The Samsung Galaxy S4 is a smartphone manufactured by Samsung Electronics. It was announced in New York City on March 14, 2013 as the successor to the Samsung Galaxy S III. The phone has many distinguishing software features such as Air Gesture, Smart Stay, and Smart Scroll; a 13-megapixel back camera, and a 5-inch (130 mm) 1080p display.
The S4 has two major variants, one featuring a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 and the other featuring an Samsung Exynos 5 Octa. The Exynos 5 Octa version features the first big.LITTLE architecture central processing unit (CPU) but does not have LTE connectivity.
The CPU has eight cores, four of which can be active at one time emulating a quad-core. The S4 was made available in late April 2013 on 327 networks worldwide and in 155 countries.Upon its release, it became the fastest selling smartphone in Samsung's history, with 10 million devices sold as of May 22, 2013, according to Samsung.
It is the first TCO certified smartphone.
Google is releasing a version of the U.S. Galaxy S4 running stock Android 4.2.2 with Google-provided updates, similar to the Google Nexus smartphones. This device will go on sale on June 26, 2013 for $649
Software
Further information: Android (operating system), TouchWiz, and S Voice
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 "Adapt Sound" and "Adapt Display" functions can automatically adjust settings for the screen and sound system for optimal quality.
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 Travel, and an optical character recognition app. A new enterprise-oriented feature known as Samsung 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.
Back of the Black Mist S4
Hardware and design
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; it is made of Gorilla Glass 3.
The S4 comes with either 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, which can be supplemented with up to an additional 64GB with the 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.
Built into the 2600mAh 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 can be wirelessly chargedusing a Qi standard special charging pad (sold separately) that utilizes magnetic resonance to produce a magnetic field through which power can be transferred.
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, and infrared blaster. The backside of the S4 has the 13 megapixel camera lens and LED flash, and at the bottom left edge has the loudspeaker.
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
Further information: Exynos and big.LITTLE
This S4 version has Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa (octa-core) system on a chip (SoC) chip containing the first ARM big.LITTLE heterogeneous architecture central processing unit (CPU). The eight core CPU comprises a 1.6 GHz quad-coreCortex-A15 cluster 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, either the big cluster is active (for maximum performance) or the LITTLE cluster (for maximum power efficiency).[dubious – discuss] 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 µsec. 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.
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