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[RANT] Are any of you disappointed with the Galaxy S4?

I'd like to see them all drop the innovation called thin.

It packs things closer together so that shock is inevitably transferred to the screen, and they could add just a little size away from thin in favor of a larger battery.

Extended or replaceable batteries, meh. Most people roll with what comes with the phone. And if doing a replaceable battery, do it right. No cover to pop off. Never used to on a lot of phones like the StarTac or the Ocean, replaceable battery also meant easy to swap.

Doesn't have to be a brick, just not all designer thin. My brother feels about his SGS3 as I do about my LTEvo - immediate reaction was the things were so thin and light we thought a breeze would make them fly out of our hands, plus obviously fragile. Boom, two cases ordered right off the bat. My wife got hers, same thing, "Honey, not carrying this until you get me a case."

Yeah, the Maxx is thin. Say it with me - huge bezel.

For the record, I like plastic, even with a fancy name to match the species of a thermoplastic polymer like polycarbonate.

Maybe it's just some of us, but that's how I feel about it.


I'll take superb battery life over a paper thin phone any day of the week...

However I'm always near power, so charging isn't an issue for me.
Got a Car Charger, a House Charger, and a Charger in my office...I've never swapped a battery out with any of my phones that had a removable batter anyway.
 
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The 3 biggest dissapointments for me in order:

1. the screen is still that crappy super amoled, that on the S3 had a heavy cyan cast. The ones i saw on launch night looked like they were heavy on the magenta cast. I think the One hands down will kick the S4 on screen quality.
2. Its basically the same software as the S3 with a few already available widgets bundled.
3. Same form factor as the S3...love it or hate it...making the S4 the same as the S3 was a huge mistake. Apple made a pretty major jump from the 4 to the 5. They do this to keep people wanting the latest "look". I bet you 90% of iphone buyers are buying the "attention" they get...not the phone. To me this is where Android has the advantage, most android buyers i think are looking for a great phone, but they also want to noticed as having the latest and greatest. This is where the S4 lets people down.

But maybe samsung is onto something...its either an iphone or its not...maybe they realize that no matter what they do, its still not an iphone. So why waste money retooling every 9 months.x


Yea but you said it yourself....Apple made a huge bump from the 4 to the 5! Your forgetting one thing my man>>>The 4S! Apple did the same thing Samsung did here, I'm not a fan of what either did! However were talking about the 2 biggest players in the smart phone game...lol, they can kind of do what they want and people will still run out and buy, although Samsung is not in Apple territory yet, but from the looks of things... They're getting there!

And what Apple did with the 4 to the 4S is what Sammy did here, they're basically releasing an SGS but calling it an S4. Hey it is what it is, in the grand scheme of things Samsung will still likely sell more android phones then anyone else in 2013!
 
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1. the screen is still that crappy super amoled, that on the S3 had a heavy cyan cast.

That may be a regional thing because none of the S3s I've seen, and that's quite a few as I sell the things, have displayed a colour cast. I'd also never call the S3 display "crappy", but maybe the UK/European models have a different screen.

2. Its basically the same software as the S3 with a few already available widgets bundled.
I'm not sure where you're coming from here; most of the features touted on Thursday night looked pretty unique to me.

3. Apple made a pretty major jump from the 4 to the 5.
They changed the screen ratio to 16:9 and slimmed it down a couple of millimetres.... hardly a major shift in design paradigm. It's still instantly recognisable as an iPhone, just as the S4 is instantly recognisable as a Samsung Galaxy.
 
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I'll take superb battery life over a paper thin phone any day of the week...

However I'm always near power, so charging isn't an issue for me.
Got a Car Charger, a House Charger, and a Charger in my office...I've never swapped a battery out with any of my phones that had a removable batter anyway.

Got to agree with you on this. I would prefer the phone to be slightly deeper and have a bigger battery to avoid having to replace or recharge during a day.

Unlike you, quite often I am out at work and I don't have access to a charger so I tend to carry a power pack with me to charge both my phones up if needs be. Fortunately, only on days with really heavy use is this an issue.
 
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Hugely dissappointed, I almost feel like I did when my iPhone 4was upgraded to 4S. What an embaressment by Samsung. I'm looking on her for the HTC One thread but cant find it, but Ill be getting that. Design and innovation, which I used to respect Samsung for, but now think they are no more than Apple.

If you'd prefer to discuss the One, please visit http://androidforums.com/htc-one/

Cheers! :)
 
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I'm looking on her for the HTC One thread but cant find it, but Ill be getting that. Design and innovation, which I used to respect Samsung for, but now think they are no more than Apple.

How can you call Samsung "no more than Apple" when Samsung kept removable battery and SD card slot and HTC removed both of these features and went with a "style over functionality" philosophy?

So which companies is more like Apple?
 
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If I had the S3, I'd probably have no desire to get the S4. I still have the S1 so, it's quite the upgrade. I'll admit I was expecting something a bit more revolutionary though.

My only reservation now is losing the physical keyboard of the S1, but it's probably inevitable.

Wow...S1!!!

Your going to love the S4...That I can promise you;)

And believe me it's going to feel very revolutionary the 1st time you lay eyes on that screen....
 
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I have an SGS3 and I will be buying an SGS4. The analogy of the Sgs3 and the SGS4 to the upgrade from the Iphone 4 to the 4s is completely WRONG.

First the screen size is different between the SGS3 to the SGS4

Second Samsung was able to fit a larger screen in the same dimensions (except S4 is thinner!)because they cut down on the bezel with a near edge to edge screen width wise.

Third The PPI and screen are different on the S4 than the S3 (S4 is using the green amoled tech)

So the appropriate analogy would be the the comparison of the iPhone 4s to the iPhone 5. Get it together people!
 
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The S3 got this much more grief when it first arrived. Especially since it never arrived with 1080p non pentile screen or an A15 processor. Now they've turned up with a quad A15 AND A7 processors, 1080p screen and more software than you'll ever really need and yet we still complain. Maybe our expectations are too high?
 
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I think that it would be more together to never compare any Android model upgrades to any iPhones, but that's just my opinion. ;)

I agree. Particularly since with the release of the iphone 5 apple put themselves outside the tech race. That phone didn't even catch up with the S3 specs wise, and so every one of the subsequent slew of android releases that surpassed the S3 technically has left the iphone standing in the water.
 
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I thought the iPhone 5 caught up with the competition? I know it only had a dual core but them cores were pretty damn powerful and the GPU left the S3 and most other devices in the shade. Most of its other hardware features like the camera sensor and speakers were high quality too.

It did, they were custom CPU cores which performed really well and the SGX543MP3 GPU was way ahead of anything Android offered at the time.

The iPhone 5 is a great device, software is the problem there, not hardware.

S4's Adreno 320 (Nexus 4, HTC One etc) has pretty much matched it though, Samsung Exynos 5 Dual with Mali T604 in the Nexus 10 is also very good.

Exynos 5 Quad with SGX544MP3 should easily beat everything but the the new iPad, unless Samsung mess up the software.
 
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I am sorry, but which aspect of Iphone's hardware rocked??


To me it didn't rock , I think the iPhone 5 is made like garbage and that when Steve Jobs died he took the ideas of Apple with him. The iPhone is basically the easiest phone on earth to scratch or dent...its like a tin can, and Apples process to get the metal black to look anodized was probably to just paint the frame and let it air dry instead of baking the color into the metal...lol, who knows what goes on at foxxcom!

Now back to the dance...
 
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I think those of you who are underwhelmed are kind of missing context for all this. Of course you're disappointed, you're tech people who follow this stuff obsessively. Year over year, you're just *not* going to see the huge leaps you want. You sound like Apple fans (I don't mean that as an insult, btw. I have owned/do own many Apple products). A great many of them complain each year when Apple releases an incremental upgrade over the previous year's model.

I think the problem is the initial "wow factor" of these phones has been lost to us forever. We're too inundated with information, guessing, wish lists that we project on to manufacturers. There will still be occasional killer apps or features but getting excited over a specific phone isn't going to happen.

Look at the HTC One. When it was first announced and demonstrated, I thought it was the hottest thing I'd ever seen. I was pretty excited about the notion of owning it. But then more details trickled out. No removable battery, no storage expansion. Will HTC muck up multitasking again like they did on the One X? Blinkfeed looked interesting initially, now I can imagine it just being annoying (I'm aware you can shove it over to another screen, but still).

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind on the S4. Most of this stuff is personal preference (which would be another point). No, I don't like Samsung's materials either. Yup, it looks like an S3, or just a slightly redesigned Note 2. I just think the insistence that these phones are underwhelming is more due to our own projections rather than these companies shortfalls.
 
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The S3 got this much more grief when it first arrived. Especially since it never arrived with 1080p non pentile screen or an A15 processor. Now they've turned up with a quad A15 AND A7 processors, 1080p screen and more software than you'll ever really need and yet we still complain. Maybe our expectations are too high?

Man, I don't ever remember that- I saw the S3 and was like- damn, now Android is playing in the big leagues- they now have a winner!

And I still think that.

I wouldn't worry about the press and everybody hating the S4. It happens with the iPhone every year and yet it still sells well. Same thing with the S3. The phone gets hyped up and then the fanboys run with it- 5" 6D holographic 1080P flexible display, 1/2 as thin, with a 50,000mAh battery, 2.5thz deca-core processor, 500GB memory, 24.5MP camera that is superior to any DSLR, and so on. Then the product launch brings them back down to reality and everybody whines. We all do it.
 
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