galaxy s4 – Tech Raman

Samsung outs a new Gold Edition Galaxy S4

Lakshmi Rajan — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:47:10 +0000

Introducing the new #GalaxyS4 Gold Edition – for a style that’s uniquely yours! pic.twitter.com/XkFu4zceHT — SamsungMobileArabia (@SamsungMobileME) September 25, 2013 While the Samsung Gulf facebook page showcased the Samsung Galaxy S4 gold edition in two color variants: Gold Brown and Gold Pink.

Post by Samsung Gulf.

There is no word on if Samsung will roll out the golden edition in other parts of the world but there is no reason to think why Samsung would hesitate to do so. If Samsung introduces the Gold edition in India, judging by the gold craze of Indians it should do remarkably well, agree?

– Via

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Samsung Galaxy S4 mini launched in India for Rs 27,990

Lakshmi Rajan — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 11:46:18 +0000

Welcome the extended family of Galaxy S4. Today the Korean giant launched Samsung Galaxy S4 mini in India for Rs 27,990. The smaller sibling of Galaxy S4 was first announced in May and later the Galaxy S4 Active and Galaxy S4 Zoom joined the famed family. Samsung is trying to milk the S4 fame and hype by squeezing in many variants. Unfortunately, except for the name monicker and the semblance to Samsung’s flagship smartphone, Galaxy S4 mini is no match to the bigger bro when it comes to the specs. Galaxy S4 mini has a 4.3 inch Super Amoled display with a qHD resolution (960×540 pixels). The resolution pales in comparison to Galaxy S4’s full HD. Again the processor is smashed to a lower end with a dual-core 1.7 GHz processor, 1.5 GB RAM and internal memory of 8 GB. The shooter is also minimized to a 8 megapixel and a 1.9 MP front facing camera. As a saving grace, Samsung has borrowed and rolled out some of the camera features from Galaxy S4 like Sound and shot, Panorama shot and also Story album that automatically organizes the captured images into album based on time, events and place. Galaxy S4 mini runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean the latest Android version cooking now and has garnished it with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. Other features like S Translator, S Health etc that was found in Galaxy S4 also are available here. S4 mini stores under it’s belly a 1,900 mAh battery and weighing an impressive 107 grams its delightful on hand. But the bottom line, will the S4 branding help sell Galaxy S4 mini at the price tag of Rs. 27,990 which does not merit the inferior hardware specs. ]]>

Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom with 10x optical zoom, 16MP camera launched in India

Lakshmi Rajan — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 08:22:09 +0000

Smartphones made cameras pocketable but if you are missing a good optical zoom but don’t want to carry around a separate digital camera, Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom could be your pick. Galaxy S4 Zoom, the first smart phone to offer 10x optical zoom, also includes a 16-megapixel CMOS sensor, with a Xenon flash. If one side of this unique smartphone resembles a digital camera, the other side features a smart phone a 4.3-inch qHD display (540 x 960 pixels), 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, 1.5GB RAM, 8GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD slot) and a 1.9MP front facing camera and running on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean OS. A picture perfect smartphone with a unique double-facet! [gallery link="file" ids="4444,4445,4446,4447,4448,4449,4450"]

The lens of Galaxy S4 Zoom has a Zoom Ring which helps to activate the In-Call Photo Share feature with a twist of the zoom ring while you are on a call and share what you see and send it via MMS instantly. Zoom ring also helps to access Quick Launch and Shortcut features that opens up the camera’s various modes. Photo Suggest feature gives access to photos taken by other photographers on the location you are in and giving you ideas for various photo compositions as well as it even suggest the ideal near by location for getting your right-click by suggesting the vantage points. Say real life photo tutor! At 208 grams and 15.4 millimeters thick, it is almost double of the original Galaxy S4 but slimmer than the last year’s Galaxy Camera, the company’s first Android flavored camera that featured a 21x optical zoom. Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom is priced at Rs 29,000 in India. ]]>

Samsung Galaxy S4 S Health review

Lakshmi Rajan — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 12:01:00 +0000

One of my most accessed feature in SGS4 happens to be S Health. Taking leverage of the various sensors and technology that comes with the smartphone, Samsung has stepped into the fitness sphere which is also a lucrative market to be in. For the users, the S health brings a level of health and fitness management in one’s pocket which helps in tracking the exercise and diet routine and as well as keep a check on it. For lazy bones, it definitely helps to stay motivated. Let’s take a Samsung Galaxy S4 S Health review tour. It’s both a novel idea to have it integrated with the smartphone as well as very practical tool to help you stay fit. Once you keep the S health app active in your phone, the S health home screen (left image) shows the calories burn and calories intake also your weight. On tapping the three horizontal lines, the screen shows the health board settings. Health board has a calorie management sessions which include Walking mate to monitor your walking, running and steps up/downs, exercise mate that logs the various physical activities you work out and a food tracker to keep a watch on your calories intake. Then you have the comfort level that gives the data on the surrounding temperature and humidity, a weight log and settings for your profile.

Get started

First thing needed to do with the S health is to go to the settings and edit the profile. The profile has the fields to add your personal data and it gives you a fair idea of target calorie intake per day to maintain your current weight and also more importantly calories you need to burn per day to maintain it. How do you go out burning those calories you take in? You walk, run and engage in various physical activities. S Health tells you exactly how much you burn with your daily activities and keep reading down to find how.

Walking mate

This is my personal pick of the feature because am not a exercise guy. Walking mate counts your steps and tracks the steps made and calories burnt in the process. You can set your personal steps goals and once you reach it, you get a medal you can proudly share it on your social networks. If not at least it gives you a bit of self motivation. Walking mate gives you datas on steps made, miles covered and calories burnt. Dig further it gives you more comprehensive data. The graph charts gives you more information on the steps you covered by splitting it into walking, running and up/down. I assume the up/down to be the steps you made in stairs. Further more you also get to analyze and compare your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly logs.

Exercise mate

So you are an exercise guy/girl. Your typical workout sessions in a day might include various physical activity. Exercise mate in S Health helps you monitor and log your various activities as well as indicates how much calories are spend over your various workouts. Once we are at exercise mate, press enter. It lists a long list of various activities. The list is comprehensive and in case your activity type is not included, you can add your own activity to the list. Click the particular activity you worked out, choose the time and date, enter the amount of time and it shows the calories burnt for the particular session. Again similar to Walking mate, you get further data to monitor your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly performances and the log list of various activities.

Food tracker

So far we talked about calories burnt but what about the calories you consume? You can’t excuse yourself over-eating and forget all about it and wonder how you gained all your flabs, right? So S Health comes with a food tracker to monitor your eating pattern. Food tracker gives an option to add your breakfast, lunch, dinner and other food intake by adding the food information. For visual delight, you can also add the photos of the food and take it further by leaving a comment to recollect something like why you over-ate? or where you ate or with whom you ate. S Health gives a list of various meals and calories attached to the particular food. If you don’t find your food in the list, you can add your meal to the list plus it also allows to custom the list with your diet chart. It also gives option to choose the bowl size. Frankly speaking, it requires an enormous self-discipline to monitor the food intake by feeding every detail but for those who religiously monitor their health, it’s an amazing app. Again, you get the graph logs to monitor your food intake on daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Comfort level and weight monitoring

The comfort setting gives an idea of the current temperature and humidity while the weight option under health diary gives you the the bi0 mass index based on your latest weight you have added. Further if you keep updating your weight, you can monitor the weight pattern on weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Check our Samsung Galaxy S4 S Health video

Samsung galaxy s4 s health review roundup

S Health is a novel, innovative application for a smartphone and by tightly integrating the fitness app with the phone Samsung has made it’s device a typical life care companion. The good thing about S Health is can keep engaged even a casual fitness person to a focused fitness and diet freak. It helps in monitoring your health in general and by making good use of sensors and smartphone technology and bundling with the phone, Samsung has delivered a personal health assistant in your palms. Stay fit with Samsung S health.]]>

Samsung Galaxy S4 Safety Assistance feature review

Lakshmi Rajan — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:36:52 +0000

Safety isn’t expensive, its priceless. In an unique, innovative and laudable move, Samsung has safety as one of the focus area in it’s new flagship device. Samsung Galaxy S4 Safety Assistance feature is an unassuming utility that many of you might even not notice it. During my conversation with many of the SGS4 users, I was surprised many of them were not even aware of this new feature. In this post, I detail about the Safety assistance feature and why it is important and should be enabled by all SGS4 users.

How to access Galaxy S4 Safety Assistance feature

Go to > Home > Settings > My device > Safety Assistance Tick the feature on. The feature is very easy to set up. We will discuss it below.

How to set up the Galaxy S4 Safery Assistance feature

Setting up is very easy. There is not much to do except ticking on the options and also pre-assign up to four contacts you would want to reach out during any emergency situation.

Add up to four contacts in the emergency contacts options .
You can set the message interval to once or every 10 minutes or 20 minutes.
Option to send emergency pictures. When enabled, both the front and rear camera shoot pictures and send it along with the emergency message when activated.
Option to edit emergency message. You can keep it default or personalize it.

How does Galaxy S4 Safety Assistance feature work?

The feature once enabled is quick to access and enable. I hope you don’t land up in any situation that warrants you to use it but God forbid you find yourself in a distress situation, all you have to activate the emergency alert is to hold and press together the volume up and down key for 3 seconds. It immediately tracks your exact location via GPS and if you have the send emergency picture option ticked on, it also captures the pictures with front and rear camera and sends an emergency message with your location and images to the contacts you have added in the contact list to reach during emergency. Here is a video we made explaining the Safety assistance feature. In our Samsung Galaxy S4 Safety Assistance feature review test, the application worked neat. It pinpointed almost the exact detail of our location and also send the pictures as MMS to the emergency contact list. Mighty impressive and effective and simple to enable, one never knows when you might need a bit of safety measure by your side. It always pays to be prepared in life. It’s very thoughtful of Samsung to add this feature and add credibility to the device’s tagline of being life companion. ]]>

Personalise your audio with Samsung Galaxy S4 Adapt sound – review

Lakshmi Rajan — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:05:41 +0000

Frankly I though Adapt Sound would be a nothing else but a gimmick feature in the latest flagship Galaxy, Samung Galaxy S4. I was surprised after testing it out.. The little feature sitting unassumingly at the bottom of the sound setting is brilliant stuff. Not everyone hears the same nuances of audio. Each one’s sensory ability varies but your headset probably doesn’t know it. Audio headset manufacturers factory fit the head-gears adjust the audio signals receiver and balance as per the median consumer data. Some devices do allow to manually adjust the audio balance for each ear but again not all phones allow that and even if your phone does chances are you can’t get the correct setting on your own. Enter Samsung with it’s Adapt Sound for SGS4 and you get customized-for-you audio quality based on your hearing and the headset you use and all done automatically. Sounds music to ears, agree? To access the feature, head to Settings > My Device > Sound > Adapt Sound Now look out for a quiet room to run the test. It is very important you run this test in a room with no external disturbance. Once you are settled in the room, plugin your headset, hit start. Once you press start, you will be exposed to various beeps played at different frequencies. If you hear the beep even faintest, press ‘yes’ else tap ‘no’, if you don’t hear anything. Don’t fret, if you don’t hear some of the beep, it’s quiet natural. The result depends on your own hearing and on the headphones being used. The test also takes into account the left and right ears by playing test tones separately with the respective audio channels. At the fag end of the test you will be asked to choose which ear you most use while attending calls to enhance the in-call audio quality. Sweet surprise here. The Adapt Sound feature not just adapts the music tailor-made for you but also works on enhancing the quality of in-call audio. Tap ‘done’ and your personalized music is served for you. You can test it too by hearing the original and the personalised music. Trust me you can make out the subtle differences. Don’t forget to run the test again through when you change to a new headset. Adapt Sound is an interesting, cool feature that seem to deliver what it claims that is giving you a personlised music experience. If you own a Galaxy S4 and a music lover, I strongly recommend to run this test.]]>

10 little known features in Samsung Galaxy S4

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:10:38 +0000

By now you might be knowing about the much talked about Galaxy S4 features like touch-free controls to preview information to accept incoming calls and flip pictures and songs by waving your hand and many more Air View and Air Gestures. You should also be aware of the S Health App for health freaks to S Translator for travel bugs in you and not to forget the eye controls to pause the video when you are not watching to scroll the screen by tilting the device or moving your head and also sharing features like Group Play and Screen mirroring. You knew right? If not read our comprehensive review first.

Galaxy S4 – Review

There are quiet a few features that are not much talked about and here we list 10 little known features in Samsung Galaxy S4 that I personally liked.

1. Safety Assistant

What is a life companion who does not keep your safety in mind? Galaxy S4 is touted as a life companion and Samsung has added a feature to assist you in emergency situation. I hope you don’t have to use it ever but in case a situation arises, there is an inbuilt safety assistant in SGS4 to fire distress signals to your known and dear ones. To access: Home > Settings > My device > Safety assistance Setting up is easy. You keep the mode on. Enter four contacts you would like to reach out in emergency situations. There is even an option to edit emergency message otherwise the device will send a standard default message. God forbid if you find yourself in a distress situation all you have to do is press and hold the volume up and down key for 3 seconds. The device then will take pictures with the front and rear camera (it’s optional, you can tick off the send pictures option) and detect your location via GPS and send a emergency message to the contacts you have added in the safety assistant emergency contact list. You can also control the message interval. The tests we did worked pretty well, throwing accurately my location as well as send the pictures along.

2. Customized Lock Screen

So you bought the phone and now you want to fiddle around the home screen like change the line Life Companion on the screen with your personalized message or tinker with the font, texts, colors? SGS4 allows you to customize your lock screen. To access: Home > Settings > Lock screen > Lock screen widgets > Edit personal message You can also do away with the text option in the lock screen and retain only the clock. You can also add shortcuts to dial, message, google now, browser and camera. Not just customizing the personal message on the lock screen or add short cuts but also you can add widgets to the lock screen to keep a quick tab on email, gmail, google now, notifications, messages etc. To access: Home > Settings > Lock screen > Multiple widgets

3. Use Galaxy S4 with Gloves

Working with a gloves and want to use your phone? Now with SGS4 you can still use the device with the gloves on. By default, the option is turned off. To turn it on: Home >Settings > My Device >Display >High Touch Sensitivity

4. Slo-mo and Fast motion feature in video

We went gaga over the new modes and features in SGS4 like dual shot, sound and shot, eraser mode, drama mode and also many lens effects. What you possibly did not know is now you can shoot slow motion and fast motion videos with your SGS4. So pretty excited to add few more effects to your videos? To access: Camera > Setting > Video > Recording mode

5. Continuous typing (Swiftkey)

Now you don’t have to download Swiftkey for fast typing by just drawing around your keyboard. Continuous typing option is now available in keyboard settings. Enable predictive text and continuous typing and there you go the new quickest typing champ in town. To access: Open message > press the ‘cog’ symbol on the bottom left > Samsung keyboard settings

6. Speed up home button responsiveness

Not many know this little trick. A long press of the home button opens up the Google Now but do you know that a quick double press of the same home button opens Samsung’s own S Voice? It does. How often do you use this shortcut to S Voice? Probably never. So why delay the home button responsiveness with a feature you will never use? Whenever you press the home button, the device waits for a moment to make sure you are not double pressing it for reaching out to S Voice. Disable the feature and you speed up the home button responsiveness a bit fast. To disable: double press the home key > it opens S Voice > click the menu soft key > settings > untick open via the home key To revert: Click S Voice > settings > tick the option again

7. Chuck your TV Remote

Too lazy to go and fetch the remote? When the smartphone is always with you, chuck the remote. Set your TV with the WatchOn app and control your TV, Set-top box, DVD or Blue-Ray players and other streaming media devices. Hope you find your country in the long list, surprisingly India was missing though the option ‘other countries’ did work for my Samsung TV but I could not detect my set-top box. Sighs!

8. Adapt Sound

Another awesome feature bundled with SGS4. It helps to adapt the music with your hearing and on the type of headphones being used. It also enhances the in-call audio quality as well depending on which ear you use often to attend calls. Cool! Trust me, you should try out it does enhances the sound customized for you. To access: Home > Settings > Sound > Adapt Sound

9. The microUSB port can output video

Do you know the Samsung Galaxy S4’s microUSB port has it’s own little trick tucked in? It has MHL capabilities when used with a special Samsung cable, letting it output HD video and surround audio. Though the Samsung adapter, basically a MHL-to-HDMI converter does not come bundled with the device. So you have to shell out extra for this.

10. Connect an Xbox 360 Controller or a USB drive

You got a wired Xbox 360 controller and you love your games with it. Now you connect your controller to your SGS4 and play games since the device supports the use of such controllers. All you need is a micro USB to full size USB cable (USB OTG cable) to connect. You can also connect an external USB storage this way, if you are not satisfied with the 64 GB external storage via microSD card.

Connect an Xbox 360 Controller and USB Storage

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Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom is official with 10x optical zoom,16 MP camera

Lakshmi Rajan — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:37:54 +0000

Call it crazy or overzealous or a revolutionary next step forward for compact digital cameras. Samsung has mashed up a smartphone and digital camera to bring out Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom – a smartphone with a 10x optical zoom, 16 mega pixel camera with a xenon camera. [gallery link="file" ids="4057,4058,4059,4060,4061"] One side looks like your typical digital camera and the other side reveals the perfect smartphone with a a smart phone a 4.3-inch qHD display (540 x 960 pixels), 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, 1.5GB RAM, 8GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD slot) and a 1.9MP front facing camera and running on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean OS. Galaxy S4 Zoom is also strengthened by new innovative features taking advantage of it’s dual nature. A zoom ring on the lens can be twisted to activate an In-Call Photo Share feature that can shoot-share instantly via MMS what you see inbetween call. Zoom ring also helps to access Quick Launch and Shortcut features that opens up the camera’s various modes. Another feature Photo Suggest might be handy for amateur photographers, it gives them access to wide collection of photographers by others and going further step ahead it can also suggest the ideal nearby locations and vantage points for better photo composition. How it works in reality we cannot comment now. Galaxy S4 weighs 208 grams and measures 15.4 millimeters thick, it is almost double of the original Galaxy S4 but slimmer than the last year’s Galaxy Camera, the company’s first Android flavored camera that featured a 21x optical zoom. There is no official word on pricing and availability. We will keep you updated and meanwhile what you think of this device? Share your thoughts. ]]>

Samsung Galaxy S4 Active goes official; Rugged and water,dust resistant

Lakshmi Rajan — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 14:29:03 +0000

The run-up to the Samsung Premiere 2013 event at London on June 20 is seeing a lots of action with the company surprising everyone by making official one after other devices. Last week we saw the diminutive variant of S4 and today we have the rugged version, all screwed up and water resistant, Samsung Galaxy S4 Active. [gallery ids="3873,3872,3870,3871,3869"] The smartphone boasts of a IP67 certification for water and dust protection and you can safely put it in water up to one meter depth for up to 30 minutes and it will survive. Not that we advice you to test it but in case of any such accidental scenario, your phone can withstand it thanks to its fully sealed body design. More importantly you can also shoot under-water with its 8 MP camera. The camera mode even has a special ‘Aqua Mode’ for better underwater images and videos. Though most of the internals are similar to Galaxy S4, few notable changes being the 5-inch display features a TFT LCD apart from the downgraded 8 MP camera. Running on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and powering the handset is a quad core 1.9 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor with a 2 GB of RAM. It also packs a 16 GB of internal memory expandable via microSD card, 2600 mAh battery, alongside connectivity options like LTE, IR-port, NFC etc. The software features like Air View and Air Gestures, Group Play, Smart pause and apps like S Health fitness and WatchON IR also finds place. Notable camera features that was included in Galaxy S4 like Dual Shot, Sound and Shot also figures in along side the new Aqua mode. Dimension wise, the Galaxy S4 Active is slightly larger and thicker at 139.7 x 71.3 x 9.1mm and weighs 151 gms, a 21 gram increase from the original. S4 Active would be available in three colors: Urban Grey, Dive Blue and Orange Flare and will hit US and Europe to begin with. ]]>

Samsung Galaxy S4 clocks 10 million sales in less than one month, new colors in offing

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:49:47 +0000

A new galaxy and a new record. Samsung Galaxy S4 has cranked up a brisk 10 million+ sales in it’s debut month. In comparison, it took 50 days for Galaxy S3 to reach the mark, 5 months for the Galaxy S II and 7 months for the original Galaxy S. Quiet an impressive jump with every new edition of the Galaxy S. To keep the momentum going Samsung has announced new shades would be available soon to join the existing White Mist and Black Forest models. The new colors to arrive are Blue Arctic and Red Aurora, followed later by Purple Mirage and Brown Autumn editions. While many of it’s competitors are hit by production snags, Samsung has been able to speed up its production and carpet bomb multiple global markets. Galaxy S4 was launched globally on April 27 and is estimated to be selling at a rate of four units per second and is available in more than 110 countries and the number would soon cover a total of 155 countries. Source: GalaxyTomorrowKorea ]]>