15 Mar, 2013 11:19 AM

The Samsung Galaxy S4

Samsung Electronics Co on Thursday premiered its latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S4, which sports a bigger display and unconventional features such as gesture controls and will spearhead its effort to challenge Apple Inc on its home turf.

The phone crams a 5-inch screen into body slightly smaller than the S III's and includes a 13MP and 2 MP dual camera capable of taking shots with both lenses simultaneously while recording sound and attaching it to the image. Dual video recording is possible, Samsung said.

The phone will run on Google’s Android operating system, with extra layers of Samsung software, which the South Korean electronics giant hopes will differentiate it from both Apple’s iPhone and numerous Android rivals.

Other notable features include the S Translator, which converts spoken and written language on the fly, Smart Scroll and Smart Pause, which track eye movements to automatically scroll the screen or pause videos, and Air View and Air gesture, which allow users to control icons by hovering their finger over the screen, and accept calls by waving their hands. An app called S Drive uses voice recognition to control navigation and communications while driving.

The phone will ship with the latest version of Android, known as Jelly Bean, and will have a choice of 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of internal storage, as well as a micro SD slot for adding up to 64 GB of card memory. It has 2 GB of RAM memory and a 2600 mAh battery.

Galaxy S 4

Samsung is trying to end its role as understudy to its more celebrated competitor, especially in the crucial American market, where Apple still rules. Even as Samsung has surpassed Apple in global market share, it is often criticised in the United States as an effective copycat, taking most of its product cues from Apple. But Samsung has begun flexing its marketing muscle more aggressively here to try to change that perception.

Some the features to mention are

Smart Scroll, Smart Pause: The rumour mills had indicated that the Galaxy S4 would allow you to 'eye scroll' but Samsung has fallen back on face recognition technology. The phone detects if you're not looking at the smartphone and will pause a video. Also you can simply tilt the phone to scroll up or down while reading. Smart Scroll will allow you to scroll through content on the screen such as email with face movements and wrist gestures.

Air Gesture: This is pretty similar to what the AirView feature does on the Galaxy Note II with the SPen. This allows users to pick up calls by just swiping their hand over the device without touching the screen. You can control and unlock the phone without touching it as well.

Air View functionality is also available and allows users to preview the content by simply holding or hovering their finger over it. Air View works for email, Flipboard, photos and calendar.

Dual Video calls: This is a pretty cool feature as it allows someone to see what's going on in your back camera while you speak to them via the front camera. Sounds interesting.

S Voice Drive: S Voice, Samsung's answer to Apple's Siri has got a pretty serious upgrade as well. S Voice Drive will answer messages, read out texts, etc, all without users having to type them while you're driving.

Samsung Knox: Kind of like the BlackBerry Balance features, this will allow users to keep their work profiles separate from the fun private stuff.

Samsung Group Play: Basically users can sync their Samsung Galaxy S4 devices into one giant stereo and play music all at the same time. This holds for upto 8 devices.

S Translator: This feature allows users to translate from speech to text and text to speech and currently supports 9 languages excluding English. These are French, Latin American Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. Samsung has also put an Optical Reader app where users can take photos of signs in other languages and the app will translate them and this comes with off-line support, means you don't have to be connected all the time to use it.

Adapt Display: This feature will adjust the screen settings, such as brightness and contrast according to the light conditions around you.

Story Albums: This allows users to make Story Albums out of their photos. The app will let users tag their photos, add captions and you can upload them to Facebook straight on. Samsung has signed up with Blurb to let US users print hard copies of these albums for a fee.

Home Sync: The Galaxy S4 can be synced to television devices etc via Samsung's Home Sync device. It allows upto eight users, has 1 TB cloud storage and content played on television can be viewed on S4 or you can transfer files and photos to your TV. Note: The Home Sync is an actually device. The S4 can be connected to it via Near Fields Communications (NFC).

Dual Camera: This allows to the smartphone to record using both cameras at once. The main video from the back camera is overlayed with the a smaller size video from the front camera. You can choose various styles for the front camera recording.

Eraser, Sound & Shot: Samsung Galaxy S4's camera will also allow you to get rid of photo-bombers. You can edit them out with the Eraser option. The Sound & Shot option allows you to record five seconds of audio before shooting.

Drama Shot: Another camera feature, the Galaxy S 4 can take more than a 100 shots in 4 seconds and then select these to form a dramatic picture.

Remote Control Support: Thanks to the IR Led blaster and the WatchOn app uses can use the S4 like a remote control for any television.