The Samsung Galaxy S4 is priming for its public debut on Thursday. And it wants to scare away the competition, which means the iPhone 5. The questions remains does the Galaxy S4 have what it takes to keep up the competition from Apple's flagship device? In all likelihood, we'll see a $200 w/ contract price point, same as the iPhone 5, going head-to-head as expected. We break it down to find out.
The S4 specs were leaked earlier Thursday, just hours ahead of the phone's release. Before the Samsung people take the stage with the bigger phone in their hands, we can already know whether the phone makes the upgrade to the Samsung arsenal worth it. First off, the screen size.
It's bigger than the S3, slightly, at 4.99 inches with a 1920x1080 resolution, which continues the company's emphasis on bigger is better when compared to the iPhone 5. Bigger, but not necessarily prettier, but it's still unknown whether the display is LCD or AMOLED. Comparing to Apple's retina is hard to do then, but the technology present in Apple's device is still unique, which means it's going to come down to whether Samsung can market the S4's visual display as an upgrade. The iPhone 5, despite its relative smallness, will likely retain the edge when it comes to display, but only among those who take screen technology seriously enough to know what AMOLED actually means. In the eyes of your average consumer, bigger may very well be better when you're scanning phones at our local shop.
But display is only the first thing you see, and for all intents and purposes the S4 is going to look just like the S3, so for many users it's how it feels. In terms of GPU, the S4 and iPhone 5 might as well be the same device. The rumored tri-core PowerVR 544MP3 GPU present in the S4 mirrors the iPhone 5's A6, but the S4 came at a higher clock speed when tested. The reason? It's got a massive, massive battery (2,600 mAH) used to offset the powerful processing. It's impossible to know just how long the phone can keep going and at what rate, but on the surface of it this phone is going to beat out the iPhone 5 in processing, granted the Android OS handles operations efficiently. Samsung hasn't had much issue with that in the past.
In terms of pure innovation, iPhone 5 was basically a bust, and for the most part, the S4 is going to keep things steady on Samsung's end, but there is one caveat. The S4 is going to support eye tracking, and you can expect Samsung to tout the feature as much as possible. While it's cool, more importantly, it gives users a meaningful avenue for interaction with their device. It's for this reason alone, not the power and not the display, that Samsung may entice more customers than ever before on the high-end side of the market. These are gadgets after all, and gadgets need to be new and fresh. The iPhone 5 is not that, the S4 just may be. Add in the S4's supposed ability to track your finger while you hover it above the phone, and that wow factor just might be there.
"Oh, that's interesting," is pretty much exactly what Samsung is going for. The iPhone 5 may be sorely lacking in that department come tonight's announcement.
