The Samsung Galaxy S4 is an Androidsmartphone 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 IIIwhich 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 trackingfunctionality (which includes scrolling).[7][8] A hardware variant of the S4 also became the first ever smartphone to support the emergingLTE Advanced mobile network standard.[10]
The S4 was made available in late April 2013 on 327 carriers in 155 countries.[11] Upon its release, it became the fastest selling smartphone in Samsung's history; the company sold 20 million S4 units worldwide in the two months following the device's launch.[12] Samsung has since sold more than 40 million units.[13]
SpecificationsEdit
Hardware
The screen features a 5-inch (130 mm) (sometimes stated as 4.99-inch)[14] PenTile RGBG Full HD Super AMOLED screen with 441 pixels per inch and Corning Gorilla Glass3.[15] The S4 is widely available in black and white color finishes; in selected regions, Samsung also introduced versions in brown with gold trim, and light pink with gold trim.,[16] Purple Mirage and Pink Twilight in Taiwan,[17] Red Aurora for AT&T,[18] and Artic Blue version by Best Buy[19]
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.[20]
The S4 GT-I9505 includes a multiband LTE transceiver and both models feature aninfrared LED that can serve as a universal remote control.[7] On June 24, 2013, a version of the S4 was created in South Korea with support for LTE Advanced networks. It is the first smartphone ever produced with support for LTE Advanced.[10] This model includes a quad-core 2.3 GHz 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 aFeliCa 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 Qistandard except on the SC-04E model.
The S4 supports the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video format.[7][8][21]
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 and LED flash, and at the bottom left edge has the loudspeaker.[22]
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.[23]
Notably, the S4 does not include an FM radio receiver, as previous models did.[24]
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 anAdreno 320 GPU.[25][26]
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-A7cluster.[11][27] The cluster of four faster "big" A15 cores is paired with the cluster of four slower, more power-efficient "LITTLE" A7 cores. The chip is capable of running only four cores at a time, either the quad Cortex A15, quad Cortex A7. The switching of the active cluster is performed by a software CPU driver. The CPU emulates a single quad-core processor to the operating system and applications.[25][27][28] 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.[29] The E300K/L/S versions support LTE, with the Cortex-A15 also clocked at 1.6 GHz.[30][31][32]
Software
The 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, similar to the "S-Pen" features utilized on Samsung's Galaxy Note series. The "Group Play" feature allows ad hoc sharing of files between Galaxy phones, along with multiplayer games and music streaming between S4 phones. The S4 also introduces Knox, a suite of features which implements a sandbox for enterprise environments that can co-exist with a user's "personal" data. Knox also incorporates use of the ARM TrustZone extensions and security enhancements to the Android platform.[33]
The camera app implements numerous new features (some of which were first seen on theGalaxy 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.[34]
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.[35] For the S4 variants on AT&T and Verizon, this update removed the ability to apply the previous bootloader 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. In November 2013, Samsung released the Android 4.3 update to most variants of the S4.
To prevent grey market reselling, models of the S4 manufactured after July 2013 implement a regional lockout system in certain regions, requiring that the first SIM card used on a European and North American model be from a carrier in that region. Samsung stated that the lock would be removed once a local SIM card is used.[36]
Model variants
Several different model variants of the S4 are sold, with most variants differing only in support for regional network types and bands.
Google Play Edition
At the Google I/O 2013 keynote, Samsung and Google revealed that an edition of the U.S. S4 would be released on June 26, 2013 through Google Play, featuring stock Android 4.2.2, later updated to 4.3, with Samsung provided updates;[70] it has an unlockable bootloader (similar to Nexus devices) and supports LTE on AT&T and T-Mobile's networks.[71] The model number is GT-I9505G.[72]
Verizon Developer Edition
A Developer Edition of the 16 GB S4 in black was released for users on Verizon, exclusively from Samsung's website on June 25, 2013. This variant ships with an unlockedbootloader, which can be used for the development and installation of custom ROMs.[73]
LTE Advanced
Samsung released a refreshed S4 in South Korea with the model numbers SHV-E330K/S/L in August 2013 that are the same as previous models, except it has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and LTE Advanced support that allows the phone to download data at up to 150 Mbit/s.[74] Model SHV-E330L for LG Uplus is world's first "100% LTE" smartphone that can utilize data, voice and text over LTE only. The phone does not use LG Uplus 3G CDMA network;[75]however, when used outside Korea the phone has to fall back to using GSM and UMTS networks as LG Uplus is the only carrier that can support LTE-only mode and this caused confusion among consumers.[76]
Samsung also plans to release an LTE-A model for Deutsche Telekom later this year.
Samsung Galaxy S4 for LTE in Rural America
Samsung released model SCH-I545L in support of LTE in Rural America.[77][78]
Samsung Limited Edition
Samsung released Galaxy S4 Crystal Edition in Thailand. It's a limited run of 3,500 units so far only available on the Samsung Thailand site. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Crystal Edition is based on the white I9500 (that's the Exynos 5-powered one) and features a unique back with studded Swarovski crystals.[79]
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