Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S4 about to hit the market
New phone doesn’t change the game, but certainly ups the ante
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is available for pre- order now with all of Canada’s major carriers, priced at $ 199 with a three- year wireless voice and data plan or $ 700 without a contract — although the nocontract price seems to vary depending on the seller. The first phones should be delivered April 27, with the official launch in Canada on May 3. Future Shop is also taking preorders for pick up of the Galaxy S4 starting April 27.
Is the S4 an iPhone killer? That’s a question that may not have an answer until Apple comes out with its successor to the iPhone 5, but for sure Samsung’s release of its newest flagship Android phone puts pressure on Apple to up its game.
Apple Inc. shares briefly fell below $ 400 for the first time in 18 months on Wednesday, touching as low as $ 398.11 US, after a supplier hinted at a slowdown in iPhone and iPad production. It closed trading on the Nasdaq exchange at $ 402.80 US.
Late Tuesday, Cirrus Logic Inc., which supplies audio chips for the iPhone and iPad, said sales of a particular chip are slowing down as an unnamed customer moves to a newer component.
The S4 has a 13- megapixel rear- facing camera, and camera modes that include the ability to take multiple exposures of a moving subject and put them in a single photo.
Turning on the 5- inch display, the screen is bigger and brighter, with a resolution up from the 720- by- 1280 pixels of the S3 to a full- HD 1080- by1920.
The pixel density at 441 ppi is up from the S3’ s 306 ppi and the iPhone 5’ s 326 ppi.
Readers have been asking if the new eye- tracking scrolling feature works well when you read on the S4 screen. I tried it out at the demo Wednesday with Samsung Canada’s Ken Price and Vlastimir Lalovic and while I was able to get it started, the scrolling kept taking off on me. Price did a demonstration that was much smoother.
Later, I figured out that if I emulated the way Price tilted his head to look down as he read through the page, the scrolling worked. It’s a feature you can turn on and off.
Other touchless features include the air view, air gesture and driving mode. The air view gives you a preview of information and other features — including one in which you can just hover your finger over type to have it magnified — a feature that’s a nod to those of us who can’t read a phone number without glasses.
I tried out the translator and the voice recognition seems very good. I spoke a phrase in English, the phone picked it up and I could listen to it read back in the language of my choice, or read the translation on the screen.
Samsung has also stepped up the sharing capability of the S4. In the demo, Lalovic showed us how we could share music, documents — including PowerPoints, photos, games and videos — among devices. In the music demo, three S4 phones became speakers in an impromptu stereo system. In the photo and document sharing, each person with the Samsung device can make mark ups that show on all the connected devices.
One of the changes Samsung is counting on to help boost the S4’ s attractiveness to the corporate market is its dual personality — the security feature that locks the business side of the phone away from the personal side. The phone I’m testing doesn’t have that set up, but on the model Lalovic showed me, the business apps had a little lock icon on them so you always know which mode the app is in. If it’s your work phone, your IT department will be able to control the apps you use on the business side along with all the data there — meaning it can wipe the device clean if it is lost or stolen. The personal side stays under your control, a feature that BlackBerry has also introduced with its BlackBerry10.