I am posting an unpopular stance - the S4 is a very nice phone but...

[MikeLip]

The good;

Awesome screen. Nice size, great color, good brightness.
TW is better than ever. However I went right back to Apex Launcher. That idiotic limit on icons is still there. Come on, guys. Give me the option to put more than 16 icons up.
Battery is very good.
Sound is good.
Screen is responsive.
More comfortable than the S3, and better screen.

The who cares;
Eye tracking - I can't make it work. So it's off.
Multi screen. So? Do you really want to work on two small screens? This makes sense on a tablet, Not on a phone.
Air gestures - gimmicky and not super useful.

Not proving it's value yet;
Super fast processors. I have several other phones in my harem. One is a Droid DNA, another is a Lumia 928. So far I see no practical speed advantage in day to day use. The DNA never stutters or makes me wait. Oddly, there are a few stutters on the S4. I turned off a lot of the overhead crap Samsung has running by default and that seems to have helped.

My take - if you are coming from something like the S3 (I had one - gave it to my youngest daughter who loves it) or the DNA, the S4 is probably not worth the upgrade unless you demand every processor cycle you can get. If you want battery life, the S4 *is* a step up. But to commit sacrilege here, you know whats (far) better on battery? The Lumia 928. For a phone that had the blogs filling their shoes with drool, the S4 is notably not that notable. It's evolutionary, sure, and probably the best Android phone available, but not as huge a step up as it as made out to be. I'll keep it and make it a daily driver, because hey, it's a darn nice phone. But I could easily have bypassed it.

I think we are also seeing the same thing happen with phones as happened with PCs. PCs got faster and faster, but you never really saw any performance improvement. I could run Word on my old 486 just as fast or faster than I can run Word on my i7. Why is that? Because the makers of the OS and applications have seen fit to load them up with so many resource hogs that all that extra performance is being burned uselessly up by processes that add nothing to the utility of the machine. Note that Word is now LOADED with junk 99.95% of everyone will never use, yet the machine has to process it. It's happening on Android. I was appalled by all the background processes running on this thing, even compared to the DNA, which is quite new. The S4 is a prime candidate for rooting to get rid of all the junk that adds nothing to the phone.

Am I disappointed? No, not really. I knew it was just a phone going in and I do like it. But I for sure feel it was overhyped. But then, that's how Android Central and other tech blogs generate revenue.

 

[garublador]

I'd agree that if you're part way through your contract with your S3 it isn't worth upgrading, but I'm not convinced that the S3 will hold up anywhere near as well as the S4 in two years. As you pointed out, feature creep in Android is real and apps of all types seem to be taking up more memory and CPU time. For example, Angry Birds worked great on my Droid X2 when I bought it, but it barely ran on it in the last few months I had it. There's the same amount of bloatware on it now as there was when I bought it and I've been deleting apps along the way to try to get it to keep up, but each update to each app has the chance of it requiring more RAM and a higher performance CPU to get it to run as well.

I think the S4 is so hyped because it's just like the S3, which most consider to be an excellent phone, but better in almost every way. How can an improvement over one of the best Android phones to date not be hyped up as an excellent phone?

 

[MikeLip]

I'd agree that if you're part way through your contract with your S3 it isn't worth upgrading, but I'm not convinced that the S3 will hold up anywhere near as well as the S4 in two years. As you pointed out, feature creep in Android is real and apps of all types seem to be taking up more memory and CPU time. For example, Angry Birds worked great on my Droid X2 when I bought it, but it barely ran on it in the last few months I had it. There's the same amount of bloatware on it now as there was when I bought it and I've been deleting apps along the way to try to get it to keep up, but each update to each app has the chance of it requiring more RAM and a higher performance CPU to get it to run as well.

I think the S4 is so hyped because it's just like the S3, which most consider to be an excellent phone, but better in almost every way. How can an improvement over one of the best Android phones to date not be hyped up as an excellent phone?

Well, it *is* an excellent phone. And I bought the hype, knowing darn well I was doing that at the time! I am still playing with it and turning off or disabling whatever I can to get the performance up to where it ought to be. I truly think though that this will be the first phone I've rooted, and that's for performance reasons. If my DNA doesn't stutter, this shouldn't!

 

[ddsdavid]

MikeLip, While I can see your point my take is a little different than yours. To me it is worth the upgrade from the DNA. Why? The DNA sim card issue made the phone unreliable and I used it for work. The DNA PUK code lock issue made it useless and I used it for work. The DNA has build issues, mine had the back cover peel off. The DNA has build issues, I had one that the wireless charger quit. Seeing a theme here? After my 5th DNA I gave up on it. It did have a better screen & was the easiest screen to see in bright daylight I ever have seen. The DNA looks a hell of a lot sexier, the wifi and phone radio were stronger and the Beats audio were hard to beat BUT for me it was very unreliable which made it worthless to me. Many claim the SIM issue is not a big deal because they can reboot or do other work arounds to temporarily get past it, well I once had a Blackberry that required constant battery pulls and I don't want to go back there either. The fact is there are a huge number of DNA's that have performance and reliability issues and if your income depends on a reliable phone then using an upgrade to get away from a problem phone is well worth it.

 

[MikeLip]

MikeLip, While I can see your point my take is a little different than yours. To me it is worth the upgrade from the DNA. Why? The DNA sim card issue made the phone unreliable and I used it for work. The DNA PUK code lock issue made it useless and I used it for work. The DNA has build issues, mine had the back cover peel off. The DNA has build issues, I had one that the wireless charger quit. Seeing a theme here? After my 5th DNA I gave up on it. It did have a better screen & was the easiest screen to see in bright daylight I ever have seen. The DNA looks a hell of a lot sexier, the wifi and phone radio were stronger and the Beats audio were hard to beat BUT for me it was very unreliable which made it worthless to me. Many claim the SIM issue is not a big deal because they can reboot or do other work arounds to temporarily get past it, well I once had a Blackberry that required constant battery pulls and I don't want to go back there either. The fact is there are a huge number of DNA's that have performance and reliability issues and if your income depends on a reliable phone then using an upgrade to get away from a problem phone is well worth it.

Whoa. I can see why you'd drop the DNA like a hot rock. My experience with it was completely the opposite - I like everything about it, and never had the SIM card problem. The one thing I didn't like was battery life - it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't good either. But I can certainly see why you'd go to a different phone.

 

[garublador]

You get the option for an SD card with the S4 as well. My brother in law has a DNA and his memory is full and there's not a lot he can do about it.

FWIW, unless I had major issues like ddsdavid had I wouldn't upgrade from the DNA to the S4, either. My experience is that the top of the line Android phones hold up for about 2.5 years after they're released. After that they get too slow to be as useful. I'm hoping that slows down a bit so I'm not forced into getting a new phone until one that really catches my fancy comes along. Last time I was stuck with the Droid X2 because my original Droid was so slow and there wasn't anything out that I thought was that much better (we didn't have 4G here at the time.) I lucked out with the S4 coming along when it did because it came to Verizon a month after I was able to upgrade. If I had to wait much longer than that I'd probably have an S3.

 

[Zooks64]

However I went right back to Apex Launcher. That idiotic limit on icons is still there. Come on, guys. Give me the option to put more than 16 icons up.

The who cares;
Eye tracking - I can't make it work. So it's off.
Multi screen. So? Do you really want to work on two small screens? This makes sense on a tablet, Not on a phone.
Air gestures - gimmicky and not super useful.

From the title of your post the first thought that went through my head was TROLL but I did at least open and read the post.

I found myself agreeing with a lot of what you said.

I switched to ADW EX launcher almost immediately. What a waste of a huge screen with the stock launcher.

I also turned off all those 'gee whiz' features that I could care less about.

Coming from a Galaxy Nexus I do notice the speed improvements. I do believe that getting the best hardware available will indeed make your phone have a longer lifespan between upgrades. I'm hoping this phone takes me the full two years and then some.

I was really looking for performance improvements, increased battery life, and better Bluetooth connectivity with the S4. I haven't had the phone long enough to make a judgement on the battery life but I'm definitely pleased with the processor and Bluetooth.

 

[garublador]

I switched to ADW EX launcher almost immediately. What a waste of a huge screen with the stock launcher.

People can argue about the lag until they're blue in the face, but the way TouchWiz wastes the screen realty is a much bigger problem, IMO.

 

[MikeLip]

People can argue about the lag until they're blue in the face, but the way TouchWiz wastes the screen realty is a much bigger problem, IMO.

Well, yeah. But the thing is it's common to all Android phones. My DNA has as big a screen at a higher pixel density than the S4, and it STILL has the same grid. So does the Note 2. This ought to be easy to fix, but no one fixes it. It's the sole reason I use a launcher.

On the other hand, neither my DNA or N2 stutters or lags. It was an unpleasant surprise - and more than a little disappointing - to see this multi-gazigahertz machine hesitate on a simple transition. Now that as much junkware is disabled as possible it seems better. But come on. That can't be what the hardware engineers intended when they designed this thing. I can see them all in their lab coats somewhere in Korea, all excited over what wonders they had wrought . Then the software guys come in, and marketing, and clog it up with fritterware.

 

[FrankP999]

...... I turned off a lot of the overhead crap Samsung has running by default and that seems to have helped.

Mike
Could you help a 'droid newbie and list some of the overhead stuff you turned off. And how you do that?

Thank you

Frank

 

[racedog]

I agree with a lot that you say. The screen is the best part of this phone. Large, but not such a large device as the Note. I found the eye scroll and most of that stuff to not be that great. The eye scroll and gestures only work with stock apps and browser and I never use those so I've shut all that stuff off. There is also the lag issue. With all that I've turned off it isn't a real issue for me now but it is a lot less smooth than my rooted and rom'ed S3. I will keep the phone because my wife really needed a new phone and I had the upgrade on my line. I will use the S4 and gave her my old S3 which she likes just fine.

Overall, it is a nice phone, but definitely not without problems, most of which were added by Samsung trying to make this a do all be all phone. They would have been better off making a less lagged device with solid features that most will use. I suspect most people will use the gestures and eye scroll as "show off" features and then end up never or hardly ever using them.

 

[MikeLip]

In application manager, you go to ALL and you can disable a lot of stuff. I have this all disabled;
Amazon (both)
Amazon MP3
Appstore
Audible
BlurbCheckout
Com2USPoker (because anything that spells "to you" as 2U was written by 10 year olds).
Flipboard - disabled since I don't use it and I don't want to be bothered to update it.
Google Play Books
Google Play Magazines
Google Play Movies
Google+
IMDB
Match3VS
My Verizon Mobile
NFL Mobile
S Health
Samsung Link (runs all the time)
Samsung WatchON - I already have a remote, thanks.
SNS
Story Album - runs all the time otherwise
Story Album Widget
Talk
VZ Navigator
Yahoo Finance
Yahoo News

I also turned off the stuff like Air Gestures, everything under Smart Screen.

Obviously there is stuff there that some people want to keep, and there are things I kept that perhaps some people wouldn't want running. For a first cut at it, go to the application manager and see what is running. If it's something you can do without, then disable it. Google is your friend there.

 

[planoman]

Hard to find fault with the OP's post. I found everything they said to be reasonable. I have almost all of the gee wiz features turned off, but have usually done that with all my phones.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337

 

[MikeLip]

I look at things like eye scroll and so forth as experiments. Someone said hey, we have the technology and computer horsepower to do this, so lets try it. It may work in the market, it may not. It may form the basis for some other service altogether. Look at the huge number of things the XBox motion detector is being used for, which Microsoft I'm sure never envisioned. Maybe the application Samsung used it's tech for isn't going to fly, but it may end up somewhere more useful or it will end up refined in such a way that it catches on. Thats the thing about new tech - you don't know where it will end up. I doubt the team that put the first laser pointer on the market ever thought they were making cat toys

 

[Valkem]

I don't disagree with you at all. I'm someone that doesn't have a harem of phones though, and this thing is ?the next big thing? if you're coming from older phones. For anyone that gets a phone every 2 years with their contract or the like, this is a huge improvement and is what phones should be in my opinion. I came from an HTC Thunderbolt that I had for 2 1/2 (maybe even 3 years). It did what I needed and I felt no need to spend more money for a smart phone when I was getting what I wanted, and the new contracts held no interest for me at the time.
The biggest thing for me was just using blue tooth with my vehicle. Hands free calls and music/audio books over my speakers in the truck. That was a big deal for me, and then the usual data usage for things like email, looking up things on the internet, and maybe a little streaming video from time to time. So there wasn't much that would make a phone better without it just being gimmicky (to me) .
The good things about this phone for me, coming from a phone that was over 2 years old are a lot of the things that wouldn't be impressive to you, or anyone upgrading from an S3. I don't think it's a huge leap, but it is a good stepping stone, and in the right direction. I am happy with a slightly large screen, much better battery life, lighter phone, and many more control (setting) options on each of the little things, to tweak the way I want it to work, or more importantly, the ability to turn off a lot of the things I don't use, and conserve battery power.
The gimmicks that I actually find a use for, but did and could live without. The air gestures. I like waving my hand over the phone to see if I have missed calls/texts when I walk back into my office without having to pick up the phone and mess with it. it helps keep the appearance that I'm 'playing' with my phone down. It also helps when I?m working in the garage and my hands are covered in grease/oil.
The split screen, I thought would be silly, but it's kind of nice when driving or traveling. This is rather specific, but I imagine other people might have like reasons. When in the vehicle, the kids will use youtube to pull a song they want to hear or show me. They'll end up continually following songs after one ends. If I get a text (say from someone we're going to meet) and you click over to texts, it cuts off the video (same with gallery video, hulu, and netflix) that they were watching/listening to, and loads text messages. With the split screen, they can open the little drawer and drop the texts onto the other half. They can read it off to me while we continue to listen to music or whatever was playing. No, I don't believe split screen works with hulu or netflix yet, but I go back to the stepping stone. If it takes off, it probably will later. I had originally turned off the split screen feature, thinking it was just silly. I recently have turned it back on and find little odd things I do use it for, and can think of more in future versions of the phone and apps that it could be used for.
While eye tracking works for me, I just don't find it very useful. Since we play video's like this while driving, and mainly for the music or sound, verus the video, we don't want to the auto-pause function to work. I also find it more irritating when reading web pages because I'm moving around don't find flicking a thumb to be that troubling. Someone that lives in the city and commutes on a bus might have the exact opposite thoughts on these options.
I thought the IR blaster to be silly until I was at my grandparents and setting up a movie. They call me once or twice a week to stop and ?put a movie in? for them. My grandmother figured out how to use Redbox and gets a movie each week, but can?t navigate their remotes. Instead of listening to them argue on who put which remote where, the last time I was there, I set my phone up to work on their devices (tv/dish-DVR/DVD-VCR player) and just did everything with a few quick swipes of the screen. While something I can definitely live without, it does make for something nice and easy. This is also something that the kids and I have started using for experiments, such as arduino boards, sensors as well as other pieces of equipment that have IR ports.
Thinking of what these types of things will lead to excites me though. Each stepping stone is leading to something more in the future, if the tech takes off.
So I think a lot of these things are gimmicky, but I think that?s what phones should become. They should be able to help us control or work a lot of the little things into our lives and help make little things easier and customizable to each of us.
Taking a step from a decent smartphone that was 2-3 years old to the s4 has been nice, and feels like a step in the right direction for me.
Again, I agree with you completely, but I think each phone will have to be loaded with gimmicky things for each of us to find something useful for our unique situation and living styles.
Something that I didn't think I would miss from my old phone is the kickstand. When I first got it, I thought it would be useless. Now I find myself wishing this phone had it, or making sure I buy a certain case, to prop the phone in certain angles when i want.

<sorry it's so long, got to thinking about so many things to add, I actually did try to keep this short>

 

[MikeLip]

I'd rather read a long, well thought out post than another "You're a troll!" thing Sounds like you have valid reasons for liking it and yeah, I did say it's a great phone. It's just not a LOT greater than last years top phones. And I fully admit to being sucked in - hey, I'm a tech geek. Sounds like you have a good - if specific - use for some of the features.

One thing that is starting to impress me is the battery with all the goodies turned off. It's set up like my other phones and the battery seems to be hanging in there really well. So I'm pleased with that.Now that some of the load is off the phone is starting to show some speed. The screen is really good. I'm pleased with that too.

 

[Premium1]

I think phones are getting to the point where all the flagships have such high end specs that you aren't going to notice much/if any difference between say a dual core and a quad core until the OS is more optimized to take advantage of it. Samsung isn't like apple and aiming for everyone to upgrade every year, they are shooting for those with the original galaxy or even the s2 to upgrade, and to those, this is a huge upgrade. I agree that from the s3-s4 you won't notice much difference, but I think that is more showing something that a phone over a year hold can still go toe to toe with even the top of the line phones now.

 

[snookasnoo]

If that was true the Nexus 4 and iPhone 5 would be slow and laggy. They aren't because they don't have all sorts of crap larded on top of the OS.
Not sure why you say TW is better than ever when you complain features don't work and gum up the phone.
I can't tell if you have rooted or not but you seriously need to shut down carrier apps, TW apps you don't use, and use titanium backup to freeze anything else you aren't using. I think Samsung took things quite a bit too far this time with Touchwiz. It could stand some serious optimization, ui and color integration, and functionality fixes. I'll probably still replace my Note 2 with it when Verizon gets a 32 GB version solely because I love the idea of a 5 inch screen in that size handset but I'm not crazy about the phone.

I think we are also seeing the same thing happen with phones as happened with PCs. PCs got faster and faster, but you never really saw any performance improvement. I could run Word on my old 486 just as fast or faster than I can run Word on my i7. Why is that? Because the makers of the OS and applications have seen fit to load them up with so many resource hogs that all that extra performance is being burned uselessly up by processes that add nothing to the utility of the machine. Note that Word is now LOADED with junk 99.95% of everyone will never use, yet the machine has to process it. It's happening on Android. I was appalled by all the background processes running on this thing, even compared to the DNA, which is quite new. The S4 is a prime candidate for rooting to get rid of all the junk that adds nothing to the phone..

Oh please...thats just nonsense. Samsung wants you to upgrade every cycle which is one of the reason they provide such poor support of new versions of the OS and poor support in general. You think Samsung is some sort of altruistic company? Hardly. Look into their history.

I think phones are getting to the point where all the flagships have such high end specs that you aren't going to notice much/if any difference between say a dual core and a quad core until the OS is more optimized to take advantage of it. Samsung isn't like apple and aiming for everyone to upgrade every year, they are shooting for those with the original galaxy or even the s2 to upgrade, and to those, this is a huge upgrade. I agree that from the s3-s4 you won't notice much difference, but I think that is more showing something that a phone over a year hold can still go toe to toe with even the top of the line phones now.

Looks like Verizon actually kept some control of the bloatware this time and also did not include some of the Samsung bloatware. Amusing how many people turn off the very features that Samsung advertises the most.

In application manager, you go to ALL and you can disable a lot of stuff. I have this all disabled;
Amazon (both)
Amazon MP3
Appstore
Audible
BlurbCheckout
Com2USPoker (because anything that spells "to you" as 2U was written by 10 year olds).
Flipboard - disabled since I don't use it and I don't want to be bothered to update it.
Google Play Books
Google Play Magazines
Google Play Movies
Google+
IMDB
Match3VS
My Verizon Mobile
NFL Mobile
S Health
Samsung Link (runs all the time)
Samsung WatchON - I already have a remote, thanks.
SNS
Story Album - runs all the time otherwise
Story Album Widget
Talk
VZ Navigator
Yahoo Finance
Yahoo News

I also turned off the stuff like Air Gestures, everything under Smart Screen.

Obviously there is stuff there that some people want to keep, and there are things I kept that perhaps some people wouldn't want running. For a first cut at it, go to the application manager and see what is running. If it's something you can do without, then disable it. Google is your friend there.

 

[garublador]

Oh please...thats just nonsense. Samsung wants you to upgrade every cycle which is one of the reason they provide such poor support of new versions of the OS and poor support in general. You think Samsung is some sort of altruistic company? Hardly. Look into their history.

Haven't there been recent updates to the S3 that includes some S4 featuers like multi-window?

 

[Notsosure]

If that was true the Nexus 4 and iPhone 5 would be slow and laggy. They aren't because they don't have all sorts of crap larded on top of the OS.
Not sure why you say TW is better than ever when you complain features don't work and gum up the phone.
I can't tell if you have rooted or not but you seriously need to shut down carrier apps, TW apps you don't use, and use titanium backup to freeze anything else you aren't using. I think Samsung took things quite a bit too far this time with Touchwiz. It could stand some serious optimization, ui and color integration, and functionality fixes. I'll probably still replace my Note 2 with it when Verizon gets a 32 GB version solely because I love the idea of a 5 inch screen in that size handset but I'm not crazy about the phone.



Oh please...thats just nonsense. Samsung wants you to upgrade every cycle which is one of the reason they provide such poor support of new versions of the OS and poor support in general. You think Samsung is some sort of altruistic company? Hardly. Look into their history.



Looks like Verizon actually kept some control of the bloatware this time and also did not include some of the Samsung bloatware. Amusing how many people turn off the very features that Samsung advertises the most.

I think you meant HTC in regards to poor support of OS update...

Edit: Just want to also note here that I'm not hating on HTC. I actually really like sense UI and had a Droid DNA. But I wanted updates to the phones and I know once DNA 2 or whenever the next flagship HTC phone for VZW comes out DNA would be abandoned. Overall that has been HTCs well known reputation.

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk