Samsung Galaxy S4 Doing Well

If you think that Samsung Electronics Co will just let Apple dominate the phone market with their 1Phone, guess again. The Korean company reported that the new Galaxy S4 phone is doing fairly well in the market.

In an outright call for a challenge, the latest flagship phone has a bigger display and new features such as gesture controls compare to iPhone 5.

Other enhancements are found on the software layer, including:

1. Smart Pause and Smart Scroll: based on the Smart Stay technology from the Galaxy S3, these two new features identifies and monitors eye movement and activates functions accordingly. Smart Pause will momentarily stop playing video when the user’s gaze moves away from the device, while Smart Scroll will move the page up or down when the user’s gaze reaches the bottom or top of the screen.
2. Air View and Air Gesture: this software feature is powered by the IR gesture sensor that’s fitted with the new Galaxy S4. Air View allows you to hover your finger over content to display specific details about it, like opening an email or text message. Air Gesture, on the other hand, allows you to give swiping directions without even touching the phone.
3. Group Play: Group Play will allow you to play music to up to 8 Galaxy S4 devices even without Internet connection.
4. S Voice Drive: an improvement to the S Voice personal assistant introduced with the Galaxy S3, S Voice Drive aids in controlling the phone while driving by allowing to send and receive emails and text messages, as well as take and make calls, just by using voice commands.
5. Dual Camera: Samsung has now made it so that certain applications, such as camera and video calling apps, can use both the front- and rear-facing camera at once.
6. S Translator: This feature will allow live text-to-speech and speech-to-text translation of up to 8 languages using only the user’s voice input.

The Galaxy S4 will be available with more than 300 mobile operators in 155 countries by the end of April. Philippine availability has yet to be determined but price is expected to be between PhP 35,000 to PhP 40,000. It will also come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB variants, and will feature 3G and 4G-LTE connectivity options depending on carrier compatibility.