With this release, the fourth of Samsung's flagship S-series phones that I've tested for this column, the new S4 stands out as, by far, the best version.
Any consideration of this smartphone line is also, necessarily, a referendum on the state of Android development as well, since Samsung tends to dress the version of Google's OS it uses pretty lightly on its phones.
Most of the device's unique tweaks are user-interface flourishes that don't drift very far from a stock Android release (at version 4.2.2 for this new phone).
From its lock screen, Samsung offers its opening salvo of style. The default ripple, already a charming effect on the S3, has been replaced with a Star Trek-style scatter of light that follows your finger as you sweep it across the screen to unlock your phone (the ripple is now an option).
What it reveals, though, is pretty standard and, in some ways, annoying.
Samsung has ramped up the number of free apps it bundles with the S4. Some of them seem useful or at least promising, like SHealth, which uses the phone's internal gyros to count steps, and STranslate, which may well prove to be a killer app for occasional travellers.
There are also five games, at least three of which seem designed to occupy children, but nothing genuinely and immediately useful like, say, QuickOffice.
I mention this because it now takes me "new computer" time to prepare a smartphone for day to day use, downloading, customising and password-activating the small blizzard of apps that form part of my mobile computing experience.
It took me five hours to prepare and organise the 27 apps I run on an Android smartphone–down one, now that Samsung bundles DropBox with the S4.
The S4 is a sleek little number, slightly thinner and taller than the S3 with a gorgeous screen that seems to run right to the left and right edges of the device, though there's a tiny sliver of border actually there.
Everything pops on it. Icons, photos, video. Everything.
The phone is light and even though Samsung still makes the back cover of this premium phone out of plastic, the new finish is more dignified than the barebones, adamantly plastic feel of the S3's cover.
There's a new software mini dock that slides out from the left where you can access a pool of Google-developed apps (no option for third-party software here) that you can turn off if you find it annoying (I did).
Problems were minimal. One widget I use to monitor an analytics package on my Web site ballooned graphically on the new pixel-rich screen (now 441 pixels per inch) and the mail app has developed a settings quirk which makes it impossible to access my domain's e-mail server (the software won't allow me to add my ISP's username schema).
The S4 is palpably faster at everything. Software launches fluidly and in a curious turn, some user-interface flourishes seem designed to make the interface move just a bit more slowly and gracefully.
The S4 is an incremental improvement over the S3. Owners of the previous model may want to upgrade if screen quality and processor speed will improve their user experience. And users looking for a new smartphone will find the S4 to be a robust competitor in a suddenly quite-crowded local market for handheld computing devices.
�2 Read an expanded version of this column here (http://ow.ly/adAll).
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