I absolutely hated it. The keys are small and I had to type super slower than usual because it just couldnt keep up with me, and no autocorrect. I did like that the numbers were laid out at the top though.
Honestly, get Swiftkey. It runs rings around any of the manufacturers stock keyboards, including the Sense keyboard. I'm just wondering are you fairly new to Android? I just ask since things like this are easily fixed by simply grabbing an app, and for many stock apps there are better third party alternatives.
I couldn't believe how poor the voice recognition is on the galaxy. I mean, it's just bad. Even on WiFi. I tried while driving to say one simple sentence and it just couldn't do it. Not even close. It got funny actually.. When I got home we said multiple sentences on WiFi and I think out of 15 tries, one was correct.
Was this using S-Voice? You can just use Googles voice software, will be basically identical to the performance on the One (the One has better microphones, so may be a little better, but not the kind of magnitude of difference you're talking about).
The performance overall was noticeably slower than on the One, or even my evo lte. Especially multitasking.
I've had no particular problems with multitasking, but certainly the S4 had a lot more micro lags, hitches and jank compared to the One. Would expect that to improve over a couple of firmware updates in the next 4-8 weeks or so, as it did with the S3 within a short period after release.
But as for the reason that I swapped for it, the camera, I was very pleased. It takes very good photos.
Agreed, the S4 camera is nice, although the One beats it in some settings (low light being chief amongst them of course).
With that being my one Samsung experience, I can't believe how popular that phone is.
It just goes to show that when a company spends the big bucks on clever advertising, people will eat it up. Congrats HTC, you have the worst marketing team in the world. Because your product is FAR superior and you are being crushed.
This phone is popular because the S2 and S3 were popular, they were popular for easily being the best Android flagships the last two years (excluding the Notes from that statement given that they aren't really in the same market segment). It isn't all about the failure of HTCs marketing department. In relation to the One, I love mine, I also love my S4. I don't rate the One "FAR superior" to the S4, I find them quite evenly balanced overall, with each forcing me to compromise on some areas in terms of my own personal use. I'm still wrestling with deciding which I keep (or whether I end up keeping the also great Padfone Infinity).
I think if anything your experience illustrates how much better the OOTB experience is on the One, the S4 is a bit obtuse in terms of lots of things taking too much digging to find your way around.