Samsung announced the Galaxy S IV at an elaborate event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City today. From a distance it could be easily confused with the current market leader the Galaxy S III bearing the same rounded corners and ubiquitous physical home button. Technology journalist and reporters from almost every major publication attended the event which lasted for the most part of an hour. The technological improvements are enough that Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing conducted an interview with the Wall Street Journal. In it he discussed the fragmented nature of the Android ecosystem mere hours before the Samsung event took place. Does Apple have something to worry about with the new Galaxy S IV? Lets take a look and see.
The Galaxy S IV is 136mm long, 69mm wide, 7.9mm thin, and weighs 130 grams. This makes it taller, thinner, and lighter than the current model Galaxy S III. It comes with a 5-inch Super AMOLED display with a true 1080p resolution. The new flagship device is powered up by a 2,600 mAh battery which should adequately power the larger panel. On the inside, the phone has a eight-core Samsung Exynos 5 with 2GB of RAM. It also has built-in temperature and humidity sensors, and a user replaceable battery. It includes Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and infrared LED, which can control your television with the WatchOn app.
The phone's built in cameras also include an impressive 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. But it is not just a camera upgrade as the camera software also has some new features. Users can take photos with corresponding audio recordings. The Galaxy S IV can also take photos with both the front and rear cameras at the same time. And if some unruly pedestrian photo-bombs a special picture they can be "erased" out of the photo on the spot.
Samsung's proprietary Touchwiz interface is also getting a significant upgrade adding both cosmetic and functional features to the mix. Samsung introduced S Translator, which translates messages in nine languages, including French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, and Spanish. There are also new control based gestures which use both eye movement and finger location. An example of the eye movement control, called Smart Pause, would enable the phone to pause or resume playing a video based on whether or not the user is looking at the screen. The "Air Gestures" feature allows the user to hover a finger above the screen to bring up additional information for dates and other supported apps.
For business oriented consumers, the Galaxy S IV also features "KNOX," a mobile device management technology that lets users separate work and play on the phone similar to BlackBerry Balance in BES10. This is considered a must have feature as more consumers bring personal devices to work. IT departments need the ability to administer app deployments without delving into a users personal data.
Samsung didn't reveal the price of the new flagship device but did reveal that the Galaxy S IV will be available globally in the second quarter of 2013. The plan is to include a global roll out and launch with over 357 global mobile operators. The hope among many is that the phone will be priced competitively relative to the Nexus 4 at $299 unlocked and off contract. Whether that comes to pass or not we'll have to wait and see.