The Samsung Galaxy S4 is a high-end, Android smartphone produced by Samsung Electronics. First unveiled on March 13, 2013 at Samsung Mobile Unpacked in New York City, it is a successor to the Galaxy S III which maintains a similar design, but with upgraded hardware and an increased focus on software features that take advantage of its hardware capabilities—such as the ability to detect when a finger is hovered over the screen, and expanded eye tracking functionality (which includes scrolling).A hardware variant of the Galaxy S4 also became the first ever smartphone to support the emerging LTE Advanced mobile network standard.
The S4 was made available in late April 2013 on 327 carriers in 155 countries. Upon its release, it became the fastest selling smartphone in Samsung's history; the company sold 20 million Galaxy S4 units worldwide in the two months following the device's launch.
The screen features a 5-inch (130 mm) (sometimes stated as 4.99-inch) PenTile RGBG Full HD Super AMOLED screen with 441 pixels per inch and Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
The S4 comes with either 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB of internal storage, which can be supplemented with up to an additional 64 GB with a microSD card slot.
The S4 GT-I9505 includes a multiband LTE transceiver and both models feature an infrared LED that can serve as a universal remote control.In June 2013, a version of the S4 was released in South Korea with support for LTE Advanced networks. It is the first smartphone ever produced with support for LTE Advanced. This model includes a quad-core 2.3GHz Krait Snapdragon 800 processor.
Built into the 2600 mAh battery is near field communication (NFC) connectivity, which allows users to perform non-touch payments at shops that employ specially equipped NFC cash registers. The SC-04E model has a FeliCa secure element, unlike other models which contain an NFC-A secure element. The NFC-A secure element on the SC-04E is provided on the SIM card. The battery also supports wireless charging through the Qi standard.
The Galaxy S4 supports the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video format.
In addition to the touchscreen, the S4 has several physical user inputs including a home button located near the bottom of the screen, at the bottom of the S4 is the primary microphone and the microUSB port for both data connections and charging; it also supports USB host and MHL 2.0. There are volume keys on the left side and a power/lock key on the right. At the top there is a 0.14-inch (3.6 mm) headphone jack, the secondary microphone, andinfrared blaster. The backside of the S4 has the 13-megapixel camera lens and LED flash, and at the bottom left edge has the loudspeaker.
Samsung's official accessory for the S4, the S-View Cover, utilizes a hall effect sensor in the phone which detects when the cover is closed and displays battery status, time, and other phone statuses in an area of the screen visible through a window on the cover.
Notably, the S4 does not include an FM radio receiver, as previous models did.
The S4 comes in two variants that differ primarily in the internal hardware:
Quad-core variant
This S4 version for North America, most of Europe, parts of Asia, and other countries has Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 SoC containing a quad-core 1.9 GHz Krait 300 CPU and an Adreno 320 GPU.
Octa-core variant
This S4 version has Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa (octa-core) system on a chip (SoC) chip containing the first ARM Big.littleheterogeneous architecture central processing unit (CPU). The eight core CPU comprises a 1.6 GHz quad-core Cortex-A15cluster and 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 cluster. The cluster of four faster "big" A15 cores is paired with the cluster of four slower, more power-efficient "LITTLE" A7 cores. At any given time, only four cores will be active, either the quad Cortex A15, quad Cortex A7 or a mix between them. The switching of the active cluster is performed on demand by the chip firmware, with the migration of the running software from outgoing to incoming cores taking 20 µs. The CPU emulates a single quad-core processor to the operating system and applications. The SoC also contains an IT tri-core PowerVR SGX 544 graphics processing unit (GPU). The GT-I9500 version of the S4 does not support LTE.The E300K/L/S versions support LTE, with the Cortex-A15 also clocked at 1.6 GHz.
Software
The Galaxy S4 ships with Android 4.2.2 and Samsung's TouchWiz Nature user experience. Eye tracking features have been extended on the S4; the new "Smart Scroll" feature can be used to scroll while looking at the screen by slightly tilting the phone, and "Smart Pause" allows the video player to pause videos if the user is not looking at the screen. "Air View" implements gestures and other functionality (such as previewing images or messages) by holding or swiping a hand or finger slightly above the screen. The "Group Play" feature allows ad hoc sharing of files between Galaxy phones, along with multiplayer games and music streaming between Galaxy S4 phones.
The camera app implements numerous new features (some of which were first seen on the Galaxy Camera), including an updated interface, and new modes such as "Drama" (which composes a moving element from multiple shots into a single photo), "Eraser" (which takes multiple shots and allows the user to remove unnecessary elements from a picture), "Dual Shot" (which uses the front-facing camera for a picture-in-picture effect), "Sound and Shot" (which allows the user to record a voice clip alongside a photo), "Animated Photo", and "Story Album" among others. Other new pre-loaded apps include WatchOn (an electronic program guide that can utilize an infrared transmitter on the top of the phone as a TV remote), S Translator, the workout tracker S Health, S Voice Drive, S Memo, Tripadvisor, and an optical character recognition app. A new enterprise-oriented feature known asSamsung KNOX allows the phone to be separated into modes for personal use and business use, and gives the business mode high security.It supports the aptX codec which improves Bluetooth-headset connectivity.
Updates
Between June–July 2013, Samsung began rolling out an update to the firmware; the update allows apps to be moved to the SD card, freed 80 megabytes of space, adds stability to the camera, and adds a new feature that increases legibility on the display. For the S4 variants on AT&T and Verizon, this update removed the ability to apply the previous root exploit known as "Loki".
In early August 2013, the Google Play Edition variant of the S4 began to receive an update to Android 4.3. By the end of 2013, Samsung plans to release updates to Android 4.3 to all of the carrier S4 variants.
SAMSUNG GALAXY S4
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