Phone Guide

Samsung might have shot itself in the foot here - the new Active version is a champion in its own right.

For the most part weve understood the idea behind the new members of the Samsung Galaxy S4 family. The S4 Mini for the budget, the S4 Zoom for the camera lovers. Makes sense, and theyre suitably dulled down in certain spec areas to make up for it.


But with the Galaxy S4 Active, its like the normal phone has been given a supercharged health kick to make it into a handset you can enjoy from a spec sheet perspective, but also feel secure about carrying around.

Think the Galaxy S4 in a case, but without a case needed. Thats roughly what youre getting here, but with less heft.

OK, so the differences are there. For instance, the screen isnt Super AMOLED, just your run-of-the-mill TFT. The camera has been downgraded to 8MP. But beyond that, theres very little to choose between them.

Its a bit thicker, obviously, but the same quad-core 1.9GHz Qualcomm processor is chugging away at the heart of it, and the 2GB of RAM remains as well.

On top of that youve got waterproof ports, IP67 dust and water resistance rating, and a more solid-feeling back that suggests you could lob this phone down the stairs, into the toilet, in a drink or bury it and it would keep on trucking.

Then youve got the same glove sensitivity, S Health apps and impressive Aqua Mode on the camera for underwater snaps, and you can see that theres going to be some tough choices down your local phone shop if you dont care so much about the huge camera sensor.

But whats it like to use in real life? Well, like we said: every bit as good as the Galaxy S4, and thanks to that already being bedded-in, the pre-production model we tried was superbly fast, whipping through the internet that nearly gave us motion sickness.

It will be interesting to see what Samsung does with the internal memory on this one, as early reports have suggested that the Active will actually use less storage for the OS than its original sibling - leading to many questions over whether some of the features on the S4 are really that necessary, and more of the space thats nabbed for the phone could be leveraged for actual user choice.

Theres so much thats impressive in the Actives design: from the easy-to-hit menu, home and back buttons to the mottled nature of the rear battery cover, there were details that felt so much more premium than we encountered on the Samsung Galaxy S4.

The screws that adorn the rear of the phone seem more to be for decoration than anything else, creating a more rugged feel to a device that needs to show the world that it can take the hard knocks thrown at it.
We couldnt test it in that way, as it was tethered to the stand, but we were impressed that there was very little flex involved when we twisted and stretched the S4 Active in different ways.

And something that will irk Sony: there were no flappy covers that had to be closed at all times to preserve the waterproofing. The headphone jack is clearly marked as something that can get wet without issues, and the back cover clips off in the same way as the Galaxy S4.

Hey, whats under there? Thats right: a microSD card slot and removable battery, of course! We can debate the merits of both until the cows come home, but there are plenty of people that are desperate for this feature on a handset, and its right here for them.

Aqua mode, which we mentioned earlier for the Samsung Galaxy Active, is the new part of the camera app that allows the phone to offset the blur that comes from taking photos underwater. As the phones touchscreen wont work beneath the waves you have to set what the volume button will do underwater. Its just a shame theres no dedicated camera key here when it feels like theres space for just that.

Early verdict

 

So what do we make of the Samsung Galaxy Active? We have to say were fully impressed by the phone that takes the best of the S4 and makes it something thats more life-proof in a variety of ways.

We can see this phone being the handset of choice for exercise fiends up and down the country, thanks to the combination of S Health (or more probably another app thats a little better at tracking your exertions) and a robust design that promises the Active could survive a slip.

We like the fact it has a full HD screen as well as keeping it at a 5-inch size, on top of the superbly powerful innards. The addition of Aqua mode wont be anything more than a gimmick to most, but shows that Samsung has got the skew of this phone a lot more right than a number of other handsets its spewed out in recent years.

Would we rate it as better than the original? Thats a tough question, as not only are you losing some of the key specs that make the S4 one of the worlds top phones, you are also having to put up with a bit more heft - and the difference is noticeable.

Sony is apparently preparing aSony Xperia i1 smartphone that packs a hi-res 20-megapixel camera.


Perhaps aiming to rival the recently unveiled Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom and rumoured Nokia Lumia 1020, the Sony Xperia i1 has leaked supposedly touting a 20-megapixel rear snapper.

Pictured in between the Sony Xperia ZL announced at CES 2013 and the newly launched Sony Xperia Z Ultra phablet, the Sony Xperia i1 is a white handset that looks to have a screen size somewhere around the 5.3 or 5.4-inches mark.

The Sony Xperia i1 was previously referred to by the codename Honami and was tipped to pack a 20-megapixel Sony 1/1.6 Exmor RS stacked sensor.

Paired with this will be a Cybershot G lens and either a Xenon flash or exceedingly bright LED flash – perhaps shown off in that pill-shaped flash section to the right of the camera.

Although this may be Sony’s own monster-megapixel smartphone, it may still pale in comparison to the likes of Nokia and Samsung’s camera-centric offerings.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom has a 16-megapixel image sensor but also packs 10x optical zoom, 100 to 3200 ISO range and an integrated Xenon flash.

Potentially being launched at a Nokia press event in New York on July 11, the Nokia Lumia 1020 (previously known as the Nokia EOS PureView) will be a Windows Phone 8 device with a 41-megapixel Carl Zweiss image sensor.

It is also said to have a Xenon flash, optical image stabilisation and a variable aperture to rival the S4 Zoom.

Design wise the Sony Xperia i1 looks to feature the same influences as the Sony Xperia Z and Sony Xperia Tablet Z with a thin profile and squared edges. It also looks like that signature power button is there too.

Any word of a launch date let alone a price for the 20-megapixel camera smartphone is still unknown.

The next generation Galaxy Note III phablet has been in the rumorland for quite some time. Today, we see the first leak photo of a prototype device.





The leaked images of the upcoming Galaxy Note III shows us the huge display and the curved corners along with the high resolution display. The thin bezel of the prototype confirms that the device is not a Galaxy Mega 6.3.

Samsung Galaxy Note III is rumored to feature a 5.99-inch Super AMOLED display with the same pixel structure as the Galaxy S4s display, a 13 megapixel rear camera, Snapdragon 800 or the Exynos octa-core processor, an S-Pen and the latest Android OS.

The Samsung Galaxy Note III is expected to be unveiled at the IFA 2013 this September, but there is no official word about that just yet.