Week 1 report from the Galaxy S4

So I've had the Galaxy S4 (GT-i9505) for a week now, from Telstra, and I thought I had best share a few thoughts and experiences with it.

I won't dive into too many of the already well publicised details of the phone. Great processor (mine has the Snapdragon 600 SoC, as opposed to what appears to be a poorly executed rushed job Exynos 5 Octa version,) great screen etc. You can read about those in the many millions of online reviews. But more and more I've found that online reviews from well known publications seem to either highlight issues that don't matter, or skim over issues that do, from a day to day, this-is-the-phone-I-have-to-deal-with-every-day perspective. Also, given what I usually do to phones (root, ROM etc) I thought I should cover more on that side as well.

In quick summary of the 2 main points that have been covered in the reviews:

• Screen - looks totally awesome. It's Pentile AMOLED, which I absolutely hated on the Lumia 800 and dealt with on the Galaxy S3. On the S4, I can't tell it's pentile, at all. Works better in sunlight too. I did compare this side by side in the Telstra shop with the HTC one, and I think the HTC is better, but I really shouldn't weigh on your decision to buy, as you'll be happy with either.
• Processor - It's the same as the HTC One. Nuff said.

Now, here is where I start to diverge from the main stream reviews:

Touchwiz
Oh Touchwiz, my poor, downtrodden friend. Most reviews and forums have at best called it the "most bearable" version of the skin, and at worst, have called it "vomit all over android". Complains range from inconsistencies with the experience across difference areas of the device, to laggyness and slowdowns caused by it. At the end of the day, 90% of people really won't care. It works, all the options are there, it still does everything stock android does (plus more, but I'll get to that), and I haven't found it to be laggy at all. On the S3 it used to chug a bit on the launcher screen, but a quick trip to the play store to get Nova soon sorted that out. This is hammered in the reviews badly, but it really doesn't impact by any stretch as far as the reviews point out.

Removable Battery
While the battery life on the S4 is great, and easily goes toe to toe with my wife's iPhone 5 if we have similar usage patterns for a day, there 2 big reasons for preferring a removable battery. This and this. If you haven't looked at those links, the first is a 7000mAh battery for the Galaxy S3. There is one coming for the S4, but hasn't been announced yet. I've used a larger battery on my S3, and it's something I've told everyone who asked that it's something that I cannot live without. To give you an idea, the stock battery on the S4 is 2600mAh, so we are talking more than 2.5 times the battery life. It makes the phone thicker and heavier, but with the phone so thin and light to start with, it's something that I personally don't give 2 hoots about, if it means I can go all weekend without a charge. The flip side of that, and I how I use the extended battery more often, is simply having everything turned on. With the extended battery, Wifi, Bluetooth, gestures, screen brightness can all be left on and turned up, without a worry in the world. The second link is for a stock battery. With the HTC One and the Xperia Z, once those batteries die, it's all over. You can crack them open and replace it, but no where near as easy. This isn't a huge point (not as big as the first) but it's still a factor.

SD Card Expansion
The price difference at the time of writing from a 16Gb to a 32Gb iPhone 5 is $100. A 16Gb SD card is around $20, and falling. When I picked up my S4, I dropped my SD card from the S3 into it, and boom, all my music, photos and videos are there. The Xperia Z has an SD card slot, but the HTC one doesn't, and that's a killer for me. The phone supports up to 64Gb cards as well, so I've always got access to that additional storage. This doesn't get touched on as much in a lot of reviews probably because of the prevalence of streaming music services in the US, but music is only a part of this. Carrying a 1080p camera around is no use if you can't expand the storage.

Build quality
Most reviews have, quite correctly, pointed out that the HTC One is a much nicer looking phone. Compared to the S4, I would agree, but really, it's been weighted in reviews far more than it should. I don't know about anyone else, but my phone usually lives in a case, which negates that straight away. Also, the HTC buttons are VERY poorly laid out (the power button at the top left put me off straight away. Top right and on the right hand side is fine, but not top left....) I also use the physical home button on the S4 to turn it on, probably more so than the power button, and that is far more convenient.

Now I mentioned in the TouchWiz part about people wanting stock Android on their devices. Google has announced the Google Edition of the S4 (which I didn't know about at the time of purchase) which makes me a very happy owner. If (as I assume) the GE version is a GTi9505 (which given it will work on AT&T and T-Mobile, I think it will be) then that gives my even more options from a custom ROM point of view. I've heard people complain that the GE will loose all of the Samsung features (um...didn't you WANT all that stuff gone!), but really, as long as the camera works, it will be fine. The main reason I don't run a rom like Cyanogenmod is the fact that some of the hardware is flakey. If these GE roms give the CM guys drivers/blobs etc to work with, then happy days.

All in all, I've very happy with my purchase. Sure, there's a 100 things on this phone I'll never use, but there's a few that I really need/want, and on that basis, I really would recommend the S4 over anything else sitting in the Telstra shop right now.