When was the Samsung Galaxy S4 released? "Samsung Galaxy S4": phone characteristics, reviews and photos. Connecting a large screen

Samsung Galaxy S4 (I9500, I9505) is the fourth and most anticipated flagship of Samsung. The smartphone was announced on March 14, 2013 and this event caused an unprecedented stir. When developing this device, the company took into account all the developments of previous years and created something simply amazing. software with a lot of functions and useful tricks.

Like previous devices, the Galaxy S4 has a plastic body. For many, this fact causes indignation and criticism, but let's find out - is it so bad? The Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone used stylish, glossy plastic with an interesting texture, and no matter how long the device was carried in a pocket or dropped on the asphalt, the damage was always minor. And you try to drop the Nexus 4 on the asphalt, with its glass cover, and see what happens.

The smartphone body is only 7.9 mm thick, with dimensions of 136.6 x 69.8 and a weight of 130 grams. It is assembled with very high quality and, even if one tries, one cannot find any creaks or backlashes.

Video: Samsung Galaxy S4 appearance

The smartphone fits a little tighter in the hand than its predecessor, the Galaxy S3, but nevertheless, holding the device is quite comfortable. Although, in order to reach the top, I personally have to move it in my hand.

The plastic feels very pleasant to the touch, although it seems more slippery than that of its predecessor, the Galaxy S3.

Screen.

The display in the Samsung Galaxy S IV is beyond praise. This is a full-fledged Super Amoled matrix with Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080). This results in almost ideal viewing angles and rich colors. The pixel density is 441 ppi, which is, of course, much higher than the sensitivity limit of the human eye.

Video: screen in Galaxy S4

Corning Gorilla Glass 3 is installed on top of the matrix.

You can sing odes of praise for a long time, but this cannot be taken away - the display here is the best to date.

Camera.

The smartphone has a 13 megapixel Exmor RS matrix manufactured by Sony. This is one of best cameras on mobile devices and even in Sony's own flagship Xperia Z, the manufacturer uses a weaker sensor. As a result, the quality of photos on the Samsung Galaxy S4 is very high level. True, at the start of sales the software was somewhat crude and some users encountered involuntary reboots of the smartphone, but this is already a thing of the past. Below are a few pictures.

Photos from the camera

The camera interface is very convenient and now you don’t have to scour the settings to select shooting modes. Just press the button under the “shutter” icon and you will see a convenient wheel with scrolling modes.

There are 12 of them in total, and if you click on the icon in the lower left corner of the screen, they will all appear in the form of a grid.

List of camera modes:

1. Automatic (full automatic)
2. Retouching (photographing faces with retouching)
3. Best photo (several shots and choice)
4. Best face (choose from several faces - great for self-portraits)
5. Sounds and photos (photo with background sound for 9 seconds)
6. Series (continuous shooting)
7. Animated Snapshot (creates an editable animation from frames)
8. Rich Tones (aka HDR)
9. Corrector (removing strangers from the picture)
10. Panorama (great tool you can make 35 megapixel panoramas, example)
11. Sports (filming sporting events)
12. Night (shooting at night and in low light)

There are also a lot of settings here, but for video there are only two.

The smartphone is capable of recording video in Full HD resolution and does it just fine. Of particular note is the video stabilization system, which works much better than its competitors.

Video from camera Samsung Galaxy S IV

Iron and other characteristics.

The 2013 flagship is initially available in two versions with the indexes I9500 and I9505. Both smartphones differ in the presence of LTE and, as a result, in the processor. The eight-core Exynos 5 Octa 5410 cannot work on LTE networks and is used in the Galaxy S4 GT-I9500. It has 4 cores with a frequency of 1.6 GHz and 4 with a frequency of 1.2 GHz and it is worth noting that they cannot work simultaneously. We found out how productive this solution is in tests.

In the second version (GT-I9505), LTE is present, and the processor is an equally powerful Snapdragon 600 chip. The PowerVR SGX 544MP3 chip is used as a video accelerator. The amount of RAM is 2 GB. As for the built-in one, here we have 3 options: 16, 32 and 64 GB. True, the system in the Galaxy S4 takes up quite a lot and in the “youngest” version of the smartphone, out of 16 users, a little less than 9 GB is left. You can read why this is so at the link below.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the smartphone’s battery, because now its capacity is 2600 mAh, which is enough for a day of work under full load.

Software.

The device runs Android 4.2.2 with the proprietary Nature UX shell. As was already mentioned at the beginning of the article, Samsung has done a tremendous job and introduced a large number of various applications and utilities. In this review, I will not analyze each program, but rather I will dwell in detail on each application in the following articles.

Contents of delivery.

Actually, nothing much has changed here and the equipment of the S IV is quite standard and no different from previous flagships. In addition to a bunch of all kinds of “waste paper”, the smartphone comes with a battery, a 5 V 2 A charger, a USB cable and headphones with earbuds of different sizes.

Comparison with others.

If you are the owner of previous devices in the Samsung Galaxy line and are thinking about buying this “monster”, you will probably want to know its dimensions in comparison with your smartphone. A few photos taken together with the devices I currently have will help you with this.

From Nexus 4

Comparison with S3 and “firstborn” I9000

And with the “giant” Galaxy Note

Comparison of two flagships

And finally the thickness

That's all for now. This review is far from complete and is constantly being improved. If you have anything to add, please write in the comments.

It has long earned credibility among buyers and even has its own loyal fans. There are many models of a wide variety of equipment in the line. Smartphones from this well-known company are especially popular. In this article we will look at one of the most common models today - the Samsung Galaxy S4. specifications which is still of interest to many, despite the fact that the phone is not a new product of the season.

Appearance

It is the design of the device that is an extremely controversial topic. After the model was released on world markets, many complaints appeared against the Korean manufacturing company regarding the device. The thing is that visually the new product was practically no different from its predecessor. In fact, this is one of the main problems of the entire series of Samsung smartphones. There is no design at all; all products are made in the same style, as if the manufacturer is deliberately trying to depersonalize his models. Characteristics of the Galaxy S4, with regard to external design, are in many respects similar to all descriptions of the design of devices from the company. The flagship has simple, streamlined on all sides, uncomplicated shapes. The device is smooth, like its plastic body and gloss, so unloved by users because for constant scratches, does not deter from purchasing it. It is surprising that even despite such a faceless design, the Samsung Galaxy S4 (the technical characteristics of which cover all the shortcomings of the case) remains in the top of the best-selling models in the world. Cunning Korean manufacturers are no worse than you and me understand that appearance is far from the most important factor when choosing a phone. The company frankly states that it is not going to change its strategy in the near future. However, perhaps this should be done, especially with such production capacity. Compared with its predecessor, " Samsung Galaxy S4, whose characteristics are largely identical, has slightly less rounded corners, a slightly wider bezel and a different flash location. The dimensions and weight of the device remain unchanged. Innovations include materials: fashionable polycarbonate has replaced ordinary plastic. This is good news because there is a chance that the new case will be more scratch resistant.

Ease of use

The model's keys and connectors remain in place. The side frame framing the display has been slightly reduced, which made it possible to fit the characteristics of a larger screen into the same dimensions of the Samsung Galaxy S4. This is certainly commendable, because the large screen will appeal to everyone, but the huge size confuses many. Another good thing is that the back cover remains removable, that is, the user has the opportunity to independently replace the battery, insert a SIM card without additional devices, etc. Initially, the phone came out in two colors (black and white); a little later, colored cases appeared, which allows everyone to choose a gadget in their favorite color scheme.

Screen

Once they take a path, Koreans invariably follow it. The new Samsung Galaxy S4 (screen size 1920x1080 pixels) is equipped with a Super AMOLED display. Diagonal - 126 mm, full and more than 441 pixels - pixel density, really pleased buyers. In general, the screen is quite good, the brightness is quite sufficient, wide viewing angles are definitely a plus, the smallest elements on the display are clearly visible. The screen is touch sensitive. The Samsung Galaxy S4, the characteristics of which are discussed in this article, has another interesting feature - the ability to control the sensor while wearing gloves. This is very convenient, especially considering the harsh Russian winters.

Camera

Let us immediately note that the experience in creating cameras accumulated by the Korean company over many years was not wasted. New smartphone I got a good camera. Of course, this directly concerns the photo processing algorithm itself, because Samsung’s Exmor R (camera module) was developed by Sony. A matrix with BSI back-illumination and a resolution of 13 megapixels is used. There is also one aimed, as a rule, at creating self-portraits and video calls (its resolution is 2 megapixels). The manufacturer promises users the ability to shoot simultaneously from both cameras. An interesting addition will be software that can compose and process the received materials, creating entire stories accompanied by a sound track. There is no dedicated photo button on the body, but this is not required, because you can release the shutter using the volume key. In general, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is equipped with a fairly high-quality camera. Characteristics in numbers for many do not carry any practical information, so you can view photos taken by the flagship outdoors and indoors.

Performance

The smartphone's hardware platform is based on the powerful Exynos 5410 Octa SoC. It includes 2 quad-core processors (ARM Cortex - A15 with a frequency of 1.9 GHz and ARM Cortex - A7 with reduced frequencies of 1.2 GHz.). The application option proposed by the company is obvious: under heavy load, the first one is used, and for those tasks that do not require significant computing power, energy-efficient cores are replaced by top-end cores. As for image processing, here the Samsung Galaxy S4 (the graphics performance, as already mentioned, is decent) supports the specialized graphics core PowerVR SGX 544MP3.

Autonomous operation

The flagship is equipped with a removable battery, which can be extremely necessary, for example, in situations with a swollen battery (which sometimes happens) or in cases of long trips, when it certainly wouldn’t hurt to get a second battery. The smartphone also supports a function that is indispensable for all advanced users. The specifications will tell you in more detail about the capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy S4 battery:

• Internet. With Wi-Fi turned on and the browser page refreshed every minute, the gadget can withstand about 8.5 hours of operation. All this at 70% brightness and power savers turned off.
• Reading. In conditions of disconnected wireless networks The phone stays charged for 10.5 hours with automatic page turning.
• Video. Continuous playback is possible for 10.5 hours, in contrast to Samsung, whose characteristics are slightly lower (6 hours of battery life in the specified mode).

In general, it can be noted that the battery life of the flagship is satisfactory. However, you have to constantly monitor and disable unnecessary services. In this regard, the phone is similar to powerful smartphones from other well-known manufacturers. If you constantly keep all applications and services turned on, charging will barely last until the evening.

"Samsung Galaxy S4 Duos" (specifications)

In fact, this is a smaller copy of the Galaxy S4. Everything is a little smaller here: the screen, the body, the camera resolution, and the performance. The main advantages of the model are compactness, a more affordable price and, of course, the ability to install two SIM cards at the same time. This moment is often decisive when choosing a particular smartphone. In modern conditions, when you need to constantly be in touch, it is very convenient to have one device and several SIM cards in it. This allows you to save on calls between different operators and not carry several devices with you.

Notes

With constant use, the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone (the characteristics were discussed in detail) produces problems with the camera, which were subsequently corrected in the new firmware.

Like most powerful phones, the top of the lid does heat up, but this is only under heavy load.

There are also some complaints related to the Super AMOLED display and the difficulty of using it on a sunny day.

conclusions

The Galaxy S4, like the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, whose specifications are slightly lower, are certainly high-end smartphones. The company does not disappoint its fans and continues to produce quality products.

As for prices, everything is standard here: the starting price at the beginning of sales is 30,000 rubles, but it rapidly falls with the release of new models. If the main thing for you is not the appearance of the device, but its practicality and “filling”, you can safely purchase Samsung. For many years, the phones of this company have been among the best and are the main competitors of IPhone, Sony, HTC and others.

Samsung has traditionally used various types of plastic in its flagship smartphones; this solution has both positive and negative sides. On the positive side, it is worth noting the light weight (130 grams) and thickness (7.9 mm) of the device. Negatives: The glossy plastic is completely impractical and quickly becomes covered in fingerprints and scratches.

The dimensions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone are typical for five-inch smartphones - it is wide and tall, so it is not very comfortable to hold in the hand, but the situation is partially improved by the weight and thickness, which are lower than many competitors, as well as the smoothed corners in the body. Compared to the (i9300), the dimensions of the S4 have not changed much, but the display diagonal has increased.

Screen - 4.4

Display diagonal is 5 inches, matrix type is Super AMOLED HD, screen resolution is 1920×1080 pixels, protective coating is Gorilla Glass 2, PPI value is 441. The advantages of the display are a large diagonal and high resolution, excellent brightness and contrast. The screen will appeal to lovers of bright colors. Cons: Super AMOLED technology, which makes the image too contrasty; not everyone will like it. WITH close range on the screen of the Samsung Galaxy S4 you can see red halos around the letters, however, most users will not notice them (by the way, since the Galaxy S3 they have become less noticeable due to the high resolution). An indirect advantage of using Super AMOLED is the energy-intensive screen, which is why the Samsung Galaxy S4 lasts longer on a single charge than many competitors.

Camera

The smartphone has a 13 MP camera with LED flash. The maximum resolution for video recording is 1920×1080 pixels, recording speed is 30 frames per second, sound is recorded in stereo mode.??

Working with text - 5.0

The standard keyboard in the Samsung Galaxy S4 is comfortable, it has a function for entering text using strokes (Swype), as well as the ability to enter numbers without switching to additional symbols mode. Disadvantages - an inconvenient language switching system: you need to hold your finger on the space bar and swipe left or right. To enter most additional characters, including the comma, you need to call up an additional menu. Another disadvantage worth noting is the relatively small size of letters in the Russian layout, despite the large diagonal of the screen.

Internet - 3.0

The device browser is great for browsing the Internet: it has separate mode reading pages without pictures. According to user reviews, this mode is convenient to use when reading large amounts of text on the Internet without being distracted by pictures. But there is no adjustment of text to the screen when scaling multiple times. The Galaxy S4 (as well as the entire line) uses special mode energy saving in the browser, the color scheme changes slightly (for example, White color goes to blue tones), but battery life increases significantly when using a browser.

Interfaces

The smartphone supports most common wireless interfaces: dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC. The device has the S Beam function, with which you can quickly transfer files, such as photos, music or videos, from one Galaxy S4 to another using Wi-Fi or NFC, placing them back to back.
LTE support is only present in the version of the smartphone with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset.

Multimedia - 4.6

Samsung Galaxy S4 plays almost any video without preliminary conversion - the device has support for rare audio formats and video containers. In the player you can select audio tracks, as well as subtitles embedded in the video file. The audio player plays most common as well as rare formats, including uncompressed audio in FLAC format. At the moment, the Galaxy line is one of the best in terms of the number of supported audio and video formats and video player settings.

Battery - 2.9

The smartphone has a removable lithium-ion battery with a capacity of 2600 mAh. We tested the battery in our two standard tests: the device is capable of playing HD video at maximum brightness for 7 hours, and listening to music discharges it in 45 hours. The battery life of the Samsung Galaxy S4 is superior to most smartphones, this applies not only to synthetic tests, but also to everyday use.

Productivity - 2.5

The device uses the Samsung Exynos Octa 5410 platform with an eight-core processor, PowerVR SGX544MP3 graphics subsystem and 2 GB of RAM. It’s worth telling a little more about this platform: it uses big.LITTLE technology, which controls the operation of the device’s cores. This chipset actually uses two different quad-core processors (one clocked at 1.2 GHz and the other at 1.8 GHz). The point is that during everyday use the less powerful processor is responsible for the work, while in games and other “heavy” operations its more productive “colleague” is switched on.

For the average user, this means a slight increase in battery life and that’s all. You most likely won't even notice the switch between processors.

The characteristics and power of the Samsung Galaxy S4 will allow you to watch Full HD video and play even the most powerful games. We tested the Galaxy S4 in Asphalt 8 and Real Racing 3: both games launched perfectly and ran smoothly even at maximum settings.

Separately, we note that there is a modification of the device based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset, which supports Russian LTE frequencies.

Memory - 4.0

The internal memory capacity of the device is 16GB or 64GB, depending on the modification. Samsung Galaxy S4 supports microSD memory cards up to 64GB. Thanks to the presence of a memory card slot, the user does not have to worry about the lack of memory in the device.

Peculiarities

The device runs under Samsung's proprietary shell - TouchWiz. In this shell, the manufacturer added its own browser, dialer, SMS client, music and video players, its own weather application and many other programs. The built-in video player supports most third-party video codecs and video formats, making it convenient to watch even unconverted video from your phone. The audio player allows you to listen to music not only by artist, but also by folder. S Memo app is a great note taking app with handwriting support. At the moment TouchWiz is one of the most convenient shells

Problem solved

Advantages: 1. Good screen. Really good. It looks nice overall, works great on a stand like a clock and doesn’t light up the whole room at night. Occupies almost the entire area of ​​the front surface. If there were even more, then the control buttons would have to be removed. 2. Good performance . Nothing to complain about. Everything works great, although the TouchWith interface is sometimes laggy. 3. S Beam is excellent. 4. Video files can be eaten by almost any standard player. It was very orderly. MX has never come in handy yet. 5. The camera’s picture quality is excellent (if the device does not reboot). The quality of the pictures is good. HDR is quite nice. 6. All other benefits described below. They really are. Disadvantages: 1. This is the second device that I have in my hands. The first one had to be handed over. Moreover, the obviousness of this arose already on the second or third day of use, but I could not do this because I left. I passed it in a little less than two weeks. This, I think, is the main disadvantage of a smartphone for 1kUSD. 2. In the old and in the new device, the memory for the user is less than 9 GB out of 16. Disgrace and marketing deception. 3. The camera (and flashlight apps that use flash) periodically cause the phone to reboot. Unpleasant. Both in the old and in the new device. 4. When you start the camera, the phone always turns the screen brightness to maximum. Why, it’s not clear to me personally. This cannot be disabled. At night it really hurts my eyes. 5. The first defective device had a bad speaking microphone. If in normal use mode everything was fine, then on the speakerphone they could not hear me, even if I spoke directly into it. 6. Clumsy appearance of some built-in applications. As beautiful and pleasant as the “Video” and “S Health” applications are, the standard player and gallery are just as disgusting and clumsy. It feels like a schoolboy did the design of the icon and interface. 7. The rebuilt standard Android menu is slightly annoying at first. The sections are grouped into 4 groups and it is not clear where and what to look for at first. 8. The volume key is not located very well. When adjusting the volume with one hand, I press the power button over and over again. 9. No radio. In Moscow, where there are a lot of cool stations, it’s sad not to use them, to be honest. 10. It gets warm. Really. Not a joke. If you make a call immediately after watching an HD video, your ear will sweat noticeably and not very pleasantly from this heating. Comment: I have a GT-i9500 on Exynos 5 OCTA, 16 GB. There are a number of nuances that do not seem to be disadvantages, but are somewhat annoying and disturbing. 1. It is not convenient to use in its original book case (if the call cannot be accepted without opening the case). Its size is such that handling the book case with one hand is not very convenient and very dangerous. You can easily drop it during opening and closing. 2. Controls the RAM so that if you open the browser, then the Camera and return to the browser, the tabs will be reloaded. Unpleasant. I expected more real multitasking. The owners of Note II 3 actively praised it to me. In the high sensitivity mode of the screen (for gloves), it can turn on in a jeans pocket 4. Modes "corrector" and " best face"do not work so well, but at least this way. The algorithm seems to select the best shot from several, and then clearly shows - “I’m great, I removed these cars and these people.” That is, it is impossible to achieve complete removal of passers-by or cars if in all pictures there is at least someone. 5. Switching between camera modes is quite tedious. I can’t suggest a better option, but something is not ideal with this either. There are few “quick” settings for pictures.

Detailed testing of screen, performance, battery life

At one time, even when the dates for the start of sales of the Samsung Galaxy S4 were not finally determined, we used our chance to conduct a completely a short time with this new product, expected by many, in order to then summarize all the data obtained into a kind of mini-review, what is called a “first look”. In it, we used only those results that we were able to obtain in the short time allotted to us to get acquainted with the device. They, of course, were not complete - we were physically unable to carry out those tests and tests that take a lot of time and which must be carried out in laboratory conditions.

But today, when the day and hour of the start of sales of the Samsung Galaxy S4 has already been predetermined, we decided to return to this issue. Before such a serious purchase, it is necessary to weigh all the pros and cons, and we, in turn, have the opportunity to provide users with the necessary additional information about the new device, which was not included in the first part of our review.

Therefore, this review will not contain a description appearance device and ease of use with controls - you can read about this in the first part of the description of our acquaintance with the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Here we will talk, first of all, about the data we obtained after detailed testing of the screen of the new smartphone using measuring instruments in our laboratory. We will also provide you with the results of all our tests of the performance of the smartphone hardware, as well as the duration of its battery life. And finally, we will spend a little more time on the Samsung Galaxy S4 camera and its operating modes. Our specialist Anton Soloviev will comment on the test photographs obtained during the study of the new product.

But first, let’s present our traditional comparison table, which has been expanded since the first acquaintance with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and now already contains information about almost all the main top new products of the new season that we have tested. All the most popular flagship smartphones are compiled into a single table for easy selection, and those that are not included here (for example, LG Optimus G Pro) will be added to it very soon. Although, we must note with regret, according to the Russian office of LG, this particular device will not be officially supplied to our market.

* The most common SIM card formats are described in a separate material.

Main characteristics of Samsung Galaxy S4 (GT-I9500)

• SoC Samsung Exynos 5 Octa, 8 cores, combined according to the ARM big.LITTLE principle: 4 high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 at 1.8 GHz and 4 energy-efficient ARM Cortex-A7 at 1.2 GHz
• GPU PowerVR SGX544MP3
• Operating system Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
• SuperAMOLED display with Pentile, 4.99″, 1920×1080
• RAM(RAM) 2 GB, internal memory 16-64 GB
• MicroSD card slot up to 64 GB
• Communication GSM GPRS/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
• Communication 3G UMTS HSPA+ 850, 900, 2100 MHz
• 4G (LTE Cat 3 100/50 Mbps) - only in the GT-I9505 version based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 SoC
• HSPA+ 42 Mbps
• Bluetooth 4.0, NFC
• Support MHL 2.0, OTG
• Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
• GPS/Glonass
• Cameras 13 MP and 2 MP (front)
• Accelerometer, photometer, digital compass, proximity sensors, gyroscope, barometer, thermometer, hygrometer and IR sensor
• Can be used with gloves
• Lithium-ion battery 2600 mAh
• Dimensions 136.6×69.8×7.9 mm
• Weight 130 g

Screen

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a very high-quality touch display made using Super AMOLED technology. In numbers, the physical parameters of the new product’s screen are as follows: diagonal - 126 mm (4.99 inches), resolution - Full HD 1080p (1920×1080 pixels), PPI pixel density is 441 ppi, although with Pentile this figure looks dubious . Yes, Pentile technology hasn't gone away, although the Samsung Galaxy S4's screen is significantly different from its predecessors. The display has both manual and automatic brightness adjustment, which is based on the operation of the light sensor. There is also a proximity sensor that blocks the screen when you bring the smartphone to your ear. Multi-touch technology allows you to simultaneously process up to ten touches, and the new screen of the Samsung Galaxy S4 allows you to operate it while wearing gloves.

A detailed examination of the display using measuring instruments was carried out by the editor of the “Monitors” and “Projectors and TV” sections, Alexey Kudryavtsev. Here is his expert opinion about the screen of the Samsung Galaxy S4.

The screen is covered with a glass plate with a mirror-smooth surface and, judging by the reflection of bright light sources in it, has a very effective anti-glare filter. There is a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating on the outer surface of the screen, so fingerprints are removed much easier and appear at a lower speed than with regular glass.

When manually controlling the brightness, its maximum value was about 230 cd/m², the minimum was 10 cd/m². Despite not the most high value brightness, even in bright daylight the smartphone can be used, since it helps out that OLED screens have less reflection from dark areas compared to a typical LCD screen. You also need to take into account the fact that in this case, than smaller area white on the screen, the lighter it is, that is, the actual maximum brightness of the white areas will almost always be higher than the specified value. Low brightness mode allows you to use your smartphone even in complete darkness without any problems. Automatic brightness adjustment works based on the light sensor (it is located to the left of the front speaker). You can make adjustments to the operation of this function by moving the adjustment slider from −5 to +5 units. Below, for three conditions, we present the screen brightness values ​​for three values ​​of this setting - for −5, 0 and +5. In complete darkness, in automatic mode, the brightness is reduced to 15, 20 and 30 cd/m², respectively; in an office illuminated by artificial light, the brightness is set to 48, 94 and 113 cd/m², in a brightly lit environment (corresponding to daytime lighting outdoors, but without direct sunlight) - increases to 280 cd/m² for all three correction values. In principle, the result of this function is as expected. When brightness decreases, modulation appears at a frequency of 240 Hz. The figure below shows brightness versus time for three brightness settings:

It can be seen that at maximum brightness there is virtually no modulation; at minimum brightness the modulation amplitude is low, so in these extreme cases the flickering of the backlight cannot be seen. At half brightness, the modulation has a larger amplitude, so at medium brightness values, flicker can be seen - hardly just by looking at the screen, but if you quickly wave, for example, a pencil in front of a white field on the screen, then flicker can be determined by the repeating mark of the pencil.

This smartphone uses a Super AMOLED matrix - an active matrix based on organic light-emitting diodes. A full-color image is created using subpixels of three colors - red (R), green (G) and blue (B), but there are twice as many green subpixels, which can be referred to as RGBG. This is confirmed by a fragment of a microphotograph:

In this square you can count 9 green subpixels, 4.5 blue and 4.5 red subpixels. For such matrices, Samsung introduced the name PenTile RGBG. However, the location and shape of the subpixels in this variant differ from the PenTile RGBG variants implemented in the Galaxy S3, ATIV S, Motorola XT925, etc. screens:

In the Galaxy S4 version, the green subpixels no longer form horizontal lines; as a result, horizontal and vertical worlds are displayed equally on the S4 screen, and not in the same way as in the case of, for example, the Samsung ATIV S.

Note that luminance is primarily determined by the green component, so luminance clarity actually corresponds to the density of the green subpixels. The fact that color clarity is lower (because the density of red and blue subpixels is lower) does not actually affect image quality, since the color clarity of human vision is also lower than luminance clarity. However, this does not mean that the image on such a screen looks exactly the same as on a screen with the same resolution, but with the same number of subpixels different colors. Let's compare, for example, how the main page of our website is displayed on the screen of the Galaxy S4 and on the LCD screen of Oppo Find 5. Both screens have approximately the same size and resolution (if you count by the green subpixels), but in the case of the Oppo Find 5 there are as many red and blue subpixels as there are green ones. Below are fragments of photographs of screens obtained when displaying the specified page in the same (original) scale.

The readability of small text on the Galaxy S4 screen is probably even better than on the Oppo Find 5 screen. However, two circumstances need to be taken into account: firstly, this text is so small that its readability is already very low simply due to its physical dimensions (the height of the letter "o" is 7 pixels, or approximately 0.4 mm); secondly, the quality of small text output in Android (and in the browser in particular) is very low in itself, but this PenTile option slightly blurs the lines that fall on the rows of pixels, and slightly increases the clarity of the lines that do not fall on the rows of pixels, because making very small text on the Galaxy S4 screen look smoother. And two more photographs taken at higher magnification of the above fragments:

The screen of the Samsung Galaxy S4 has very good viewing angles: the white color noticeably changes hue only at large angles, and the black color simply remains black at any angle - it is so black that the contrast parameter is simply not applicable in this case. When viewed perpendicularly, the uniformity of the white field is very good. Switching the state of the matrix elements is actually carried out instantly, so the response time can be equated to 0. The gamma curve constructed using 32 points did not reveal a significant blockage in either highlights or shadows, and the index of the approximating power function is from 2.28 to 2.32 V depending on the selected profile, which is slightly higher than the standard value of 2.2 (in the captions, the number in brackets is the indicator of the approximating power function):

In case of profile Dynamic The gamma curve has a slightly S-shaped character; for the three remaining profiles it practically does not deviate from the power law dependence. The color correction profile is selected on a separate page in the screen settings section.

There are only four profiles, plus a special “Optimize display” mode, in which manual profile selection is blocked, and the phone apparently selects the profile itself by analyzing the current image. Note that the brightness of image fragments changes dynamically in accordance with the nature of the displayed image - it decreases for generally light images and increases for dark ones. When selecting a profile Dynamic this effect is slightly more pronounced, and when the mode is turned on Auto tuning screen brightness The dependence of brightness on the lightness of the image becomes even stronger. Therefore, the dependences of brightness on hue (gamma curves) that we obtained may not correspond to the gamma curves of a static image, since the measurements were carried out at serial output shades of gray on the entire screen.

Color gamut for profiles Dynamic And Standard very wide:

When selecting a profile Adobe RGB The coverage is slightly tightened in the blue and yellow areas (here the black line is the Adobe RGB space coverage, the white line is the measured coverage):

When selecting a profile Movie The coverage is tightened even more, but still remains wider than sRGB:

Without correction, the spectra of the components are very well separated:

In case of profile Movie with maximum correction, the color components are already slightly mixed together:

Note that on wide-gamut screens, the colors of regular images optimized for sRGB devices appear unnaturally saturated. However, a visual assessment showed that when choosing a profile Movie saturation is noticeably reduced, and colors become close to natural. Without correction, in profiles Dynamic And Standard, the colors are unnatural: for example, the faces of white-skinned people have a pronounced carrot tint. The balance of shades on the gray scale is not ideal, but, in general, acceptable. The color temperature is above 6500 K, but in the area of ​​the gray scale from white to dark gray this parameter changes slightly. The deviation from the spectrum of an absolutely black body (delta E), if it exceeds 10 units, is not very much, which is considered a good indicator for a consumer device, while the variation in delta E is not very large (the dark areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since there is a color balance does not matter much, and the measurement error color characteristics large at low brightness):

Therefore, according to visual assessment, there are no special complaints about the transmission of shades of gray.

In general, in terms of consumer characteristics, the screen of this smartphone has every right to take first place in the competition with the screens of other top-end smartphones of the same class, at least at the time of writing this article.

Camera

Photo evaluation and quality conclusions were made by Anton Solovyov.

Samsung Galaxy S4 is equipped, like most modern smartphones, with two digital camera modules. The main rear camera module has a 13-megapixel resolution. The Samsung Galaxy S4 uses Sony's Exmor R sensor, based on BSI back-illumination technology. The camera shoots in a maximum resolution of 13 megapixels, and the pictures are 4128x3096 in size with an aspect ratio of 4:3. You can manually switch the camera to shooting mode with a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9 - then the pictures will be taken in size 4128 × 2322 (10 megapixels). You can evaluate the quality with which the Samsung Galaxy S4 camera shoots by clicking on the thumbnails below.

Conclusion on the photographic capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy S4 camera. Among the advantages of the camera, we can note very good sharpness in most photographs. I would like to hope that the rather large areas of blur at the edges are caused by not very good calibration of the lens, and not by the design features of the camera, because in general the lens is made decently and fully utilizes the 10 megapixels of the matrix. It’s not often that such a successful combination of matrix and optics is found on smartphones. One cannot but rejoice at the almost complete absence of chromatic aberrations and sharpening contours. In any case, they are hardly noticeable. The camera selects exposure well, but very conservatively, and the camera's color rendition is also conservative. It seemed that due to the aperture, the camera would lose depth of field, however, as can be seen from the macro photographs, the depth of field is sufficient, which is, admittedly, bad for artistic photography, but very good for documentary photography. Overall, we can conclude that Samsung is quite a successful camera, more than suitable for everyday documentary shooting. Considering that this is the camera quality that most smartphone users demand, we can note that Samsung is moving in the right direction.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 camera can shoot video in Full HD resolution (1080p). Autofocus is fixed quickly enough, there are no slowdowns or sticking when shooting. Also in the settings there are shooting modes with slow and fast motion effects. Below are test videos shot in various modes. Video is saved in MP4 (video - MPEG-4 AVC ( [email protected]), sound - AAC LC, 128 Kbps, 48 ​​kHz, 2 channels).

• Video No. 1 (27.4 MB, 1920×1080)
• Video #2 (11.4 MB, 800×450, slow motion)
• Movie #3 (15.4 MB, 1920×1080, fast motion)

There are a lot of settings for controlling the camera, everything in the menu is arranged almost the same as in previous top-end Samsung smartphones. It is possible to attach geotags to a photo, add graphic effects, enable smile detection, panoramic shooting, and, of course, software enhancement can be used here using HDR (High Dynamic Range) technology. There is image stabilization and the ability to display a grid on the screen.

Performance

The Samsung Galaxy S4 hardware platform is based on a powerful SoC, which includes a 4-core processor with ARM Cortex-A15 cores running at 1.8 GHz, and another 4-core processor with ARM Cortex-A7 cores running at lower frequencies 1.2 GHz. This hybrid technology of combining high-performance and economical cores in one chip was created by ARM, this concept is called big.LITTLE, and its implementation is licensed to third-party processor manufacturers in the same way as the ARM cores themselves. A quite obvious use case is expected: under heavy load, the system uses high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 cores at high frequencies, and when performing tasks that do not require significant computing power, the top cores fall asleep, and they are replaced by energy-efficient ARM Cortex-A7. Let us add that similar (in principle, not in implementation) hybrid technologies are also used in the NVIDIA SoC.

The Exynos 5410 Octa processor cores are supported in graphics processing by the PowerVR SGX 544MP3 graphics core. However, there is another modification of the smartphone, equipped with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor operating at a frequency of 1.9 GHz, where Adreno 320 is used as a graphics coprocessor. In our case, the device was presented in an eight-core configuration - this is the so-called. "international version".

Now we already have the opportunity to compare the performance of the Samsung Galaxy S4 with all the other top flagship new products this season. Most of them, by the way, are built on the previous top-end platform Snapdragon S4 Pro. Quite expectedly, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was on the first step in the ranking of devices we had previously tested, and only HTC One gave him worthy competition, demonstrating similar performance results. At the same time, smartphones such as Google Nexus 4, LG Optimus G, HTC One X+ and Samsung Galaxy Note II remained behind the leader in this race. Let us present the results we obtained using popular tests, which we have collected in tables for convenience, adding the results of other devices we have previously tested.

Below are the results of testing the Samsung Galaxy S4 in the new version of GLBenchmark - 2.7.0, where a new T-Rex HD scene of increased complexity was added. As we remember, even such a powerful system as the Oppo Find 5 produced only 13 fps in this test. The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 platform in HTC One handled this difficult test better, but only slightly - 15 fps. For some reason, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was unable to play these scenes from the new test at all, so the final results were incomplete, which left us a little disappointed.

Since the Samsung Galaxy S4 is one of the first smartphones to support 802.11ac, we separately tested the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. Testing was carried out with the ASUS RT-AC66U router - one of two models supporting the 802.11ac standard present on the local market. Let us remind you that this a new version The standard only operates in the 5 GHz band and provides more than twice the speed of 802.11n. In the case of smartphones, most often only one antenna is used, so connection speeds in this case can be a maximum of 150 Mbps for 802.11n and 433 Mbps for 802.11ac. Actual performance is usually about half that. In addition, many mobile devices do not even support dual-channel operation, resulting in a 72 Mbps limitation for 802.11n.

Samsung Galaxy S4 has one antenna, which causes maximum speed connections 433 Mbit/s. When operating in the 2.4 GHz band with one channel, this model shows real performance of about 50 Mbit/s, which can be considered an excellent result. However, we note that the tests were carried out in a relatively empty airwave. Switching to 5 GHz in 802.11n mode allows you to more than double the speed of information exchange with your smartphone - we were able to get 133 Mbps for downloading data to the smartphone and 117 Mbps for sending from the smartphone to the router. Of course, such high indicators allow us to talk not only about comfortable video viewing high resolution, but also about fast synchronization and downloading files to the device. At the same time, we were unable to connect in the “802.11ac only” mode. The reason is most likely that a device sample was used for the test. In any case, if you plan to actively use this model, we highly recommend purchasing a modern dual-band router.

Play video and connect to an external screen

To test the omnivorous nature of video playback (including support for various codecs, containers and special features, such as subtitles), we used the most common formats, which make up the bulk of the content available on the Internet. Note that for mobile devices it is important to have support for hardware video decoding at the chip level, since it is most often impossible to process modern options using processor cores alone. Also, don't expect mobile device decoding everything, since the leadership in flexibility belongs to the PC, and no one is going to challenge it.

Additionally, the MHL interface was tested. To test it, we used an LG IPS237L monitor that supports direct MHL connection using a passive adapter cable from Micro-USB to HDMI. Samsung, for some reason known only to it, has implemented its own version of this interface in its devices that supposedly support MHL. As a result, to connect an external device via MHL, you need to use special adapters or connect standard MHL adapters through simple passive adapters. By luck, we found such an adapter.

As a result, we connected the LG IPS237L monitor and the MHL adapter via this adapter. When using the LG IPS237L monitor, MHL output was carried out at a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels at a frequency of 30 frames/s. When the smartphone is landscape-oriented, the image is displayed on the monitor screen in landscape orientation, while the image on the monitor fits within the boundaries of the screen and exactly matches the image on the smartphone screen. When the smartphone is in portrait orientation, the image is displayed on the monitor screen in portrait orientation, while the image on the monitor is inscribed within the height of the screen, and black fields are displayed on the right and left. In this case, the actual resolution on the monitor screen is, of course, lower than the resolution on the smartphone screen.

Sound is output via MHL (in this case, the sounds were heard through headphones connected to the monitor, since there are no speakers in the monitor itself) and has good quality. At the same time, at least multimedia sounds are not output through the loudspeaker of the smartphone itself, and the volume is controlled by buttons on the smartphone body. The smartphone connected via MHL is charging.

Video output using the standard player deserves a special description. To begin with, using a set of test files with an arrow and a rectangle moving one division per frame (see Methodology for testing video playback and display devices. Version 1), we checked how the video is displayed on the screen of the smartphone itself. Screenshots with a shutter speed of 1 s helped determine the nature of the output of frames of video files with various parameters: the resolution varied (1280 by 720 (720p) and 1920 by 1080 (1080p) pixels) and frame rate (24, 25, 30, 50 and 60 frames/ With). The results of this (block entitled " Screen") and subsequent tests are summarized in the table:

Note: If both the Uniformity and Dropout columns are rated green, this means that when watching movies, there will most likely be no or no amount of artifacts caused by frame spacing or dropouts visible. will not affect viewing comfort. “Red” marks indicate possible problems associated with the playback of the corresponding files.

According to the frame output criterion, the quality of playback of video files on the screen of the smartphone itself is very high, since frames (or groups of frames) are output with uniform alternation of intervals and there are no skipping frames. However, in any case, uniform alternation of frames is a relatively unstable state, since some external and internal background processes lead to periodic failure of the correct alternation of intervals between frames. During testing, an interesting feature was discovered: it seems that in the case of files with frame rates of 30 and below, the screen refresh rate is 40 Hz, and for files of 50 and 60 fps, the refresh rate increases to 60 Hz. As a result, for a file with 30 fps we got the following image:

And for a file with 60 fps - like this:

When playing video files with Full HD resolution (1920 by 1080 pixels) on the smartphone screen, the image of the video file itself is displayed one-to-one, exactly along the border of the screen in true Full HD resolution. Considering that the color resolution in a video file is two times lower than the brightness one, the features of the PenTile matrix actually do not affect the quality of the output of video files. The brightness range displayed on the screen slightly does not correspond to the original one: in the shadows, a couple of shades of gray are indistinguishable from black, but in the highlights all gradations of shades are displayed (for video in the range 16-235).

With a monitor connected via MHL, when playing video with a standard player, the image is displayed only in landscape orientation, while only the image of the video file is displayed on the monitor, and only information elements and virtual controls are displayed on the smartphone screen. When playing video files with Full HD resolution (1920 by 1080 pixels) on the monitor screen, the image of the video file itself is displayed one-on-one, exactly along the border of the screen in true Full HD resolution. The brightness range displayed on the monitor corresponds to the standard range of 16-235, that is, all shade gradations are displayed in shadows and highlights. The results of the monitor output tests are shown in the table above in the “MHL (monitor)” block. The output quality is good, but, of course, in the case of files with 50 and 60 fps, some frames are skipped, since the output is in 1080p mode at 30 fps.

Additionally, video output (with a standard player) via MHL using an MHL adapter was tested. When using this adapter, output to the monitor was carried out in 720p mode at 60 fps, which determined the maximum actual image resolution. With the exception of resolution and frame rate, everything else - the nature of the interface output, charging, audio output and gray scale - did not differ from a direct connection via MHL. The test results are shown in the table above in the “MHL (adapter)” block.

When using an adapter, the intervals between frames in the case of files with frame rates up to 30 fps inclusive can vary by three times (from 1/60 to 3/60) and alternate unevenly, while 720p files are output at 50 and 60 fps Fine.

In general, an MHL connection can be used for gaming, watching movies, surfing the web, and other activities that benefit from multiplying the screen size. True, you will have to purchase an adapter specifically for Samsung or find an appropriate adapter.

Battery life

The capacity of the lithium-ion battery installed in the Samsung Galaxy S4 is 2600 mAh. The battery here, as mentioned earlier, is replaceable, which can save you in the event of a swollen battery, for example (and users have had such cases with Samsung batteries). And you can stock up on a second battery in case of a long trip, which can also be convenient.

The smartphone demonstrated very good performance in terms of battery life, leaving a little behind many of the top new products that we have tested over the years. Lately. Only again, HTC One was able to match the results, and even outplay its opponent in some ways. Here are the results of testing the test subject in several battery modes.

Continuous reading in the FBReader program at a minimum comfortable brightness level (brightness was set to approximately 100 cd/m²) for 2 hours consumed 17% of the full battery charge, and two hours of watching YouTube videos in high quality (HQ) via the home Wi-Fi network -Fi device has used up 24% of its battery capacity. Under maximum load in continuous 3D game mode (100% brightness, 60 fps), which we usually test using GLBenchmark, the smartphone, as mentioned above, refused to pass testing and constantly dropped out of the program. Therefore, unfortunately, we were unable to obtain data on this test. Fully charged Samsung Galaxy S4 completed in 2 hours.

Prices

The average retail price of the device in rubles in Moscow at the time of reading the article can be found by moving the mouse to the price tag.