Post by uptowndragon on Jun 3, 2013 0:41:05 GMT 7
Samsung Galaxy S4 GTI9500 Smartphone Review
MAKE WAY FOR YOUR NEW LIFE COMPANION – IT’S LEAN, MEAN, SEDUCTIVE & 100% PURE FUN
Reviewed By: Dragon
CERTIFIED OBJECT OF DESIRE BY RENTAK SEJUTA
Samsung has been taking the world by storm in recent years, ever since it embraced the Android platform, and released its Apple beating Galaxy series of smartphones. The S1, S2 and S3 saw significant growth for the Korean electronics giant in the mobile devices marketplace, and pretty much set the benchmark for all Android based smartphones. The Korean technology maestro’s are now back with their latest incarnation, the Galaxy S4, touted as the world’s best ever smartphone, and we were lucky enough find ourselves with one courtesy of Samsung Malaysia to test out. Amazingly at the point of this writing, 10 million S4s have already been sold, which may render whatever we write about a bit redundant.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 which Samsung terms as a life companion and not just a smartphone, comes packed with a bus load of features and is certainly one mean machine under the hood. For starters, the GTI9500 we were provided with is powered by a killer Exynos 5 Octa-core 5410 system on chip (S.O.C.) set up using two quad core processors – a 1.6 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and a 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor – coupled with a Tri Core 533 Mhz Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU, running the latest Android Jellybean 4.2.2 version. To the non techies among us, it simply means that the S4 is blazingly superfast and a beast of a performer. Without delving into the details, this technical set up is also more power efficient, giving the S4 even more juice to its already large capacity 2600mAh battery, pushing it to around 12 – 15 hours of mixed usage. The S4 also boasts an even brighter 5” Full HD Super AMOLED (1920 x 1080) 441 ppi display wrapped in a 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm body, complete with a 2 megapixel front facing HD camera and a 13 megapixel rear facing auto focus HD camera complete with a flash unit, 2GB RAM, 16 GB storage and a micro SD slot which can support up 64GB of additional storage. The S4 is HSDPA (42.2Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76Mbps) compliant, and supports all the standard 2.5G networks as well as LTE. GPS is standard but the S4 also has GLONASS, the Russian equivalent.
Coming from using a smaller footprint Android device, I was surprised to note that the larger yet slim and sleek looking S4 was incredibly light, weighing in at just 130g and snug enough to fit in my palm, although I would have preferred it to have a tad more grip on its diamond patterned polycarbonate back, being an absolute klutz myself. The TCO and UL certified S4 which is made with eco-friendly material and processes, comes packaged quite attractively in a crate like hard paper box made from 100% recycled paper as well, that also holds a stereo headset, additional earphone plugs, a USB power cum data cable, a portable wall socket plug, the Quick Start Guide, a Handbook and the Warranty Card. Even the printing on the box is made of soya ink. A big thumbs up from Rentak Sejuta to Samsung for being a environmental conscience manufacturer.
Taking off the back cover only requires light prying and reveals a large 3.8V Lithium battery, a Micro SD slot, a Micro SIM slot and a small speaker at the bottom that packs a rather loud punch. Putting the back on is literally a snap. The S4 starts up in less than 22 seconds and shuts down in under 8. There are only 3 physical buttons on the S4 – Power, Volume and Home, plus two capacitive ones for Back & Menu.
If you never used an AMOLED display before, you will find the S4’s 1080p Super AMOLED screen, bright, vivid and detailed. It looks amazingly beautiful but personally I prefer an IPS display and found the screen a bit overwhelmingly vibrant but nothing I can’t get used to. But this is purely a matter of taste. Standard touch action on the S4 is super fluid and extremely responsive; with no lag whatsoever thanks to the powerhouse engine that runs the device. It was pure pleasure to use and the larger screen size was a welcome change for me, with text and graphics looking crisp and legible. Rentak Sejuta web page never looked so good on a smartphone before. Right out of the box everything looked in its rightful place on the screen, so much so I didn’t have to mess around with the effortless and intuitive Samsung TouchViz user interface which runs above the Android Jellybean 4.2.2 operating system. I absolutely love the haptic touchscreen QWERTY keyboard on the S4. It’s a boon to type with and I was so amazed with its accuracy and the fact that I actually managed to type comfortably without making a single mistake throughout this review period. The S4 virtual keyboard also supports trace typing (continuous typing) where you swipe your finger from one alphabet to another as well Swiftkey technology which allows the Samsung to learn and predict what you are typing.
Now that we have gone through all the basics, let’s find out what makes the Samsung S4 a life companion instead of just a smartphone. The premise of the S4 is that it is not just a technological wonder, it’s also a conceptual product that incorporates four key values of life – fun, relationship, life task and life care - into its design, which is based on consumer trends.
Touch-less
The most useful feature we liked about the new touchless functions on the S4 is the Air Call Accept which allows you to answer calls by just swiping our hand across the sensors on device. The call will go straight to the speakers. I can imagine using this while having a messy banana leaf meal. The other one we like is the Air Browse which allows you to swipe through your gallery images without touching the screen. Also good is Air Jump which allows you to scroll up or down web pages or emails without touching the screen. Another nice one is the Smart Scroll function which allows you to scroll web pages by either tilting your head up or down or tilting your device, but unfortunately this only works with the Samsung browser, and not with Chrome, or any other popular browsers. Another excellent feature which I will definitely find useful is the webpage magnifier which allows me to magnify contents on the screen, but this one is also strictly for the Samsung browser. Air View allows us a summary of what's in our email, without having to actually opening it, by just hovering over any email header. Samsung has pretty much thought of everything and some of these touch-less functions which are categorized under their Life Task philosophy (which aims to simplify tasks) may come in handy, but they do have some inherent limitations, but the S4 is already very functional and a breeze to use despite all these glossy new add-ons.
Camera
Most of the S4’s fun element is centered on its camera’s features, the most notable being the Dual Shot which allows you to not only take a photo of your subject but also yourself simultaneously with both the back and front cameras and being able to incorporate yourself into the main photo. This will probably be the most used feature in the S4 and I can see loads of fun with it. It comes with 8 different frames including a stamp, heart shaped and a window. Dual shot also allows you to split the screen in two – one for the front and one for the back. We spent hours fooling around with this we forgot the time. I even shared photos I took with this feature directly to my facebook account with the S4. It was easy as pie. Sharing is truly hassle-free on the S4. Being a professional photographer I normally do not put up poor quality photos on my social networks, so I rarely share anything I took with devices on the net, but the quality of photos taken with the S4 are better than decent.
I "inserted" myself into Samsung's web page highlighting Dual Shot, in the following photo, using the dual shot feature on the S4. Sharing it on Facebook was a cinch. "Cheers you all!"
Another excellent feature I discovered while I was fooling around with the camera was the voice control, which allows me to shoot with just my voice. This reduces camera shake as you don’t have to physically touch the screen. This was quite handy considering the light weight of the camera added to the camera shake despite having the anti shake on.
Sound & Shot will be another camera feature that will be highly appreciated, where nine seconds of sound can be recorded into a photo. This is an excellent feature especially if you want to voice tag a photo on the fly. It’s extremely handy and very practical in both work and play, and definitely a winner. We can see us using this quite a bit.
The other interesting new camera feature is the drama shot which allows you to shoot a series of photos of a moving object to create a single photo which shows the object in various forms of motion. We can see using this in concerts especially when artistes are running and jumping around all over the stage. It will certainly create some drama in the photo and will be great for publishers like us. Test shots proved that it worked reasonable well with images appearing clear and detailed with negligible blurring. I have to admit the camera is pretty decent on the S4 and may actually consider shooting with the device for our publication on certain occasions.
We managed to get our friend Andrew Warren from EHQ Projects, Malaysia's leading sound & staging company, to help us demonstrate the drama shot. This was done indoors at Life Centre in low light. Despite some expected blurring it turned out pretty okay.
Another feature we tried with S4 and worked superbly was the Panorama effect which we tried right outside Life Centre. We panned through a series of shots of the monorail line in front, and the S4 did the rest - PERFECTLY! The photo speaks for itself.
Besides these key features there’s a whole collection of other features that can be found by rotating the carousel styled selector that comes up after pressing the mode button. One of our favourites is the Eraser mode, which is excellent for getting rid of unwanted moving objects in a photo especially when you are shooting landscape, buildings or scenery. Great for removing people you know will somehow walk into your frame while you are shooting something of interest.
Music
Where the S4 falters is in its music playback. Not necessarily a deal breaker but if you are looking for a good music player, you have to look elsewhere. But this is the case for most smartphones or tablets in the market. The biggest problem in the S4 lies in the lack of quality amplification. We plugged it into our Altec Lansing 52521 amplified 2.1 speakers and ha d to crank up the volume almost to the max on the speakers just to hear the audio. Secondly the sound was rather flat and with nearly no separation in almost everything we played. We pretty much abandoned the idea of going through our selected track list after just a few songs, as the S4 simply could not keep up. We also opted out of listening to the S4 through our main reference Thinksound MS01 in ear monitors, for the fear it will further expose the weakness of S4 in the music department. Instead we decided to listen using our more mobile device friendly Woodees Classic earphones which tends to be more forgiving and usually brings out the best out of most devices. Everything fell in place once it was paired with the Woodees and the stereo separation was more apparent and the overall musicality was acceptable but not brilliant. We could hear the separation more clearly on songs like The Flying Pickets “Only You” and Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”. Alison Moyet’s “Invisible” & Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” sounded decent vocally and musically, but Incognito’s “Still A Friend Of Mine” sounded more clouded and uninspiring, despite the prominent notes of the bass guitar which was quite evident. The vocals went astray on Lightning Seeds “Pure” despite everything else on the track sounding tight. As expected the bass was boomy on David Guetta’s “Titanium” and totally wishy washy on Alexandra Stan’s “Mr Saxobeat”. Surprisingly the built in speaker on the S4 was listenable and definitely louder than its peers in the market – almost like a decent transistor radio. In fact we enjoyed the S4 more through its inbuilt speakers than any other method. Overall we found the S4 wanting as a music player with its inconsistent performance, weak output and lack of musicality, but hey, it’s a smartphone, not a dedicated music player, and will be more than good enough for most.
On The Go
Like we said earlier in this review, we were going to push the S4 to the max, so what better way then to take it along with us and use it in the real world, in our work, as we hit several events over the weekend. The key focus was to use the S4 as a supplementary image & video capture device, and the S4 did come in handy many a times, and even came to our rescue when our main photographic equipment failed on us. So along with our much trusted Canon Powershot SX30 superzoom and our handy Canon Powershot A1200, trooped along the S4. Check out the results during our weekend crawl through various music and performing arts events in the city.
Please do remember this is a smartphone and not a professional or an amateur camera, and will in no case replace a proper camera. That goes the same for all smartphone devices, but the S4 surprisingly had its strengths. We will let the photos and videos do the talking. Those of you who follow our Facebook updates, may have seen some of the photos we shot on the prowl uploaded directly, and may have been pleased with the results. So were we. It’s not perfect but it can be quite good if you make the extra effort to understand its limitations and advantages.
Our first stop was The Judgement Day 2013, the nation's biggest international BBoy jam, which was held at Zouk Club KL, last Friday evening. We took several late evening shots with the S4's camera mode set to auto. The results looked promising and can be compared with nearly most compact cameras in the market, but it did take a steady pair of hands, to counter camera shake.
The first image we shot was of top American street dancer BBoy Full Deck, who got his big break after being a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance. He was quite happy to pose for us.
The crew members of The Judgement Day were also more than happy to pose for us, but they were also keen to check out the new S4 after seeing the results of their photo. By the way is that an "S" for Samsung.
We also took the following inside Zouk in auto and flash fired in total darkness. The S4 actually managed to lock the shot and produce a sharp and vivid photo of the banner hung under the deejay counter. Many compact cameras would have failed this test. Overall the S4's camera seems to be able to focus rather well in the dark, which is a huge plus point for it.
Our next stop was Fete De La Music Festival at Jalan Mesui, Kuala Lumpur. The following was taken late in the night in auto mode with the flash fired. We loved the irony of the fact we did not need a big lensed DSLR to take a photo of fellow media buddy Liyana from Astro, who was busy snapping photos as well.
We took the S4 indoors into The Establisment, one of the venues for festival, to capture this decent photo of French power pop band Pony Pony Run Run's lead singer, under mixed stage lighting, without firing the flash. It took us several attempts to get it right as the singer was flailing about the stage. In the end we had a photo we could actually use for publication, and it did not come from our regular gear.
Video Capture
The Galaxy S4 can record and playback in full HD and supports MPEG4, H.264, H.263, DivX, DivX3.11, VC-1, VP8, WMV7/8, Sorenson Spark and HEVC codecs. We revisited The Judgement Day 2013 international bboy jam the following day for its main event, and took advantage of the S4's HD video recording capability in a staged lighting environment inside Zouk KL. The results were astounding. It was way better than many actual digital cameras touting the Full HD logo on their products. Playback on S4 was delightful and the downloaded video was equally as good in full screen on a 20" desktop PC LCD screen. We did not try it out with a HD TV as the device does not come with a direct HDMI out on the smartphone. We would require a Samsung HDTV /MHL Adapter EPL-3FHU (which is not supplied) to connect a HDMI cable to the TV. Considering how skinny the S4 is, it would be really asking a lot from Samsung to squeeze in a HDMI out port on the S4. Check out the video we shot live.
We actually shot loads of video with S4 at Judgement Day as the device was more than capable of holding its own despite shooting in a mixed and constantly changing lighting environment. Most of the videos we captured will be available on our YouTube channel shortly. Its video recording also proved extremely handy in the next two events we headed on to later in the night - the Rising EDM Festival @ KL Live and also the Buterfly Sleepover Party ft Jeanna Ho @ Butter Factory. Looking at the output, we can easily substitute the S4 with our regular HD video cameras in selected conditions.
But the thing that got us really excited was the S4 actually came to our rescue when our regular Canon Powershot SX30's flash unit failed to fire during our coverage at the Butter Factory. We would have actually lost the opportunity to capture some key content if not for the S4. Thankfully I managed to photograph the in demand Hong Kong actress, model and budding deejay Jeanna Ho live in action behind the decks, with S4. Was I glad I brought the S4 with me or I would have been kicking myself. Of course, I would not be expecting the S4 to match my Canon, but the shots I took at the event were more than decent and were of publishable quality for our news site.
All our efforts would have become zero if we had failed to shoot Jeanna Ho. The S4 literally saved us.
The S4 was not as intrusive as a large camera, so it was easy to snap shots of hot babes like these on the fly.
My publisher Anastasia and I chillin' after a hard days work, captured lazily with the S4.
Story Album
Capturing all these photos and having to manage them, had us checking the S4's Story Album feature which allows us to organize our photos and create photo albums based on specific events and customize them the way we want them with a choice of various layouts and themes. We gave it a shot and created one for the Butterfly Sleepover Party. It can be easily used as a simple photo album with descriptions, an e-brochure or even a digital coffee table book. It is only limited to our imagination. We can see this being used in real life for managing projects or for marketing purposes, or as a creative way to do presentations, and feel it will definitely come in handy in our line of work should we choose to create something on the fly.
But if you are one who prefers to work on your photos on the PC, data transfer is a cinch on the S4. Just plug and play.
Conclusion
Regardless of whether you want to buy into Samsung's "Life Companion" philosophy, the superfast, well specified Galaxy S4 is already a major contender in the smartphone marketplace despite all the bells and whistles it boasts, and continues to set the benchmark for others to keep up with. Its efficient, fluid and a joy to use, and will certainly be your life companion even at its basic form(at least until the next Samsung masterpiece comes along). Its is one of the best, if not the best Android smartphone in the market, and deserves our certification as an OBJECT OF DESIRE. The only foible the S4 it has is that as a music player it is just sufficient, but like we said its not a deal breaker. Serious listeners will probably have a dedicated music player at hand, anyway. The rest will not be too bothered, especially if the S4 is paired with the right headphones. The novelty may run out on all the excellent extended features over time, but in its base form the S4 without a doubt is a hard one to beat.
For more information on the Samsung Galaxy S4:
www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxys4/
MAKE WAY FOR YOUR NEW LIFE COMPANION – IT’S LEAN, MEAN, SEDUCTIVE & 100% PURE FUN
Reviewed By: Dragon
CERTIFIED OBJECT OF DESIRE BY RENTAK SEJUTA
Samsung has been taking the world by storm in recent years, ever since it embraced the Android platform, and released its Apple beating Galaxy series of smartphones. The S1, S2 and S3 saw significant growth for the Korean electronics giant in the mobile devices marketplace, and pretty much set the benchmark for all Android based smartphones. The Korean technology maestro’s are now back with their latest incarnation, the Galaxy S4, touted as the world’s best ever smartphone, and we were lucky enough find ourselves with one courtesy of Samsung Malaysia to test out. Amazingly at the point of this writing, 10 million S4s have already been sold, which may render whatever we write about a bit redundant.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 which Samsung terms as a life companion and not just a smartphone, comes packed with a bus load of features and is certainly one mean machine under the hood. For starters, the GTI9500 we were provided with is powered by a killer Exynos 5 Octa-core 5410 system on chip (S.O.C.) set up using two quad core processors – a 1.6 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and a 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor – coupled with a Tri Core 533 Mhz Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU, running the latest Android Jellybean 4.2.2 version. To the non techies among us, it simply means that the S4 is blazingly superfast and a beast of a performer. Without delving into the details, this technical set up is also more power efficient, giving the S4 even more juice to its already large capacity 2600mAh battery, pushing it to around 12 – 15 hours of mixed usage. The S4 also boasts an even brighter 5” Full HD Super AMOLED (1920 x 1080) 441 ppi display wrapped in a 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm body, complete with a 2 megapixel front facing HD camera and a 13 megapixel rear facing auto focus HD camera complete with a flash unit, 2GB RAM, 16 GB storage and a micro SD slot which can support up 64GB of additional storage. The S4 is HSDPA (42.2Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76Mbps) compliant, and supports all the standard 2.5G networks as well as LTE. GPS is standard but the S4 also has GLONASS, the Russian equivalent.
Coming from using a smaller footprint Android device, I was surprised to note that the larger yet slim and sleek looking S4 was incredibly light, weighing in at just 130g and snug enough to fit in my palm, although I would have preferred it to have a tad more grip on its diamond patterned polycarbonate back, being an absolute klutz myself. The TCO and UL certified S4 which is made with eco-friendly material and processes, comes packaged quite attractively in a crate like hard paper box made from 100% recycled paper as well, that also holds a stereo headset, additional earphone plugs, a USB power cum data cable, a portable wall socket plug, the Quick Start Guide, a Handbook and the Warranty Card. Even the printing on the box is made of soya ink. A big thumbs up from Rentak Sejuta to Samsung for being a environmental conscience manufacturer.
Taking off the back cover only requires light prying and reveals a large 3.8V Lithium battery, a Micro SD slot, a Micro SIM slot and a small speaker at the bottom that packs a rather loud punch. Putting the back on is literally a snap. The S4 starts up in less than 22 seconds and shuts down in under 8. There are only 3 physical buttons on the S4 – Power, Volume and Home, plus two capacitive ones for Back & Menu.
If you never used an AMOLED display before, you will find the S4’s 1080p Super AMOLED screen, bright, vivid and detailed. It looks amazingly beautiful but personally I prefer an IPS display and found the screen a bit overwhelmingly vibrant but nothing I can’t get used to. But this is purely a matter of taste. Standard touch action on the S4 is super fluid and extremely responsive; with no lag whatsoever thanks to the powerhouse engine that runs the device. It was pure pleasure to use and the larger screen size was a welcome change for me, with text and graphics looking crisp and legible. Rentak Sejuta web page never looked so good on a smartphone before. Right out of the box everything looked in its rightful place on the screen, so much so I didn’t have to mess around with the effortless and intuitive Samsung TouchViz user interface which runs above the Android Jellybean 4.2.2 operating system. I absolutely love the haptic touchscreen QWERTY keyboard on the S4. It’s a boon to type with and I was so amazed with its accuracy and the fact that I actually managed to type comfortably without making a single mistake throughout this review period. The S4 virtual keyboard also supports trace typing (continuous typing) where you swipe your finger from one alphabet to another as well Swiftkey technology which allows the Samsung to learn and predict what you are typing.
Now that we have gone through all the basics, let’s find out what makes the Samsung S4 a life companion instead of just a smartphone. The premise of the S4 is that it is not just a technological wonder, it’s also a conceptual product that incorporates four key values of life – fun, relationship, life task and life care - into its design, which is based on consumer trends.
Touch-less
The most useful feature we liked about the new touchless functions on the S4 is the Air Call Accept which allows you to answer calls by just swiping our hand across the sensors on device. The call will go straight to the speakers. I can imagine using this while having a messy banana leaf meal. The other one we like is the Air Browse which allows you to swipe through your gallery images without touching the screen. Also good is Air Jump which allows you to scroll up or down web pages or emails without touching the screen. Another nice one is the Smart Scroll function which allows you to scroll web pages by either tilting your head up or down or tilting your device, but unfortunately this only works with the Samsung browser, and not with Chrome, or any other popular browsers. Another excellent feature which I will definitely find useful is the webpage magnifier which allows me to magnify contents on the screen, but this one is also strictly for the Samsung browser. Air View allows us a summary of what's in our email, without having to actually opening it, by just hovering over any email header. Samsung has pretty much thought of everything and some of these touch-less functions which are categorized under their Life Task philosophy (which aims to simplify tasks) may come in handy, but they do have some inherent limitations, but the S4 is already very functional and a breeze to use despite all these glossy new add-ons.
Camera
Most of the S4’s fun element is centered on its camera’s features, the most notable being the Dual Shot which allows you to not only take a photo of your subject but also yourself simultaneously with both the back and front cameras and being able to incorporate yourself into the main photo. This will probably be the most used feature in the S4 and I can see loads of fun with it. It comes with 8 different frames including a stamp, heart shaped and a window. Dual shot also allows you to split the screen in two – one for the front and one for the back. We spent hours fooling around with this we forgot the time. I even shared photos I took with this feature directly to my facebook account with the S4. It was easy as pie. Sharing is truly hassle-free on the S4. Being a professional photographer I normally do not put up poor quality photos on my social networks, so I rarely share anything I took with devices on the net, but the quality of photos taken with the S4 are better than decent.
I "inserted" myself into Samsung's web page highlighting Dual Shot, in the following photo, using the dual shot feature on the S4. Sharing it on Facebook was a cinch. "Cheers you all!"
Another excellent feature I discovered while I was fooling around with the camera was the voice control, which allows me to shoot with just my voice. This reduces camera shake as you don’t have to physically touch the screen. This was quite handy considering the light weight of the camera added to the camera shake despite having the anti shake on.
Sound & Shot will be another camera feature that will be highly appreciated, where nine seconds of sound can be recorded into a photo. This is an excellent feature especially if you want to voice tag a photo on the fly. It’s extremely handy and very practical in both work and play, and definitely a winner. We can see us using this quite a bit.
The other interesting new camera feature is the drama shot which allows you to shoot a series of photos of a moving object to create a single photo which shows the object in various forms of motion. We can see using this in concerts especially when artistes are running and jumping around all over the stage. It will certainly create some drama in the photo and will be great for publishers like us. Test shots proved that it worked reasonable well with images appearing clear and detailed with negligible blurring. I have to admit the camera is pretty decent on the S4 and may actually consider shooting with the device for our publication on certain occasions.
We managed to get our friend Andrew Warren from EHQ Projects, Malaysia's leading sound & staging company, to help us demonstrate the drama shot. This was done indoors at Life Centre in low light. Despite some expected blurring it turned out pretty okay.
Another feature we tried with S4 and worked superbly was the Panorama effect which we tried right outside Life Centre. We panned through a series of shots of the monorail line in front, and the S4 did the rest - PERFECTLY! The photo speaks for itself.
Besides these key features there’s a whole collection of other features that can be found by rotating the carousel styled selector that comes up after pressing the mode button. One of our favourites is the Eraser mode, which is excellent for getting rid of unwanted moving objects in a photo especially when you are shooting landscape, buildings or scenery. Great for removing people you know will somehow walk into your frame while you are shooting something of interest.
Music
Where the S4 falters is in its music playback. Not necessarily a deal breaker but if you are looking for a good music player, you have to look elsewhere. But this is the case for most smartphones or tablets in the market. The biggest problem in the S4 lies in the lack of quality amplification. We plugged it into our Altec Lansing 52521 amplified 2.1 speakers and ha d to crank up the volume almost to the max on the speakers just to hear the audio. Secondly the sound was rather flat and with nearly no separation in almost everything we played. We pretty much abandoned the idea of going through our selected track list after just a few songs, as the S4 simply could not keep up. We also opted out of listening to the S4 through our main reference Thinksound MS01 in ear monitors, for the fear it will further expose the weakness of S4 in the music department. Instead we decided to listen using our more mobile device friendly Woodees Classic earphones which tends to be more forgiving and usually brings out the best out of most devices. Everything fell in place once it was paired with the Woodees and the stereo separation was more apparent and the overall musicality was acceptable but not brilliant. We could hear the separation more clearly on songs like The Flying Pickets “Only You” and Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”. Alison Moyet’s “Invisible” & Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” sounded decent vocally and musically, but Incognito’s “Still A Friend Of Mine” sounded more clouded and uninspiring, despite the prominent notes of the bass guitar which was quite evident. The vocals went astray on Lightning Seeds “Pure” despite everything else on the track sounding tight. As expected the bass was boomy on David Guetta’s “Titanium” and totally wishy washy on Alexandra Stan’s “Mr Saxobeat”. Surprisingly the built in speaker on the S4 was listenable and definitely louder than its peers in the market – almost like a decent transistor radio. In fact we enjoyed the S4 more through its inbuilt speakers than any other method. Overall we found the S4 wanting as a music player with its inconsistent performance, weak output and lack of musicality, but hey, it’s a smartphone, not a dedicated music player, and will be more than good enough for most.
On The Go
Like we said earlier in this review, we were going to push the S4 to the max, so what better way then to take it along with us and use it in the real world, in our work, as we hit several events over the weekend. The key focus was to use the S4 as a supplementary image & video capture device, and the S4 did come in handy many a times, and even came to our rescue when our main photographic equipment failed on us. So along with our much trusted Canon Powershot SX30 superzoom and our handy Canon Powershot A1200, trooped along the S4. Check out the results during our weekend crawl through various music and performing arts events in the city.
Please do remember this is a smartphone and not a professional or an amateur camera, and will in no case replace a proper camera. That goes the same for all smartphone devices, but the S4 surprisingly had its strengths. We will let the photos and videos do the talking. Those of you who follow our Facebook updates, may have seen some of the photos we shot on the prowl uploaded directly, and may have been pleased with the results. So were we. It’s not perfect but it can be quite good if you make the extra effort to understand its limitations and advantages.
Our first stop was The Judgement Day 2013, the nation's biggest international BBoy jam, which was held at Zouk Club KL, last Friday evening. We took several late evening shots with the S4's camera mode set to auto. The results looked promising and can be compared with nearly most compact cameras in the market, but it did take a steady pair of hands, to counter camera shake.
The first image we shot was of top American street dancer BBoy Full Deck, who got his big break after being a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance. He was quite happy to pose for us.
The crew members of The Judgement Day were also more than happy to pose for us, but they were also keen to check out the new S4 after seeing the results of their photo. By the way is that an "S" for Samsung.
We also took the following inside Zouk in auto and flash fired in total darkness. The S4 actually managed to lock the shot and produce a sharp and vivid photo of the banner hung under the deejay counter. Many compact cameras would have failed this test. Overall the S4's camera seems to be able to focus rather well in the dark, which is a huge plus point for it.
Our next stop was Fete De La Music Festival at Jalan Mesui, Kuala Lumpur. The following was taken late in the night in auto mode with the flash fired. We loved the irony of the fact we did not need a big lensed DSLR to take a photo of fellow media buddy Liyana from Astro, who was busy snapping photos as well.
We took the S4 indoors into The Establisment, one of the venues for festival, to capture this decent photo of French power pop band Pony Pony Run Run's lead singer, under mixed stage lighting, without firing the flash. It took us several attempts to get it right as the singer was flailing about the stage. In the end we had a photo we could actually use for publication, and it did not come from our regular gear.
Video Capture
The Galaxy S4 can record and playback in full HD and supports MPEG4, H.264, H.263, DivX, DivX3.11, VC-1, VP8, WMV7/8, Sorenson Spark and HEVC codecs. We revisited The Judgement Day 2013 international bboy jam the following day for its main event, and took advantage of the S4's HD video recording capability in a staged lighting environment inside Zouk KL. The results were astounding. It was way better than many actual digital cameras touting the Full HD logo on their products. Playback on S4 was delightful and the downloaded video was equally as good in full screen on a 20" desktop PC LCD screen. We did not try it out with a HD TV as the device does not come with a direct HDMI out on the smartphone. We would require a Samsung HDTV /MHL Adapter EPL-3FHU (which is not supplied) to connect a HDMI cable to the TV. Considering how skinny the S4 is, it would be really asking a lot from Samsung to squeeze in a HDMI out port on the S4. Check out the video we shot live.
We actually shot loads of video with S4 at Judgement Day as the device was more than capable of holding its own despite shooting in a mixed and constantly changing lighting environment. Most of the videos we captured will be available on our YouTube channel shortly. Its video recording also proved extremely handy in the next two events we headed on to later in the night - the Rising EDM Festival @ KL Live and also the Buterfly Sleepover Party ft Jeanna Ho @ Butter Factory. Looking at the output, we can easily substitute the S4 with our regular HD video cameras in selected conditions.
But the thing that got us really excited was the S4 actually came to our rescue when our regular Canon Powershot SX30's flash unit failed to fire during our coverage at the Butter Factory. We would have actually lost the opportunity to capture some key content if not for the S4. Thankfully I managed to photograph the in demand Hong Kong actress, model and budding deejay Jeanna Ho live in action behind the decks, with S4. Was I glad I brought the S4 with me or I would have been kicking myself. Of course, I would not be expecting the S4 to match my Canon, but the shots I took at the event were more than decent and were of publishable quality for our news site.
All our efforts would have become zero if we had failed to shoot Jeanna Ho. The S4 literally saved us.
The S4 was not as intrusive as a large camera, so it was easy to snap shots of hot babes like these on the fly.
My publisher Anastasia and I chillin' after a hard days work, captured lazily with the S4.
Story Album
Capturing all these photos and having to manage them, had us checking the S4's Story Album feature which allows us to organize our photos and create photo albums based on specific events and customize them the way we want them with a choice of various layouts and themes. We gave it a shot and created one for the Butterfly Sleepover Party. It can be easily used as a simple photo album with descriptions, an e-brochure or even a digital coffee table book. It is only limited to our imagination. We can see this being used in real life for managing projects or for marketing purposes, or as a creative way to do presentations, and feel it will definitely come in handy in our line of work should we choose to create something on the fly.
But if you are one who prefers to work on your photos on the PC, data transfer is a cinch on the S4. Just plug and play.
Conclusion
Regardless of whether you want to buy into Samsung's "Life Companion" philosophy, the superfast, well specified Galaxy S4 is already a major contender in the smartphone marketplace despite all the bells and whistles it boasts, and continues to set the benchmark for others to keep up with. Its efficient, fluid and a joy to use, and will certainly be your life companion even at its basic form(at least until the next Samsung masterpiece comes along). Its is one of the best, if not the best Android smartphone in the market, and deserves our certification as an OBJECT OF DESIRE. The only foible the S4 it has is that as a music player it is just sufficient, but like we said its not a deal breaker. Serious listeners will probably have a dedicated music player at hand, anyway. The rest will not be too bothered, especially if the S4 is paired with the right headphones. The novelty may run out on all the excellent extended features over time, but in its base form the S4 without a doubt is a hard one to beat.
For more information on the Samsung Galaxy S4:
www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxys4/
