Samsung Galaxy S4 – Hands On

Photo fun

There are some fun photo modes, including Dual Camera, Sound in Shot, Drama Shot, Cinema Photo and Eraser Shot. Dual Camera takes a photo from the front and rear camera at the same time, and puts both pictures together. The idea is to overlay a picture of yourself into a ‘picture in picture’ style frame that forms part of the photo you took from the rear camera. You can adjust how the frame looks, where it’s positioned and how big it is. With the Sound in Shot feature, you can record up to 9 seconds of audio to annotate your pic. Drama Shot is quite fun – it takes a burst of photos and then combines them into a single shot, and is great for fast-action or sports related scenes. The clever Eraser Shot can even delete unwanted people who may have strayed into your family photo, and you can remove them without a trace. The Cinema Photo mode takes a short video and you can then decide what parts you want to show as a still image and which you want to animate. The image is then saved as a GIF file.

Also, some of Samsung’s Galaxy Camera elements have been imported into the GS4. For example, it’s now easier to choose between photo modes such as night shots, fireworks, beach scenes and more.

Healthy living

Samsung has picked up on the trend for using technology to improve your health. The GS4 comes with S-Health, which is an assortment of features to do the same sort of thing. It can track your movement using the accelerometer, and record the temperature and humidity of your environment. You can track these measurements over time and see how you how you progress. There’s also a food tracker that tells you the calories in the food you’ve eaten and adds this to your record. Samsung has also created some specialised accessories such as a heart rate monitor, pedometer and bathroom scale that communicate with the GS4 via Bluetooth to add even more information to your health profile.

The Group Share feature lets you quickly and easily share photos, music, documents or play games with up to 8 other Galaxy S4 owners. We tried it and all it took for a connection was a quick tap and our devices were talking to each other and sharing their content.

It's easy to share your files, music, photos and even play games with a group of up to 8 others.

You’ll also find an IR transmitter placed on the top edge of the GS4, which turns it into a remote control for compatible TVs. With it you can check programming, search through and play your saved videos, and change volume and channels. While it wasn’t specified which TVs this will work on, it’s fairly safe to assume these will be recent Samsung Smart TVs.

Other accessories include the View Cover, which is a snap-on case that has a small viewing window cut-out that leaves a bit of the screen visible, and where a specialised menu shows you things like SMS status, battery status, caller ID and date and time.