Samsung Galaxy S4 – is £630 too much for a phone?

I’ve had a Samsung galaxy for 2 years and changed to iPhone 5 2 weeks ago. I much prefer the iphone: more responsive, smaller, lighter, better battery life, can operate with one hand, simpler to use, cooperates with my ipad via iCloud. But I appreciate that some may prefer a bigger display or lower price…each to his own.

You are comparing a 2009 phone to a 2012 device.

so specs dont matter to you? you dont mind spending a close enough amount on a vastly inferior product because of the apple brand?

Maybe the Apple product is inferior, maybe they are control freaks but I’ve not experienced the endless crashes and freezes I had with my Android phone, which I’m sure could have been fixed by jailbreaking it, rooting it or whatever, I just need a phone that works, I have a PC that I use for computer science stuff and a Mac for everything else, same applies to my phone, an Android is more customiseable and interesting to use, but like italian exotica cars is not exactly what you would use to go shopping in. So my ancient Lambo is for impressing people, making a lot of noise and draining my bank account, but for shopping, moving bags of cement and just generally getting me there in a boring but reliable way my Focus does the trick. Same with phones. I bet most of the people who want the S4 have huge wide screen HD TVs, so why would you want to watch even HD movies on a 5, 6, 7 or any other size screen?

i have owned a htc desire(first android phone) galaxy s iphone 4 and then the galaxy nexus and i havent experienced any of the above issues. I watch movies on my tv at home i just prefer higher resolutions where i can remember all that marketing crap jobs was saying about the iphone 4 had a retina screen with a resolution higher than the eye can perceive but you will notice a sharper texts etc. The iphone 5 has 1136×640 resolution 326 ppi while the galaxy s4 is 1920 by 1080p with a ppi of 440. Why not get more for your money? you say that andoird phones are like “exotic cars” but apple stuff are priced like them for incremental updates(and overpriced for more memory)

Wow. Fantastic. But won’t it be obsolete in six months?

Actually, what seriously impresses me is the replaceable battery.

why? because the note 3 will be out? the gs4 will still be an amazing phone. I mean if its too pricey for you; you could always go for a motorola defy for 50 quid

Actually, I have a £50 phone. It’s not one of these new-fangled smartphones though.

you could have got alot more features etc for the same price. What phone did you get?

It is a Nokia C2-01. I don’t need features because I can use my tablet or laptop without reading glasses, and I struggle to read the text on the biggest phones.

fair enough but most smart phones have a pinch to zoom feature

Absolutely. I use that to read the smallest text on my iPad, and the trackpad performs the same function on my laptop.

but wouldnt you prefer one device that does the job of you phone, tablet etc in one great package? this phone is around the price of the latest ipad but is many times more powerful(benchmarks prove this) the definition is also several times higher than the “better than the eye can receive all powerful retina display” and its an oled screen meaning organic light emitting diode which uses less power and has great colour reproduction. The higher definition and 5 inch screen means that you will be more than fine.

Thank you, but I think I’ll stick to my MacBook Pro and iPad. I can do real work on the laptop too, so take that when I’m out an about unless I’m travelling light. And if I’ve forgotten to take my phone with me, which does happen, I can use Skype.

if you bought an ordinary latptop for about 500 and this phone you would have saved yourself over a grand easily and you would have much better specs and would be able to do more But hey it’s your god given right to spend money on insanely overpriced junk that is made by a company that steals ideas rebrands them and sues other companies. Seriously apple behaves like they are in ibms position. ibm puts insane amounts in r and d and other companies have used their stuff but no lawsuits. While apple on the other hand literately invented the concept of the aluminium unibody and the firewire port(only about 10% of people remember what that it is). No other company did unibody construction before apple because of how wasteful it is(the end user needs to replace the entire device if things go wrong)

I have been using Apple computers at home and at work for over 20 years. The worst feature is the amount of hype they attract, and I have no intention of contributing to that. FireWire has been an important feature of Apple computers, and SCSI before that. Now we have the Thunderbolt interface. I’ve only had one ‘ordinary’ laptop – a 17 inch Toshiba – and I gave it away to a colleague at work.

its 5 inches which is quite big. Trust me when i say the level of convergence this phone provides (very gigh def high quality oled screen insanely powerful processor with 4 cores dedicated to lower power stuff) you will not struggle to get about 2 days out of it maybe slightly more with normal usage. isnt it better to have one great device(and being able to add 64 gb at will) that replaces a tablet(which in most cases are more expensive and have lower specs)

one allows you to expand the memory the other doesnt the htc one “ultra pixel” camera produces over processed pictures which reviewers are saying tanked. Btw the iphone 5 cost £142 to build(64gb model and roughly 20 pounds between sizes yet massive retail difference) the htc one build price hasnt been released yet but doubt its different. Unibody construction is incredibly wasteful and gives you less in terms of control when fixing it(you need to replace the whole thing)

32gb more than enough for myself and most others. The issue with over processed photos has already been rectified in the next firmware. My last three phones have been the iphone 4, the S2 and then the S3 and while i like the spec of the S4, My htc one is on another level. I honestly don’t believe £630 is justifiable when phones that are just as good if not better are available for £120+ cheaper. But that’s just my opinion.

See the FAQ at the bottom of the page.