Who's happy, who's not with the S4

[Dnomac]

By far the best phone I've owned (Droid X and iP4). I used TouchWiz for a few days before installing Nova and have noticed virtually no lag. In my opinion, the HTC One and G4 are very comparable and the differences will come down to personal opinion. I am envious of the aluminum build and was turned off by the plastic build of the G4 until I bought it and played with it. I actually really like how it feels in my hand. The construction strikes a good balance between build quality and portability (very thin/light).

I've had the phone about 2 weeks now and still find myself constantly picking up the phone and swiping between screens for no reason other than to admire the beautiful screen.

 

[Szadzik]

Came from S3 and even though the difference is not huge, I like it.

 

[CaptainRon]

Came from an EVO 4G.

I think this phone is over-hyped. The hardware is great but I think Samsung did a poor job with the software (HTC does a better job w/ software). Many of the gimmicky features are just that plus they feel like they are still in beta. They don't work very well (voice control, eye controlled scrolling and "stay-alive" feature, etc...). The screen is nice but the auto-brightness sucks. The Samsung bloat is annoying (as is all bloat). Took a lot of tweaking and turning off "features" to get the phone to work smoothly.

The phone is basically an "incremental" upgrade to my EVO and most other "high-end" smartphones. Faster, more memory (love the 64GB card option), bigger screen, better camera but other than those standard improvements, I could have stuck with my EVO and been happy.

I'll probably be rooting soon which will (hopefully) fix many of the annoying software features.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the phone but...it's just another smartphone with nothing really new or revolutionary which is truly useful.

One man's opinion.

I agree totally. I came from a rooted Galaxy Nexus which I thought was a great phone. The S4 is faster and has a nicer screen, but after a few days it doesn't feel like the quantum leap I got going from the Droid to the GNex. Maybe I'll feel different after I root it.

Again, I'm "happy" with the S4. It's a great phone, it just doesn't quite meet the hype.

 

[dwbrewer]

I came from the Thunderbolt on Verizon. Need I say more
Very happy with this phone. It does what I need for it to do in regards to work. I am not happy that Verizon pulled some of the functionality (Blocking mode for instance).

 

[rdefino]

Whats blocking mode for ?

 

[rkkeller]

I have the iPhone 5 and the S4 right now and honestly don't think I touched the i5 more than 2-3 times since getting the S4, its on a shelf in the computer room.

I think how happy someone will be depends on what they wanted out of it. I didn't buy a phone to play a lot of games, sure I have some but space will not an issue for me. The feel of it is fine, mine is in a case and probably most others too so not an issue for me. The lag I never noticed but the i5 is a little smoother overall. Camera to me is outstanding, screen great and it's just about the right size.

I am sure there are better gaming devices out there, better cameras, etc.... but overall in one package I am very satisfied.

 

[tastycaramel]

I am overall happy with the S4 despite paying $900 (large percentage of my bank savings) just to buy the phone. Very fluid in games and very good display. I say this phone is worth it!

 

[PrinceOfDorne]

Although the plastic battery door is starting to make noise. I also have HTC One and LG Optimus G, and if I were to rank them it would be:

Build wise:

1. HTC One
2. LG Optimus G
3. SGS4

Performance wise:

1. SGS4
2. HTC One
3. Optimus G

 

[janx218]

I'm loving my S4 so far, but I'm coming from the barely-smart Casio G'zone Commando. People complain about the S4 only having 8GB of internal storage free--that sucker only had about 300MB. So I'm just thrilled to have a phone I can actually do things on.

 

[Kelmar]

Whats blocking mode for ?

See photo

 

[Captain Mal 78]

I'm due for an upgrade from my s2 in mid June. I was dead set on the s4 but all the top reviewer recommended the HTC one due to the s4's lag issues and lack of memory out of the box so I was very tempted to go for the HTC one. But after watching many videos on that phone there's a fair number of people talking about build quality issues around the casing etc and that HTC sense has some weird quirks! and seems really crappy! So now I'm thinking of coming full circle and staying with my original choice of the s4..!

Such a tough decision!

I'm in the same boat. Keep going back and forth. For now, I decided to wait. I refuse to buy the 16 gig S4 when it has less internal memory to use than my S2 (if I spend a lot of money on a flag ship phone, it darn well better have more internal memory than my 2 year old phone). I think I'll wait until T-Mobile gets the 32 gig S4 or the 64 gig HTC One, whichever comes first.

 

[rvltn123]

Very happy with the phone. Use it primarily for business. Came from a Bionic, unrooted. The criticisms with storage and build materials were moot points for me because 16gb is plenty for my needs (I don't play those space-demanding games) and I prefer to have a removable battery case.

 

[Tsepz_GP]

Thoroughly enjoying my beast

Likes:
Incredible display
Great batt life
Quick charging
Excellent camera
Great design, it looks in real life
More solid feel than my S2 and S3
The new Sensors and their awesome features
New TouchWiz is more refined
32GB built in Mem
Great audio quality and volume via headphones
Great audio quality in-call
Strong signal strength both on network and WiFi
Loving the TW Music Player
Fact that it came with Android4.2.2 straight out-the-box
Plenty RAM to multitask compared to my GS3 I9300

Dislikes:
Built-in Web browser needs some work
No full Polaris Office doc editor out-the-box (can be downloaded through Samsung Hub now though)
WatchOn doesn't support some of the TVs, Set top boxes etc...I try it with
Smart Scroll needs a lot of work
New NFC standard means you can't use it to transfer things from S4 to e.g. S3

That's about it.

 

[jdCaptivate]

As you can see from my list of phones, I've owned a good portion of the AT&T Galaxy lineup.

This by far, is the largest leap. While I didn't have the S3, my wife does... and this phone smokes her's. The Captivate to S2 was nice... the Skyrocket with LTE was very nice. The S4, disabling crap that is enabled on a LOT of phones, not just Samsung... is not a big deal. Only reason I knew of this lag, was because I just got the phone and was checking back into the forums. I kind of checked out, after I stopped flashing with the Captivate.

Saw all this talk of lag and when I discovered that they're not hardware issues, not even software issues... but a setting issue... well, that's not really an issue, is it? Its just a setting.

Phone is even faster now. So, yeah. I'm happy. Now just have to keep my wife from being pissed off, I got it. I broke the news to her, while she was with a friend... so she bit her tongue, then just walked on eggshells all day. Might be in the clear, though I'll try and put another day between the purchase, for good measure.

 

[speedlever]

After a brief affair with the Note2, I am delighted with the GS4. The rest of the family has iPhone 5's. So be it.

 

[DanDroide]

WatchOn doesn't support some of the TVs, Set top boxes etc.

I don't know if this will help you but I was able to find my Tivo BEFORE the WatchOn update and it was gone (as a choice) after the update. I uninstalled the update and my Tivo choice returned and works just fine.

 

[dlphnfn]

I'm kind of "meh" about it... I've had all HTC phones to this point, so maybe you can color me an HTC fan boy. I like the removable battery and ability to add the SD Card (the reasons I bought this instead of the One). But there isn't anything else that sets it apart from the One. Pair that with the fact I paid $250 for the SGS4 and the One would have set me back only $100 because of the rebate they were offering me... I think it would have been worth the $150 less.

 

[MOS95B]

I just traded in my Droid Charge for the S4 yesterday. So, the first 24 hours have been pretty impressive

No lag (yet) either. Not that I'd likely be able to tell after being on the Charge for 2 years

 

[tastycaramel]

I'm kind of "meh" about it... I've had all HTC phones to this point, so maybe you can color me an HTC fan boy. I like the removable battery and ability to add the SD Card (the reasons I bought this instead of the One). But there isn't anything else that sets it apart from the One. Pair that with the fact I paid $250 for the SGS4 and the One would have set me back only $100 because of the rebate they were offering me... I think it would have been worth the $150 less.

Here in singapore, the HTC One is more expensive than the S4. Not sure why is that so

 

[stereoeclectic]

By far the best phone I've owned (Droid X and iP4). I used TouchWiz for a few days before installing Nova and have noticed virtually no lag. In my opinion, the HTC One and G4 are very comparable and the differences will come down to personal opinion. I am envious of the aluminum build and was turned off by the plastic build of the G4 until I bought it and played with it. I actually really like how it feels in my hand. The construction strikes a good balance between build quality and portability (very thin/light).

I've had the phone about 2 weeks now and still find myself constantly picking up the phone and swiping between screens for no reason other than to admire the beautiful screen.

I also came off the DX. the camera difference is somewhat astounding.

 

[chris2k5]

3 weeks in, I am not sold on the S4. Will still keep it but once a newer device comes to market, I'll switch.

1. TouchWiz lag is horrible. I can't get over how much the phone stumbles on it's face.
2. Camera bump reveals camera when put down on table and the camera is all scratched.
3. A lot of the new features are truly gimmicks. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. The conditions and the stars have to be aligned perfectly for it to work.
Example: Video eye pausing is very fiddly and pauses the video constantly and then starts it again without me even turning away! The eye scrolling works sometimes only.
4. Build quality has been spoken of a lot already. This phone's plastic painted silver rim dents easily. The POWER BUTTON is mushy and recessed already.

I baby my phones and the S4 got special attention but the hardware isn't holding up in some places.

 

[DanDroide]

I will tell you one minor thing I don't like, with the S4 software. They took away the ability to set a "default" reminder time on the calendar. This is a pain to me. You used to be able to go into Calendar > Menu > Settings > Default Reminder Time.

 

[trparky]

It is not TouchWiz that's slowing the phone down. There is something wrong in the device's kernel, far lower than TouchWiz on the software ladder and much closer to the bare-metal hardware. There are a number of third-party kernels that have fixed the issue to the point where there is no lag.

 

[chris2k5]

It is not TouchWiz that's slowing the phone down. There is something wrong in the device's kernel, far lower than TouchWiz on the software ladder and much closer to the bare-metal hardware. There are a number of third-party kernels that have fixed the issue to the point where there is no lag.

Haven't seen this posted anywhere. Even XDA. Can you link us to where you found this?

 

[jdCaptivate]

Haven't seen this posted anywhere. Even XDA. Can you link us to where you found this?

Did you turn off, the software lag that is turned on by default and isn't exclusive to TW.

Not a single bit of lag on my phone. I turn it on, screen snaps on. I swipe, screen refreshed immediately. Apps are snappy, etc.

Did you do these things, because you don't specify and might feel a bit differently.