Samsung Galaxy S4 to hit markets in April: All you need to know

Samsung has just launched its flagship device the Galaxy S 4 at an event in New York. The flagship Samsung device is, of course, packed with features such as Smart Pause, Smart Scroll, Air View etc. Samsung is touting this one as your ‘Life Companion’. No really, not joking that’s their tag line as announced in the Broadway-style launch. In terms of specifications, the smartphone comes with 2 GB RAM, has a full HD AMOLED display with a five-inch screen and a pixel density of 441 pixels per inch. The screen resolution is 1920x1080 pixels. The phone will come in 32 and 64 GB versions with a microSD card slot which has a 64GB limit. The device has a removable 26oo mAh battery. It has eight sensors, which includes the usual acceleromter, Digital compass, Gyrometer etc. The new sensors are the IR Gesture sensor aka the infrared LED for remote control functions (more on that later) and a sensor for temperature and humidity control. It has a 1.9Ghz quad-core Snapdragon processor and there is another version with a 1.6 octa-core (eight core) processor. The processor will depend on the market. India should get the octa-core processor. The device runs Android 4.2.2. version of Jelly Bean along with a generous helping of Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface. The device of course supports 4G LTE and Samsung is launching two versions of the phone 4G and 3G. The device also supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC. The rear camera is 13 megapixels while the front one is 2 megapixels. And yes… the device does look a lot like the Galaxy S III. So what has changed? Here’s a look some of the features of this smartphone. Smart Scroll, Smart Pause:  The rumour mills had indicated that the Galaxy S4 would allow you to ’eye scroll’ but Samsung has fallen back on face recognition technology. The phone detects if you’re not looking at the smartphone and will pause a video. Also you can simply tilt the phone to scroll up or down while reading. Smart Scroll will allow you to scroll through content on the screen such as email with face movements and wrist gestures. [caption id=“attachment_662112” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Samung Galaxy S4. Life companion? Reuters[/caption] Air Gesture: This is pretty similar to what the AirView feature does on the Galaxy Note II with the SPen. This allows users to pick up calls by just swiping their hand over the device without touching the screen. You can control and unlock the phone without touching it as well. Air View functionality is also available and allows users to preview the content by simply holding or hovering their finger over it. Air View works for email, Flipboard, photos and calendar. Dual Video calls: This is a pretty cool feature as it allows someone to see what’s going on in your back camera while you speak to them via the front camera. Sounds interesting. S Voice Drive: S Voice, Samsung’s answer to Apple’s Siri has got a pretty serious upgrade as well. S Voice Drive will answer messages, read out texts, etc, all without users having to type them while you’re driving. Samsung Knox: Kind of like the BlackBerry Balance features, this will allow users to keep their work profiles separate from the fun private stuff. Samsung Group Play: Basically users can sync their Samsung Galaxy S4 devices into one giant stereo and play music all at the same time. This holds for upto 8 devices. S Translator: This feature allows users to translate from speech to text and text to speech and currently supports 9 languages excluding English. These are French, Latin American Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. Samsung has also put an Optical Reader app where users can take photos of signs in other languages and the app will translate them and this comes with off-line support, means you don’t have to be connected all the time to use it. Adapt Display: This feature will adjust the screen settings, such as brightness and contrast according to the light conditions around you. Story Albums: This allows users to make Story Albums out of their photos. The app will let users tag their photos, add captions and you can upload them to Facebook straight on. Samsung has signed up with Blurb to let US users print hard copies of these albums for a fee. Home Sync: The Galaxy S4 can be synced to television devices etc via Samsung’s Home Sync device. It allows upto eight users, has 1 TB cloud storage and content played on television can be viewed on S4 or you can transfer files and photos to your TV. Note: The Home Sync is an actually device. The S4 can be connected to it via Near Fields Communications (NFC). Dual Camera: This allows to the smartphone to record using both cameras at once. The main video from the back camera is overlayed with the a smaller size video from the front camera. You can choose various styles for the front camera recording. Eraser, Sound & Shot: Samsung Galaxy S4’s camera will also allow you to get rid of photo-bombers. You can edit them out with the Eraser option. The Sound & Shot option allows you to record five seconds of audio before shooting. Drama Shot: Another camera feature, the Galaxy S 4 can take more than a 100 shots in 4 seconds and then select these to form a dramatic picture. Remote Control Support: Thanks to the IR Led blaster and the WatchOn app uses can use the S4 like a remote control for any television. Samsung has of course packed the smartphone with tons of features. The device will be hitting most countries by April. Samsung has not revealed the price of the smartphone.