Samsung tap-danced, traveled and got tipsy during its hour-long press conference to introduce the Galaxy S4 Thursday.
Hosted in the "best theater in New York" – Radio City Music Hall - the event was a production of Broadway proportions, all to show off the new flagship device in real world applications.
"Before you hear about the device itself, I would like to emphasize one thing," JK Shin, Samsung's head of mobile, said as a prelude to introducing the handset.
"We are continuing innovation. We are always listening to learn from people around the world, about what kind of progress they really want. And these efforts have taken us where we are today."
The phone will certainly hit a decent amount of global citizens - Shin said it will launch through 327 mobile operators in 155 countries in both 3G and 4G LTE varieties.
"Once you spend time with the Galaxy S4, I am confident you will feel how it makes your life richer, simpler and fuller," Shin said.
Ryan Bidan, director of product marketing for Samsung Telecommunications America, helped knock out the obligatory hardware rundown.
Physically the phone is slight - it's only 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm and weighs 130 grams. The screen however, is hefty enough, coming in at a full 5 inches. It's a Full HD Super AMOLED display and houses 441ppi.
The phone has a polycarbonate finish, likely to disappoint many a user, and is dressed in either Black Mist or White Frost.
It can support downloads at 100MB per second and uploads of 50MB per second, a factoid that drew "woo hoos" from the crowd. It also has Bluetooth 4.0, a 13MP camera on the back (more "woo hoo-ing") and a 2MP on the front.
The S4 comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants, plus the option to bump up to 64GB more through microSD. There are eight sensors in total - including infrared gesture and temperature and humidity, two new additions.
One fact that Samsung seemed to skip was the processor: While we played with one that had a 1.6GHz Octo-core Exnyos 5 chip, some regions of the world will get a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro.
Showtime
Having gotten the hardware out of the way, Samsung moved onto the things it really wanted to talk about: features.
Through a series of elaborate and at times unbearably hokey vignettes, a troupe of Broadway actors, the night's MC and Bidan pranced through the various bits of software and apps that make the S4, in Samsung's mind, really tick.
Remember the little boy with the box? How could you forget, right?
Jeremy was there too - in fact, he not only carriers around mysterious white boxes, he tap dances, and does it rather well.
This was all to show off Dual Camera, which uses the front and rear camera simultaneously to take two pictures at once, plus a few other "take a better image" functions such as an eraser that eliminates unwanted clutter from the background.
In the spirit of ease, Air View was also introduced - no need to actually touch the phone to preview something when you can hover it over the screen to bend it to your will. Not to be confused, we also have Air Gesture, which lets you navigate your phone in the same fashion, ideal for situations you don't want to touch the screen (sticky fingers, drink in hand, etc.).
Samsung took us on a very long romp through China, Brazil and France with its S Translator feature, an app that can understands nine languages and translates text to speech and vice versa, plus other connection-increasing functions like Story Album, which automatically throws your snaps into a collection.
Samsung talked up Samsung Knox, a tool that keeps work and life separate and safe, S Health and Share Music, which lets you play music through up to eight Galaxy devices, even without an internet connection.
The groovy girls above helped confirm the Smart Scroll and Smart Pause features we've heard so much about, thanks in part to an unnecessarily shirtless "gardener" walking across the stage while one of the woman was watching a less interesting video.
The features came on hard and fast, but the tune Samsung wanted to sing came through crystal clear - the S4 is a nifty device that will give consumers features they didn't even know they needed.
In spite of the theatrics, the phone managed to stay in focus. Samsung accomplished its mission in getting the S4's message across, but whether it's been heard by consumers, we'll have to wait until April to find out.
Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/galaxy-s4-takes-a-bow-in-unabashedly-theatric-press-conference-1137778
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