Jul 30


Samsung Galaxy S4 Unboxing by Chris Rauschnot @24k on Twitter

The Verzion Wireless Buzz Group recently invited me to check out their newest offerings, the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. As the fourth edition to their line of wildly successful smartphones worldwide, I was excited to see what the design, capability and advanced features it had over what I’m used to working with each day.

The Galaxy S4 is a thin smartphone, but it has a very large and bright 5″ screen. I evaluate new smartphones from many companies frequently and can say that this phone has the best and brightest screen to date with a 1080p HD and AMOLED display, even besting the Note 2, also from Samsung.

One clever and unique benefit for a busy social media user like me is the ability for the Galaxy S4 to track eye movement that paused video playback when I looked away.  It will even answer the phone with a wave of a hand and it is of course filled with other fun tech specs.


Video Courtesy of Samsung

The one moment when you least expect it and drop your phone, you’ll be glad for the thinner, stronger Gorilla Glass 3 screen. But just in case, I went ahead and purchased an S View flip cover. It doubles as a little window to what’s happening on the phone too, by displaying signal strength, caller ID info and text messaging status.

Living in Las Vegas, I’m constantly trying to see a smartphone screen when taking photos of sunsets and the desert landscape. The Galaxy S4 was bright enough even in the afternoon daylight to see photos with its auto-adjusting brightness.

The camera on the Galaxy S4 is quite the beast. A few years ago, having a few megapixels was a big deal. Now I’m working with a svelte device that is capable of 13 megapixels.


Golden Nugget Shark Tank Tube Slide

With this version of Samsung’s photo software, I had the option to choose an auto-adjusted color tone, movie, dynamic and professional photo presets that yielded more accurate colors.

Having so many megapixels is great and all, but what the phone is able to do with the underlying tech is the best part of the gadget. I was able to take several panoramic photos without any brightness or color banding that still seems to plague other smartphones today.

A higher megapixel count helped me post better-looking Instagram photos. How you ask, when I cropped the photo for just the right square, the final version must have enough pixels for everything to look crisp and clear, perfect for the online photographer.

This smartphone has a fast shutter that is additionally able to capture live action and fast movement with its burst mode. After taking 20 photos very quickly, the software presented me with an option to choose the best and only save those to memory. As this phone has the latest Android system and a memory slot, I saved my photos to the card. Now I won’t have to upload all of my photos to the cloud right away to save internal memory space.


Video of Vegas Magazine Party at Azure Pool

A phone of this caliber came bundled with many other time saving benefits as well. The camera hardware and software on the Galaxy S4 is able to record full 1080p video and take photos at the same time. This allowed me to take live video and photos of VIPs at an event. This was not possible on my stock iPhone and other Android phones I have owned in the past.

Techies out there will be happy to know that the Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with 4G LTE from Verizon, 2GB of Ram, 16GB of internal storage space, near field communication or NFC and the Star Wars Jedi-mind trick like option I mentioned before, where when I waved my hand over the top sensors in the Gallery app, my photos scrolled to the left and right, depending on which way I waved.

Unlike with other smartphones, I felt like I had the “force” and was able to switch between apps quickly, going from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapseed and email. Being able to use one device that’s now as capable as most of the devices I normally would carry around each day is big.

Thanks Verizon and Samsung for sending me a cool gadget so that I can share my daily experiences live with friends around the world.

Disclaimer: I am a Life Style Blogger and part of the Verzion Wireless Buzz Group #VZWBuzz and received a Samsung Galaxy S4 from them. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

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