To recap, I’m taking a narrative approach to reviewing the Samsung Galaxy S4. By using the device in day to day life, rather than a forensic examination of every single feature, I’m hoping to get a better feel of the device as a tool to be used every day by ‘normals’, rather than racing to meet a deadline and working down a bullet point list of new features… This week, after some surprisingly nice weather in Scotland, I’ve been out and about with the S4 and seeing how the camera performed.
One thing to note in passing is that the readability of the S4 in sunlight is slightly poorer than the S3. It is still legible with the sun shining straight onto the screen, but there is less contrast on show with this model than the previous Galaxy flagship.
Onto the camera. It’s a 13 megapixel shooter that produces some of the largest images of any smartphone currently on the market. It’s not always about the size, it’s about the quality of the image, and I’m happy to write that the Galaxy S4 is a very good smartphone camera. I think I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the best Android smartphones for taking pictures.
I’d pick out the Apple iPhone 5 and the Nokia Lumia 920 as the handsets you would want to compare pictures taken on S4 to. I’d say that the S4 is slightly better than the output from Apple’s smartphone under most circumstances, while shots from Nokia’s stabilised PureView Lumia 920 to me feel slightly warmer, although I think this is down more to post-processing of the image than the optics. As the light level drops, the Lumia 920 is still the smartphone to have, but the Galaxy S4 matches the performance in almost every other circumstance.
One thing that I have found with the Galaxy S4 user interface is that Samsung loves to have a lot of options available, and the layout of these options can be a bit ‘kitchen sink’ with everything pushed in so they are there, but not in an easy to find way.
The original and full article can be found over on Forbes.
Ewan Spence is a blogger, author and writer based out of Edinburgh, Scotland. In addition to his own blog, he has contributed and contributes to BBC News, BBC Magazine (online), The Stage (UK Arts and Entertainment Newspaper), Computing (VNU), iProng Magazine, IT Pro, O’Reilly’s Make Magazine, Palmtop Magazine, Podcast User Magazine, UK Tech and UK Mobile Blognation, PDA Essentials, Mobile Messaging 2.0 and All About Symbian.
He wrote the book Rapid Mobile Enterprise Development for Symbian OS and has audio program commissions for BBC Radio 5 Live – Through the Night and Pods and Blogs, Computer Outlook Talk Radio Show and Talk 107. He also regularly speaks at and moderates panels at high profile technology conferences around the world.
