Review: Samsung Galaxy S 4

Meet the Samsung Galaxy S 4, the latest most-anticipated smartphone on the market, and a pretty impressive device on its own merits. But it's evolution instead of revolution this time around, and that places the S 4 in a tricky spot.

So this is what it's come down to for the evolution of the smartphone: A device can suddenly be defined as much by its software as its hardware, and the line between last-gen and next-gen is as blurry as a photo taken on some old VGA camera.

None of this is meant to knock the S 4, because it's certainly a solid phone. But Samsung doesn't quite do enough to make the device distinct. This phone has an ever-so-slightly larger, 5-inch screen, 0.2 inches bigger than the S3's screen, but a slim bezel keeps the device just about the same size. It looks thicker, yet weighs in at just 4.6 ounces, plenty light enough to disappear into a back jeans pocket.

The S 3 and S4 are designed so similarly that you'd be hard-pressed telling them apart. That's not necessarily a bad thing; a series of iPhones have dealt with the same issue. But the S 4's design lacks the edgy beauty of the HTC One, or the sleekness of Sony's latest Xperia phone.

It's all glossy plastic, not exactly the most attractive stuff, but what it lacks in beauty it makes up for in utility. You won't feel quite as compelled to purchase some overpriced, glove-like case for the S 4 because of the design simplicity. (I did love Samsung's S View cover, however, and if you have $59.99 to spare, that's the way to go, coating your S 4 in a cover just as intelligent as the iPad's brilliant Smart Cover.)

Back to the S 4. The design may be simple, but under the hood is a phone that runs with the finest devices on the market. You get a 1.9 gHz Snapdragon processor, and a 2 GB of RAM. And the battery on the S 4 is a serious step up from most smartphones; I'm a pretty heavy Bluetooth user who's addicted to Google Play music and surfs the internet for fantasy baseball info far too often, and I still got a little over a day out of a full charge.

The frame also surrounds one of the finest screens on a smartphone today. Apple's Retina screens are officially battling heavy competition these days, from the HTC One, to last year's brilliant Xperia Z screen (one of the more underrated screens on the market) to the S 4's full 1,920x1,080 Super AMOLED panel.

Text is a dream on here, just as clear and full as it is on a Retina-equipped device, and colors are tremendously lush and vibrant. Colors really pop, and yet you get strong, deep blacks on the S 4. This is a definite step up from the S 3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and video viewing is strong, even if I am traditionally a proponent of the larger Note 2 for movies.

Samsung also leaves you a microSD card slot, a key advantage when matched against such phones as the HTC One and that venerable iPhone.

Samsung also makes an underrated move to include an IR blaster on the S 4. Paired with a new WatchON app, this allows you to remotely control your TV with your S4. It's a feature we're seeing in more and more cell phones and tablets, and it's executed solidly here. Unfortunately, it can't quite match the depth of what we've seen from Sony the last two years, and the S4's WatchON app still doesn't play nice if you own a high-end home theater surround sound.

The camera on the S 4 is another tremendous advantage. The main camera is a 13-megapixel monster, and it takes some truly beautiful shots. Lowlight photos are solid, although they don't quite reach the level of Nokia's Lumia 920, and Samsung gives you an extensive suite of software options filled with photo magic.

On the whole, many of the new modes lack the practicality of the shooting modes that helped define the S 3. Some of them feel a bit gimmicky, such as Samsung's Dual Shot mode, which essentially lets you take shots with the front and rear cameras on the same photo. And I've never been a huge proponent of simply removing things from photos, or moving pieces of a photo here and there. But it's nice to have options, and Samsung gives you a load of them here.

Options, of course, are a key theme of the S 4's software. The S 4 aims to be the most highly customizable Android experience on the market, backing up a solid TouchWiz UI with loads of unique options.

Don't want to go through the trouble of using your thumb to scroll up and down web pages? The S 4 can watch your eyes, and when the screen tilts in a certain direction, the page will scroll automatically. This feature winds up being impractical and unreliable, but Smart Pause, another eye-tracking feature, fares better. Look away from the screen during a video, and the S4 video automatically pauses.

Such features can be turned on and off, although honestly, I turned most of them off. Such eye-tracking features are technological accomplishments, but are they truly necessary? Samsung is automating plenty of processes that truly don't need automation, and it's all part of their attempt to bring innovation to this smartphone.

The S 4 tries to do that in other ways, too, with some S Health software that can pair with a Nike Fuelband-like wristband, and a surprisingly handy S Translator devices that has me chronically texting things in other languages just for fun. These pieces of software stand out and function well.

But they're pieces of software, things that could theoretically be applied to other phones, not gamebreaking pieces of technology. And that's the latest sign of just how hard it is to innovate in this field these days. The S 3 pushed Samsung to the Android market's forefront, and the Galaxy Note 2 is the finest Android device I've ever tested.

The S 4? It's not leaps and bounds ahead of either of last year's devices. Instead, it's a hop forward, solid hardware and interesting, innovative software all rolled into one, the kind of device that just might convert an Apple user to Android. But if you have an S 3, or even a Galaxy Note 2, I'm not sure an upgrade is essential just yet.

Samsung's S 4 certainly gets the job done, and it's a prime target for anyone ready for an upgrade. And the S 4 also proves one thing: It's getting evermore challenging to get the job done building a captivating Android smartphone.