Samsung Galaxy S4 review (one year later)

Introduction

Released in April of 2013, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was a cutting-edge smartphone that featured all the goodies one could need back then. However, as it's the norm in the wireless industry nowadays, a top-shelf smartphone remains top-shelf for just about one year, when it gets outshined by its successor and next-gen rivals. And indeed, we now have the Galaxy S5 as the new king of the hill by Samsung, along with a number of other drool-worthy propositions like the Xperia Z2 and One (M8), but should we hurry to dismiss the Galaxy S4 as a viable option on the market? Definitely not! Samsung's last-year champion still packs quite a punch, plus its price is supposed to have gotten more un-flagship-like, as we now have more powerful smartphones occupying the highest end of the spectrum, pushing the price of older gear down.

A full year has passed since the Galaxy S4's initial launch. However, the popular phone is still available for purchase as new, so here's what we're going to do: we'll see how the GS4 compares to other smartphones that happen to sit closest to it in terms of pricing at the moment. Interestingly, it looks like manufacturers haven't really targeted the upper-mid range of the market that much in the past few months. This means that there are few such handsets out there that deserve your attention. One of those rare examples is the HTC Desire 816 (still difficult to find), so we'll make sure to factor in this one in the following lines, as it comes pretty close to the S4 in terms of cost. However, as a whole, it appears that the Galaxy S4 actually remains closer to the new flagships of 2014, as well as those that launched towards the end of 2013 – in terms of both specs and pricing.

So, the first task has been accomplished – we've identified the types of phones that the Galaxy S4 can best challenge at the moment. Now, let's dive in and see if Samsung's last-year heavy-hitter can still warrant a purchase, as well as if its new rivals have gained a lead that's significant enough in order to transform them into must-have upgrades for those numerous GS4 owners.

Design

Deja vu! Well, not exactly, because when it comes to Samsung's designs, we're constantly having deja vu sensations, as there's little difference in the design aesthetics across the company's portfolio. Really, we don't know if it should be considered a design that's completely, irreversibly worn out, or one that just never gets old. Still, we have to admit that it's a full year later, and the clean, glossy plastic body of the S4 still seems perfectly current.

Although the Galaxy S4 doesn't differ much from the GS5 or any other ~5” Samsung phone in terms of looks, it does have a rather unique advantage among its peers, and that's its relatively reasonable size of 5.38 x 2.75 x 0.31 inches (136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm). In contrast, this year's crop of high-end phones is definitely larger, starting from the Galaxy S5 (5.59 x 2.85 x 0.32 inches (142 x 72.5 x 8.1 mm)), moving through the One (M8) (5.76 x 2.78 x 0.37 inches (146.36 x 70.6 x 9.35 mm)), and ending up at the Xperia Z2 (5.78 x 2.89 x 0.32 inches (146.8 x 73.3 x 8.2 mm)). Sure, some of these feature slightly bigger screens, but the substantial differences in their dimensions mean they shouldn't be overlooked.

In terms of build quality, the Galaxy S4 is unapologetically plastic. The design is uninspiring, just like any other Samsung Android phone. It doesn't have the GS5's perforated back – instead, it comes with the simpler, glossy back cover that may be a fingerprint magnet, but makes the handset feel comfortable and moderately non-slippery in the hand. In terms of looks and materials, though, it can by no means rival some other phones that exhibit more attention to detail when it comes to their exteriors, such as the Apple iPhone 5s and the HTC One (M8). The Xperia Z1, which launched about half a year after the GS4, is also decidedly more premium with its solid glass-and-metal construction, and the same goes for the newer Z2.

The physical buttons of the phone function well enough – there isn't anything particularly impressive about the volume, power and home keys, but they definitely get the job done without much hassle. In that area, the Galaxy S4 is once again inferior to handsets that put more emphasis on design, such as the iPhone 5s and One (M8), but if we look at the Galaxy S5, things haven't really changed much for Samsung.

An area where we can see the Galaxy S4 starting to lag behind current trends is ruggedness. Many an Android flagship coming out this year have some form of IP certification, while the GS4 doesn't have any. This means that in contrast to some of the top handsets you can buy today, the Galaxy S4 isn't supposed to be capable of resisting dust or water. Still, not all 2014 flagships have received those rugged capabilities – the HTC One (M8), for example, can only resist small sprays of water, so the GS4 isn't completely outdated in this respect.

Display

Samsung armed the Galaxy S4 with the best AMOLED screen it had at the time. Nonetheless, it was still far from perfect and lagged behind IPS LCD screens in a number of aspects. Samsung then followed up with better AMOLED screens in the Note 3 and S5, so the GS4's display is now inferior even in the context of AMOLED displays only.

The Galaxy S4 comes with a 5” 1080 x 1920 screen – that makes it better than any other mid-range display in terms of resolution, as pretty much all mid-rangers max out at 720p. In comparison with newer high-end Androids, the GS4 stays competitive in the size and resolution department, but there are other aspects of its screen that make its age shine through.

It is really dim and inaccurate, compared to both the quality LCD and AMOLED screens of today. Achieving about 300 nits max, the GS4 is a phone that's hard to view under the hot, bright sun. In comparison, Samsung's new AMOLED screens can go up to about 450 nits, making them much easier to view outside. Meanwhile, quality LCD screens can go up to about 500 nits, delivering even better visibility. Not that outdoor visibility depends solely on screen brightness, but it's certainly one of the most important factors. Having that in mind, a notable performer in this respect is the iPhone 5s, which can reach about 580 nits – an astonishing feat!

Color-wise, things aren't looking pretty for the Galaxy S4 (literally). It's a bluish/greenish screen that lacks a lot of red, and thus, liveliness. Of course, you can always stick with the Standard or Dynamic screen modes, enjoy the punchy visuals and forget about accuracy, but that's not the point here. The point is that if you want to experience life-like visuals on the GS4's screen – you can't. It'll always have excessive green or blue, depending on which mode you've chosen. Meanwhile, it seems like AMOLED hasn't gone so far in this department since the GS4, as the newer GS5 and Note 3 don't really excel as well. On the other hand, there are more and more high-quality LCD screens on the market, which can offer you a much better viewing experience, with vivid, yet true-to-life colors. Such examples include the Apple iPhone 5s, LG G2, HTC One, HTC One (M8), Sony Xperia Z2, and many others. As you can see, that's almost every contemporary premium smartphone with IPS LCD or Super LCD display.

Of course, that's not to say the GS4's screen is so difficult to look at. Not at all – the added punch and contrasty looks sure are eye-catchy, but we should definitely take into account the great amount of color error that this display exhibits, making for unnatural skin tones and overall artificially-looking visuals.

Interface and Functionality

Samsung has been doing a good job at keeping its 2013 flagship up to date. The Galaxy S4 now runs Android 4.4, so it has all the latest perks bundled with KitKat. However, the user interface that's running on the phone isn't the new, flat one that made its debut on the Galaxy S5. Instead, it's last-year's affair, which is now getting decidedly old-school. There still isn't word on whether we should expect the flat UI on the GS4, but we sure hope it'll be released, since it's a pretty major update for the software, and it'd be sad to see such a relevant phone remain with the old interface.

Functionality-wise, well, there's no two ways about it – the Galaxy S4 is still a very versatile phone that can do pretty much everything your brand new Xperia Z2 does. Well, it might lag a little bit more, but at the end of the day, the functionality is there. The biggest drawback we have with the Galaxy S4 in terms of software is that it's really a cluttered experience. It has so many options and features that it can really become somewhat difficult and unintuitive to navigate and get stuff done. In this respect, the new TouchWiz is noticeably better, as it also has a plethora of options, but those aren't so in-you-face – everything is much neater and organized. The same applies if we look at the rest of the mobile landscape – save for the LG G2, everything else presents us with a mostly nice and clean software UX that doesn't attempt to overwhelm users with countless features and options. That's another reason why we hope Samsung will update the GS4 with the newer TouchWiz, though that's yet to happen.

Processor and Memory

Armed with Snapdragon 600, the Galaxy S4 is now well behind the latest silicon accomplishments present with phones utilizing the Snapdragon 800 or 801 processors. That's not to say that the SD 600 is a bad processor – actually, it's more than decent, even today, so it'll let you run all kinds of apps and games with no issues. An interesting fact we have to point out here is that it seems no one's doing Snapdragon 600 phones nowadays. Instead, the mid-rangers of 2014 are all equipped with Snapdragon 400-grade processors, which makes them significantly slower than the SD600-powered Galaxy S4.

The more popular version of the GS4, the I9505 one, has the Snapdragon 600 SoC with 1.9 GHz Krait 300 CPU and Adreno 320 GPU. However, there's also the I9500 one, which uses Exynos 5 Octa at 1.6 GHz and the PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU. In comparison, the SD 801-equipped models of today, such as the GS5 and One (M8), are often clocked at frequencies of about 2.5 GHz. Plus, the newer Adreno 330 GPU also provides a substantial increase in graphics performance, though, as we said, that hardware prowess remains largely unused (by anything meaningful) to this day. In that line of though, the Galaxy S4 and its Snapdragon 600 (or Exynos 5 Octa) still packs quite a punch. GS4 users aren't really missing all that much in the performance department. We know TouchWiz tends to get laggy, but that's simply a software problem, and will hopefully be resolved with an eventual software update. Should the new UI arrive on the Galaxy S4, it'll greatly improve the performance, though there might still be some choppiness here and there, just as on the GS5.

When it comes to inbuilt memory, the GS4 is still perfectly adequate with its 2 GB or RAM, while the memory variants of 16, 32 and 64 GB can fit every taste, especially when there's also a microSD card slot on board. For a full year, nothing has changed all that much in this category to render the GS4 old.

Internet and Connectivity

Snapdragon 800 brought a slightly faster browsing experience, but the Galaxy S4 still holds up pretty well on its own. Regardless if you'll be using Samsung's own browser, or Google's Chrome, speed is guaranteed to be pretty adequate. When the GS4 launched last year, Chrome for Android was still a bit rough around the edges, but after numerous updates and enhancements, Android's stock browser can finally offer a perfectly satisfying web-surfing experience. In addition to exhibiting smooth and fluid navigation, it can also inflate text in a better way, courtesy of some of its latest updates. The only major thing that seems to be missing from the app is an option to have a vertical scroll lock, which would not let you go horizontally once you've started to scroll vertically, but that's probably a matter of time. Meanwhile, the reasons to side with Samsung's internet browser have been reduced to minimum.

In terms of connectivity options, we guess we wouldn't surprise anyone if we say that the Galaxy S4 will have you covered with its rich set of features, like DLNA, MHL, Wi-Fi 802.11 a, b, g, n, n 5GHz, ac , NFC and infrared (for remote control features), right? Oh, yeah, there's also Bluetooth 4.0, so the list is as complete as it can be, even by 2014's standards.

Camera

Now, that sounds like a fun thing to do – to see if the Galaxy S4, which was among the top camera phones for 2013, can still compete against the latest cameraphones like the Xperia Z2, the One (M8), or the GS5 itself!

First things first, let's refresh our memories about the characteristics of the Galaxy S4's camera. It's a 13 MP shooter with a standard smartphone sensor size of 1/3.06", F2.2 aperture and 31 mm focal length. So far, so good. True, we don't have a more ambitious sensor size such as those of the Galaxy S5 or Xperia Z2, but we know that better hardware doesn't always equal better results, so we still have our hopes that the GS4 will perform in a respectable manner.

As the rest of the Samsung Galaxy S4's software, the camera application is a bit old-school. However, apart from the fact that it's quite clunky and cluttered, it naturally has all the usual options like ISO, metering, and so on – newer flagships haven't brought anything fancier to enhance this aspect of the smartphone camera. And what about camera modes? Well, the Galaxy S4 tries to overwhelm the user by featuring about a dozen of those, with not-so-popular names like Best face, Best photo, and Sound & shot making the list. It's no wonder that Samsung decided to scale things down in the GS5. Most of these modes are present there as well, but they are neatly hidden in a submenu, so that you don't always have to scroll through an endless list of modes. But you know what, a clunky camera app UI is something we can easily live with... after all, most users are simply sticking with the Auto mode, so a longish list here or a gimmick there don't really stand in the way of decent experience.


As we said, the Galaxy S4 was among the best camera phones of 2013, and it looks like 2014 smartphones haven't really managed to seriously overshadow it thus far. Sure, the quality 16 MP camera of the Galaxy S5 captures a bit more detail in comparison, but the difference is really small, and when it comes to other components such as colors and exposure, it's really hard to distinguish the shots taken with the GS4 from those taken with the GS5. So far, other players haven't introduced any significant camera breakthroughs as well – Sony's G Lens camera has stayed mostly the same in the Z2, while the One (M8)'s UltraPixel camera is... well, an UltraPixel camera.

Color reproduction is very realistic in the images captured by the Samsung Galaxy S4, and while the shooter often tends to overexpose brightly-lit highlights, that's mostly a minor issue.



Meanwhile, the only significant improvement in 1080p video recording we've seen recently is the slightly wider adoption of optical image stabilization, and while the Galaxy S4 lacks this, the quality of the video is still superb. In short, you won't really gain that much in terms of camera, should you upgrade to a newer Android flagship.

Multimedia

Even though the Galaxy S4's screen is quite off from reference values of image reproduction standards, it's still quite fancy when it comes to media like video. The punchy, AMOLED colors do make images especially vibrant and saturated. While that doesn't always work out well, it's undeniable that the GS4's AMOLED display is eye-catchy when displaying pictures or some kind of video content. What's more, its size of 5" is still considered the sweet spot between comfort and viewing area.

The Snapdragon 600 SoC is powerful enough to run all kinds of media you can find nowadays, so compatibility issues are unlikely.

The built-in music player of the Galaxy S4 is rather uninspiring, though it does have all the standard settings (and more), as you can imagine. Apart from the dated looks, everything's in order as far as music goes.

If we have to compare the GS4 to the current landscape of Android phones, it seems the handset holds up pretty well, save for the rather inaccurate screen.

Call quality

As you can imagine, things aren't moving very quickly in the call quality department, if they are moving at all. While we're all waiting for the deployment of HD voice, it looks like we shouldn't expect such big differences across devices – not that there aren't exceptions. Thankfully, the GS4 isn't one of them, as call quality is just your typical affair – with loud and sharp voices that are relatively easy to comprehen, but nothing especially good to make it stand out, and the same goes for the mic.

The built-in loudspeaker has plenty of power, and while it doesn't deliver HTC One Boom Sound level of depth, it still sounds acceptable and adequate.

Battery

No two ways about it – while the Galaxy S4's battery life was considered among the better ones in the industry last year, it's now been made laughable by its successor and the rest of the current-gen crowd. If we take a look at some of the results we've gotten from our custom battery test, it turns out that there's been a rather big improvement from last year, probably due to the devices getting larger to some extent.

The Galaxy S4 has lasted the modest 4h 59 min, which is way behind the GS5's 8h 20 min, or the Xperia Z2's 8h 10 min. The One (M8) also has a very impressive result: 7h 12 min. The Galaxy S4 does better than the Xperia Z1 and its 4h 43 min, but the other rival that got launched by the end of 2013, the G2, is also ahead with its result of 6h 48min. This comes to show that if you're looking for maximized battery life, the new generation of high-end smartphones will serve you better.

Conclusion

When all is said and done, it looks like the Samsung Galaxy S4 continues to be a strong performer - a full year after its official release. Sure, the Snapdragon 600 chipset shows its age against handsets sporting the newer Snapdragon 800/801 series, and the screen is dimmer and less accurate, but overall, the newer generation of smartphones hasn't managed to gain a tremendous lead technology-wise. This means that there won't be such great benefit for you, should you upgrade to a 2014 flagship.

Naturally, that kind of thinking only applies to current Galaxy S4 owners. This is so, because it turns out the handset has managed to keep its price fairly high, so if you're on the lookout for a new smartphone, we wouldn't really advise you to consider the GS4, as its off- and on-contract pricing isn't that cheaper than those of its newer rivals. At the current time, the Galaxy S4 costs about $150 less than the Galaxy S5 or the HTC One (M8), which are armed with current-gen technology, making a step forward in the performance department, thanks to the Snapdragon 801 SoC. Obviously, the GS5 and Xperia Z2 are better than the GS4 in every way, while the One (M8) excels with its faster internals and more premium, metal body, but has an inferior camera. Finally, with almost identical price tags, the Sony Xperia Z1/Z1S and LG G2 are overall better phones than the GS4.