The most anticipated smartphone of the year has finally arrived in the United States, and has made its way to the Amazon Wireless store. The Galaxy S4 4G Android smartphone is offered by Sprint on Amazon starting at just $149 on contract in the 16 GB model. Samsung said that pre-order demand was much more than they expected, which caused a minor delay in shipping. But the fourth-generation of the Galaxy S smartphone lineup is now available, and the handset delivers a large high-resolution 5.0 inch screen with extremely high pixel density.
The Galaxy S4 delivers the new Floating Touch which allows you to use hand gestures to control the phone without touching the screen. Other applications like S Health and S Translator provide several health tracking and language features, and the handset is also NFC capable out-of-the-box. YouTube and Picasa applications have been pre-installed, and Samsung has added a 13.0 megapixel camcorder to the back phone. That camera can be controlled with voice activation, and delivers video capture at a rate of 1,080P HD resolution and 30 frames per second.
A special effects package is also on board, and that rear snapper joins a front facing 2.0 megapixel chat cam in the handset’s camera combo. Exceptionally slim and light considering the impressive amount of hardware on board, the brand new Galaxy S4 smartphone measures only 0.31 inches (7.9 mm) in thickness. At 4.59 ounces (130 g), it is also lighter than other phones with the same size display. The display in question is a Super AMOLED 5.0 inch model, with pixel density of 441 pixels per inch.
More than 16 million colors are used to create visual displays, and resolution runs 1,080 x 1,920 pixels overall. A scratch resistant layer protects the screen, which accepts capacitive, multitouch gestures. Samsung has included an extended life, oversized 2,600 mA battery, which delivers up to 12.0 hours of talk time from a single charge on the Sprint 4G LTE network. The CPU on the Galaxy S4 is a quad core processor running at 1.9 GHz, and it joins a PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU, 2.0 GB of RAM memory and 16 GB of built-in storage in the handset’s hardware profile.
The Galaxy S4 is running on the new Jelly Bean 4.2 OS. A microSD slot provides storage expansion possibilities, and the Galaxy S4 also offers a built-in music player capable of filtering by album, artist and title. The handset offers Bluetooth wireless connectivity, and can also function as a central hub for several wireless devices. Whatever you are viewing on the large 5.0 inch screen can also be transported to an exterior HDTV or monitor through a wireless DLNA connection.
