Yes it’s here – Samsung launches the Galaxy S4

Samsung has today launched the successor to its popular Galaxy S3 phone, the Galaxy S4.

The device packs a lot of punches, but many of the spec rumours have proven true, so the surprises have really come from the built-in apps and capabilities the Galaxy S4 has on board.

The breakdown

But first, the breakdown. As rumoured, the Samsung Galaxy S4 will run with a five inch screen made of Gorilla Glass 3.0 and its measurements are 136.6mm high (same as the S3), 69.8mm wide (compared with the S3’s 70.6mm and 7.9mm thick, compared with the S3’s 8.6mm. The device is also slightly lighter than the S3 at 130g.

It will run with a 13MP rear camera with autofocus and 1080p recording, as well as a 2MP front facing camera, much like the Sony Xperia Z.

Running on the latest version of Android, Jellybean 4.2.2, the device will ship with different processors, depending on the region, interestingly enough; some will feature the rumoured Exynos 5 processor at 1.6GHz, Samsung’s new grunty and energy efficient CPU, while other markets will see the device run a Snapdragon quad core CPU at 1.9GHz. The S4 will pack a 2600mAh battery and 2GB RAM.

At time of writing Samsung was unsure which processor the UK market would see, said user experience would basically be the same on devices and UK release was set for 26th April.

So the rumours were true!

Well, kind of. Samsung’s released a whole bunch of interesting capabilities with the S4, including the rumoured Smart Scroll and Smart Pause.

Smart scroll means tilting the device while reading a browser screen automatically scrolls the page. The scrolling stops when the phone senses you are not looking at the screen. Smart Pause is much the same – when watching a video, when the phone senses you’re not looking at the screen, the video will pause, using facial recognition technology through the front facing camera and the angle of the user’s face, Samsung said.

Other interesting features include Air Gestures, such as Air Jump, which jumps to the top of a page when the user waves their hand from bottom to top of screen – without touching the screen. Air Hover was another offering, where websites, images and texts can be previewed by hovering your finger over the screen, without touching it; a preview of the item is displayed by the device.

The camera packs some interesting features too, like the Eraser mode, which takes a burst of photos and edits out ‘heavy’ movement, such as people running or walking behind the picture – so no more photo bombing, guys. There’s also the dual video modes for chatting or taking back and front video simultaneously.

Stay tuned for What Mobile’s First Look at the Galaxy S4.