Wow. The phone that’s all over the world is currently in Malaysia. Particularly, I got my hands on the beasty octa-core variant.
As far as you can tell since its announcement, the new Samsung Galaxy S IV – coded i9500 for the octa-core Exynos version and i9505 for the quad-core Snapdragon version – definitely runs fast, but then heat is always a great benchmark of efficiency, so I took a touch around the earpiece area for the heat and it was cool. Then onwards to test other things.
Looking around the device you can see a somewhat new design around the edge, with its power button and volume rocker being positioned the same as it was on its predecessors. Nice touch, feels lighter and definitely thinner than the Galaxy S III, even with more grip too.
What’s the Galaxy S IV without testing the camera? Though as you can see, there’s an LED flash right below the 13MP cut-out for the camera on the back plate, where the black colour variant will have this mesh texture (can’t feel though) and the white will have just a plain, flat slab. So let’s test by taking photos – since the camera itself is one of the main selling point of their new flagship phone.
The front-facing 2MP camera actually did a pretty good job in the Dual Camera feature as it just appear as a small part in the picture, yet resizable and there is an entire list of frames to choose from. A plus, and a feature that’s definitely useful, given that the cameraman doesn’t screw up the entire picture by having a totally opposite camera exposure in the picture.
Since it runs on the latest Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, it also has the two-finger-drag quick settings just like the Nexus devices does, where you can toggle a bunch of different settings all within one collapsible bar – only that Samsung offers the feature like any other custom ROM does – that is to personalize the quick settings menu.
Samsung even made some tuning the Android’s settings menu to make it look a little more cleaner and tidier by categorizing everything and stuffing away things which are rarely used.
A clean interface, which I actually would like Google to follow suit.
Up next, I got my hands on another unit of the Galaxy S IV which has a flip case tailor-made for the this device – the flip case that looks just like the one they did for Galaxy S III, now with a cut-out to see the time, notifications and battery. Also, it has a sensor that triggers the screen to wake and lock as the flip cover opens and closes. Neat! Feels good on the hand too!
Samsung also isn’t going to give just black and white colour variant for its flip case, albeit there are a few versions of the flip case covers. Given an entire spectrum of colours of the case to choose from, you can really mix and match to suit your outfit of the day, everyday.
Well then, after testing out a few things, I touched the earpiece area again to sample the heat. And oh my it is definitely hot. Burning hot. Of course there aren’t any apps to really get the precise temperature, but I can assure you by just doing all those above, the phone became a heater – the earpiece was really unpleasant even to be touched for more than 3 seconds.
In any case though, stay tuned for any further reviews in the future!
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