Samsung Galaxy S 4 (T-Mobile)

Samsung has something for everyone in the Android-powered Galaxy S 4 ($149.99). It's this year's no-brainer: the phone to get if you don't want to worry about which phone to get. No matter what you want to do, the Galaxy S 4 can get it done. That makes it our Editors' Choice for full-touch smartphones on T-Mobile.

Physical Features and Phone Calls

The Galaxy S 4 looks like a refined Galaxy S III at 5.4 by 2.75 by .31 inches (HWD) and 4.6 ounces. It's still plastic, in white or black, with chrome trim, and a subtly patterned, smooth back. The edges are squarer, forgoing the 'pebble in your hand' metaphor that ruled the S3. It doesn't taper. But it's almost exactly the same size as the S3, with the new phone's larger screen made possible by a smaller bezel.

 

On the front, a 1,920-by-1,080, 5-inch Super AMOLED HD display boasts a spectacular viewing angle and shimmering colors. The physical Home button, below it, joins the traditional Android Menu and Back buttons. I like this setup a lot more than the perplexing two-button approach on the HTC One.

The Galaxy S 4's back is removable, giving you access to the battery and microSD card slot. You can also replace the back with an optional flip cover that sports a window near the top; when the cover is flipped closed, you see the time and alerts through the window. I had trouble getting the flip cover to stay closed when sitting on a desk, though. The front just wouldn't lie flat.

An excellent voice phone, the S 4 is really, really good, and that's not just because of T-Mobile's new HD Voice. In my tests, call quality was unusually sharp and clear, and the earpiece and speakerphone both got quite loud. Transmissions were sharp, too, with excellent noise cancellation that doesn't damage the quality of the voice. Transmissions from the speakerphone were a touch tinny, but very clear. Just like on the Galaxy S III, you can personalize the call sound profile to your own sense of hearing, which is one of the phone's best hidden features. The S 4 also supports T-Mobile's excellent Wi-Fi calling system.

Basic Performance and Networking

The Galaxy S 4 is the fastest smartphone we've benchmarked so far, thanks to its 1.9GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. Yes, some other international S 4 models will get the Samsung Exynos octo-core, but that processor isn't necessarily any faster or better, it just takes a different approach to a low-power mode. 

Along with the processor, Samsung gets props for running Android 4.2.2, the latest version of Google's mobile OS. Some of the newest features aren't available here, though: Multi-user mode is for tablets, and Samsung's custom camera app omits Google's Photo Spheres.

The 1.9GHz Snapdragon torched the processor-dependent Antutu benchmark, but it also did unusually well on Basemark OS, which launches real applications, and on the GLBenchmark graphics benchmark. Even pushing all the pixels on a 1080p screen, this is the fastest Android phone available. I topped off performance testing with the hideously heavy Need for Speed: Most Wanted game, which ran like butter on the S 4.

Spectacular speed results carried over to network testing, too. The Galaxy S 4 is an LTE phone, although you can switch it off if you aren't in one of T-Mobile's few LTE cities. You don't lose much, either. On T-Mobile's HSPA+ network in midtown Manhattan I got speed up to 14Mbps down and 2.3Mbps up using Ookla's Speedtest.net application. That's solid 4G by anyone's measure.

The S 4 also supports GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, and NFC. I connected a Plantronics Voyager Legend Bluetooth headset £66.99 at Amazon UK and media playback and voice dialing went off without a hitch.

Battery life isn't extraordinary, but it's good. I got 10 hours, 50 minutes of talk time, and 4 hours, 48 minutes streaming constant video over HSPA+ with the screen set to maximum brightness. As we've seen with these 1080p phones, that high-res screen really takes a toll. 

(Next page: S Everything)