Daily I try to check around to get a micro snapshot of the important smartphone market. Amazon’s best seller list (updated hourly) is one of the places I rely on to give an indication of a device’s sales appeal. Since the launch of the HTC One I’ve noticed that although highly acclaimed by every reviewer who has had the pleasure of putting the phone through its paces the phone cannot seem to crack the monopoly Samsung has on sales.

I’ve never seen any carrier version of the HTC One rise higher than number 5 on Amazon’s best seller list. Compare that with the Samsung Note II, Galaxy S3 and most recently the Galaxy S4 rotating at the top and its clear Samsung sales are humming along and the vast majority of the profit and sales rests with them. For even more perspective Samsung currently has 16 of the top 20 best selling phones at the moment on Amazon.

There is nothing more to say than this is just an awesome piece of work. The cinematography and flow to it is spot on and the timely use of the galaxy s4 hits the right notes. Ladies and gents please check out Hi Hey Hello featuring the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Rumors of this Ruggedized Samsung Galaxy S4 have been flying around for sometime now, and here we have a leaked image. If nothing at all, I’d say it looks better than the normal version of the new Android king. How about that, the hard working man gets a good looking device for once!

No ifs, ands or buts about it, Samsung has no officially stolen all of Apple’s “Magic.” Samsung’s SideSync allows you to interact with your SG4 as an extension of the PC when connected.

It supports dopeness like copy and paste from PC to Phone and visa versa, drag and drop files, screen extension or you can even have the phone represented virtually on the display.

Very nice Samsung, very nice! Check out the video below! Also note, this thing only works with Samsung laptops, and not all of them at that. Not so very nice Samsung, not so very nice.

So you ran out and bought your iPhone 4S….eeeer…. Galaxy S4s, rushed home, popped open the box and felt like the king/queen you deserve to be! You’ve got your plastic scepter at you side and there is nothing to stop you from allowing google to know everything about you all over again!

But wait, there’s lag. Not your ordinarily “playing call of duty while downloading transformers 3” lag, the 2008 Android lag. You thought this was a thing of the past, HA! Jokes on us, I thought so too. So this is cutting edge plastic, the fastest any phone has gone before, more cores and rams and features than the US Enterprise could ever hope to see, and yet, there’s lag?

What gives? I’ve played with the SG4 for all of 20 minutes an found it SUPER ANNOYING to see a 3 day old smartphone with nothing on it lag. For crying out loud, even Blackberry’s Z10 had some common decency not to lag.

Who is to blame for this sloppy delivery? It couldn’t be Google, my HTC One runs like a champ, and is currently my new favorite device. It couldn’t be samsung, right? After all, the SG3 and Note II had no lag, surely the latest versions of these phones would be just as smooth?!

I reach out to the readers to do, please, help an old geek like myself understand, what is S Lag and where is it coming from? The dozens upon dozens of forum posts complaining about this can’t be false! Does plastic not dissipate heat?  Oh, before I go, save yourself some headache, do not hard reset your phone, they’ve tried that. Some even tried it 3 times, still lag. o_0

Today’s Apple earnings call just ended. Apple CEO Tim Cook suggested no new products would be coming from Apple until the fall of this year and more would be throughout 2014. It is now time for everyone to give the same advice to Apple that everyone harpooned Microsoft with a couple years ago.

Competitors will not stand still and wait for Apple to reinvent markets anymore. They are not laughing off to their demise any suggestion that a new product is coming fro Cupertino that will shake the industry. Chief amongst the Apple competitors is Samsung. We all know Samsung is going to carpet-bomb the heck out of the Galaxy line of phones and pretty sure they’ll dominate sales figures all year. Add in the rest of their electronics lineup and Apple’s apparent delay in releasing new products and Apple might just find themselves introducing products later this year to a decidedly unwelcoming or even worse, apathetic market.

I’m stating right here that 2013 will indeed be the year of Samsung. Get ready for your new electronic overlords.

Samsung is clearly out for blood! If you think you’ve seen this theme before, you have, its sort of like the deal Apple scared with Best Buy not too long ago. Now, along comes Samsung looking to steal even more thunder from the fruit company. According to reports, the mini Samsung stores will pop up in high traffic Best Buys around the launch of the highly anticipated Galaxy S4. This is looking to become less of a war and more of a beat down, and no, Samsung might not be the one at the bottom of the pile.

The Galaxy S4 will be making its debut on the AT&T network soon. Pre-orders will go live on April 16th with the cost to pre-order running a cool $249.99 with a two-year commitment. For additional info you can visit http://www.att.com/galaxys4

Source: Engadget via AT&T Consumer Blog

Samsung has no intentions of letting Apple debut market disruptive products and have the benefit of a couple years to themselves garnering all the profit and mindshare. The latest example is Samsung confirming the development of a smart watch. Recent rumors have pegged Apple intending on releasing such a product at some point this year. Samsung to their credit has realized the mistake their other competitors haven’t. You simply cannot allow someone to launch a disruptive product and think you have the luxury of time on your hands to compete against it. Especially when that someone is Apple who already has mastered the art of locking consumers into their ecosystem and dominating mindshare.

Samsung has become quite bold in their intentions to dominate any and all markets. The smart watch is on their radar and they have taken preemptive action to make sure their customers know they have one on the way. The battle starts in the mind. Samsung gets that and that is why they went on the record to let the world know they aren’t asleep at the wheel.

Source: Forbes

Samsung enjoyed a great bit of success with the Galaxy line, not only are they virtually neck and neck with Apple in terms of mindshare, they’ve also managed to bridge the gap is sales. Its only right the Galaxy S4 was as highly anticipated as it was, but did Samsung do it? Did they manage to get over the tipping point? Lets see.

Hardware and design

The Galaxy S4 brings along with it some great hardware improvements, all of which keep it in the “cutting edge” crowd and in the running for the short lived “King of Android” crown. It features a large 5 inch 1080p full HD display with a madness  441 pixels per inch. The S4 will offer two different processors depending on your region, you’ll either get Samsung’s Exynos 5 or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro, both quad core performers. 2GB of operational RAM, 16, 32 and 32GB of storage, the usual suspects in connectivity including 802.11ac and an IR blaster,a 13MP camera in the rear and 2MP in the front and a massive 2,600 mAH battery round out the specs.

Although these specs are worth some excitement, for most they seemed a bit lackluster only because the design of the S4 does very little to part resemblance to the S3. Even though Samsung made it thinner, lighter and even added a metal and around the side of the entire phone, the feeling is hard to shake. It just looks like the same plastic you either love or hate. Personally, I think this is okay.

Features aka gimmicks

Gimmicks I say? No, features you say! At this point, its tough to really draw a line, and this is a good thing. The Galaxy S4 brings along with it an almost overwhelming amount of features. The impressive part about it all is how well they’re implemented, it really does make it hard to point them out at gimmicks.

In no particular order, lets start out with S Health. The Galaxy S4 has an onboard pedometer and a number of other sensors able to track your daily steps, ambient temperature and even humidity, the data is then nicely tracked within the app. It even has the ability to work with other accessories such as scales or blood pressure meters.

Gestures, lots of gestures! How about one called “Air View,” which allows you to preview information on the without actually touching the screen, even pinching and zooming, just hovering your finger above the screen. Air Gestures, which allows you to swipe through images, messages and more by waving your hand from right to left of vie versa in front of the phone.

Smart pause and smart scroll are probably the show stoppers. Smart pause keeps and eye on your head while watching videos, if it detects you look away, it will pause the video, then resume when you return to viewing position. Smart scroll deploys the same concept, but it does so when reading, when it detects your eyes looking towards the bottom of the page, it will scroll up for you.

WatchON makes uses of the included IR Blaster on the S4 to change channels and control your TV or set top box. It also goes a bit future to allow you to download listings and even purchase content.

Dual Shot mode on the camera activates both the front and rear cameras all at once to allow you to capture a fairly unique image with both the subject and the person taking the picture. Other camera modes include the ability to turn a short video into gifs, the ability to create a story from a series of images and even the ability to erase and replace the backgrounds on pictures.

S View cover are a modified version of the popular Galaxy S3 flip covers, but they include a cut out in the front to allow you to view the widget on screen as notifications come in. S Translate can take pictures of text and even words and reproduce them in text for various apps. S Drive lets you interact with the GPS experience without ever touching the phone while driving!

Depending on what side of the fence you’re standing, these could all easily fall under gimmicks, but even so, I’ve never seen a company pack this many gimmicks in one product. And if you call them features? Well, Samsung sure did out the competition.

Final Thoughts

From an objective point of view, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is nothing but better designed piece of plastic with a bit more metal around the sides, perhaps HTC’s leader was right to say “SG4 is more of the same.” From a “get real” point of view, this phone stands for everything Samsung has been building slowly in the past 4 years and are now at the top, they made it!

They watched, learned and now they conquer. A lessoned learned from Apple, hold on to your core design a bit longer, people will still buy! Executed better than Apple, SOFTWARE OPTIMIZATION! Like I’ve been preaching for years, hardware isn’t the strong point, it’s the software. Samsung manages to put out a shocking quantity and quality of features in one iteration like never seen before. But the truly important part to note here, their supply chain is unstoppable. Because of the plastic we all hate, they’ll have this thing available when they say it will be, and in no shortage.

The already amazing success of the SG3 looks to achieve new heights with the new SG4, I am willing to bet no one will side with the “yea, but it’s the same thing!” the anti-Samsung crowd will push in our face. Why? Because Apple pioneered “the same thing,” and it has done well, but Samsung did not fail to keep the features and software experience fresh. Way to go Samsung!