Galaxy S IV unveiled–full details [UPDATED]

The Galaxy S IV has just been unveiled – but what are you getting? Well, we’re here to solve your confusion. If you didn’t catch the video of how it looks, check it out in this post where it was leaked ahead of the launch event.

UPDATE 1: Now with their introduction video!

Before the presentation video ended, I got the time to capture the image of the full specifications sheet, so you can get a much better idea of what you’ll be seeing.

We’ll break it down into parts, so it’s much more easier to get to know each and every part of it.

Specs

 

UPDATE 2 : It’s confirmed that the Galaxy S IV runs on either 1.6GHz octa-core Exynox processor OR a 1.9GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, depending on region. No updates on what Malaysia’s getting though.

The Galaxy S IV will have a 4G LTE chip that supports global frequencies and standards – no matter which country you’re in, it works! Bluetooth 4.0, Infrared LED for the IR Gesture, MHL 2.0, a generous 2GB of RAM with 16GB of internal memory, expandable with an addition of 64GB microSD cards. There’s also a humidity sensor that Samsung says “to really let you know what’s happening around you”. Also, Samsung guarantees you that with such hardcore specs, a removable 2,600mAh battery will last you throughout the day! Best of all, it runs on the latest version of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean!

The processor used is unknown, but presumable it’s using the Octa Core, which is made up of two quad-cores. Other features like the Youm, bendable AMOLED display, is unknown if it’s present in the phone or not.

A large 5 inch Full HD (1920×1080) Super AMOLED display, that’s 441 ppi (pixels per inch)! Your eyes will be totally immersed in such beauty. It has a built in feature called Adapt Display feature to adjust your contrast, saturation and brightness according to what you’re doing and what environment you are in – making the entire experience a lot less stressful for your eyes.

Camera

The camera itself has amazing features as someone finally solves the biggest problem of all – forever alone camera guy who doesn’t appear in all of the photos.

A 2MP front facing camera and a 13MP rear facing camera, the Dual Camera feature takes advantage of your front and rear facing camera – with a wide variety of frames for the cameraman to appear in the picture alongside with the rear camera image! Problem solved if you (cameraman) always feel left out of any pictures!

Besides pictures and videos taken alone, there’s even a new updated version of ChatOn, Samsung’s own version of a WhatsApp equivalent, supports dual video calls – where the cameraman appears within a frame and your contact sees what you see through the rear facing camera. Again, never be left out!

If you’re a big time camera users like I am, you’ll probably want the Galaxy S IV’s cool camera feature – Eraser. It works exactly like how Scalado Remove does, which was bought by Nokia an now only available for Nokia Lumia devices. How it works is that you take a few pictures and the phone stitches them together, then the user selects which part is to be removed and which part stays – perfect for a landscape in the busy environment!

Design

The design of the phone is pretty much the same as the Galaxy S III, though thinner and lighter, with a different look at the removable back cover, and otherwise it looks exactly the same. The leaked phone with the codename GT-i9502 pretty much showed us all how the design of the Galaxy S IV is.

Being much less flattened-Galaxy Nexus-ish like the Galaxy S III, its big brother now looks like a rounded slab – but then again the bottom row of buttons remained and my dreams for touch screen buttons are crushed. The body itself is made of special polycarbonate and available in black and white.

Another great Lumia footstep followed by Samsung. No details on what glass it uses but I’m predicting that it’s Corning’s Gorilla Glass 2 again – or maybe something special since it’s glove friendly. Anyhow, look at that thin bezel!

Features?

Surely, Samsung packed a whole list of features into this baby. I noted down a full list, but let’s summarize all of them. The Galaxy S IV has S Translate, a built in translator app that has more than 10 languages preinstalled – works without internet connection and with speech-to-text and text-to-speech engine so you can talk to the locals naturally in your language while your Galaxy S IV translates them back and forth in real time.

Another great feature is the Story Album, where the phone automatically detects that you’re out there travelling, recommends you to take pictures and you can create a full fledge album of that particular trip itself and upload the entire album to Facebook, then get a hardcopy of it. Samsung also introduced the feature called Home Sync, where the mentioned trip album can be synced entirely to your home to let your loved ones see them. It’s a personal cloud storage of 1TB, up to 8 users per home and connectable with NFC.

There’s also the new Samsung Hub where it has every single thing – music, games, books, videos – all in a beautifully crafted magazine-style display.

Announced at MWC 2013, Samsung Knox provides you two totally separated profiles securely running simultaneously within one phone, where Samsung plans to keep your work profile with your personal use profile separated, presumably to take the work pressure out of your life when enjoying.

The new S Drive enables your phone to adapt and adjust itself to the car that it is paired to via Bluetooth, so that the sound is clear enough to hear and to be heard. There’s also a software for your computer called Smart Switch available for download, which helps you switch from any phone to your new Galaxy S IV!

If you knew about Google Nexus Q, you’ll probably have an idea what I’m about to talk about. The new feature that Galaxy S IV has is Group Play – where you can play the same content within a circle (up to 8) of Galaxy S IV – making it a DIY surround speaker. A leader controls the entire circle, but each and every member can contribute! With the Group Play, Samsung says that “you can show pictures and play multiplayer games together”, logical but I have no idea which game will support this feature just yet.

The aforementioned Infrared LED in the specs section enables the Galaxy S IV to detect movements without contact, made possible by the Infrared LED. The feature called Air Gesture lets users simple glide hands above the screen and it automatically scrolls for you yet it works in all 4 directions! The reason for this? Samsung’s presentation said it’s for reasons such as “my fingernails are wet, I don’t want to put the drink down”, and so on.

The next generation of Smart-stuff since Smart Stay came about. Samsung announced the Smart Scroll and new Smart Pause– where it now detects your eyeballs. The new Smart Pause is able to pause your videos if your eyes look away from the screen, and continues when you look back. Smart Scroll as the name suggests, scrolling texts with your eyeballs without you doing anything with your fingers.

There also is a feature called S Health, where it creates a personal health profile for you, detects how many calories you burned by just walking for the day, your heartbeat rate and all things health. Samsung also said that it’s “compatible with other health equipment” to give you a full health report saved right into your phone itself!

Last but not least, Samsung offers a bunch of different types of accessories and colours for the Galaxy S IV, wit their newly designed S View Cover, a flip cover with two cutouts to see important information without flipping the case open while still protecting the screen itself. Not sure if I’ll like it, but the fact that there are so many colours for the flip and protective case makes me think twice about the S View Cover.

Conclusion?

The phone itself is most definitely packed with great features – innovative, useful and it seems practical, not sure how practical it is in practice when users get their hands on it. In whichever case, the design is still the same as the Galaxy S III with minor changes, but internally mesmerizing and packed with features I know I’ll use a lot, like the Eraser for the camera for one. Being able to work with gloves will only boost the sale of this phone – don’t forget that its predecessors are already selling like hotcakes!

Before we end this, let me answer one important question.

Should I upgrade?

My personal answer for now is really depending on what phone you’re currently using. In any case, most probably, I’ll say yes.

Thanks for reading!

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