Our first face-to-face meeting with Samsung's Galaxy S 4
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Looks like a tiny progress in the design department, but then again, we kept buying the newest iPhones over the years anyway.
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Design isn't going to be a revolution every time - people underestimate the amount of work that goes into refining a good product into a better one.Mangkunegara":2aoy6waa said:
Not sure I'd be so keen on that "video pauses when looking away" feature. It may work out, but I'm not convinced. Glad they're trying though.
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another ars account":14eno8o4 said:
I agree. To me, it has a little bit too much of a Big Brother feeling to it (and I'm not talking about that crappy tv show either)
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What's with the gloves-on screen? Anyone know about the technology that might be behind that?
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celticsky":wwfkb482 said:
It's a camera that is always on you, on your phone. That isn't a little scary to you?
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celticsky":56qmmmmq said:
Oh sorry, I misunderstood your comment. I didn't mean to insult your taste in tv shows. My bad.
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Smart Stay was introduced with the S III and has the same functionality (polls the front facing camera at some interval and runs facial recognition to determine if someone is looking at the screen.) This video pausing feature seems like a natural extension of the Smart Stay concept. Nothing particularly new here.CalgaryTechGuy":2l7xhzvi said:
Smart Stay has always been toggle-able, plus you get a notification icon indicating that the camera is in use. I've never found it to be particularly creepy or felt as though my phone was watching me without my permission. Most of my frustration with that feature has arisen from situations where 'Big Brother' isn't watching me closely enough and the screen turns off while I'm still using it.
Overall, I think it's a neat feature but on my S III it can be a bit fiddly and doesn't work well in low light conditions. I hope they have improved performance in the implementation on the S IV.
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Touch with gloves is a nice touch. Also happy to see it takes SD cards.
I saw Andrew's byline, then the nails in the first pic, and for half a second thought "Andrew painted his nails!"
I saw Andrew's byline, then the nails in the first pic, and for half a second thought "Andrew painted his nails!"
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DyDx":1rlkm0zv said:
This isn't much more informative, but at least you get some trademarks to start digging from: http://press.nokia.com/2012/09/05/synap ... lumia-820/
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Poor Apple. Only Fanbois, Lawyers and Shitty Judges can save it from irrelevance. Where is your messiah now?
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Doubling hardware specs, offering new tweeks and the newest Android version. Eat crow Phil Schiller
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What's the justification for 4 front page stories about the same event covered by the same staff, none of which have a different take from any of the others? OK, maybe the livelog is conceptually different, but all the rest? esp. since the one of the other stories has a byline all of 35min after this one?
Really bad editorial judgment, Ars Technica.
Really bad editorial judgment, Ars Technica.
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VideoGameTech":32r3giub said:Touch with gloves is a nice touch. Also happy to see it takes SD cards.
I saw Andrew's byline, then the nails in the first pic, and for half a second thought "Andrew painted his nails!"
They haven't made me start painting my nails for reviews photos yet, but I assume it's only a matter of time.
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It doesn't bother me from a "big brother" standpoint, as I'll assume it's not recording my actions and sending them back to some server. But, I haven't had a lot of success with programs/devices that try to infer my intent and do what they think I want them to do. So far, that's always been more frustrating than helpful. If there's an easy one touch disable for the feature when it does it to you and you didn't want it to, then no big deal.celticsky":2fg7qxdu said:
I'd be lying if I said the eye scrolling and video pausing features weren't a concern. I'll be confirming that I can disable them before buying the phone.
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When iPhone 5 was released with new internals, bigger screen and refined design, people whined that it was "boring". Now Samsung releases new flagship Galaxy, with a bit bigger screen and new internals, while keeping outside appearance practically identical, the screams of "boring" are absolutely deafening.
No, wait, they are not. Huh, imagine that.
No, wait, they are not. Huh, imagine that.
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Move to Florida. None of us here have ever given that any thought at all.omgia":3646ecnh said:
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lost_packet
Ars Praefectus
Seriously guys, how hard is it to hire a decent photographer to go on assignment with you? Even if you don't want a full or part time photog, there are plenty of accomplished amateurs that could help.
Something like the Galaxy S4 is big news, so why take shitty cell phone pics? That's amateurish for a major site like Ars.
Something like the Galaxy S4 is big news, so why take shitty cell phone pics? That's amateurish for a major site like Ars.
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DyDx":gsc13qmg said:
For the Nokia Lumia phones, they are using a Synaptics sensor that offers higher sensitivity than a typical touch sensor. From there, the software is tuned to recognize an intentional touch or gesture separate from wiping the screen off on your sleeve.
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another ars account":3avtrt8m said:
Especially if you are looking away during a commercial.
Technically, I'm sure being able to handle when two people are watching is a hurdle -- does it stop when both are looking away? Or is it like the Start Stay where if you face isn't *right* in front of the screen fairly straight on it thinks you aren't looking at it?
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meh. And that's good news.
This is the point when (I hope) people realize smartphones are just that and the pace of genuinely useful innovation is going to slow to an evolutionary pace, so we don't have to get ourselves wound-up everytime a new model is released.
And it was always going to happen sooner since so much technology was leveraged to begin with.
iPhone has peaked.
Galaxy S has peaked.
Maybe that makes room for others.
This is the point when (I hope) people realize smartphones are just that and the pace of genuinely useful innovation is going to slow to an evolutionary pace, so we don't have to get ourselves wound-up everytime a new model is released.
And it was always going to happen sooner since so much technology was leveraged to begin with.
iPhone has peaked.
Galaxy S has peaked.
Maybe that makes room for others.
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Janne":2nghs6f3 said:
It's all about expectations. As long as Samy don't tout something as revolutionary if it's just a refinement and they should be fine on this side. Even if it's a good refinement.
That said, I'm a little bit disappointed. I'm still waiting to the (almost) perfect phone to drop my (aging) HTC Desire.
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NicoleC":hoyy20xr said:
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Maybe v2.0 will know you are watching a commercial (like those obnoxious Galaxy S spots) and automatically fast-forward with a time warp function. Oh crap, there goes the billion dollar ad budget.
Actually, this sounds like a really annoying gimmick feature for me because I blink a lot, look around a lot, and watch videos on public transportation where I have to monitor my surroundings. Unless you can set a long deadband, I might never get to the end.
Guess I'll stick with my 4S awhile longer, it's so reassuringly out-dated.
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thomsirveaux":20g2ibkw said:VideoGameTech":20g2ibkw said:Touch with gloves is a nice touch. Also happy to see it takes SD cards.
I saw Andrew's byline, then the nails in the first pic, and for half a second thought "Andrew painted his nails!"
They haven't made me start painting my nails for reviews photos yet, but I assume it's only a matter of time.
You need the Francis Ion ALT-GAL bangs to go with the blue nail lacquer.
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CalgaryTechGuy":2jdqi8zt said:
I find it equally frightening as the recent Microsoft FUD about how Google spys on your email. Which means not at all frightening.
Gasp!
You mean when I use Gmail, a machine statistically analyzes my email in order to calculate which ads to display that I am more likely to respond to! Horrors! What an invasion of privacy!
Now my phone has a camera that uses highly advanced algorithms to determine whether I'm looking at the phone in order to add convenient features to the phone! OMG that's as scary as how my dog can tell whether I'm looking at him or the TV. What is the world coming to.
No, the sky(net) is not falling.
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lost_packet":2efb5rn4 said:
Seriously not trying to be defensive, but my byline is on those pictures so let me just say - event photography can be tricky. The lighting is always bad, and you're often crammed in a tiny area where you're being jostled by a bunch of other people (it looks like some outlets were given access to the phones in a private meeting without all the jostling and the awkward security hardware, but we weren't one of them). In this case, we were told we had a limited amount of time with the phone before we had to move on and let the next person at it, so there are time constraints as well.
Not that any of this is an excuse, but they're ultimately less-than-ideal circumstances for taking amazing photos and I wanted to make sure people were cognizant of that. I think most of these came out OK, though I'll give you that a couple are a bit blurry—for those, you fix what you can after the fact as best you can and hope that they still illustrate what you want them to illustrate. Hope this provides a little insight.
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What does the "S" stand for? Super? Samsung? I'm confused by the convention- is there such thing as a non-S Galaxy 4?
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Good question. Samsung has a bunch of other Galaxy trademarks like 'Samsung Galaxy R' and 'Samsung Galaxy M', but they've trademarked Galaxy S by itself and they're obviously putting a lot of wood behind this brand. As far as I can tell they're not bothering to be specific about what the S means, but in the long run I expect it will be taken to mean Samsung, if anyone cares.jynxst":vakq7jhj said:
Also in the long run, i.e. maybe two or three years, I expect 'Android' (the brand) to become as prevalent as Win32. Android will just be one of those bits that are in Galaxy S phones, like ARM, Dalvik and the rest. Seriously, how long can all these other Android players stay in the market while losing money on every phone they sell?
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"Next, we decided to take a look at the software. New features aside, the new phone will look very familiar to anyone who has ever used Samsung's TouchWiz interface."
So it looks like ass, then. Samsung have awful, just awful, UI designers.
Experience:
Galaxy S
Galaxy SII
Galaxy SIII
So it looks like ass, then. Samsung have awful, just awful, UI designers.
Experience:
Galaxy S
Galaxy SII
Galaxy SIII
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