The new samsung galaxy s4 reviews, and what apple is saying

In purely commercial terms, the Samsung Galaxy S III was always going to be a tough act to follow. After all, it established and then cemented Samsung’s position as the number one smartphone maker by volume - and the only one to give Apple the collywobbles.

I suspect that’s why Samsung has played it safe and opted for evolution rather than revolution with the S III’s successor. Make no mistake, the Galaxy S4 isn’t much of a trailblazer. In fact, if you were being unkind, you could accuse it of just being the Galaxy S III Mk. II.

That’s not to say Samsung hasn’t ladled on the upgrades. The screen has jumped from 4.8 inches and 1280 x 720 resolution to five inches and 1920 x 1080 while the S III’s quad-core 1.4GHz chip has been replaced by a Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600 SoC with four Krait 300 cores clocked at 1.9GHz. It also has 2GB of RAM.
That chipset makes the S4 the most powerful smartphone on sale today. Well, almost. Then there’s another version, the I9500, which has Samsung’s own Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chip on board to give it a wee bit more grunt on paper. But the UK is only getting the LTE-compatible I9505 variant that I’ve got in my paw at the moment.

The main camera has had a pixel count boost from 8Mp to 13Mp, while the webcam has been given a rather smaller bump from 1.9Mp to 2.0Mp. The battery has been sent to the gym too: it now has a capacity of 2600mAh, rather than 2100mAh.

Many of you will doubtless be relieved to hear of the two things that Samsung has not messed with: the removable battery and the Micro SD slot. As was the case with the S III, the S4 is available with either 16, 32 or 64GB of on-board storage. Personally, I’d go for the 32GB version because the system takes up nearly 8GB of space. If memory serves me right, the 8GB Nexus 4 loses 3GB to the system, which suggests that all the Samsung-added extras take up around 5GB.

Thanks to the slavishly similar design, the S4 looks at first glance much like its predecessor. In fact, I suspect many people will be pushed to tell the two apart unless they see them side by side.

Despite the larger screen and battery, the S4 is 3g lighter, 0.8mm narrower and, at 7.9mm, 0.7mm thinner than the S III. That’s quite an achievement. The thinness of the side bezel is particularly impressive because it makes the S4 easier to use single handedly than the S III, despite the greater screen acreage.
It’s still a rather plastic affair, though a new surface treatment makes it feel less cheap than the S III. Compared to the iPhone 5 and HTC One, the S4 still doesn’t comes across as a truly premium bit of kit.
As many of you will know from my previous reviews of Galaxy handsets, I’m not a fan of the physical home button that Samsung seems wedded to. It looks and feels old fashioned to me, though it clearly doesn’t bother the millions of S III and Note 2 owners out there.

even with all these evolution, apple still has something to say: Apple Inc. (AAPL) told a U.S. judge it will seek permission to add Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy S4 smartphone to a list of 22 “accused products” Apple alleges infringes its patents.

The disclosure came in a footnote to a filing yesterday with U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh in San Jose, California, responding to her April 24 directive that each side submit a limited list of the other’s allegedly infringing products.

This is the second infringement lawsuit between the companies in the same court. Apple filed the case last year to address technology in newer smartphones made by the companies.

“Apple has identified (and separately counted) specific Samsung products -- not product lines,” the Cupertino, California-based company told Koh in its six-page submission. Included on its 22-item list are Samsung’s Galaxy SII and SIII phones, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 10.1 and Galaxy Note II hybrid phone-tablets and three Galaxy series tablet computers.

Should Apple win permission to add the Galaxy S4 smartphone that Samsung released last month, it will drop one of the other devices from the list, according to the filing.

Samsung, too, submitted a 22-product list to Koh, identifying as alleged infringers five models of Apple’s iPhone, five versions of the iPad tablet computer, three types of iPod digital-music players and the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air computers.

 Each side also accused the other of failing to properly interpret and comply with the court’s April 24 directive.

Apple resubmitted an “identical” list of 22 products previously shown to the court on April 22 “with one addition: the Samsung Galaxy S4 product line, which Apple admits it has not even accused in this case,” Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung claimed.

“Samsung continues to identify entire product lines as single accused products in an attempt to circumvent the court’s limit on accused products,” Apple said in its filing, citing the references to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro computers.

This second patent suit follows a case in which a jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion after finding Samsung infringed six of the iPhone maker’s mobile-device patents.

Koh, correcting what she said was the jury’s error, reduced the damages total to $639.4 million and ordered a new trial in November for some products at issue in that case