Samsung Galaxy S4 launched, lives up to the hype

Late on Thursday, in New York, Samsung unveiled its much awaited smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S4. It follows the Galaxy S3, which did really well in 2012.

The Korean company's flagship smartphone appears to be its best till date. The Galaxy S4 delivers all that was expected of it and much more.

Design: The design is very similar to its predecessor. However, the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a slightly bigger display in a slightly smaller package. Specifically, it has a 5-inch display in a 0.7 mm thinner body than the Galaxy S3. In addition, the display is full HD (1080 pixel) Super AMOLED with 441 pixels per inch and a PenTile pixel arrangement. Made of polycarbonate, it doesn't feel too plastic.

Processor: As reported earlier, the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be powered by the 8-core Exynos Octa 5 CPU, which will be clocked at 1.9 GHz. Matching industry standards, it will be paired with 2GB RAM. But the US version of this smartphone will run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. Also, it will run on the Android v4.2.2 operating system with the TouchWiz Nature UX (user interface).

Storage: The Samsung Galaxy S4 will come in three variants with different storage sizes: 16 GB, 32GB and 64GB. All three will offer microSD card support.

Camera: Moving beyond the 8MP camera of the Galaxy S3 and the Note II, the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a 13MP rear camera with a 2MP front facing camera. Some great work has been done here as well as both cameras can be used together to shoot photos and videos in what Samsung calls a "Dual" mode. In addition, there are a number of shooting modes, including a Drama mode.

Connectivity: Apart from near field communication (NFC), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G/LTE (long-term evolution), the Galaxy S4 will also have a built-in IR Blaster. These will vary by country. An IR blaster or infrared blaster is similar to an infrared remote control for a device.

Smart Pause and Smart Scroll: The Galaxy S4's eye tracking feature lives up to the pre-launch hype and is an integral part of the phone. Smart Scroll allows users to scroll through the browser and email without touching the phone while Smart Pause will pause a video when you turn away from the phone, using facial recognition.

Air View: Available on the Note II, Samsung has added an advanced version of this software on the Galaxy S4. It allows a user to hover a finger over the content in certain apps and get a pop-up view of what's inside. For instance, over a thumbnail, to get a larger preview of a photo.

Battery: With so much on board, a smaller battery will not do. Hence, the flagship smartphone has got one with 2,600 mAh capacity.

Others: There are many more features. The S-Health app, a fitness monitoring app, will be integrated with third-party accessories such as blood pressure monitors and glucose meters. Air Gesture lets a driver control the phone through gestures while S-Translate can translate several languages in real time. There is also a thermometer and IR gesture sensor in addition to the standard suite of sensors.

Pricing and Availability: There's been no word on the pricing yet and the smartphone will only go on sale towards the end of April. Samsung plans to have worldwide releases in April and May. While we don't have any specific, confirmed launch date for the Indian market, it is likely to happen in April.

All in all, the Samsung Galaxy S4 combines a neat design with a powerful processor and a host of software add-ons. I can't wait to get my hands on this super smartphone.