MobilePros&Cons: 07/19/13

Samsung Galaxy S4 Pros & Cons - What users are saying Volume 2
"What are the differences between vietnam made or korean or china made onces?" "LIFE COMPANION? ONLY A FEW MONTHS COMPANION....!" "Call log is a pain. I just want to view only number of calls like incoming, outgoing, missed etc. I don't want to view messages log. In log view settings, I just mark only call view, but after sending a message, my log changes to default so that I can view all messages and calls which I sent or received. How to stop it?" "Can we write anything on its screen quickly with our fingers without disconnecting the call, if a caller dictates us a telephone no while a call is on? We can do so on some LG phones." "It brought nothing new to the table just more gimmicks." "The UI is too bloated and that hurts the user experience. This Galaxy Nexus 2 that I own is horrible in terms of lag and it stutters like crazy. Instead of belting out more phones with minor upgrades, Sammy needs to start put tons of resources in software quality." "I am not looking forward to the bloatware as I just counted 21 apps disabled on my Note 2" "I have rooted and ROM'ed in the past but that got old waiting on an update to fix some bug...so not worried about the locked boot loader as I will stay stock." "Nova cleared all my folder setup that I spent 2 nights creating.. YIKES!!" "I absolutely love the picture quality that the camera produces. While I miss the nifty Zoe and highlight features" "My wife bought this phone. She used an HTC Touch 3G before, so it was a huge step forwards. At first, it was working well. But 2 weeks later, it got software problems, which got solved after several resets. Later on, it happened again, so we sent it back. We got it back all fixed. Then after some time, again problems with network connections. We went back, got a brand new one. This works fine, except for the fact that the LED flash doesn't work!!! so it's a waste of money, how can we be that unlucky to have two times a failure product? what to do? so far it's a waste of money." "Although they know android sucks, they still want to buy them. Same with game of thrones. Everybody says "I like that" but when you ask them what they like about it, they don't know. They just copy everyone else saying they like it when its pile of dog chod." "Does having the basic set of 'quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A7' for mainly UI operations (TouchWiz) affect the performance of the system? Being TouchWiz not precisely light, and that it involves several of the cool and main features of the S4, I wonder. I don't know how 'heavy' have to be a task for the system to switch to the A15 cores. For example if I open Maps or YouTube, which set of cores is likely to be in use? How good can we say (based on facts) are the set of quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A7? And Does 1.2GHz sounds and can be a bit slow? what do you think? Would it be possible to deactivate the basic set of cores manually? Would this destroy battery optimizations?" "Who said metal phones dont have good reception? My nokia N8 had the best reception. Even in the elevators, I got full signal." "A phone can have metal body and still have a strong signal reception. Most of the Nokia E-Series focus on metal casing and the entire world knows that Nokia phones have the best reception. Even Nokia's cheapest phone the Nokia 1100 (flashlight phone) beat many high-end phones in terms of antenna signal reception." "Notification light is hardly visible on the white version." "I got S4 for 37000 Rs. I got one time screen replacement warranty for one year and smart view flip cover which will be delivered by Samsung within 30 days. I am from Lucknow, India." "Samsung has released 3 updates and after all three updates now phone's heating problem is solved. Phone is not getting hot while charging now." "Sound output is great on headphone, use a good headphone and you will get heavy bass and clear sound. If you want bass in video player, use Equalizer app from play store." "I am from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. I bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 (GT-I9500) paying a whooping amount of INR 41,500/- on 08th July 2013. Within a week, I suffered Mobile Network Signal Drop (NO SERVICE - ERROR SEARCHING NETWORKS) and Call Drops! I tried replacing my SIM card and trying other network provider's SIM too. But the problem persisted. I also researched the internet and came to know that many of the users have the same problem! It's definitely a handset fault. I contacted Samsung Customer Care on 16th July 2013 and they said that, as a policy they could not replace my Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9500 as it has crossed 7 days period after purchase (NOT TO MENTION...RIDICULOUSLY SAMSUNG INCLUDES SUNDAYS TOO, EVEN WHEN THE CUSTOMER CARE CENTERS ARE CLOSED!!). Failing to solve the issue even after updating my software, now they have provided me with the option of replacing the motherboard of Samsung Galaxy S4 (GT- I9500). My charm of buying such an high-end phone has been completely lost and left me shattered fearing any more loss after motherboard replacement! I feel cheated buying a Toy of INR 41,500/-, when Samsung cannot even provide a stable BASIC necessity. It's even more sad for me since I have still not started paying my monthly installments!. I DO NOT recommend Samsung Galaxy S4 to anyone, unless you want to waste your hard earned money." "If it has Exynos chipset, then it doesnt support 4G and Exynos octa core has overheating issue." "Why my galaxy S4 (i9500) takes longer to finish boot compared to my sis's S4? (i9500). Both stock, difference is about 10 seconds" "I have the black one with a Urban Armour Gear case on. It gives the flash less glance" "Variance is good! BUT Announcing 64gb for this phone AND not releasing is WRONG. Where is the 64gb? WHERE? Don't give me compromising statements like "Oh you can use SD slots?" NO. IF I AM RICH I should be able to afford anything samsung has to offer. NO more 16gb junks." "Im having a hard time connecting to Wi-fi. I am From the Philippines and using the free router from Pldt." "Don't worry about RAM on a 2GB DDR3. S4 is a phone with DDR3, HTC ONE and Z being DDR2 RAM phones. You always have more than 800 MB+ free. After a fresh reboot, I have 1.3-1.4GB free. So RAM is never a problem. After disabling many S apps like Slink, Samsung Push etc, the free RAM increases. The Google Play edition will have more than 1.2-1.4GB free RAM and it will be a waste of 2GB RAM as there is no way to utilise 2GB RAM." "Does the memory card make my phone work faster? When I took my phone at first day (there weren't many applications and files saved on the phone) the videos on youtube and the videos saved on the phone were opening very fast. Now that I've installed some applications and saved a lot of photos and other documents on my phone. Now it takes a little time to open videos. Is this happening because I am not using a external memory card yet?" "I ordered a SGP Ultra Oleophobic screen protector." "I currently use a Motorola Razr I which has 1GB of RAM and when I purchased it, it had 450-500 free RAM after a reboot." "I am having some issues with the AT&T 32GB S4. Call quality on Speaker is muffled to those on the other side. In the middle of conversations I can hear people but they can't hear me and calls have ended. I downloaded speedtest.net on the S4 and I ran it sitting next to the S3 16GB from AT&T and the upload speed is a bit faster. Is NOVA Launcher considered a ROOT to the device?" "Upgrading via kies has an advantage, it installs the whole new firmware instead of only the updated files. It cleans any bugs or corrupt files and hence, is like a clean install. One downside is that it installs the whole 1.5 GB firmware."

Samsung Galaxy S4 Pros & Cons - What users are saying Volume 2

"What are the differences between vietnam made or korean or china made onces?"

"LIFE COMPANION? ONLY A FEW MONTHS COMPANION....!"

"Call log is a pain. I just want to view only number of calls like incoming, outgoing, missed etc. I don't want to view messages log. In log view settings, I just mark only call view, but after sending a message, my log changes to default so that I can view all messages and calls which I sent or received. How to stop it?"

"Can we write anything on its screen quickly with our fingers without disconnecting the call, if a caller dictates us a telephone no while a call is on? We can do so on some LG phones."

"It brought nothing new to the table just more gimmicks."

"The UI is too bloated and that hurts the user experience. This Galaxy Nexus 2 that I own is horrible in terms of lag and it stutters like crazy. Instead of belting out more phones with minor upgrades, Sammy needs to start put tons of resources in software quality."

"I am not looking forward to the bloatware as I just counted 21 apps disabled on my Note 2"

"I have rooted and ROM'ed in the past but that got old waiting on an update to fix some bug...so not worried about the locked boot loader as I will stay stock."

"Nova cleared all my folder setup that I spent 2 nights creating.. YIKES!!"

"I absolutely love the picture quality that the camera produces. While I miss the nifty Zoe and highlight features"

"My wife bought this phone. She used an HTC Touch 3G before, so it was a huge step forwards. At first, it was working well. But 2 weeks later, it got software problems, which got solved after several resets. Later on, it happened again, so we sent it back. We got it back all fixed. Then after some time, again problems with network connections. We went back, got a brand new one. This works fine, except for the fact that the LED flash doesn't work!!! so it's a waste of money, how can we be that unlucky to have two times a failure product? what to do? so far it's a waste of money."

"Although they know android sucks, they still want to buy them. Same with game of thrones. Everybody says "I like that" but when you ask them what they like about it, they don't know. They just copy everyone else saying they like it when its pile of dog chod."

"Does having the basic set of 'quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A7' for mainly UI operations (TouchWiz) affect the performance of the system? Being TouchWiz not precisely light, and that it involves several of the cool and main features of the S4, I wonder. I don't know how 'heavy' have to be a task for the system to switch to the A15 cores. For example if I open Maps or YouTube, which set of cores is likely to be in use? How good can we say (based on facts) are the set of quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A7? And Does 1.2GHz sounds and can be a bit slow? what do you think? Would it be possible to deactivate the basic set of cores manually? Would this destroy battery optimizations?"

"Who said metal phones dont have good reception? My nokia N8 had the best reception. Even in the elevators, I got full signal."

"A phone can have metal body and still have a strong signal reception. Most of the Nokia E-Series focus on metal casing and the entire world knows that Nokia phones have the best reception. Even Nokia's cheapest phone the Nokia 1100 (flashlight phone) beat many high-end phones in terms of antenna signal reception."

"Notification light is hardly visible on the white version."

"I got S4 for 37000 Rs. I got one time screen replacement warranty for one year and smart view flip cover which will be delivered by Samsung within 30 days. I am from Lucknow, India."

"Samsung has released 3 updates and after all three updates now phone's heating problem is solved. Phone is not getting hot while charging now."

"Sound output is great on headphone, use a good headphone and you will get heavy bass and clear sound. If you want bass in video player, use Equalizer app from play store."

"I am from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. I bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 (GT-I9500) paying a whooping amount of INR 41,500/- on 08th July 2013. Within a week, I suffered Mobile Network Signal Drop (NO SERVICE - ERROR SEARCHING NETWORKS) and Call Drops! I tried replacing my SIM card and trying other network provider's SIM too. But the problem persisted. I also researched the internet and came to know that many of the users have the same problem! It's definitely a handset fault. I contacted Samsung Customer Care on 16th July 2013 and they said that, as a policy they could not replace my Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9500 as it has crossed 7 days period after purchase (NOT TO MENTION...RIDICULOUSLY SAMSUNG INCLUDES SUNDAYS TOO, EVEN WHEN THE CUSTOMER CARE CENTERS ARE CLOSED!!). Failing to solve the issue even after updating my software, now they have provided me with the option of replacing the motherboard of Samsung Galaxy S4 (GT- I9500). My charm of buying such an high-end phone has been completely lost and left me shattered fearing any more loss after motherboard replacement! I feel cheated buying a Toy of INR 41,500/-, when Samsung cannot even provide a stable BASIC necessity. It's even more sad for me since I have still not started paying my monthly installments!. I DO NOT recommend Samsung Galaxy S4 to anyone, unless you want to waste your hard earned money."

"If it has Exynos chipset, then it doesnt support 4G and Exynos octa core has overheating issue."

"Why my galaxy S4 (i9500) takes longer to finish boot compared to my sis's S4? (i9500). Both stock, difference is about 10 seconds"

"I have the black one with a Urban Armour Gear case on. It gives the flash less glance"

"Variance is good! BUT Announcing 64gb for this phone AND not releasing is WRONG. Where is the 64gb? WHERE? Don't give me compromising statements like "Oh you can use SD slots?" NO. IF I AM RICH I should be able to afford anything samsung has to offer. NO more 16gb junks."

"Im having a hard time connecting to Wi-fi. I am From the Philippines and using the free router from Pldt."

"Don't worry about RAM on a 2GB DDR3. S4 is a phone with DDR3, HTC ONE and Z being DDR2 RAM phones. You always have more than 800 MB+ free. After a fresh reboot, I have 1.3-1.4GB free. So RAM is never a problem. After disabling many S apps like Slink, Samsung Push etc, the free RAM increases. The Google Play edition will have more than 1.2-1.4GB free RAM and it will be a waste of 2GB RAM as there is no way to utilise 2GB RAM."

"Does the memory card make my phone work faster? When I took my phone at first day (there weren't many applications and files saved on the phone) the videos on youtube and the videos saved on the phone were opening very fast. Now that I've installed some applications and saved a lot of photos and other documents on my phone. Now it takes a little time to open videos. Is this happening because I am not using a external memory card yet?"

"I ordered a SGP Ultra Oleophobic screen protector."

"I currently use a Motorola Razr I which has 1GB of RAM and when I purchased it, it had 450-500 free RAM after a reboot."

"I am having some issues with the AT&T 32GB S4. Call quality on Speaker is muffled to those on the other side. In the middle of conversations I can hear people but they can't hear me and calls have ended. I downloaded speedtest.net on the S4 and I ran it sitting next to the S3 16GB from AT&T and the upload speed is a bit faster. Is NOVA Launcher considered a ROOT to the device?"

"Upgrading via kies has an advantage, it installs the whole new firmware instead of only the updated files. It cleans any bugs or corrupt files and hence, is like a clean install. One downside is that it installs the whole 1.5 GB firmware."

Samsung Galaxy S4 Pros and Cons - What users are saying Volume 2