Hello,
SI recently moved to Ireland and company gave me a option to go for S4 and iPhone 5, since I'm a android user from the start (have been using nexus 4 earlier) there was no option of guessing what I need to choose, so now I use a galaxy s4 from Vodafone. Its been a month and half with the device and let me break it down to whats good and bad on the device.
Pros :
++ The first and for most thing that you will notice when you pick up the device is the display . its gorgeous, you will love it from the minute you turn on the device, my colleague who is using iPhone looked my screen and said what display is that , its absolute amazing. The HD wallpapers you place it on the background looks amazing with colors popping up and making the device feel you have made the right choice.
++ The ambled display make the display more vibrate with colors standing out and making the picture looks amazing
++ The Snapdragon processor + 2 GB of RAM gives the device a smooth experience and navigating between pages looks amazing smooth.
++ Battery backup on the device amazingly good, I get a 1 and half easily or even 2 days on a charge that is with 3G HSPA+ all day on (the place I live in doesn't have LTE) mostly checking Whatsapp message from my wife (she is India) every 10 to 20 minutes and moderate calls to friends and family, no usage of power eating apps like Youtube, games etc.
++ Camera is another brilliant thing on the device, the picture comes in clean, clear and brilliant to look at , there are some cool new tricks (like dual photo, eraser etc) even though I don't use it .
++ The video mode on the camera has also some nice tricks like slow motion and fast motion, its fancy but these features doesn't support audio so no real advantage here if you want to capture audio with slow motion.
++ you can control the camera with voice command very useful when you are taking family picture and you have no one behind the camera to click and its works without any issues.
++ S health, I was not into the health fitness gadgets and always thought it was just a waste of money, then one day I just switched on the S health feature and started walking around the city for some view of the country and god it worked it kept / felt every feet movements perfectly and gave a good prediction to how many kilometers I walked in and calories I burned. A good feature to have for health conscious country like Europe / US, in India I don't think that works, since food is our first priority :)
++ support to work with OTG cable , very very useful
++ Support to screen mirror from phone both without wire and with wire. Without wire required you to buy a Samsung dongle to wok.
++ Many motion gestures (like eye scrolling, eye pause etc), nice to showoff to friends but on a daily basis I ha vent used it and have turned of all ...
++ Front Facing camera was brilliant as well, Skype calls and video chat on the network works without any issue and gives in a average quality
++ One thing I didn't like about the Nexus 4 was I couldn't customize the quick toggles on the notification bar, Samsung has made that easy to do with its TouchWiz.
++ The device is extremely light weight and can be easily handled with one hand.
++ The device has an expandable storage and removable battery, only flagship device till now carrying this legacy when every others have stopped giving the most important feature.
++ Games and graphics looks brilliant all games runs in smoothly and gave me a good experience while playing it, no shutter, no lag, just smooth.
++ Browsing was an amazing experience, the big screen give you lot of contents and the display makes the picture look sharp and text more readable.
++ Navigation / GPS works flawlessly, one thing that will bring me back to s4 from my Nexus 4 is this feature (since I tend to use location feature a lot), the receiver was so quick to pick up location and gave me a much better picture to where I was and app like trip adviser (pre-installed) recommend all the places nearby.
++ Voice quality / Loud speakers sounded just fine and could hear the people talking with the other end fine.
++ Speakers is also good.
++ Samsung OS has few neat tweaks that you can customize like home button long press , Lock screen customizing, when users calls in and you want to note down a number you can launch note taking app and the write it down using your finger (its much better than annoying the caller with dial tones from pressing the keys ), some to name a few, these are really minute things but a welcome feature which the vanilla android is lacking
++ Email / Exchange server works as expected on all the android device have no issues so far.
++ If you are constant notification checker then you would love the S-view cover, as that helps you to save battery by lighting only the pixel area that needs to displayed ( AMOLED feature )
Cons:
++ I have read many times Samsung plastic body make the phone cheap , owning none of the Samsung device before I never believed it , but now since I own one, I do feel that is true, the device looks really cheap, the plastic back ( mine was black variant ) had some dot design which I never liked, its keeps pooping and makes me feel if I regret taking this to the premium iPhone. Soon I brought a case on it from Ebay which looks better now.
++ The TouchWiz might be appealing for some, but I find it little bit on the feminine / kids side, its colorful and too bright for my taste, after few days I went back to my good old Nova launcher and customized my home screen to one of the theme by the my color screen (check out their YouTube channel) .
++ Samsung has installed many apps, except the S health rest seems just the counter apps to Google, like S translator (Google translator), S voice (Google now), S planner (Calender), Samsung Hub (Google play) etc, this wasted lot of space on the device when there is already being provided from Google.
++ Adding to space, even though mine was 16GB , out of the box you get only 8GB
++ When the battery is low say less than 10%, the camera app doesn't function at all, it will die out stating low battery, which really pissed me off as I wanted to take pictures and the phone wasn't allowing me to do it.
++ The Samsung motion gesture only works with Samsung related apps (like default browser (not chrome ), gallery etc, other apps cannot use the feature ...
++ Other than this, I don't I have anything bad to say .
Verdict :
Apart from the design choice , the phone is a absolute beast , powerful and can handle every task with ease, go for it if you have the money to spend on the phone and looking for a awesome experience, you will not regret and with the power it is holding I'm quite sure the phone can withstand apps of at least 2 to 3 years ahead of its time .
Thanks.
