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Technologies on Smartphones That You Should Look For

September 18, 2013October 1, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

NFC

Near Field Communication has always been regarded as a cutting edge technology. You can’t throw a stone now without hitting an Android device with NFC technology. It is a secure way that devices can connect by simply bringing them together. Right now, NFC has yet to find applications in the current smartphone market. The technology is not new, although it has yet to have any big applications. However, NFC has its importance. It simply has to be present in your smartphone if you are buying it for the long run.

2. Appropriately Large Screen

You don’t need an ultra-large screen such as the one with Galaxy Mega. You don’t even need a 5.5 inch screen as in Optimus G Pro. All you need is a 5 inch screen that fits well in your pocket, such as the one Galaxy S4 has. Anything between 4.5 and 5.2 inches is perfect for a smartphone. Anything above that goes into the phablet family and should be considered a different kind of device.

If you are buying a phablet, be prepared to use it with a little bit of difficulty than a regular smartphone. Due to this reason, Asus’s PadFone and FonePad are not quite there with the customers. For a perfect combination of devices, you could have a regular smartphone, 5 inches; a tablet, 8-10 inches; and optionally a small tablet, 7 inches. A phablet is neither there nor here, and it is difficult to get by.

As we talk about large screens, so should we about smaller screens. iPhone’s 4 inch screen and BlackBerry Z10‘s 4.2 inch screen are not quite there in terms of user experience. I am not saying they are bad. They are not as perfect as HTC One‘s or Galaxy S4‘s. For such smaller screens, a smaller price is appropriate, but that is apparently not going to happen.

3. Battery That Lasts

Right now, LG G2 comes with a 3000 mAh battery that can last days even with that huge screen.

Apple iPhone 5S’s battery is only around 1500 mAh, and it is nothing compared to those on the Android devices we have. The battery is not going to give more than a day of usage, and it is just inconvenient to have such a puny battery, even with a device as light and thin as iPhone.

Apple could make iPhone a little heavier by including a larger battery and still it would be one of the thinnest and lightest smartphones out there. They obviously chose not to do that. In your upcoming phone, look for a large battery that can give you more than enough backup.

4. Fingerprint Scanner

As Apple has pioneered this, fingerprint sensors should be available on all other devices in the very near future. That is the trend. It is one thing that anyone could admire about iPhone 5S. The fingerprint scanner allows perfect security, and it is also appropriately placed for the most ergonomic use.

5. Optical Image Stabilization

This is something great on your smartphone cameras. As of now, only a few devices come with it, including HTC One, Lumia 920. Other phones, such as the iPhone provide a technology to stabilize the images, but that is not built into the camera hardware itself, and hence it is not that perfect. If you are looking for a perfect anti-shake smartphone camera, OIS is worth waiting for.

Also, if you are not quite looking for front-facing camera quality, start looking. Here is the table containing the best front-facing camera smartphones.

6. Large Pixel Cameras

Once we spoke about the camera technologies, where we mentioned the race for megapixel count has ended for good. Right now, Apple has also acknowledged the fact that the larger pixels, not the larger number of pixels create better images. HTC One was the first ever phone to revolutionize the large pixel size through its HTC One. One has a pixel size of nearly 2 microns each, called UltraPixels. With only 4 UltraPixels, HTC One camera gives us better images than the 8 MP cameras most other phones have.

With iPhone 5S, Apple has also gone with slightly larger pixels of 1.5 microns. That size is still not quite effective though. We want really large pixels. One of the upcoming phones that will have this is HTC One Max which will sport 5 UltraPixel camera.

Conclusion

If you are looking for amazing smartphones, there are a number of things that you need to have on them. A few technologies were discussed in our previous article here. Some of them are discussed here as well. Unless you are getting a perfect smartphone, there is no point in spending too much money.

[Image: Time]

New Upcoming Devices Worth Waiting For!

May 28, 2013October 1, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Let me start with an apology for little or no updates in the past few days. It has been quite a mess here in the Blue Bugle planet. It took me a while to get myself updated on what is happening in our industry. Today, I have been looking through my news resources, and one of the upcoming devices that is expected to make an impact is Samsung’s Galaxy Note IIIâ€”the third installment of the very popular Note series.

Exactly how popular the Note family has been, one might wonder. Initial update on Samsung website pointed us in this direction: Galaxy Note, the original, did sell about a million units each month to reach a target of five million in March last year. Later on, Korean news source, MK News did report this success continued in the exact fashionâ€”ten million in ten months. The core of that article talks about how Note II, the successor to Note, reached a million sales in South Korea.

Although not close enough to compete with the success of iPhone or Galaxy S family, Note has been and continues to be the most successful of all phablets. Probably this is the reason why Samsung wants to develop Note as a family of products (we had Note 8.0 and real 10 inch tablets in Note family). They are also interested in building phablets larger than Note, for instance. Remember our short look at Galaxy Mega a few days back?

Hence, Note III is well worth waiting for. Although we were not quite impressed with Note II, in which some things could have been better, we are quite confident about Note III, which will probably feature anti-shake camera technology (aka optical image stabilization) as in HTC One or Nokia Lumia 920. ETNews’s article also suggests the camera will probably feature 3x optical zoom.

Although we don’t have an idea of the technical specs of this phablet, over the last few days the Web got all kinds of pictures supposedly of the device. It seems Note is no different from other major Galaxy devices. Check out a few pictures.

Note III’s screen is another aspect. It could in fact be bigger than that of Note II with 5.5 inch Super AMOLED panel. Supposedly, the new Note will include Android 4.3, which is rumored to be under testing. Check out this image, the device codenamed N7200 is recognized to be Note III.

This makes Note III an awesome smartphone worth waiting for.

Motorola X-Phone (Moto X)

Over the last few days, there have been plenty of rumors regarding this smartphone. Motorola X-Phone is one device that Motorola is depending on this year. Since Motorola is under Google now, the X-Phone will be running the latest of Android, and it is supposed to get all the software updates earlier.

There have been quite a bit of speculation regarding this device and its capabilities. A number of rumors, leaked pictures, and FCC filing sketches have cropped up recently. It is not yet clear to us what the device looks like. Evleaks’s image here may give you some idea:

Also, this filing sketch, submitted to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) gives a bit of an idea of how the device may look like:

As you can see, the serial number given to the device is XT1058. Also, there are a few beautiful designs from artists speculating how X-Phone will look.

[Update]

Motorola has released an official PR stating the status of the X Phone, which will be named actually, ‘MOTO X’. It will be the first smartphone to be assembled in the United States. Motorola also created this tweet with an image of the map of the location, where Moto X will be assembled. It is in Fort Worth, Texas. Check it out:

Soon, the â€˜X’ in #FWTX takes on a whole new meaning.bit.ly/17uZjFd twitter.com/Motorola/statuâ€¦
â€” Motorola Mobility (@Motorola) May 30, 2013

Whether or not the devices manufactured in the US will cost you extra money needs to be seen. We know about the Google Glass, made in USA, costing 1500 dollars.

Apple iPhone 5S

The ubiquitous iPhone will probably get an update by the last quarter of this year. We don’t know how it will be named yet, but we have an idea: iPhone 3GS followed by iPhone 3G; 4S followed by 4; and now probably 5S followed by 5. What is this â€˜S’? Well, Apple says it is for â€˜Speed’. With that ideology, 3GS was a slightly improved version of 3G; 4S, slightly improved from 4; and we should probably expect a slightly improved 5, right? Probably!

Also, with this ideology, one should either look for the more advanced â€˜S’ family of iPhones or the regular updated iPhones. One need not buy iPhone 4S if one already owns iPhone 4.

If 5S is only a slight improvement over 5, I, as many people, will be disappointed. iPhone 5 did not include the hardware that could compete with the other phones in the Android market. iPhone 5S cannot be a simple upgrade that includes a few new features. With the leadership change in Cupertino after the last year’s Apple Maps fiasco, design chief Jony Ive now also supervises software design. A significant revamp is expected in iOS 7 that will ship with iPhone 5S. This update is very important for Apple’s strategy this year.

There was one rumor in the last couple of days from WeiPhone.com that talks about iPhone 5S’s resolution. They believe they got some information stating the iPhone will have double the resolution of iPhone 5. Now, if you read our article here, without a significant screen size increase, this resolution will only have a ridiculous overkill effect. For this reason, we believe either this is a false news or iPhone 5S will include a much larger screen, probably closer to 5 inches.

People have designed their own iPhone 5S, but I will not bore you with these inspiring fake designs. But if the iPhone comes with certain key enhancements, such as NFC, a more powerful processor, more RAM, and a radical improvement to the iOS operating system, then it will be the first iPhone in years to be able to stand out well. Sir Ive’s tactics on hardware design have been enormously successful for Apple. If the new iOS under his aegis also turns out to be mind-blowing, the new iPhone will awe us.

To Be Concluded

Most of the devices that we have been awaiting have reached the marketâ€”HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z, among others. One other improvement that we will get to see is Nokia Lumia 928, the slightly improved Verizon phone. We will publish detailed reviews once these devices come to the market. In the meanwhile, we can only speculate.

Smartphones With the Largest Screens: Have We Reached the Breaking Point Yet?

April 15, 2013October 1, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

One of the biggest news of the last two days is the release of yet another smartphone in the Samsung Galaxy family, a phone of no especial features, with 720p 233ppi TFT screen, Android Jelly Bean, 1.5 GB RAM, 8/16 GB internal storage, Exynos 5 1.7 GHz dual-core processor, etc. The smartphone, known as Galaxy Mega is peculiar due to its screen size, of 6.3 inches, which makes it the mammoth of the smartphone market.

Samsung was the first manufacturer to lead the way to phones of unusually large screen sizes. Soon enough, other manufacturers followed, and some even managed to go a few steps further. Is this rat race for large screen sizes come to an end? Is it time for customers to really think about the display technology, rather than the screen size? Let’s find out.

The year was 2011 and the place, Berlin, home to the Berlin Radio Show. Samsung announced a legendary product in its Galaxy family of devices—the Galaxy Note. The product is in its second generation now, with sales going up continuously. It is one of the most successful products from Samsung, and the most successful among the so called ‘phablets’. Note came out almost a year after the first device to mark large screen revolution, Dell Streak, which did not sell well largely due to the cumbersome nature of its form factor.

Note, however, changed the story altogether, by becoming highly successful. Note II is also well received, although we would love to wait. Note family has spawned a whole number of phablets, which was a new term applied to devices between phones and tablets (specifically, between 5 and 7 inches of screen size). Galaxy Mega, by that reasoning, is a perfect phablet.

Screen Sizes of Touch Devices

In the last few years marking the revolution of touch-based devices—smartphones, phablets, and tablets—we have seen that the devices have touched all screen sizes. We have a whole array of phones and tablets with screens going from 4 to 10 inches.

We have the legendary Apple iPhone at the sixth generation now with a screen size of 4 inches, the smallest of all devices in high-end mainstream production. We have BlackBerry Z10 with 4.2 inch screen, Nokia Lumia 920 with 4.5 inch screen, HTC One at 4.7 inch screen, Galaxy S3 at 4.8 inches, and S4 at 4.99 inches. This is the array of smartphones having all kind of screen sizes. After this, we have phablets—LG Optimus G at 5 inch, Note II at 5.5 inches, and now Galaxy Mega at two different screen sizes—5.8 inch and 6.3 inches. Beyond that, we enter into the tablet market, dominated by Google Nexus 7 with 7 inch screen, iPad Mini with 7.9 inch screen, etc., and the list goes up to Nexus 10 with close to 10 inch screen.

Right now, the only size that we expect to be filled is between 6.3 inches and 7 inches. Maybe, Samsung will come up with another phablet with some 6.8 inch screen to fill that void.

The crux of the matter is that we have reached an impasse. Any other screen size probably is not going to make any difference. You can safely put away the search for a fitting phone with large screen size.

What Should You Consider in A Smartphone Display

Another important question here is, how do screen size and screen quality correlate? Galaxy Mega has a 6.3 inch TFT screen, but it supports only 720p HD resolution, which is smaller than 1080p full HD on Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Accordingly, it has close to half as many pixels as in Galaxy S4. 233 ppi is not a very rich screen, in comparison to GS4’s 441 ppi or iPhone 5’s 326 ppi.

Another important aspect to consider is the technology used in the display in question. There are quite a number of smartphone display technologies out there, and you should know which your phone uses. Super AMOLED and LCD IPS are two of the most prominent. While most of the Samsung devices have Super AMOLED HD display, iPhone and most of the other smartphones come with LCD with In-Plane Switching technology. There are a few differences between AMOLED and IPS.

A year ago, if you needed a smartphone of enormous display size, you probably had only one or two options, but now you can get a number of phones from all manufacturers at all convenient display sizes.

The crux of the matter here is, you should consider the display technology used, including the brightness, contrast ratio, resolution, etc., now that you can get smartphones of all display sizes.

A Few Competing Devices

As we noted early, Dell Streak started the revolution, although it was not part of it. Note won the revolution, and following its success a number of phones and tablets came out with extra-large display sizes. A few of them are here.

1. HTC One

One comes with a 4.7 inch screen, which is just perfect for viewing anything, wrapped in a form factor that fits in your pocket perfectly. [By the way, just as Samsung came up with Galaxy Note with slightly larger screen than Dell Streak, they came up with S3 with slightly larger screen than HTC One X.]

2. Galaxy S4

Upcoming Galaxy S4 marks Galaxy S family’s largest smartphone, at 4.99 inches.

3. Droid DNA (HTC, Verizon)

Popular Droid DNA has super bright 1080p full HD display using LCD3 technology. It’s available from Verizon, and outside Verizon it takes the shape of J Butterfly.

4. Sony Xperia Z

Xperia Z is this year’s Sony flagship with 5 inch screen. It is waterproof as well.

5. LG Optimus G

Optimus G is the most advanced smartphone from LG and it has the same tech specs as its brother, Google Nexus 4, also manufactured by LG.

6. Asus PadFone Infinity

This is a 5 inch phablet from Asus. It should not be confused with Asus FonePad, which is a 7 inch tablet with phone call capabilities. On an unrelated note, neither FonePad nor PadFone is named right.

7. Optimus G Pro

LG Optimus G Pro smartphone with 5.5 inch screen

Upcoming LG Optimus G Pro is a classic phablet with some pretty decent specifications.

8. ZTE Grand Memo

This year’s Grand Memo is one of the devices that ZTE is betting on highly. It has a 5.7 inch screen. [By the way, Galaxy Mega has a 5.8 inch screen version as well, effectively closing the gap in competition with Grand Memo]

9. Huawei Ascend Mate

You know Samsung wants to make a larger phone whenever a phablet of large screen gets released, right? We saw it in action with Dell Streak earlier, and we saw it again with Ascend Mate from Huawei. The phablet with 6.1 inch screen was officially unveiled in CES this year.

These are only a few worth mentioning in a sea of large screen phones.

The Usability

One of the important things that I look for in a smartphone is how convenient it is to take it with me. A phone is a portable device, and it should be portable. Usually phablets are neither portable nor good enough for some serious work. If you want a phone, the perfect size should be five inches or less, as long as the design is compact enough to be carried around in your pocket. 4.8 inch Galaxy S3 fits well in your pocket and with the same size as that, Galaxy S4 will also fit perfectly. S4 is also thinner than S3. HTC One looks good and has a pretty correct form factor for even tight-fitting pants.

As long as the manufacturers keep the size of the phone proper, fitting well in all kinds of pockets, the screen size can be tweaked. On the other hand, making devices around screen size is not a good design technique. This is the reason why I would not recommend devices larger than the Note II at 5.5 inches. Due to the same reason, Galaxy Mega is not a product that we are excited about, not to mention the substandard tech specs.

Conclusion

Galaxy Mega and such other large phablets actually don’t give you any better user experience than a regular smartphone. They may only confuse you by making you think whether you could have chosen a small tablet instead. Nexus 7 would be perfect in place of Galaxy Mega. Hence, any product larger than 5 inches or at the most 5.5 inches qualifies as overkill and you needn’t be excited about it.

Remembering the Past: Samsung Galaxy S Series Phones

March 30, 2013September 30, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

After Apple introduced us to the world of iPhone in 2007, it became kind of a household name and grew to be the most popular smartphone in the history of smartphones. Other companies like Nokia, BlackBerry, and Samsung were struggling to come up with an innovation that could shake the iPhone empire. Android came forth and started a revolution as we know it. Android’s diversity in the form of an open source mobile operating system, licensable to OEMs made it a huge success. The Google Play app store helped a lot.

When OEMs like Sony, HTC, and Samsung came up with all kinds of amazing hardware and software innovations to work with the Android operating system, a multi-tasking PC-like platform was possible outside Apple. This did really popularize the smartphones. One important milestone in the smartphone revolution is the Galaxy series of phones introduced by Samsung, especially Galaxy S series, introduced back in 2010.

On Oct 26, 2011, Samsung announced that the Galaxy S phonesâ€”S and S II have sold over 30 million units. iPhone’s success should be read along with this. iPhone did sell far more units than Galaxy S and S II did. In the most recent quarter ended in December 2012, Apple did report 47.8 million iPhones were sold. We looked through the press releases made by Apple over time, and a total of 318.945 million iPhones were sold since its beginning in 2007.

That is the total number of iPhones sold, and it is ten times the sales of Galaxy S and S II combined.

Then came along, Galaxy S III. With one of the largest screens and quad-core processing power, Galaxy S III did achieve a monster sales record. It was in November 2012 that Samsung made this announcement. Galaxy S III had made 30 million sales. In one of the recent press releases, Samsung announced S series phones have sold over 100 million units. By September and November last year, Samsung Galaxy S III was confirmed to be the highest selling smartphone in the market, surpassing iPhone as well.

There is no other smartphone in the history of smartphones that have come anywhere near the sales record of these two smartphone families, iPhone and Galaxy S.

Those Old Galaxy Devices

Galaxy S Series started off with the first device, back in 2010, known by that name, Galaxy S. Here it is.

Briefly, the technical specifications were as follows: 4 inch Super AMOLED display, WVGA resolution (800×480 px), Samsung Exynos 3 processor (1 GHz single-core), 512 MB RAM, up to 16 GB storage, and running Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread operating system.

The phone is not powerful by today’s standards. In 2010, it was one of the smartphones with the highest configuration. The competition was iPhone 3GS, HTC Evo 4G, Droid Incredible (also from HTC), Nokia N8, etc. Although there were devices like Evo 4G with slightly superior hardware specifications, Galaxy S did make it to the top.

Then came Samsung Galaxy S II, in May 2011. The device sort of looks like iPhone (as do several other Samsung devices), and it spawned a long-lasting legal battle with Apple. Oddly enough, Galaxy S II was not regarded by Apple to be one of the infringing devices. Here is the S II for you to look at:

The tech specs were a major improvement over Galaxy S. S II in fact was the highest-specification device at the time of release, and became an instant hit. It is worth mentioning that Galaxy S II started the most prolific smartphone growth that Samsung is experiencing today. It had 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus display (it is Super AMOLED Plus, as opposed to Super AMOLED on S III, and Plus is definitely better) 480×800 px, Exynos 4 dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, Android Gingerbread (upgradable to 4.1 Jelly Bean), 1 GB RAM, 16/32 GB storage, 8 MP camera, etc.

It did have competition in the form of iPhone 4, Motorola Droid Bionic (Verizon’s Droid), HTC Evo 3D, Sony Xperia Play, LG Nitro HD, Motorola Atrix 4G, etc., to name a few. A few devices released after S II’s launch, such as iPhone 4S and 2012’s release of Nokia Lumia 900 also came with amazing technical specifications.

About time when Samsung started to feel that Galaxy S II was losing out on technical specs, they made a slightly modified version available, in the form of Galaxy S II Skyrocket on the AT&T network. It did have slightly modified features like a 4.5 inch screen and Snapdragon 1.2 GHz processor (that supports LTE better). Another recent modification to the S II was released very recently in the form of Galaxy S II Plus.

Through fierce competition, Galaxy S II emerged as a highly popular device, and has sold 40 million units as of January 2013. These amazing achievements do set the Galaxy S family apart.

Galaxy S III

Samsung Galaxy S II’s amazing success paved way for Samsung to come up with a better, more advanced, faster challenger, known as Galaxy S III. Before the launch of S III, Samsung did launch another of its most successful productsâ€”Samsung Galaxy Note. Galaxy S III had a smaller screen than Note, and did not come with an S-pen. Still, Galaxy S III, just as supposed, broke all sales records.

One or two very important aspects behind Samsung’s success are its high-end configuration with Galaxy S II at the time of availability, and its strong hold on the Super AMOLED display technology, regarded to be one of the best of mobile display technologies. Things that don’t favor Samsung are its build quality and battery life (which I suppose you could rectify with an updated firmware and other steps).

Galaxy S III was unveiled on 29 May, 2012, more than one year after S II was released. Galaxy S IV’s launch of today is relatively early, you should know. It was released with one of the greatest technical specifications of all smartphones in the industry. It is almost a phablet with its 4.8 inch screen.

While the edge design is not personally appealing to me, the smartphone excels in more factors than any other smartphone in the industry to date. Briefly, the technical specifications are Exynos 4 quad-core processor clocked at 1.4 GHz (or Snapdragon S4 1.5 GHz dual-core), 4.8 inch Super AMOLED HD (720p), 8 MP camera, up to 32 GB storage and 64 GB SDXC, 1/2 GB RAM, Android 4.0.4 ICS (upgradable to Jelly Bean), NFC, 4G LTE, etc.

The phone is available in all major carriers, and in 145 countries, two important factors behind its immense success. In some countries, the phone has 2 GB of RAM as well. It built on the platform provided by Galaxy S II and became so popular. By January 2013, the smartphone has sold over 40 million units. We don’t have the most recent sales figures from Cupertino, but it is safe to assume Galaxy S III has become the most feared competitor of Apple.

In Conclusion

Galaxy S series is continuing. Within a few hours from now, at 7 pm Eastern Daylight time, in the Times Square, New York City, Samsung is unveiling the next Galaxy S smartphone. The unveiling is a little early as compared to S III’s release. It is an exciting time for smartphone buffs around the world. We have a lot of information as to what is expected of the device.

You can watch the unveiling live through Samsung’s YouTube channel.

In the last few days, we have been hearing a lot about 4.99 inch Super AMOLED Plus display (yes Plus is coming back), eye-tracking feature, 13 MP camera, 8-core processor, and a few others, on S IV. Everything that we have been hearing about will be clear within a few hours. You can follow me on Twitter @bluebugletech to know the latest about Galaxy S IV.

To get the Galaxy devices, go to: Galaxy S Phones from Amazon Wireless.

Additional New Sensors on Galaxy S4 Give Extra Features

March 22, 2013September 30, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Samsung Galaxy s4
You may have read our initial reaction to the Galaxy S4 launched last week. A few things that went into this smartphone include a few new sensors that will truly revolutionize the smartphone world. With these three additional sensors, Galaxy S4 is capable of a lot of functions that other smartphones in the market are currently not. For instance, your Galaxy S4 can sense the temperature and pressure of the surroundings.

If you remember, we did cover the most widely available sensors on smartphones in another post. Those sensors are already there in all of the current smartphones. Samsung has gone one step further to add three more sensorsâ€”temperature, humidity, and IR gesture. These sensors can measure the temperature and humidity of the surroundings and lets you control the phone through air gestures. Let’s check them out. We don’t have yet the actual details of the sensors used on Galaxy S4, but here’s how they basically work.

IR Gesture Sensor

Have you ever played a game on Microsoft Kinect? Do you have any idea how Kinect works? Samsung Galaxy S4 and Microsoft Kinect have one thing in commonâ€”an IR gesture sensor. Kinect emits an Infrared beam to cover the room in which you are playing a game and this particular beam helps it identify your movements in order to replicate it within the game. The same principle is used in Galaxy S4.

In order to do certain basic functions on the GS4, you can use hand gestures without actually touching the phone. Tasks like accepting calls, viewing images on a gallery, changing tracks, etc., are possible with hand gestures.

Smart Stay Features

You know, there had been quite a bit of hype regarding the eye-tracking feature of Galaxy S4. This particular feature was supposed to help the phone scroll through what you are reading based on your eye movements. Well, that is implemented in a slightly different way on GS4. First of all, Samsung improved the Smart Stay feature it implemented in Galaxy S3 smartphone. Smart Stay makes sure the display stays on as long as you are looking at it.

The Smart Pause feature is implemented as an improvement over Smart Stay, making sure that your phone pauses a video you are watching if you look away. This has nothing to do with IR gestures. It is simply a software improvement on Smart Stay.

Another thing that got a bit of hype was the smart-scrolling, in which people believed the phone can scroll the display based on where you are looking on the screen. Well, not quite. The scrolling happens when you tilt the phone, and not when you look at the bottom of the screen. These features don’t make use of any sensors, only the front-facing camera.

Temperature and Humidity Sensors

Two other major improvements on Galaxy S4 are its temperature sensors and humidity sensors. We don’t have much information about the chips used to implement these features. Also, more information about how these features work and the apps available to take advantage of these features will be known once the device hits the market.

In order to gather temperature and humidity data, usually you need an attachment for your phone, such as this Netatmo Weather Station for iPhone, shown in CES. But within GS4, apparently you don’t need an attachment to make it into a weather station.

As a TV Remote (Samsung WatchOn)

Galaxy S4 has an IR blaster built in. This makes the smartphone capable of controlling your TV’s set top box in the form of a remote. Samsung is shipping an app called WatchOn that works with the IR Blaster feature to make Galaxy S4 your TV companion. Apparently it works pretty well:

In Conclusion

As you can see, Samsung Galaxy S4 is proving to be one of the most advanced smartphones in the industry today. Samsung has not only improved the Galaxy series in terms of hardware, but also software. We did look at quite a number of software improvements in our preview of GS4. These features should make the phone one of the most productive smartphones in the market.