Samsung Galaxy S4 unveiled
Expected to be the phone that will offer serious competition to Apple’s iPhone, the long-awaited Galaxy S4 was unveiled by Samsung yesterday in Manhattan, New York.
After months of speculation from tech analysts across the world, Samsung revealed its most anticipated feature – a smart scroll that tracks the eye-line of the user with a front-facing camera, allowing users to scroll down web pages and e-books touch-free.
In addition to this, the device comes with a 13 megapixel camera (the iPhone 5 is 8 megapixels) and can translate nine different languages, either by text or from text to speech and vice versa. “Think about being able to communicate with your friends around the world without language barriers,” said JK Shin, Samsung’s head of mobile.
The touchscreen has been designed to recognise fingertips without them directly touching the screen, up to a distance of approximately 2cm.
Harry Wang, analyst at Parks Associates, told the Guardian: “Samsung is trying to do one thing: knock Apple’s status in the US. They want to show that they can excite the high-end smartphone adopters just as well as Apple.”
So will the Galaxy outshine the iPhone?
Data collated from Experian proves that demand is high already, with one in four consumers searching for Samsung’s new S4 over the past week – a 30% increase on previous weeks, which is the biggest increase that any other smartphone has experienced.
In that same week, one in five people searched for Apple’s iPhone – notably less in comparison to the Samsung device when broadening the scale.
The Galaxy S4 will be offered by 327 mobile operators in 125 countries, including UK operator EE – the only UK network to offer the Galaxy 4 with 4G.
Paul Jevons, Director of Products and Devices, EE, said: “The interest we’ve received from consumers and businesses has almost reached fever-pitch levels, so we’re delighted to be the only UK operator to offer the Samsung Galaxy S4 enabled with 4G from launch.”
The device will be available from the end of next month.