By DAVID POGUE
“We’re No. 2,” went the old Avis slogan. “We try harder.”
There’s a world of wisdom there. When Apple designed its original iPhone,
it had zero market share; the company had nothing to lose by taking
risks. As a result, the phone teemed with bold ideas.
But as the iPhone became more iconic and more important to Apple, the
company’s courage to shake things up has dwindled. Why mess with a great
thing?
That timidity gave Samsung the opening it needed. Its Galaxy S phone
went after the iPhone with all guns blazing, and soon became a cellular
celebrity in its own right.
When it was a distant would-be, Samsung had nothing to lose. “Let’s try
making the screen really huge!” “Let’s try hand gestures!” “Let’s try
eye recognition!”
But now here’s the Galaxy S4, the fourth incarnation of Samsung’s
best-seller. (All four big United States carriers will offer it for
prices from $150 to $250 with a two-year contract, or around $640 up
front.) And here’s the funny thing: Now Samsung is starting to play it
safe.
The Galaxy is still a beautiful, high-horsepower Android phone. But
basically, it’s an updated Galaxy S3. If this were Apple, who adds the
letter S to denote a slightly upgraded model (“iPhone 4S,” for example),
Samsung might have called this phone the Galaxy S3S.
The S4 is the same size as the S3 (well, seven-tenths of a millimeter
thinner). It’s still huge, more Jumbotron than index card. Good for maps
and movies, bad for small hands.
And the S4 is still made of plastic — lightweight and grippy, but not as
classy as the iPhone’s glass or the HTC One’s metal.
All told, nobody at the office will notice that you’ve bought the latest and greatest.
Yet Samsung has managed to cram better components into this wafer
without increasing its size. The bright, supersharp screen is now 5
inches diagonal, up from 4.8; the margins have shrunk.
The battery is 20 percent bigger, too. That doesn’t necessarily mean
much improvement in the one-day battery life, because the larger screen
drinks up more power. Fortunately, you can still pop off the back panel
and swap batteries, which you can’t do on an iPhone without a blowtorch.
You can also expand the storage with a memory card; the iPhone can only
watch with envy.
Most of the other changes in the S4 are software features. More than
ever, Samsung’s design approach this time was, “Throw everything in and
see what sticks.” There was absolutely no filter. There’s also no
consistency, coordination or unified direction; it’s just a big,
rattling cargo bay crammed with features.
A few examples: SMART SCROLL This is the S4’s much
anticipated eye tracking. Like its predecessor, the S4 can recognize
your eyes; it can, for example, dim the screen when you look away, to
save battery power. In the S4’s video app, playback pauses when you look
away (usually).
Better yet, the Web page or e-mail message you’re reading scrolls when
you tip your head, or tip the phone a little bit. No hands! It’s
unpredictable and gimmicky, but hey — it’s innovation, right?
AIR VIEW Point to the screen without actually touching
the glass to get a pop-up preview of something. For example, point to a
calendar square to see a pop-up preview of that day’s events, or to a
Gallery thumbnail image to see the full-size photo.
Unfortunately, this feature is inconsistent. Why does it work in the
Mail program, but not the Gmail program? (For that matter, why does
Android require one app for Gmail, and another for other e-mail
services?)
AIR GESTURES A sensor sees when you’re waving your hand
— a feature that “really adds value when you’re eating with greasy
fingers,” Samsung says. You can scroll a Web page or e-mail message by
flapping your hand, or accept an incoming call with a wave. When the
phone is locked and dark, waving makes the screen light up long enough
for you to see the time, battery gauge and notification icons.
S TRANSLATOR Supposedly, this app is the universal
translator of sci-fi dreams. You type or even speak in one language; the
phone displays and speaks a translation in another. It sort of works
when you type, about as well as Google’s translation page. But the phone
makes mincemeat of spoken utterances — and that’s before it tries a
translation. Sorry, Trekkies.
These gee-whiz recognition features work only in certain apps; learning
which ones takes some time. And some come turned on, some off; the
decisions seem arbitrary. When you first turn on your S4, you’re offered
a list of them, with explanations, but my S4 ignored some of the
selections I made there.
Nor is that the only bug. My unit crashed constantly, dumping me
unceremoniously out of the Camera app or the Settings pages and
instantly forgetting preferences I’d set.
The camera is very good, but the 13-megapixel photos are slightly soft
and, in low light, grainy. The Camera app has received a makeover, too,
following the same feature philosophy: anything goes.
You can snap stills while recording video. You can film in slow motion
or fast motion. You can apply Instagram-style filters (weird colors,
aging effects) to either stills or video, and preview the effect before
you take the shot. That’s not even counting the specialty modes:
DRAMA SHOT The phone takes dozens of photos of a moving
subject (a skateboarder, say). The software creates a single composite
shot, displaying several copies of your skater in various stages of
motion.
ANIMATED PHOTO You create a movie, and then paint out
portions of the scene that you want frozen. The result: a still photo
where only one element (say, a ceiling fan or a fountain) is moving.
DUAL CAMERA Both the back and front cameras are active.
You, the photographer, appear in a movable inset within the larger
photo or video.
Most of the inset styles include silly frames: a heart, a postage stamp,
a fisheye bulge. But one style, a screen that’s evenly split between
front and back cameras, can be incredibly useful. It lets you film host
and interviewee simultaneously, for example, or narrate an unboxing
while remaining on camera.
Here’s a twist for you: The best new S4 feature is one that hides most
of them. It’s Easy Mode, and it will make a lot of people very happy.
In this mode, the S4’s feature snowstorm clears up. There are only three
Home screens, and the icons on them are big, few and clear, like
Camera, Internet, Phone, Messaging. Some apps have been simplified and
given bigger, bolder fonts: Calendar, Settings, the dialer, Email and
Messaging. In the Web browser, a handy + button pumps up the type size.
Samsung doesn’t exactly say that the new Easy Mode is for old people.
But clearly, it’s for people who favor large type and simple functions.
And why not? Until now, phone hardware advances — faster Internet,
better cameras, nicer screens — have been accompanied by increased
software clutter. But why must they go hand in hand? Why shouldn’t you
have a state-of-the-art phone with a clean interface?
In the end, the Galaxy S4 is a good choice for people at opposite ends
of the technical spectrum: gadget hounds who love to customize at one
end, and (thanks to Easy Mode) the easily overwhelmed at the other.
For everyone else, the S4 may be buggy in spots and laden with
not-quite-there features. But the basics are excellent; this phone is
still a fast, bright, handsome pocket rocket. It easily earns its place
as a successor to the Galaxy S3 and a rival to the iPhone.
Next time, it may be Apple’s turn to try harder.
