Unlike the Samsung Galaxy S4, the iPhone 5 has been launched just a while ago. The guys at Apple
were basically ecstatic for the 2 million pre-orders they had (with 1 million more than the pre-orders made for the iPhone 4S) and they started to promote their product a lot. We know that Android-running smartphones have been outselling the iPhones for a while now… do the Americans still think they have a chance in front of Samsung?
The Korea Times (the oldest English-language newspaper in South Korea) became world-famous due to its close relationship with some of Samsung’s employees. Their reporters found out that the Koreans at Samsung are going to launch their new Galaxy S series smartphone in February 2013, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This quite surprises us if we think that the Samsung Galaxy S3 had a self-hosted event, and that device managed to reach 10 million sales in less than 55 days. According to some reporters of The Korea Times, the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be available all over the world somewhere in March 2013. Again, hard to believe, if we think that the Samsung Galaxy S3 needed almost two months to achieve that.
The price tag for a brand new, entry level Samsung Galaxy S4 would be of $629.95. The no-contract version of the iPhone 5 is $649 in the United States of America. But does it worth it? Let’s compare the devices and find out ourselves.
Design
The design of the Samsung Galaxy S4 will probably be similar to it’s predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S3. However, the edges will be smaller in order to allow a wider screen to fit in, and the main physical button will disappear as well. The colors in which this product will be available are: black, white, gray, red and blue. From our point of view, this is quite important as the customers may prefer one color instead of the original black and white.Display
When it comes to the display, the guys at Samsung decided that it would be a good idea to make it wider. So, the Koreans picked one 5.0 inch display (with 0.2 greater than the Samsung Galaxy S3′s) with a resolution of 1080×1920 Full HD and 440 PPI. The technology used for this screen is the Pentile Super AMOLED technology, also used at the Samsung Galaxy Note and Samsung Galaxy Note II. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 2, again, just like the Samsung Galaxy Note II.Returning to the iPhone 5, the guys at apple will use the same old LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors and 4.0 wide (with 0.5 wider than the iPhone 4S). The display provides a resolution of 640 x 1136 pixels, it features a density of 326 PPI and is protected by the first generation of Corning Gorilla Glass.
The conclusion? Samsung Galaxy S4′s display is with 1 inch wider, has 440 PPI instead of only 326, and it’s protected by the second generation of Corning Gorilla Glass, instead of the first, so is more unlike to be broken. Why would we choose some weird resolution display like iPhone?
Hardware
Returning to Apple’s iPhone 5, this one features one 1.2 Dual-Core processor, 1 GB of RAM, and the Apple A6 chipset. The guys from Apple decided to go with the PowerVR SGX 543MP3 (triple-core graphics) graphics card, and with the nano-SIM technology as well. Just like the Samsung Galaxy S4, the iPhone 5 is available in 3 different versions of internal memory: 16, 32 and 64 GB. However, the Apple’s iPhone won’t feature a 128 GB version. The device will feature one 8 MP rear-faced camera, which develops a resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels and another front-faced camera of 1.2 MP.
Our winner, is obviously the Samsung Galaxy S4, because it’s 2 GHz Quad-Core processor and the 2 GB of RAM memory.
Software
Now this is the best part! As some of you may have heard, rumors said that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will feature the Android 4.1 JellyBean. Not true! The new Galaxy S series device will come with the Android 4.2 version, called Key Lime Pie. This new Android version will come with a bunch of new and handy features. Let’s discuss them a bit!The “Customization Center” will allow users to perform a whole variety of tasks, like changing wallpapers and ringtones. That would be its primary feature. Next to that, the Customization Center will also have de option to enable or disable OEM UI overlays like HTC’s Sense or Samsung’s TouchWiz. That’s an example of the guys at Google listening. Users began complaining of those since the moment when the manufacturers decided to implement them.
Another whole new feature of the Android 4.2 it is called “Templates”. This will basically allow users to change the layout and appearance of UI elements, and will offer the possibility to apply Instagram-like filters to their UI.
Returning to the iPhone’s iOS, yes, it has also a bunch of new features, but the feedback received from the users isn’t quite positive. Again, we’re going to let Samsung win that too.
