MobilePros&Cons: 07/18/13

Samsung Galaxy S4 Pros and Cons - What users are saying Volume I
"Coming from a Rezound, the S4 rocks. Super amoled screen is beautiful, battery life is amazing, over 3 days with light usage. The S4 is fast and lag free compared to the rezound." "This phone is pretty dang unbelievable coming from the Nexus. I thought the Nexus was fast, especially with ROMs I'd flash, but it cannot even compare." "HTC, stay away from them. Their updates are either very late or non-existent. I had the Droid Incredible and Droid Incredible 2 and will never buy HTC again after what they pulled with the DINC 2." "The auto-brightness feature for the screen sucks...needs work. The volume control and annoying warning need work. Bluetooth seems to have strange issues with connecting to some devices. Signal reception on my phone is worse compared to the S3 and my previous EVO 4G. Wife has the S3 and she always has better reception." "Had to turn off all of the 'special' Samsung features and make some tweaks to the Dev options in order to get rid of horrid lag." "I came from an EVO 4G which I really liked and so far, I see the S4 as an incremental upgrade." "S4 is a minor incremental upgrade compared to the S3." "I've had my S4 for about a month now, coming from a Motorola Atrix 4G. I love my S4. The screen size is perfect. I can use it one handed 95% of the time. The Super Amoled HD screen is just beautiful and everything is very sharp and colors look almost life like. There is some over saturation, which can be changed in the settings menu." "It can take great close ups and 4X digital zoom with great detail." "I have had some lags, but not sure if it was due to the 3rd party launcher I'm using. Doesn't happen often." "The speaker is very loud and sounds great, but lacks bass." "Since I have 9 different calendars to keep track of, the Stock calendar app is just awesome and really easy to use." "Love the earth tone color and transition affects." "My S4 is lighter and thinner than my smaller Atrix 4G. I was surprised about how light it is." "The notification bar with all the quick setting buttons, that can be customized, is really nice." "I like how the settings are broken down into 4 tabs: connections, my device, accounts and more. I ended up taking my 16GB version back for the 32 GB version because I ran out of space once I transferred everything from my Atrix 4G over. 16GB = 9GB of personal storage; 32GB = 24GB personal storage." "One thing I wish my S4 had that my Atrix 4G has, is the "USB Mass Storage" option when hooking up to a computer." "On my S4, when I'm transferring pictures to my computer to my Kodak Easy Share program, it doesn't see my S4. So I have to first transfer the pictures to a picture folder, I created on my desktop, then transfer them to the Kodak program. It's not hard, just more steps to do the same thing." "The battery life is great for me. I get on average around 12 to 14 hrs using wifi 90% of the day, bluetooth about 10%, GPS 5%, sync set for every 4 hrs for email, about 1hrs of web reading and 3 hrs on screen time using auto brightness." "I use "WatchON" more than I thought I would. Its a really cool feature. Since our remotes are not back lit, using my S4 to change channels in the dark. Schedule recordings or see what's on TV is a handy feature." "Using "Flipboard" for my news, all in one place is really nice and you can customize it to what you want to see." "I like the dual display mode too. Really helpful, but limited. I have over 245 apps and only about 10 of them are capable of using this feature." "I find the display size ideal for my usage, with it's wide range of brightness and power saving mode, the battery life I'm enjoying is just terrific. With it's high ppi rating it's even much better than my iPhone 5 display." "One of the first apps I installed was SwiftKey, the increase in speed and accuracy of texting, emails and the like is amazing. A long time Swype user and enthusiast, I finally decided to try SwiftKey and I'm so glad I did." "I had an S3 and upgraded to an S4. I also have an HTC One. At weekends when I only take one phone with me, it's usually the HTC One. It more reliably gets a fast mobile data signal where I live/work. Whilst using the S4 with a memory card, crashed and lost all my holiday pics, but that could have been the card. The S3 did that to me too...which could ...could also have been the card!" "Many of the S4 Touchwiz "clever bits" are just too clever and end up being a pain and getting turned off. On the other hand, so does HTC Sense. Both of mine have Nova running instead." "I have had my GS4, for a week now. Came from the DNA which was a nightmare for me. 4 replacements total, the 1st had the sim error all the time. Second one had a defective camera, 3rd same as second one the camera had horrible lines through it. And the last one kept giving the preparing sim error, would never get a data connection, and would randomly power on/off on its own. So far the gaaxy 4 is great, I cannot complain about a thing."

Samsung Galaxy S4 Pros and Cons - What users are saying Volume I

"Coming from a Rezound, the S4 rocks. Super amoled screen is beautiful, battery life is amazing, over 3 days with light usage. The S4 is fast and lag free compared to the rezound."

"This phone is pretty dang unbelievable coming from the Nexus. I thought the Nexus was fast, especially with ROMs I'd flash, but it cannot even compare."

"HTC, stay away from them. Their updates are either very late or non-existent. I had the Droid Incredible and Droid Incredible 2 and will never buy HTC again after what they pulled with the DINC 2."

"The auto-brightness feature for the screen sucks...needs work. The volume control and annoying warning need work. Bluetooth seems to have strange issues with connecting to some devices. Signal reception on my phone is worse compared to the S3 and my previous EVO 4G. Wife has the S3 and she always has better reception."

"Had to turn off all of the 'special' Samsung features and make some tweaks to the Dev options in order to get rid of horrid lag."

"I came from an EVO 4G which I really liked and so far, I see the S4 as an incremental upgrade."

"S4 is a minor incremental upgrade compared to the S3."

"I've had my S4 for about a month now, coming from a Motorola Atrix 4G. I love my S4. The screen size is perfect. I can use it one handed 95% of the time. The Super Amoled HD screen is just beautiful and everything is very sharp and colors look almost life like. There is some over saturation, which can be changed in the settings menu."

"It can take great close ups and 4X digital zoom with great detail."

"I have had some lags, but not sure if it was due to the 3rd party launcher I'm using. Doesn't happen often."

"The speaker is very loud and sounds great, but lacks bass."

"Since I have 9 different calendars to keep track of, the Stock calendar app is just awesome and really easy to use."

"Love the earth tone color and transition affects."

"My S4 is lighter and thinner than my smaller Atrix 4G. I was surprised about how light it is."

"The notification bar with all the quick setting buttons, that can be customized, is really nice."

"I like how the settings are broken down into 4 tabs: connections, my device, accounts and more. I ended up taking my 16GB version back for the 32 GB version because I ran out of space once I transferred everything from my Atrix 4G over. 16GB = 9GB of personal storage; 32GB = 24GB personal storage."

"One thing I wish my S4 had that my Atrix 4G has, is the "USB Mass Storage" option when hooking up to a computer."

"On my S4, when I'm transferring pictures to my computer to my Kodak Easy Share program, it doesn't see my S4. So I have to first transfer the pictures to a picture folder, I created on my desktop, then transfer them to the Kodak program. It's not hard, just more steps to do the same thing."

"The battery life is great for me. I get on average around 12 to 14 hrs using wifi 90% of the day, bluetooth about 10%, GPS 5%, sync set for every 4 hrs for email, about 1hrs of web reading and 3 hrs on screen time using auto brightness."

"I use "WatchON" more than I thought I would. Its a really cool feature. Since our remotes are not back lit, using my S4 to change channels in the dark. Schedule recordings or see what's on TV is a handy feature."

"Using "Flipboard" for my news, all in one place is really nice and you can customize it to what you want to see."

"I like the dual display mode too. Really helpful, but limited. I have over 245 apps and only about 10 of them are capable of using this feature."

"I find the display size ideal for my usage, with it's wide range of brightness and power saving mode, the battery life I'm enjoying is just terrific. With it's high ppi rating it's even much better than my iPhone 5 display."

"One of the first apps I installed was SwiftKey, the increase in speed and accuracy of texting, emails and the like is amazing. A long time Swype user and enthusiast, I finally decided to try SwiftKey and I'm so glad I did."

"I had an S3 and upgraded to an S4. I also have an HTC One. At weekends when I only take one phone with me, it's usually the HTC One. It more reliably gets a fast mobile data signal where I live/work. Whilst using the S4 with a memory card, crashed and lost all my holiday pics, but that could have been the card. The S3 did that to me too...which could ...could also have been the card!"

"Many of the S4 Touchwiz "clever bits" are just too clever and end up being a pain and getting turned off. On the other hand, so does HTC Sense. Both of mine have Nova running instead."

"I have had my GS4, for a week now. Came from the DNA which was a nightmare for me. 4 replacements total, the 1st had the sim error all the time. Second one had a defective camera, 3rd same as second one the camera had horrible lines through it. And the last one kept giving the preparing sim error, would never get a data connection, and would randomly power on/off on its own. So far the gaaxy 4 is great, I cannot complain about a thing."

Samsung Galaxy S4 Pros and Cons - what users are saying Volume I