Samsung revealed their signature product last month (March 2013) with a big hype at the event held in US. In fact, the event was criticized by some of the analysts claiming that it was too long and ambiguous because Samsung didn’t reveal the technical stuff about the Galaxy S4 at once. In any case, it was a massive event that caught the attraction of a lot of people and critics are already starting to like the new smartphone from Samsung. Within a month, Samsung revealed yet two other smartphones (Galaxy Mega 6.3 and Galaxy Mega 5.8) that belong to the category we call as Phablets. They are neither a tablet nor a smartphone at a screen size of 6.3 inches and 5.8 inches. It is too small to be a tablet, and it is too large to be a smartphone; hence the name Phablet. Samsung already have their king in the Phablet arena which is Galaxy Note. In fact, that is more or less like the second signature product for Samsung. In the light of that, we are trying to understand why Samsung is trying to release yet another Phablet and we have some theories. First off, Galaxy Mega isn’t as polished as Note 2, so it is speculated that Mega might be released in order to increase the demand for the next version of Galaxy Note. On the other hand, given that Mega doesn’t have the glamor nor the S-Pen Stylus Note has, it might be Samsung’s low cost version of Note line. Nevertheless, let us first compare Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 against S4 and see how it performs.
Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 Review
Samsung has released two versions of the Galaxy Mega; one with 5.8 inches display panel and the other with a huge 6.3 inches display panel. Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is the biggest smartphone from Samsung yet and trust me it is really big. If you thought Galaxy Note was big, wait until you see this monster. Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 has 6.3 inches TFT Capacitive touchscreen display panel featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 233 ppi. It supports multi touch and comes with Samsung Touch Wiz UI; however, it doesn’t seem to have the Gorilla glass reinforcement on the display panel. In fact, this tells me that Samsung doesn’t consider Galaxy Mega at the level of Galaxy Note or Note II because they haven’t paid as nearly as much attention to this handset which you will find out when you are done with the review.
Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is powered by 1.7GHz dual core ARM Cortex A15 processor on top of Exynos 5250 chipset along with Mali T604 GPU and 1.5GB of RAM. It runs on the newest Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, and the underlying hardware is quite a feast for the operating system. It is true that Samsung Galaxy Mega doesn’t have a Quad Core processor, but Cortex A15 processor cores are sufficiently more powerful than the A7 or A9 processor cores. It comes with 8 GB or 16 GB of storage with the option to be expanded by microSD up to 64GB. We are happy about the inclusion of the microSD card slot to this monster so that it can be put to proper use.
Samsung has also been gracious enough to include 4G LTE connectivity in Galaxy Mega 6.3, which boosts its usability. There is Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac available for continuous connectivity with the option to easily setup a wireless hotspot to share your super-fast internet connection with your friends. There is 8MP camera in the back with autofocus and LED flash that should be able to capture 1080p videos @ 30 frames per second. The 1.9MP front facing camera can be used for video conferencing purposes. The handset comes in Black or White and looks sleek and attractive with a thickness of mere 8mm. However, you might feel uncomfortable keeping it on your face and making a call. Samsung has included 3200mAh battery in Galaxy Mega. Unfortunately, this doesn’t come with the best thing I like in Note which is the S-Pen Stylus.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Review
Samsung Galaxy S4 is finally revealed after the long anticipation. S4 looks smart and elegant as ever. The outer cover emanates Samsung’s attention to detail with their new polycarbonate material making up the cover of the device. It comes in Black and White with the usual rounded edges we are used to in Galaxy S3. It is 136.6 mm long while 69.8 mm wide with 7.9 mm thick. You can clearly see that Samsung has kept the size almost the same as Galaxy S3 to give a sense of familiarity while making it rather thin for a smartphone of this caliber. What this would imply is that you are going to have more screen to look at while having the same size as Galaxy S3. The display panel is 5 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display panel featuring a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels at a pixel density of 441 ppi. This is actually the first Samsung smartphone to feature 1080p resolution screen although several other manufacturers beat Samsung to it. Nonetheless, this display panel is incredibly vibrant and interactive. Oh and Samsung features hover gestures in Galaxy S4; that is to say you can just hover your finger without actually touching the display panel to activate certain gestures. Another cool feature Samsung has included is the ability to perform touch gestures even with wearing gloves which would be a step forward towards usability. The Adapt Display feature in Samsung Galaxy S4 can adapt the display panel to make the display better depending on what you are looking at.
Samsung Galaxy S4 has 13MP camera that comes with a bunch of awesome features. It certainly doesn’t necessarily feature a newly crafted lens, but Samsung’s new software features are sure to be a hit. Galaxy S4 has the ability to include audio in to photos you snap which can act as a live memory. As Samsung put it, it’s like adding another dimension to the visual memories captured. The camera can capture over 100 snaps within 4 second, which is just awesome, and the new Drama Shot features means that you can choose multiple snaps for a single frame. It also has an eraser feature which can erase unwanted objects from your photos. Finally, Samsung feature dual camera, which lets you capture the photographer as well as the subject and superimpose yourself in the snap. Samsung has also included an inbuilt translator called S Translator, which can translate nine languages as of now. It can translate from text to text, speech to text and speech to speech in any way convenient for you. It can also translate written words from menu, books or magazines, as well. Right now, S Translator supports French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish. It is also deeply integrated with their chat applications, as well.
Samsung has also included a customized version of S Voice which can act as your personal digital assistant and Samsung has optimized this to be used when you are driving too. They have made the transfer from your old smartphone to the new Galaxy S4 very easy with the introduction of Smart Switch. The user can separate their personal and work spaces using the Knox feature enabled in Galaxy S4. The new Group Play connectivity seems like a new differentiating factor, as well. There were a lot of rumors going on about Samsung Smart Pause which tracks your eyes and pauses a video when you look away and scrolls down when you look down or up which is awesome. S Health application can be used to track your health details including your diet, exercises and can connect external equipment to record data, as well. They also have a new cover that is more or less similar to the iPad cover which makes the device sleep when the cover closes.
As we have speculated, Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with 4G LTE connectivity as well as 3G HSDPA connectivity along with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n for continuous connectivity. Strangely enough, Samsung has decided to include a microSD card slot on top of the 16 / 32 /64 GB internal memory you already have. Now we come down to what’s under the hood; it’s not very clear about the processor although Samsung seems to ship Galaxy S4 with two versions. The Samsung Exynos 5 Octa processor is featured in Samsung Galaxy S4 which Samsung claims as the world’s first 8 core mobile processor and models in some regions will feature Quad Core processor, as well. The Octa processor concept follows a recent whitepaper released by Samsung. They have taken a patent for the technology from ARM, and it’s known as big.LITTLE. The whole idea is to have two sets of Quad Core processors, the lower end Quad Core processors would consist of ARM’s A7 cores clocked at 1.2GHz while the high end Quad Core processors will have ARM’s A15 cores clocked at 1.6GHz. Theoretically, this will make Samsung Galaxy S4 the fastest smartphone in the world as of now. Samsung has also included three PowerVR 544 GPU chips in Galaxy S4 making it the fastest smartphone in terms of graphics performance as well; at least theoretically. The RAM is the usual 2GB which is plenty for this beefy device. You certainly don’t have to worry about the performance with Samsung’s signature product because it is going to pack up plenty of action to keep running for a whole year at the top of the market. The inclusion of removable battery is also a nice addition compared to all the unibody designs we’ve been seeing.
A Brief Comparison Between Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 and S4
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is powered by 1.7GHz ARM Cortex A15 dual core processors on top of Samsung Exynos 5250 chipset along with Mali T604 GPU and 1.5GB of RAM while Samsung Galaxy S4 is powered by Samsung Exynos Octa processor which is an 8 core processor with 2GB of RAM.
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean while Samsung Galaxy S4 runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 has 6.3 inches TFT Capacitive touchscreen display panel featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 233 ppi while Samsung Galaxy S4 has 5 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display panel featuring a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels at a pixel density of 441 ppi.
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is larger, slightly thicker and heftier (167.6 x 88 mm / 8 mm / 199g) than Samsung Galaxy S4 (136.6 x 69.8 mm / 7.9 mm / 130g).
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 has 8MP camera that should be able to capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second while Samsung Galaxy S4 has 13MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second with awesome new features.
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 has 3200mAh battery while Samsung Galaxy S4 has 2600mAh battery.
Conclusion
Samsung has left a couple of breadcrumbs for us to understand that they haven’t given a lot of thought to the design of the Galaxy Mega. The first thing that catches my eye is the display panel which is a simple TFT panel. It isn’t IPS; it isn’t Super AMOLED unlike the signature devices from Samsung. Moreover, it doesn’t have Gorilla Glass reinforcement either which is unfortunate. The resolution offered is 720p in this big screen which makes it pixelate occasionally. However, Samsung has been gracious in terms of the processor and especially the network connectivity enabling users to put Mega 6.3 to good use. The processor is not the top of the market, but it isn’t a bad choice either. However, given we are comparing Galaxy Mega 6.3 with Samsung’s all-time favorite signature product Galaxy S4, Mega 6.3 didn’t really have a chance competing. Even though that’s the case, it is also true that Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 provides an alternative use of this smartphone tablet hybrid for those who are hungry for display panel real estate. So, if you are one of them, you may well find Galaxy Mega 6.3 attractive; otherwise you’ll probably enjoy Samsung Galaxy S4 better.