Samsung’s Next Big Thing, the Galaxy S4 Lands in India Priced at Rs 41,500 :)

Samsung’s latest entry into the Smart phones market has finally landed in India. The phone, which by all appearances seems to be the best mobile device ever created, is touted to have many industry first features such as the revolutionary gesture control, 5 inch Full HD (1080 pixels) Super AMOLED screen covered with Gorilla Glass 3 for toughness, an 8 core processor and a 13 Mega Pixel Digital Camera.

Samsung lately has been furiously battling Apple in the Smartphone segment offering devices which are comparable to those offered by the Cupertino giant, if not downright superior. For instance, their new Galaxy S4 which has been positioned against Apple’s iPhone 5 not only offers every feature that it has, but also many new ones. The gesture control in the S4 allows users to control apps simply by swooshing their fingers over the phone (much like Tom Cruise controlled the monitors in Minority Report), while its digital eye tracking front camera can automatically scroll a page down when it senses that the user has reached the last portion of the page. The phone also uses Google’s latest Android 4.2 (codenamed “Jellybean”) Operating System which is touted for its incredible speed and user friendliness.

Despite all of these seemingly futuristic upgrades, the phone is still considered an evolutionary design rather than a revolutionary one; most of its offerings are still the same as the older Galaxy S3. Here’s a comparative list of their respective features:

(* Price of the Galaxy S3 given above is market average and is subject to change)

Being the successor, Galaxy S4 demonstrates qualitative superiority over its predecessor; however the price it is quoted at clearly puts it in the high end category. On the flip side, why not take this as an advantage and get a brand new S3 for now if the 41,500 price seems too high? Besides the lower price, the S3 is not all that far behind the S4, also you can simply update the phone to the new Android 4.2 OS and get a lot of the functionalities that the S4 offers, save for the gesturing and a couple other features unique to it such as the proprietary Knox which is designed to make the phone more secured in an enterprise environment.  Knox is multi-layered security software which allows users to separate their work files and apps from their personal software and data, keeping them locked and secured. The S4 also has a dual video call feature which will allow users to take pictures with the back camera while talking with the front camera simultaneously.

While it had been accused of being an Apple copycat flooding the market with cheap iPhone knockoffs, Samsung has indeed proven itself to be an innovative force this year. With the new S4 Samsung has demonstrated that it is committed to providing the market with groundbreaking new technologies and tools at affordable price points for everyone to sample. In fact there are clear indications that the Korean company just might end up in the No-1 spot in a few short years so all we can say is watch this space!