News & Reviews:   Samsung Galaxy S4

While Samsung have already come out with their Galaxy Camera they still intend to stick a more powerful camera sensor on one of their smartphones like Nokia's EOS and Sony's Honami. Upping the sensor megapixels to 16MP from the current standard of 13MP, the new cameraphone from Samsung will most likely be called the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, making it a variant of the current flagship Samsung Galaxy S4. Other tech specs rumoured to come out for the Zoom include:

• 10x Optical Zoom
• 16MP camera sensor
• 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display
• 8GB storage + 64GB microSD
• Bluetooth 4.0 LE, Wifi 802.11 a/b/g/n, A-GPS

The Samsung Galaxy S4 I9505 or the version with LTE and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor recently got a firmware update which has improved battery tests significantly. How significantly? Well, check out the test graphs below and see for yourself. The previous performance is marked in yellow:

Talktime Tests

AnTuTu is a benchmark app that posts the scores of various smartphones, tablets and similar devices online. So when a mystery Samsung device posts with the model number GT-P5200 gets AnTuTu scores of 24616, scores which are on the same level as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 based Samsung Galaxy S4, you can bet that we'll take notice. Now, bear in mind that this is a recent happening and that Samsung just don't use the GT-PXXXX naming convention anymore means several things.

While the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 were both officially announced last month, recent rumours confirm release dates for Europe and Russia will be Week 20 to Week 25 for the Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Week 19 to Week 21 for the Galaxy Mega 6.3. Hopefully, Malaysia and other Asian regions will get the next batch of shipments after this. The Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active are expected to be released in Week 29 while the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom is expected from Week 23 to Week 25. For those of you who haven't been counting, this week is Week 19.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV has a ton of S features in it, almost too much to list. You've already seen many of these features already in action and it seems that Samsung wants to show you even more. These next few ads showcase a number of S features including S Beam, Air View, Air Gesture, Drama Shot and even the IR Blaster for HDTV remote control.

While supposedly real pictures of the Samsung Galaxy Note III have appeared, apparently this has been confirmed as a ZOPO ZP950 Android handset with a 5.7 inch screen and not the Galaxy Note III. According to new rumours, the Samsung Galaxy Note III currently has three different prototypes which will be used for the final design. The renders above show that the Note III will most likely follow the same look and feel as the Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV.

It is always interesting to see behind-the-scene shots of how the people who made something truly excellent came to those decisions. That being said, the Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV creators and designers supposedly got their inspiration for it from the stars in the night sky. The HTC One design team on the other hand were aiming for zero-gap construction which resulted in the beautifully elegant aluminum unibody design available from the HTC One. The Apple iPhone 5 was also designed with the idea of making a much better phone than before.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 brings with many new additional features and functions. While NFC isn't new and has been available on the Samsung Galaxy SIII, Samsung recently revealed that the previous programmable NFC sticker TecTiles doesn't work with the Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV. So if you've been using this a lot (and have TecTile stickers all over the place) don't be surprised if your new Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV doesn't seem to work with them. This is because Samsung have released a new TecTiles 2 version. This news isn't such a big thing for Malaysia where not many people actually use it but for the tech savvy it could be the explanation for why your new smartphone isn't working as you well as the previous one.

Watching expensive smartphones fall is usually a nightmare most people don't want to see, but with the recent release of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV we now have it in not one but two drop tests against the Apple iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy SIII. Samsung have defended and stood by their decision to continue using a plastic polycarbonate body for the Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV but have upped the protection for the display with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 screen which recently proved it was as scratch proof as it could possibly be.

What they found out

The folks at iFixit just love tearing down smartphones and this was no different for the Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV when it officially came out. After a brief tear down they discovered that the Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV:

• has a removable battery
• has an iFixit score of 8 out of 10
• uses IR sensors near the screen to enable Air View and Air Gesture
• has one of the most sensitive screens around (can even use with gloves)
• has the same 4G LTE chip as Google Nexus 4