I'm surprised that they finally pushed a metal body, after everyone wanted one for their standard edition. It's a shame their nerfing the specs to some degree, as the housing looks sharp.
I'll just go ahead and say it. I'm confused why it has real buttons. I would think for a rugged version that is going to be traveling through dust, muck, and water they'd have removed as many buttons as possible, for less holes for crap to get in. I'd have expected all softkeys on the front. The only exception would be gloved use, but even then, the S4 does have the suped up screen sensitivity so that could be negatable.