to look very closely at it to see the thinner body. Are they trying to "Out Apple" Apple with the thin design? Oh, but the stronger polycarbonate design is suppose to address the GS3 smashing to pieces when dropped during the iPhone 5 head to head showdown.

I did think being able to use the touchscreen while wearing gloves was a nice feature but the hovering hand gestures may cause a lot of accidental input and be frustrating causing people to want to turn that feature off.
The talking pictures is somewhat nice but the group video including the "Head" of the person holding the GS4 was cheesy and gimmicky.

So much was missed out in this broadway show. They didn't even talk about usable battery life, they just showed the specs of the battery and boasted about it being removable. I guess it's their way to stick it to Apple. Not impressive. They didn't even do a full recap of all the features. I got bored and forgot most of them due to how long and dragging the show was.

Whomever has a GS3, this is not the upgrade for you unless you like paying for upgrades that really aren't upgrades. Somehow I feel the upcoming iPhone has nothing to worry about.

 

[dennno]

Apple is hanging on to the smartphone market by a thread, a name, and an IOS. Sorry, but the hardware on this is WAY better than the iPhone 5. Apple is "stuck on thin" and its beyond annoying. They are destroying their mac lines slowly and I suspect the next iPhone will look very similar to the last iPhone. Seriously, who will buy an iPhone 5s that looks like an iPhone 5? If not for IOS, I would be on the galaxy.

iOS is not exactly a "[thin] thread". It's a huge component that influences people's decisions to buy phones. If Samsung had iOS then you'd switch over. Apple understands that the phone is the whole experience with the OS, heck even Samsung's VP uses an iPhone for that reason.

 

[Frenchjay]

Apple should try to exit the smart phone business and save some face while they still have some pride.

No way can they withstand the assault that Samsung is going to provide with their ever more impressive innovations.

The iPhone survived so long thanks to gimmicks, but its not getting it done anymore. Apple will be smart to enter some other market segment like smart watches.

Lol, is this a joke? You do realise that the specs that you see on the phone mean very little don't you? When you actually hold the phone and use it, then you can say whether or not its better than this or that. Faster CPU? Well Apple devices have proven time and time again that a lower clocked CPU can beat one that is better with no lagging of stuttering. Megapixels in a camera, they mean nothing. Up until now most tech sites say the iPhone 5 has got the best phone camera.

Samsung have crammed in specs and gimmicks and kept the same design. I don't care about what it does on paper, it means nothing compared to user experience.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Drama Burst, which creates animated GIFs

... that's one of the crappiest picture formats around. Why on earth would you want a picture with such high resolution and such crappy color reproduction? Why not go with animated PNGs (they're supported by Chrome and Firefox if no other browsers...)

 

[fourthtunz]

Apple should try to exit the smart phone business and save some face while they still have some pride.

No way can they withstand the assault that Samsung is going to provide with their ever more impressive innovations.

The iPhone survived so long thanks to gimmicks, but its not getting it done anymore. Apple will be smart to enter some other market segment like smart watches.

Classic!

 

[irDigital0l]

Looks really nice.

If apple doesn't show anything new during spring ill probably get this. Also looking to Google IO.

 

[ranjanrocks]

I found the upgrade from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5 to be excellent.

i found the iphone 4 to iphone 5 upgrade a complete waste! decided to dump this ****** phone for a HTC one.......

 

[JodyK]

Competition is good for all of us! Now c'mon Apple and wow us yet another time and blow their Android crap out of the water!

 

[daneoni]

Apple should try to exit the smart phone business and save some face while they still have some pride.

No way can they withstand the assault that Samsung is going to provide with their ever more impressive innovations.

The iPhone survived so long thanks to gimmicks, but its not getting it done anymore. Apple will be smart to enter some other market segment like smart watches.

I'd like some of that hashish you've been smoking. Actually maybe not.

 

[SpectatorHere]

The S4 is really nice, but I'm a fan of the stylus, so I guess I'll wait for the Note 3.

Hope you've dumped your Apple stock, an iPhone 5/5s will get blown out of the water by this. While hardcore Apple fans won't buy this, everyone else will. It's superior every which way but in looks--as if that's a big concern. Replaceable battery, expandable memory slot, outputs to TV, IR blaster for TV remote functions, LTE, DirectX 10 graphics, NFC, 5" HD display, external temp and hygrometer.

I hope Apple comes out with the iPhone 6 this year, they need to.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Apple is hanging on to the smartphone market by a thread, a name, and an IOS. Sorry, but the hardware on this is WAY better than the iPhone 5. Apple is "stuck on thin" and its beyond annoying. They are destroying their mac lines slowly and I suspect the next iPhone will look very similar to the last iPhone. Seriously, who will buy an iPhone 5s that looks like an iPhone 5? If not for IOS, I would be on the galaxy.

You are so correct because the S4 looks nothing like the S3:

 

[mozumder]

What would be killer is if Apple came out with an iPhone 1 again, with modern CPU & display. Basically an iPod touch with a GSM/CDMA phone but no 3G or LTE, so that there's no data plan required.

This is the phone Apple needs for China/India, and for people that use a phone as a phone only and for the iPod function.

Is it even possible to get a smartphone without buying a data plan?

 

[marv08]

Pen tile displays use an uneven sub-pixel count (2 red, 2 green, 1 blue), the actual rendition of content is dynamically adjusted for in the display driver. This works fine for irregular patterns (like images, movies, most games etc.), because this trickery is not detectable by the eye (as long as the pixel size is small enough based on the viewing distance).

The problem is font rendition and the technology OSs use to perform font smoothing (anti-aliasing and sub pixel rendering), as all OSs expect to deal with panels using equal RGB sub-pixel counts. That means they perform font smoothing computations based on wrong assumptions. This is made worse by font smoothing on non-Apple OSs being less efficient anyhow (the Quartz engine in OS X and iOS scales font width, height and weight linearly, other OSs only scale width and height linearly - this results in the actual font weight being different/off at different magnifications).

If you market a 400-something ppi display, people expect to get a text rendering quality that is identical to an Apple "Retina" device. Due to the combined effects of the PenTile sub-pixel layout and less effective font scaling by the OS, they simply will not get that. It is a clear case of designing for an impressive spec sheet, but not for the best results.

 

[bbeagle]

Too big, ugly design and a lot of unnecessary features as always.. you can still see the lag in the videos..

The problem with Android is the lag inherent with Java itself. Apple developers use Objective C, and Android developers use Java.

The sticky details in as consise layman terms as I can think of right now:
Java has garbage collection, which Objective C does not have. Garbage Collection makes it easier for developers, but causes lag.

Garbage collection frees up memory, but it can run at times beyond developer control. When garbage collection starts, the application must be paused/frozen for a split second until the memory is freed, and then the program can run again.

Objective C, on the other hand, leaves it to the developers to do this manually. (The latest version of Objective C has the compiler do a lot of the work using ARC - but it's still not garbage collection).

It's sort of like you throw out all sorts of stuff in your garbage can in your room...... Java would be like your mom who randomly comes in to dump your garbage can into the trash, thus emptying it. It might be almost empty, it might be overflowing when she comes in, but when she comes in, you have to cease all your activities, like talking with friends, until she leaves. Objective C is YOU taking the garbage can out when you are free and doing nothing. Like, you just got off the phone and now are free for 2 minutes to do this activity.

Until this issue is solved in Java, Android will lag. I know there are some future developments to java in allowing garbage collection to run without pausing/freezing the app, but that is tricky as well.

 

[b11051973]

I really want a 5" smartphone. I feel so tempted by these Android phones. If all we get this year is the 5S, then it could be 18 months before I maybe see a larger iPhone. I'm not saying I only want them to build a big phone. Make a 4" and 5" iPhone, just please give me a 5" iPhone!! I love my iPhone 5. I just want it to have a bigger screen!!

 

[hrl]

Now waiting for the incremental iPhone 5S in 6 months, still featuring a dual core CPU when the rest of the world has movied on to quad core.

While I like the idea of having a quad core under the hood, I can't help but thinking how smooth the iPhone 5 is with A6. It doesn't need anything faster. It shows how efficient iOS is and how very very inefficient the other side is and it is still not as smooth as iOS with all those power.

This isn't just in iOS, but Macs as well. Imagine if you run Windows on a 1.6 GHz C2D...

 

[BornAgainApple]

The S4 has some neat sensors I wish the iPhone could ship with, like barometer, thermometer and humidity just to name a few. But I'm happy with my i5

 

[SpectatorHere]

The problem with Android is the lag inherent with Java itself. Apple developers use Objective C, and Android developers use Java.

The sticky details in as consise layman terms as I can think of right now:
Java has garbage collection, which Objective C does not have. Garbage Collection makes it easier for developers, but causes lag.

Garbage collection frees up memory, but it can run at times beyond developer control. When garbage collection starts, the application must be paused/frozen for a split second until the memory is freed, and then the program can run again.

Objective C, on the other hand, leaves it to the developers to do this manually. (The latest version of Objective C has the compiler do a lot of the work using ARC - but it's still not garbage collection).

It's sort of like you throw out all sorts of stuff in your garbage can in your room...... Java would be like your mom who randomly comes in to dump your garbage can into the trash, thus emptying it. It might be almost empty, it might be overflowing when she comes in, but when she comes in, you have to cease all your activities, like talking with friends, until she leaves. Objective C is YOU taking the garbage can out when you are free and doing nothing. Like, you just got off the phone and now are free for 2 minutes to do this activity.

Until this issue is solved in Java, Android will lag. I know there are some future developments to java in allowing garbage collection to run without pausing/freezing the app, but that is tricky as well.

This is utter bs. It used to be true, but just isn't anymore. Long time iPhone owner (have an i5 atm) and I can assure that my Nexus 7 is just as responsive...in fact more responsive thanks to the crappy touch sensitivity of the i5.

 

[ranjanrocks]

Lol, is this a joke? You do realise that the specs that you see on the phone mean very little don't you? When you actually hold the phone and use it, then you can say whether or not its better than this or that. Faster CPU? Well Apple devices have proven time and time again that a lower clocked CPU can beat one that is better with no lagging of stuttering. Megapixels in a camera, they mean nothing. Up until now most tech sites say the iPhone 5 has got the best phone camera.

Samsung have crammed in specs and gimmicks and kept the same design. I don't care about what it does on paper, it means nothing compared to user experience.

u mean to say that the same lame user experience on iOS since 2007 is great? it's just sad....everyone in my friends circle and work place are dumping their iphones for samsung.....the screen size on iphone 5 is ridiculous!! terrible resolution, pathetic battery life, LTE signal is terrible(cant blame AT&T coz my friends HTC one x has better speeds on same network), the new earphone jack in the bottom is sad, "earpods" are a joke to say the least! crappy mono speaker.....the list is never ending.....

iPhones were considered "cool" until a year ago.....people laugh at you if u upgrade to an iPhone5 now.....samsung galaxy series is the new "cool" kid on the block now....

 

[unobtainium]

Not trying to sound critical but how much better can a display get when once it leaves the ability to be seen by the human retina? Serious question. To me anything over 400+ seems pretty pointless.

I know how it can get better - use IPS instead of the dim, colour-inaccurate AMOLED technology. Even better, move away from pentile, which gives a dingy look.

The iPhone 5 screen, though smaller, is still vastly superior for these reasons.

 

[Bahroo]

It still has a pentile display...are you joking me lmfao wow

 

[SpectatorHere]

Pen tile displays use an uneven sub-pixel count (2 red, 2 green, 1 blue), the actual rendition of content is dynamically adjusted for in the display driver. This works fine for irregular patterns (like images, movies, most games etc.), because this trickery is not detectable by the eye (as long as the pixel size is small enough based on the viewing distance).

The problem is font rendition and the technology OSs use to perform font smoothing (anti-aliasing and sub pixel rendering), as all OSs expect to deal with panels using equal RGB sub-pixel counts. That means they perform font smoothing computations based on wrong assumptions. This is made worse by font smoothing on non-Apple OSs being less efficient anyhow (the Quartz engine in OS X and iOS scales font width, height and weight linearly, other OSs only scale width and height linearly - this results in the actual font weight being different/off at different magnifications).

If you market a 400-something ppi display, people expect to get a text rendering quality that is identical to an Apple "Retina" device. Due to the combined effects of the PenTile sub-pixel layout and less effective font scaling by the OS, they simply will not get that. It is a clear case of designing for an impressive spec sheet, but not for the best results.

Yeah, but it's not pen-tile...

 

[samcraig]

There was little audience response because the audience wasn't mic'ed. Were you there? I wasn't. But I know some people who were there - the show got a response.

One of the biggest complaints about Android manufacturers is that they fail to show what the phone can do in real life. They are too busy spouting specs and/or futuristic robot crap or whatever.

While cheesy - this was a great presentation that showcases what the phone can actually DO. For that I give the presentation a thumbs up. But I'm not at all surprised you hated it.

Racist? How so? And to showcase the drama mode on the phone - great idea with the tap dancing. Maybe you aren't into the arts. It's cool. Maybe if they had someone jumping out of a plane it would have been better for you. To each their own.

They didn't put down the S3. And in fact - many of the same software features of the S4 are going to be offered on the S3. How is the S4 timing any different than the iPhone 4s or what will most likely be the 5S. What about the new new iPad?

Some of the features are gimicky. Some of the ones you mention I am sure are app based and don't activate in ALL apps.

I don't have the S3 - I have the SII skyrocket - so I'm pretty jazzed about this. Just like I was jazzed going from one generation of the iPhone to two ahead of it.

As for specs - they matter less than what the phone actually does. So I agree - battery size matters less than what the "life" is.

Megapixels don't matter - how do the pictures look

Cores don't matter - how does the phone perform.

I'll look forward to reading reviews. Worst case - there's always the HTC One. Although their tweeting tonight really was infantile.

The Samsung keynote was horrible to say the least. Where do I start? Over produced just to showcase a phone. The comedy was corny and received very little response. No need for all that broadway nonsense including the over-the-top orchestra. It was very sexist and borderline racist and the kid tap dancing was completely unnecessary. Also they put down the GS3 in order to make the GS4 look good. How stupid was that? Good job Sammy, upset your customers that just bought the GS3 and signed a 2 year contract.

I did like the voice translation. Not sure how useful that will be to many people or how often anyone would really use it. The new design was lackluster. You have to look very closely at it to see the thinner body. Are they trying to "Out Apple" Apple with the thin design? Oh, but the stronger polycarbonate design is suppose to address the GS3 smashing to pieces when dropped during the iPhone 5 head to head showdown.

I did think being able to use the touchscreen while wearing gloves was a nice feature but the hovering hand gestures may cause a lot of accidental input and be frustrating causing people to want to turn that feature off.
The talking pictures is somewhat nice but the group video including the "Head" of the person holding the GS4 was cheesy and gimmicky.

So much was missed out in this broadway show. They didn't even talk about usable battery life, they just showed the specs of the battery and boasted about it being removable. I guess it's their way to stick it to Apple. Not impressive. They didn't even do a full recap of all the features. I got bored and forgot most of them due to how long and dragging the show was.

Whomever has a GS3, this is not the upgrade for you unless you like paying for upgrades that really aren't upgrades. Somehow I feel the upcoming iPhone has nothing to worry about.

 

[GuitarDTO]

I'll give Samsung credit for trying to innovate and bring some new stuff to the table, but most of the "features" they introduced will be gimmicks at best. At this point the phone market is saturated and it really just depends on which ecosystem and screen size you prefer. I believe blackberry is the only one bringing something truly new to the table with the z10, and it will be the one phone that may get me to jump from my iPhone instead of waiting another year to see what the next generation phones bring.

 

[zosokm]

Apple should try to exit the smart phone business and save some face while they still have some pride.

No way can they withstand the assault that Samsung is going to provide with their ever more impressive innovations.

The iPhone survived so long thanks to gimmicks, but its not getting it done anymore. Apple will be smart to enter some other market segment like smart watches.

The iphone survived so long because it reintroduced the concept of how a smart phone should be. Every other phone maker has adopted the iphone path since 2007. The majority of "smartphone" users are not macrumors, cnet or arstechnica readers. They just buy the smart phone and use less than 10% of the features. Android sells well because they have extremely cheap handsets. The iphone 5 and galaxy s3/4 buyers are not the majority in the rest of the world where the phones are not subsidized. Even in the US the 2 year old iphone 4 is still selling very well. If Apple were to release a low cost iphone - that would sell extremely well too.

Phones are only going to be evolutionary from now on - they have reached their peak. I dont expect samsung or apple to bring out something revolutionary in phones for the next few years. Thats why companies are focussing on other technologies (like google glass)