Here's a little compilation of things I don't like about the S4. Don't get me wrong, I have a large list of things I love about the phone. However, some of the downsides (for me) may sway me toward a new phone in 2 years, or even 1 year from now.
All the same, it's a great phone. I could go on about the things I love about it, but here's most of the stuff I've noticed I don't like about the phone.
What have you found to be a pain?
The big downsides:
- The touchscreen is *TOO* sensitive, even with the ultra-sensitivity feature turned off. It will go off sometimes when I am just off from the keyboard instead of touching it, causing text messages to result in sloppy typing. Swiping is fine, but sometimes I prefer thumb-typing with the autocorrect on Swiftkey.
- Battery life is not good. The 2600mah battery, which seems great on paper, ends up being torn apart by the screen.
- The screen is *way* too dim in sunlight. It has to be maxed out (resulting in terrible battery life) to even slightly see it on a sunny day.
- I live in an area with poor reception. When I'm down in my basement and wake up in the morning, sometimes I have to reboot the phone or else it won't access my network (even if I drive out into areas with good reception). It can go into a mode where it says there's no signal found, which is odd and very annoying.
The little downsides:
- The camera cannot be customized to have favorite settings side-by-side. I want to be able to switch between panorama, HDR, and automatic quickly without wheeling through the other settings. Often times I'll want an HDR shot, and then I'll want to switch to automatic. Sports mode is also very useful (sometimes automatic doesn't work too well for high motion and sports mode tends to work out well), and it would be nice to have that at easier access.
- The sound settings are all over the place. I can toggle my sound down to vibrate, and then if I open up a game it'll blast at full volume. Having to manually ensure the sound is muted on each setting is a pain.
- The sound issue extends into the alarm clock. If my sound isn't up, my alarm clock won't go off. However, I like going to sleep without sounds going off on me at night.
- The automatic setting for the alarm clock (which can't seem to be changed) is to use an alarm sound which is too melodious and easy to sleep through. This default alarm setting has to be changed manually. So, when I double-click to enter into S-Voice and set my alarm for 7AM, I'd like to be done with it there rather than manually click through my phone to edit that alarm's settings.
- Notifications and alarms turn on the screen, and often leave the screen on until they are dealt with. This is an issue, since batteries die!!
- Certain features just aren't intuitive, and require customization to be all that useful. Some of the customization required can't be done even with apps, so it leaves me with a "highly customizable phone" that isn't really able to be made that convenient in a pinch.
- Boot times aren't absolutely ideal.
- S-Voice could definitely be better, and have more features built in.
- "Drive" mode could use some improvements. It really isn't helpful when driving a lot of the time.
- The signal strength in poor signal areas on the S4 is significantly worse than even cheap blackberries, or any 4S or iPhone 5. Consistently.
- The camera is pretty terrible in low-light shots. The difference between daylight and low-light shots is ridiculous. There isn't a lot in the way of competition as far as night-shots go with a camera-phone, but still!.
Silly picky things:
- I've noticed some glitches when unlocking the phone after turning the screen off while using the camera. Half the screen will do a weird blip thing and then return to normal.
- Where the screen panel meets the metallic-like plastic, dirt can slightly wedge itself in there.
- There could be more unlock effects provided.
- Would be nice to have some darker wallpapers provided. It's hard to find decent wallpapers (saves some battery life).
- Unlocking the phone using a num-pad password requires "ok" to be clicked after entering the code. It should simply unlock automatically once you've entered the correct code, or at least have an option to allow for this.
Personal:
- I've found that a 5-inch screen is slightly too bulky for me. It fits in my pocket, but ideally I might go for something more along the lines of 4.5 inches, or even 4 inches... that's what I'd call ideal.
- The headphones that are included with the phone suck. That's fine. However, they're designed to seal to your ear (which is meant to boost bass and seal out noise), and I'd much prefer a sit-in design which is easier to put in, and can be used with one earpiece in while driving, etc.
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