Next up this afternoon is Samsung Electronics's (005930KS) event at Radio City Music Hall in New York, where the company is expected this evening to unveil the next installment in its “Galaxy” smartphone franchise.
A line has formed outside stretching from 50th Street around the corner and up 6th Avenue to 51st Street. A troupe of dancers is doing a synchronized routine across the Street, on the other side of 6th Avenue, in front of a large sign reading “UN PACKED BE READY.”
It's a brisk 30 degrees outside.
There's been quite a bit of speculation this week as to whether tonight's announcement will put substantial distance between Samsung's portfolio and Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, or whether it will temper the smartphone battle for the moment.
And the show is about to begin. Packed house here inside Radio City, lots of camera crews.
Lights come down, here we go. Start with a video…
A young boy wakes up and is driven by chauffeur to Radio City, with a box marked with the “Unpacked” event. The stage rises with Samsung master of ceremonies Will Chase and an adorable child actor. Full orchestra on stage. Chase says “tonight we're to show you an amazing new Galaxy product … That is going to make our lives easier.” He welcomes JK Shin, head of Samsung mobile telecommunications division. Shin says the past few weeks have seen an “amazing degree of rumor and speculation about what I am going to unveil tonight.”
The intent is to help us all “live a simpler and richer life.” What if we could record sound while taking a picture, he asks. What if the smartphone could understand if you wanted to scroll up or down just by looking at the screen? Think about touchless interfaces.
The scrim behind Shin is displaying various logos, including “S Health” and the “Knox” brand for Samsung's enhanced enterprise security.
“For each of us, life is journey. You want a life companion. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Samsung Galaxy S IV.”
(Click for larger image)
It rather looks like the SIII. Shin assures us it is thinner and lighter than the last Galaxy.
The phone will roll out in April with 347 operators. It will support FDD LTE and TD versions.
Ryan Bidan, head of marketing for Samsung Telecommunications America.
Chase goes through some features with Bidan: 7.9 millimeters thin, weighs 130 grams, five-inch screen, full HD AMOLED screen, 441 PPI. Polycarbonate case in white and black.
The LTE feature will support category three, meaning 100 megabit per second downloads, 50 megabit uploads. The main camera on the back is 13 megapixel, the front camera, 2 megapixels. The device has 2 gigabytes of LPDDR DRAM, and eight sensors, including temperature and humidity sensors. 2600 milli-amp battery.
And now we're getting a real live on-stage performance, a dramatization of parents who do and don't have 13-megapixel cameras, and whether or not they can take pics of their kids that are “great.” The “dual camera” record function can record with both cameras at the same time. There's a picture-in-picture function that shows both video recordings on screen at the same time.
A fast-exposure feature can take multiple images and then create a composite that will “erase” people who wander into the scene. Then there's something called “air view” that lets you hover your finger over the screen to get previews of an image.
Another performance on stage. Using “S Translator,” your expressions are translated by the phone as you speak. Understands 9 languages, and supports both text to speech and speech to text. That includes Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. It has a vocabulary of 4,000 useful phrases, says Chase, which means it can work even without a network connection.
Something called “adapt display” adjusts to tasks you're doing, such as answering an email, playing a game, or taking a picture, to make the screen easier on your eyes.
Next up, “story album,” features an “automatic album creation” function. Just choose a template and make a page of your pictures and upload to Facebook. You can also send a hard copy of your album, for $30, to various countries directly from the phone.
Using the previously announced “home connect” function, you can send pictures to a device called “home sync” back at the house that has a terabyte of shared storage. It also works over NFC connections directly to the phone. “It functions as a sort of hub for your life and memories.”
Now we're talking about “S Voice Drive.” It pairs with a car's Bluetooth function to make that screen fonts larger, easier to read, and to offer more voice-command functions and hands free functions � finding directions, asking the weather, etc. We get a dramatization of some guy having the S IV read him back his email.
And a new app, “Samsung Smart Switch,” will transfer all your data from almost any other smartphone.
The S IV will work with gloves on, taking a page from Nokia's (NOK) Lumia.
We're getting some screen shots of what's called the “Samsung Hub,” which is a kind of store with a magazine interface, for all sorts of content.
Now we're getting an example of how multiple Galaxies can function as different speakers for a given piece of music. One is the tweeter, one the sub-woofer, etc. Even with just two phones, “you can set up a great two-channel system.”
Samsung has updated its “Chaton” feature, with group video chat for up to three parties, and use the dual-camera functions to include both yourself and those who are in front of you.
Now we're diving into “Air Gesture,” which allows you to navigate the phone without touching the display. If, you, for example, don't want to put down your drink.
And a “smart scroll/smart pause” function will pause and play a video based on whether you look at the device or look away.
There will be accessories to monitor your heart rate and blood sugar, for the S Health function.
There's a new cover, called “S View.” It has a transparent window in it that allows you to view critical information without opening the phone.
And that's it! Pricing was not announced. Shortly after the presentation, AT&T (T), Sprint-Nextel (S), and T-Mobile USA all announced they will carry the device in the U.S.
It's time to rush the stage for some hands-on demos.
During my demo time with the S4, some things were clear. It is a brilliant 5-inch display. Talk about bright and crisp! Those who were near me trying out the device remarked on how light it is, and indeed it is noticeably lighter and thinner than the SIII. I think Samsung is to be commended for getting this kind of display into a slim, sleek package.
The software features were another story. They didn't work all the time and were consistent to the extent that they functioned in certain places and not in others. For instance, in the gallery, when looking the photo roll, you can hover your finger over an image to make a preview thumbnail pop up. And then in email, when looking at a list, you can hover your finger over an individual message to make a preview of the message body pop up.
Hovering one's finger over an email in a list produces a preview text.
Hovering one's finger over an image in the gallery produces a preview.
These same gestures, however, are not ubiquitous. They are only in these specific contexts. Which is too bad, because it would be nice to have touchless gestures throughout the interface. Then again, in the moment that it took for me to hover with my finger over a picture, say, waiting for the sensor to detect my hovering finger, one wonders if it wouldn't be easier to just press and hold down on the screen.
The Smart Pause, which lets you look away during the course of a video and have the video automatically pause, worked off and on. The Smart Scroll feature, which will move a Web page up and down as you tilt the phone, didn't work at all in my brief examination. The sensor has to see that you are looking straight at the screen, and so I tried in various ways to move my head into different orientations, but to little effect. I did see an assistant make it work, but not flawlessly.
It was difficult in this brief demo to know if the sometimes erratic functioning of these features were a consequence of my lack of exeperience, or a limitation of the phone's sensors and software. We'll know better once there's more extensive testing.
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