Samsung Galaxy S4 Unboxing & Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
4,751 words · ~23 min read
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this video is brought to you by the Corsair Voyager air the high performance
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wireless media hub for your connected life visit Corsair.com Voyager air to
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learn more welcome to my video of the Samsung Galaxy S4 which is sort of an
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unboxing and more sort of an overview after me spending a weeken change with
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the device and sort of what I thought of it so it's going to be featuring my cat
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Galaxy which is actually not his name at
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all and he's not going to be in the video so I'd like to start with my plain
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white box which is a Press Box you don't get your Galaxy S4 in a box like this
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and it won't have your name on it mine says line of Sebastian on it which
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happens to be my name very very cool okay so Slick's
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operating the camera today so feel free to direct all of your complaints about
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the camera work today to slick on the Forum um okay there's a micro SIM
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starter kit I got a tus phone so it also gave me a bit of a chance to check out
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ts's Network cuz normally I'm a Bell customer so it was not that interesting
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it was fine didn't really have any complaints uh we've got a Samsung
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charger as well as a Samsung Dongle it should be noted that you'll get the best
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charging performance using a genuine Samsung charger so that's something to
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note and then I got actually I added this piece of foam myself the phone was
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actually not in a piece of foam it was just in the box with all the other parts
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loose but they never intended to ship it that way so it's uh so it's all good so
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let's start with touch wiz's optimizations most Android users
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probably won't care too much about particularly things like up here where
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you can see either this is great so this is more like what TouchWiz users are
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going to be used to go back this is more like what TouchWiz users are going to be
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used to seeing right here with all of your toggles but now there's a whole
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thing where you can get like 20 of them and they're all up there you can turn on
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and off everything from Wi-Fi GPS and sound things that you would actually use
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daytoday to things like their smart scrolling Smart Stay um driving mode all
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those kinds of things that normally you wouldn't touch too much but of course you have the option of seeing the whole
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list or not seeing the whole list now there's third party apps to do pretty
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much everything but not everyone's going to be capable of using them my mom for
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example just went to Android and I mean
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even something like installing an app is Way Beyond her so honestly if I'd had
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the choice I'd have been happier to give her something like an S4 if possible
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because easy mode would have made my life a little bit easier when it comes
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to helping her set up up so basically okay yeah yeah yeah will be applied to
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your home screens all this stuff so it turns everything into nice big old
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people friendly buttons that they don't have to think about too much and you can
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pretty much set up for them once and
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then not have to touch it anymore I mean there's no way my mom calls more than like nine people so I could set all
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those people up there for her and all she have to do is swipe to the left to make a call and swipe to the right to
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put on the basic apps that I actually thinks that she needs to use uh the
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proximity sensor is really cool now Samsung's integrated a lot of Technology
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with the S4 that goes from profoundly
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useful to profoundly useless um I think some of the highlights for me were s
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translate which I didn't use day-to-day
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obviously but if I was traveling it actually works pretty well the only
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languages that I can speak and understand are really English and French
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and at least that mode worked outstandingly well the one drawback is
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that it does use data so if you're traveling unless you have a data plan
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there you might find yourself not using it that much the proximity sensor I also
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found was really cool the motion sensor so you can do things like call someone
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once you've got them open in your contacts just by here we go so I'm going
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to call I'm going to call myself once you have that person up you can just
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place the call by putting the phone to your ear it actually works but it's not
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exactly a new feature by any stretch of the imagination and with things like
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swipe to the right to call swipe to the left for text it's not exactly
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groundbreaking in terms of how much more quickly it's going to allow you to use
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your phone which I found was sort of my experience with a lot of the Samsung
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features that they've added so one one one thing was uh waving to answer a call
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if it was just kind of like this or you just like pass over it once then I could
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really see the usefulness of it but the first time I tried to use it I realized
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you actually have to wave over several times you have to move quite slowly so
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for me it' be faster to just pick it up and go like this and answer my call um I
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mean the the one implementation oh yeah and same thing with uh with sort of
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browsing web pages and stuff like that so when you have the internet browser
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open I have like a Wikipedia page open here so you can you can browse web pages
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like that but I ever since the Advent of
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momentum based scrolling in browsers um
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I don't really see a point in having something like that the one area where I
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found this really useful is normally when you're moving applications around
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on your device you would pick it up and then you'd kind of drag it somewhere um
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whereas with this you can pick it up so you just press and hold and then you can
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kind of go like this to decide which page you want to put it on but you can
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see it actually sort of went backwards once when I accidentally did that for
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the most part it was pretty intuitive and I found that was the most useful thing about the motion sensor in front
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of the camera slick brought up an interesting point to me that if you have
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junk on your hands and you don't want to touch your phone then things like the
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fact that the capacitive touchcreen can be operated even if you're not quite
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touching it which I personally found to be more of an annoyance than anything else and I did turn it off pretty much
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immediately because just to trying to scroll around on a web page it was
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zooming in on things and telling me stuff about it and it was like oh no
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that's not actually what I wanted but if you're just trying to answer your phone while your nails dry personally I paint
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my nails all the time then yeah I can see the usefulness of that but it wasn't
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something that comes up for me a lot so there you go uh the screen is widely
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regarded to be much better than previous pentile displays such as on the Galaxy
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S3 so while the Matrix isn't necessarily
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one to one to one of every pixel color
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it is close enough that you don't have that same blurriness in the text and I
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personally didn't observe it at all and comparing side by side with the HTC1 I
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don't notice that anything other than the fact that the Vibrance is like eye
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blindingly vibrant which is a lot of people like that um I didn't notice any
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problems with it compared to LCD the lock screen's been changed as well for
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example you can do
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this which is obviously useful but that's not actually sort of the
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Improvement so you can swipe to the right to get to some frequently used applications and whatnot and you can
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swipe to the left to get widgets for example which I personally thought was
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really cool it should be noted you like so many Android things like I mentioned
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at the very beginning of this video a lot of the improvements Samsung's making
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can be done with third party apps but not necessarily everyone wants to do
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that so let's get into the ergonomics and build quality which is something
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that everyone's talking about with this phone because the most notable thing
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about it is that it's not really that different from the S3 I do find it more
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comfortable to hold than the S3 particularly the more square shape of
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the side it was is less it digs into me a little bit less um also the the
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rounded Corners compared to the HTC1 which has more sharp Corners that I
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found dug into my palm a bit more I did find that more comfortable however the
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overall rigidness of the chassis which
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I've seen argued both ways as a feature and as a drawback so you can see I can
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bend that phone um does a couple of things so number one is it makes it feel
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more like um more like an older phone
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when especially if you come from iPhone which I did I was an iPhone 4 user for a
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long time or you come from something like an HTC1 which feels like just oh
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feels really really good um so the S4 has that kind of going against it but
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I've also heard people say well come on it's the only phone right now with Gorilla Glass 3 which adds ruggedness
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and adds durability it's got a plastic chassis which means it'll absorb shock
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more easily when it's dropped so that's another prevailing Theory as well and it
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enables Samsung to do air hole let's see if I can come on at least
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it's harder to get off than the old one there you go you have to like really be
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dedicated to getting the back panel off if you want to and you can remove the back panel replace the battery which I
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don't see most people doing especially with those little portable battery Banks
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I mean I carry one slick you carry one right yeah I mean especially with those
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around that's a great way to beef up he says he carries two um to to charge up
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your devices I mean that works really well uh micro SD I didn't end up using
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but because I don't have one handy but I would it would have been nice it should
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be noted that the stock Android or the not stock Android operating system on
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this phone takes up 6 to 8 gigs of storage and if you have a 16 gig phone
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it's not a lot of storage left for things like movies and music and movies
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particularly you are going to want to watch on the 5-in screen on this guy
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because they look awesome uh there's your sim slot right there which doesn't
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come out or go in unless you remove the battery which is kind of smart cuz they
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don't want you changing that around and other than that the only other thing left on the back is the camera which is
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13 megapixels and it's one of those
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things where you know you go go find side by-side images on the interwebs
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because they're all over the place but in a nutshell the S4 is able to take way
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more Sharp Images than the HTC1 which guys if you recall has a 4 megapixel
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camera only but they're Ultra pixels they're big pixels can take way more
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sharp pictures in broad daylight than the HTC1 but the HTC1 blows it out of
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the water in terms of um low light performance so it's all about what's
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more important to you on the side You'
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got your volume rocker which I found way better than the HTC1 not nearly as good
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as my older iPhone 4 because of how hard
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it is to find it and correctly press it
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when it's in your pocket that's when I'm usually operating the volume rocker of
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my phone when it you know when I wouldn't be able to look at it and go
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like this so being able to tell tacti
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where it is and which way I'm pressing it is really nice HTC1 really suffers in
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this way you've got your headphone microphone port on the top as well as ah
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I emitter very very cool uh their their
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s watch or whatever it is they call it I didn't end up using it because I have a
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TV but I have no TV subscription no Netflix subscription no Hulu
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subscription no YouTube subscriptions now that YouTube's paid I have nothing
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so I'm not much of a media consumption guy I've watched two movies since my
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baby was born The Hobbit which was great except for the dwarves that were singing
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for some reason I have no idea what was going on with that and yeah Lick's
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giving me a face palm right now you know what it wasn't that great and then the
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uh I also saw Skyfall which was just horribly disappointing I mean a Bond
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movie without a Bond girl people are like oh no she was the Bond girl yeah
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for like four minutes I mean yeah to imply that James
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Bond only needs a girl for four minutes is I think uh not a very fair thing to
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say about his anyway so speaking of media consumption we have a bit of an
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interesting thing to talk about in this video if you could throw that to me this
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my friends is a book I got it 3 months
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ago I have not even cracked open the cover so when audible.com reached out to
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us with an opportunity to do a free Audi book for our viewers thing where if you
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go to audible.com Linus you can get a free book so it's basically a first
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month of your subscription free um I was
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like okay so the one that I used my free book on was actually that one so my plan
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is to I downloaded the app on my phone so my plan is to listen to the book
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while I fall asleep and as slick knows normally I use Adventure Time to fall
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asleep I don't actually watch the show I just listen to it but I've made my way
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completely through it I'm done now so I need something else so I'm going to
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listen to this book instead of reading it so guys feel free to go to
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audible.com Linus get a free audiobook download the app use it on your computer
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use it in your car do whatever it is you're going to do you don't have to get
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good to Great by Jim Collins which might not be what you're all interested in but
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you can check out not only New York Times bestsellers but also audible's own
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best sellers I mean they're trusted it's
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an Amazon service so it was easy to use you can't really go wrong all you do is
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like press the thing and then you place the book this is
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audible all right well apparently it's music now as well but there you go guys
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check it out uh moving right along other
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bizarre features things like Sealth to me are one of those things where it's
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like we fit where the sales pitch is use
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this device to be more healthy but the reality of it is is if you already had
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like the gumption and wherewithal to keep track of your life to the degree of
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detail that this application is going to require you to do it they want you like
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taking pictures of your food and recording calories and and it's a
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pedometer which is kind of cool it has humidity and temperature sensor which is
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cool but the kinds of people who would actually be doing that are the kinds of
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people who are probably already doing it anyway and are probably fit and active
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so I don't think that the S4 is going to be the difference between being someone
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who sits on the couch and eats potato chips and the difference between someone
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like that and someone who's like an active healthy individual I don't think that's going to happen but there you go
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it's kind of neat uh there's accessories coming that'll make it easier to use and
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more comprehensive but uh I think finally we're going to finish up with
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the physical features of the phone so on the right side you've got the lock button which is a way way better
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position than the top left of the HTC1
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because nine times out of 10 I go to press this I mash the volume button so
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yeah there someone take a cue from that and the lock button is exactly how the
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volume button should be because it's easy to feel and it has a nice tactile
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press to it speaking of buttons Samsung hasn't done a way with the three button
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approach to the bottom so you've got your they went away come back uh so
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you've got your context menu you've got much too Google's trigger in I'm sure
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you've got your context menu down here your back button as well as your
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dedicated home button there's one feature that I thought was cool but for
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some reason isn't working for me right now but if you hold the back button you
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can open up their multi- window display
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compatible application this comes over from the note to and it works really
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well because of the high resolution screen well when I was using it but now
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it's uh not seeming to work for me right now for some reason but that's the way
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videos go is you want to demo something and it just kind of dies um the camera
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the camera improvements are really really cool on this phone so there's a
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bunch of stuff that it does so there's all these different modes honestly if
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you're using it in stock mode you might be missing out a little bit but I found
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myself doing that a fair bit just and I'll explain why best face is cool so it
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allows you to sub out bad faces this is great for when you're doing a group shot
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so when you have time to Tinker with the phone and go oh I want drama mode which
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will capture a bunch of different pictures and then see you can see they
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have a little snowboarders an example like something like a soccer ball flying
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something along those lines eraser takes random weird strangers out of the back
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um the other one that I thought was great which one best best photo and best
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face are the ones that I found most useful however what I to capture the
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moment unless you're staging something or it's like a group picture where you're getting a bunch of people
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together I really found myself launching
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the camera app and taking a picture quickly go go go go go because uh you
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want to capture that moment and because the shutter speeds so fast you can just
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go be you can do your own best picture and you can sort through it after on
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your own that's what I actually found myself doing however it's cool that it
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has all these features and I like that they're a carryover from the Galaxy
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camera Samsung's talked a lot about KNX and the enhanced security that it offers
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there was a great article from just in case on Android police where he
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basically said look don't worry too much because basically what they're doing is
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they're locking it down for the people who aren't Adept enough to get past it
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but for those power users we're still going to be okay we can still load
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custom kernels that don't do those Security checks so you can choose
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whether you have the customizability or whether you have the locked down more
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secure device it remains to be seen how dedicated Samsung really is to keeping
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things custom and how dedicated they are to making it well more locked down let's
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get into a couple more of the motions and Gestures uh Palm motion I didn't end
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up really using uh there's a couple cool things here though so you can mute and
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pause playing sounds when the screen is on by turning it over personally this
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bothers me a little bit because I hate putting my screen down on anything but
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if I had a case for the phone then we'd be having a different conversation about
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it they have a case available that's actually pretty cool has a little window so you can see notifications speaking of
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notifications smart alert which basically will uh buzz when you pick up
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your phone if there's something new there you go I don't know if you guys
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heard that but then it doesn't turn the screen on which is like okay that's
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great Samsung you told me there's something new you didn't tell me what it was so now I have to press the button
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anyway which means I'm it's probably easier for me like habit wise I already
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just press the button immediately and look at my phone all the time anyway so
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so there's that uh what else stuff like voice control has always felt kind of
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goofy to me I use it much um if I used my phone when I was driving more then
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that might be something that I would use and I did find that the voice recognition for text voice to text was
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outstanding uh better than anything I've really used in the past although again I
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have always kind of found it Goofy and I haven't really gone out of my way to use it that much but it was something that
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was actually usable unlike other stuff
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that yeah I've seen in the past all
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share is still here I don't think I've ever seen anyone use it um their group
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play was really neat when I was at the Samsung demo and there were like five
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people sitting around a table with S4s you know playing poker um turning every
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phone into a speaker and like you know oh this is a center channel this is a
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left and right channel um I've never found myself in a room with more than
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maybe two Galaxy users at the same time
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particularly of the same model and the way that Samsung segments their software
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across different devices has always really bothered me because from my
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perspective I would think from their perspective it would be better for them
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to have this technology be supported across all their devices so that it's
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like the Samsung Experience as opposed to going well no the Galaxy S4 will have
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4.2 and the Galaxy S3 will have 4.1 and
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they will be different because of that I mean there's no reason they can't roll it out to the S3 and yeah I'm still
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bitter about my wife's Galaxy S Vibrant which was the first Galaxy that never
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even got uh ice cream sandwich cuz Samsung said oh well there's not enough
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RAM and yet third party app developers could do it
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so I don't know I mean using software as
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a way to differentiate platform to platform I was only slightly bitter
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about my iPhone 4 not getting Siri because everything else has been rolled
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out all the way up to iOS 6 so yeah even Apple for three-year-old
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plus devices is still rolling out all the software so it'd be great to see
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Samsung try to follow suit but I understand that Android is a little bit of a different beast in that way group
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play on the other hand for things like sharing music to wireless portable
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speakers when compatible Stuff shows up is going to be really really cool
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I think that's pretty much everything that I wanted to talk
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about yeah I hope you guys have enjoyed this video um at the end of the day if
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you're looking for a conclusion um I will be sticking with my HTC1 it's all
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about the trade-off do you want the more advanced features it's a faster
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processor 1.9 versus 1.7 GHz um do you
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want the high megapixel camera or the ultra pixel camera do you want things
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like the gestures and the temperat and humidity Monitor and S Health and all
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these features that Samsung puts in to differentiate their phones um or do you
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want something that really has that that
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feel like it's a serious business device I mean this is the first I've said this
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before in my ey switch to Android where I did 30 days with the HTC1 um coming
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from iOS to Windows Phone 8 now to
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Android um I've said this already but
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this is the first Android phone that I've really touched that feels like an Apple phone in terms of quality um also
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it was a huge step backwards for me going to a rearm mounted speaker again
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from the boom sound really boom sound uh but the front
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mounted speakers on the HTC1 um you know going back to cupping
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my hand behind the phone just really felt like like like going a generation
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back in terms of the device so I'll take the ergonomic quibbles that I have with
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the HTC1 it's not perfect I hate the location of the lock screen and I really
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don't like the way the volume rocker works for the overall higher build
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quality although it should be noted that Beats Audio isn't something that a lot
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of people have asked me if the Beats audio on is great it's not that great um
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iPhone 4 has better sound quality through the headphones than the Galaxy
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S4 or the HTC1 from my experience for that matter so I think that pretty much
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wraps it up thank you for checking out my unboxing and really it was more of an overview of my thoughts of the Galaxy S4
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let me know if you guys enjoyed the video by clicking that like button and don't forget to subscribe as always
20:51
unless you're already subscribed in which case I don't know subscribe
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again or something
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