It's been a fair old while since my last series of phone faffs, in which I pitted the Samsung Galaxy SIII against the latest Windows Phones from Nokia. The S3 won in the end, primarily due to the fact I could make it work like a Nokia Lumia, whereas I couldn't make a Lumia work like a Galaxy.
Since then I've been using the S3 pretty much exclusively, and it's consistently delivered in every area. Browsing, photos, the navigation works great (as long as you're online - more on that in a later blog though).
I found I could even pimp it up. I added a longer life battery and discovered I could charge the phone wirelessly - just like the Nokia Lumias.
I took it overseas, bunged a U.S. sim card in it, tethered iPads and other phones to it and it just kept delivering.
So when Samsung launched the S4 recently, I had to wonder just how much better it could possibly be.
Well, I've been playing with one for a few days and it definitely is a step up - in lots of little ways.
Essentially the S4 is the same phone. It's still an Android, albeit a very fast and powerful one. Although it's the same length and slightly more narrow than its predecessor, the screen is a bit bigger. It has a more solid feel to it - I don't know why, it just does. In fact, every time I use it, I seem to find something else it simply does better.
One of those things is called Smart Scroll.
According to Samsung, they've put a lot of time, effort and money into making the Galaxy S4 its most user friendly device yet. To achieve this, they've included a whole heap of extra sensors to read how you're interacting with the handset, from the way you're holding it to how you're looking at it - even what the temperature is!
This means browsing a website or reading a long document can now literally become a hands-free experience.
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| Who's watching who? |
Smart Scroll works in one of two ways - Firstly; you can set it to detect which way you're tilting the handset. Tilt the bottom up and the the page automatically scrolls down. Tilt the phone the other way to scroll back to the top. It works in both portrait and landscape which is good because I've never understood why people try and view websites in portrait.
Alternatively; and this is kind of hard to believe till you've actually tried it, but you can set Smart Scroll to detect which way you're LOOKING at it. I'm not even kidding. Look towards the bottom of the page and it'll scroll down. Look up and back you'll go. Even Mike Hosking was impressed when I showed him this trick.
Whichever setting you choose, a small icon flashes up green in the middle of the screen to let you know when you're good to go, although you can turn this off if you find it intrusive. It isn't so I haven't.
I don't know whether it's because I wear glasses or I'm just not very good at it yet, but I found the second "looking" option a bit less reliable than the tilt option. I get the feeling it's the kind of thing you could train yourself to use more consistently if you really loved the feature. For now though, I'm perfectly happy with my Smart Scroll set to tilt. It makes me feel nicely lazy not to have to swipe up and down my emails.
Is it a must-have feature? Probably not, but it's some pretty nice icing on Samsung's latest cake and like I say, it's just one of a host of neat little tricks they've built in to the S4. The phone's now watching you all the time. If you're someone who views a lot of video content you'll appreciate the Smart Pause function, which stops your clip if you have to look away for any reason then automatically plays it again once your eyes are back on the screen.
Again, this is not something I was sitting there thinking, "Gee, I wish my SIII would stop playing my video automatically when I have to look around to answer someone's question." But since I've used it, I'd miss it if I didn't have it.
Now my phone is watching my every move, I can do more of what I like to do best; think less. After all, that's why I have a smart phone in the first place - so I can be dumber.
Next week we'll see if the the S4 can deliver on it's promise to provide comprehensive off-line navigation... as long as I don't get lost in the process.
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