Samsung Galaxy S4
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is a series of high-end Android smartphones produced by Samsung Electronics as the fourth smartphone family of the Samsung Galaxy S series and was first shown publicly on March 14, 2013, at Samsung Mobile Unpacked in New York City. It is the successor to the Galaxy S III, which maintains a similar design, but with upgraded hardware, more sensors, and an increased focus on software features that take advantage of its hardware capabilities—such as the ability to detect when a finger is hovered over the screen, and expanded eye tracking functionality, it was released the previous year. A hardware variant of the S4 became the first smartphone to support the emerging LTE Advanced mobile network standard. The T-Mobile version of the Galaxy S4, named the model, was released the same month. The phone's successor, the Galaxy S5, was released the next year.
The Galaxy S4 is among the earliest phones to feature a 1080p Full HD display, 1080p front camera video recording, and among few to feature temperature and humidity sensors and a touch screen able to detect a floating finger.
Sales and shipping
The S4 was made available in late April 2013 on 327 carriers in 155 countries. It became Samsung's fastest selling smartphone and eventually Samsung's best-selling smartphone with 20 million sold worldwide in the first two months, and 40 million in the first six months.In total, more than 80 million Galaxy S4 units have been sold, making it the most selling Android-powered mobile phone of all time.
The Galaxy S4's successor, the Galaxy S5, was announced by Samsung in February 2014 ahead of a release in April of that year.
Specifications
Hardware
Comparisons
The Galaxy S4 uses a refined version of the hardware design introduced by the Samsung Galaxy S III, with a rounded, polycarbonate chassis and a removable rear cover. It is slightly lighter and narrower than the Samsung Galaxy S III, with a length of, a width of, and a thickness of. At the bottom of the device is a microphone and a micro USB port for data connections and charging; it also supports USB-OTG and MHL 2.0. Near the top of the device are a front-facing camera, an infrared transmitter for usage as universal remote control, proximity, and ambient light sensors, and a notification LED. In particular, the infrared sensor is used for the device's "Air View" features. A headphone jack, secondary microphone and infrared blaster are located at the top. The S4 is widely available in black and white color finishes; in selected regions, Samsung also introduced versions in red, purple, pink, brown with gold trim, and light pink with gold trim. In late January 2014, Samsung's Russian website briefly listed a black model with a plastic leather backing, similar to the Galaxy Note 3. On 6 February 2014, the Korean LTE-A model got three new colors, those colors being Rose Gold White, Rose Gold Black, and Deep Black.The S4's Super AMOLED display with 1080×1920 pixels is larger than the 720×1280 display of its predecessor, and also features a brand new "Diamond" PenTile RGBG matrix subpixel arrangement which has a better subpixel fill-rate for any given resolution than the traditional linear RGBG PenTile layout that had been used prior. The whole pixel density also increased from 306 to 441 ppi, surfaced with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. An added glove mode option increases touch sensitivity to allow detecting touch input through gloves. The Galaxy S4 is Samsung's first and one of the earliest mobile phones of all time to feature a 1080p display.
Unlike previous models, the S4 does not contain FM radio support, citing the increased use of online media outlets for content consumption on mobile devices.
Camera
Related section: [|Camera software]The camera of the Galaxy S4 uses a 13-megapixel Sony Exmor RS IMX135 image sensor, later used on the Galaxy Note 3.
While the front cameras of the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2, both released in 2012, are only able to capture videos at up to 720p HD resolution, the front camera of the Galaxy S4 allows 1080p Full HD video recording for the first time in any Samsung mobile phone.
The image sensor of the front camera is a Samsung CMOS ''S5K6B2.''
Sensors
Like the Galaxy S3, the S4 is equipped with an accelerometer sensor, a gyroscope, a front-facing proximity sensor, digital compass and barometer.Unlike the predecessor, the S4 is also equipped with a hall sensor for the S View cover, a self-capacitive touch screen layer for Air View and thermometer and hygrometer sensors, the last two of which only the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3 out of all historical Samsung flagship devices are equipped with.
International variants
Galaxy S4 models use one of two processors, depending on the region and network compatibility. The S4 version for North America, most of Europe, parts of Asia, and other countries contains Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 system-on-chip, containing a quad-core 1.9 GHz Krait 300 CPU and an Adreno 320 GPU. The chip also contains a modem which supports LTE. Other models include Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa system-on-chip with a heterogeneous CPU. The octa-core CPU comprises a 1.6 GHz quad-core Cortex-A15 cluster and a 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 cluster. The chip can dynamically switch between the two clusters of cores based on CPU usage; the chip switches to the A15 cores when more processing power is needed, and stays on the A7 cores to conserve energy on lighter loads. Only one of the clusters is used at any particular moment, and software sees the processor as a single quad-core CPU. The SoC also contains an IT tri-core PowerVR SGX 544 graphics processing unit. Regional models of the S4 vary in support for LTE; for Exynos 5-based models, while the E300K/L/S versions support LTE, with the Cortex-A15 also clocked at 1.6 GHz. the GT-I9500 model does not. The S4 GT-I9505 includes a multiband LTE transceiver.LTE-A (LTE+) variant GT-I9506
On 24 June 2013, a variant supporting LTE Advanced, the first commercially available device to do so, was announced for South Korea. In December 2013, it was also shipped to Germany as Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE+, but only with Telekom and Vodafone branding.It also was equipped with increased processing power by using the same CPU and GPU hardware as the Galaxy Note 3 SM-N9005, although no precluded video recording capabilities beyond 1080p at 30 fps.
Storage options
The S4 comes with either 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB of internal storage, which can be supplemented with up to an additional 64 GB with a microSD card slot. Unofficially, the S4 microSD card slot supports 128 GB cards as well. The S4 contains a 2600 mAh, NFC-enabled battery.Software
The S4 used to have Android 4.2.2 and Samsung's TouchWiz Nature user experience. Head tracking features have been extended on the S4; the new "Smart Scroll" feature can be used to scroll while looking at the screen by slightly tilting head or phone forward or backward, and "Smart Pause" allows the video player to pause videos if the user is not looking at the screen. "Air View" and "Air Gestures" implement gestures and other functionality by holding or swiping a hand or finger slightly above the screen, similarly to Samsung's Galaxy Note series, and adds a feature known as "Quick Glance", which uses the proximity sensor to wake the phone so it can display notifications. The "Group Play" feature allows ad hoc sharing of files between Galaxy phones, along with multiplayer games and music streaming between S4 phones. The S4 also introduces Knox in the Android 4.3 update, a suite of features which implements a sandbox for enterprise environments that can co-exist with a user's "personal" data. Knox incorporates use of the ARM TrustZone extensions and security enhancements to the Android platform.The camera app implements numerous new features, including an updated interface, and new modes such as "Drama", "Eraser", "Dual Shot", "Sound and Shot", "Animated Photo", and "Story Album" among others. The S4 also supports High Efficiency Video Coding, a next-generation video codec. Other new pre-loaded apps include WatchOn, S Translator, the workout tracker S Health, S Voice Drive, S Memo, TripAdvisor, and an optical character recognition app. The previous "Hub" apps from past Samsung devices were replaced by a single Samsung Hub app, with access to music, e-books, and games that can be purchased by users. To take the screenshot the user can simply swipe their hand on the screen from one end to other horizontally.
In February 2014, Samsung began rolling out an update to Android 4.4.2 "KitKat" for the S4; the update adds user interface tweaks such as a camera shortcut on the corner of the lock screen, options for setting default launcher and text messaging applications, support for printing, and a new location settings menu for tracking and controlling the use of location tracking by apps. It also makes significant changes to the handling of secondary storage on the device for security reasons; applications' access to the SD card is restricted to designated, app-specific directories only, while full access to internal primary storage is still allowed. Although this behavior has existed since Android 3.0 "Honeycomb", OEMs such as Samsung previously modified their distributions of Android to retain the previous behavior, allowing applications to have unlimited access to SD card contents.
In January 2015, Samsung began rolling out an update to Android 5.0.1 "Lollipop" in Russia and India, an update which brings all the features of Lollipop, such as enhanced performance and lockscreen, including a refined interface with a flatter and geometric look, as seen on the Galaxy S5. Samsung paused the rollout soon after, when users reported major bugs. The rollout continued in March 2015 starting with unlocked models in the UK, Nordic and Baltic countries and has since then spread to several other countries. US and Canadian Galaxy S4 models received Android 5.0.1 Lollipop update in April 2015; despite this, there is a workaround available via ROMs taken from the Galaxy S6 series that can make upgrading the Galaxy S4 to Android 7.0 "Nougat" with Samsung Experience 8.0 possible.