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Slide Notes

Mossberg tested the Galaxy S 4 intensively for four days and while he admires some of its features, overall, he declares it isn't a game-changer. Rather, he states, "It's an evolution of the prior model and despite some improvements, it still is especially weak in the software Samsung adds to basic Android. I found Samsung's software often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional."
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Mossberg On Galaxy S4

Published on Nov 18, 2015

Summary of Walt Mossberg's review of the Samsung Galaxy S4 from online.wsj.com

PRESENTATION OUTLINE

GALAXY S4

MOSSBERG'S TAKE
Mossberg tested the Galaxy S 4 intensively for four days and while he admires some of its features, overall, he declares it isn't a game-changer. Rather, he states, "It's an evolution of the prior model and despite some improvements, it still is especially weak in the software Samsung adds to basic Android. I found Samsung's software often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional."
Photo by dfarber

THE GOOD

BIGGER SCREEN

30% LARGER THAN IPHONE
"The new Galaxy boasts a giant 5-inch screen, a bit bigger than the 4.8-inch display on its predecessor, but its mostly plastic body is thinner and lighter. It may stretch some small pockets and purses, and look funny when held to your ear, but it doesn't feel like a brick.

Still, compared with the iPhone 5, with its 4-inch screen, the S 4 is 30% larger and 17% heavier."

13-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA

SLIGHTLY BETTER PICS THAN 8MP IPHONE 5
"The new Galaxy has a 13-megapixel camera, compared with 8 megapixels for the iPhone 5."

BATTERY

REMOVABLE, LASTS ENTIRE DAY
"On many key hardware specs, the Galaxy S 4 shines. Its screen and camera resolution beat the iPhone 5's and I found its pictures to be slightly better than those from the Apple phone, which is nearly a year old. Its removable battery gave me a full day of use."

THE BAD

OUT OF THE BOX, CAMERA INACCESSIBLE

WITHOUT FIRST UNLOCKING THE DEVICE
"... Out of the box, there's no camera icon on the lock screen so you can immediately take a picture. (You can add this feature, via the settings menu...)"
Photo by ☼zlady

CLUTTERED

WITH EXTRANEOUS AND DUPLICATIVE SOFTWARE
"Nearly all Android phones already come with two email apps—one reserved for Google's Gmail. But on the Galaxy S 4, there are also two online video and music stores, two music and video players, two calendars and two browsers."

BUGGY

SOME FEATURES JUST DON'T WORK WELL
"I had almost zero success with a suite of features that claim to take certain actions by detecting whether you're watching the screen. For instance, Smart scroll will scroll the screen based on the angle of your head and Smart pause will stop playing a video when you look away. I only got these to work about 10% of the time. Samsung blamed lighting conditions, even though I used it in many settings."
Photo by gui.tavares

CONCLUSION

HTC ONE

WORTH A LOOK IF YOU'RE SHOPPING FOR ANDROID PHONE
I urge readers looking for a new Android smartphone to carefully consider the more polished-looking, and quite capable, HTC One, rather than defaulting to the latest Samsung.

Review here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323550604578412663217414132.h...

LEARN MORE

Read the complete review online by clicking the link below:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323735604578440824138699526.h...
Photo by aur2899