Don't be fooled by Samsung's new flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone.
Superficially, it looks like its predecessor, the outrageously successful S3, which attracted 40 million sales in six months. The S4 brings with it a bucketload of new features, some of which are innovative, reliable and useful, but others barely work or aren't useful.
Indeed, the battle lines in Samsung's market fight with the iPhone 5 couldn't be starker now.
Whereas the iPhone offers a tightly integrated and controlled set of functions that work in harmony, the Galaxy S4 is more like a giant sandpit of tech experiences thrown together, with Samsung offering lots of virtual buckets and spades. You'll never be bored with the S4 even if everything doesn't work.
The standout feature of the S4 has been understated. It's not the software features, rather its high-definition 441-pixels-per-inch AMOLED display. It's much better than the S3's. It offers magnificent viewing: sharp, detailed features and rich colours that make even my more boring snaps look vivid and dynamic. If anything, colours are a tad oversaturated. The screen is readily usable outdoors too.
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Recommended CoverageSamsung Galaxy S4 impresses
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As expected, Samsung has upgraded the hardware capabilities of the Galaxy phone. It has a faster 1.9 Gigahertz quad-core processor versus 1.4 Ghz on the S3, a bigger screen (5 inches v 4.8 inches), a finer resolution main camera (13 v 8-megapixels), is three grams lighter and 0.7mm thinner and has a battery with 24 per cent more capacity.
The handset retains its predecessors' cheapish plastic feel, but has a better grip on the back panel. Less than premium looks are an issue for the Galaxy range, with competition now from the beautifully crafted HTC One and Sony's media powerhouse, the Xperia Z, when side by side on shelves in telco stores.
To its credit, Samsung has persisted with a removable rather than fixed battery, but it limits how razor-thin the S4 can be. But with a couple of spare batteries, you're set for keeping your phone alive when travelling. I'd prefer that to an even thinner form.
As with the S3, you also can slot in a microSD card to add up to 64 Gigabytes of storage to the fairly meagre 16GB of internal storage in Australian handsets.
It is the big sandpit of add-on features that has attracted the buzz around the S4. We've been trying them out. Some are fantastic. Some you might disable immediately.
The S4 is more than an evolved S3. It adds features from the Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy Camera.
Take "Air View", where a user previews emails, text messages, photos and websites by hovering a finger over the screen without touching it. Samsung offered a similar feature on the Note 2 except the hovering is done with its S-Pen stylus.
I got Air View to work consistently but you need to switch on a series of settings for this to happen. It also works with the popular app Flipboard.
Another quirky feature called "Smart Scroll" worked for me inconsistently, sometimes not at all. The camera supposedly follows your eyes and, when you slightly tilt the phone, it will scroll automatically as you browse. This feature is a work in progress.
An ability to flick through photo albums using gestures called "Air Gesture" was pretty reliable. But it needs a long swoosh above the screen near the camera region, which takes more effort that an onscreen finger-flick, so you'd only use it with dirty hands.
Still, "Air Gesture" has great potential in the kitchen, when reading recipes on the phone with hands caked in flour and butter. I'm looking forward to recipe apps that use it.
"S-Translation" too looks useful. The app uses voice recognition to convert what you say into another language, and then utters back the translation. That's good when travelling. But there are a few riders. First, it's limited to eight languages. Second, you need to be network-connected.
Third, voice-to-voice translation is already available through Google's Translate app. I'd back Samsung's voice recognition, which has improved markedly.
Samsung also has added its user-friendly mode menu from the Galaxy camera into the S4. It makes selecting shot modes easy and there are great choices.
The panorama mode takes a full 360-degree view while "drama" mode weaves into a single photo five images of a moving object.
The "sound and shot" mode marries a single shot with seven seconds of atmospheric audio.
We especially liked "eraser" mode, which obliterates moving objects in the background.
RATING: 9/10
PRICE: $899 from Samsung Experience stores or on contract from Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Virgin Mobile
