Introduction

Ease of Use

The Samsung Galaxy S4 measures 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm, which means that it can be easily stored inside a trouser pocket, and weighs a mere 130g without battery and card. It's undoubtedly a large but very slim device that will definitely get you noticed, especially in the attractive white finish of our review sample. Build quality is fine, but not class-leading, and having to remove the plastic cover off the back to insert a microSD card is more than a little disconcerting!

The Galaxy S4 has a fixed lens with a focal length the 35mm equivalent of 31mm and a maximum aperture of f/2.2. There's 13-megapixel effective resolution from the standard sized 1/2.33-inch CMOS sensor. On the back is a very impressive 5-inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel Full HD touchscreen AMOLED display, and the S4 zoom runs the Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system.

The plastic back cover aside, with what feels like a higher proportion of metal in the build than plastic, the Galaxy S4's sleek and stylish exterior certainly looks the part. Other than the lens, the only other features on the sparse front of the Galaxy S4 are two slots for the microphones and the LED flash unit, positioned directly below the lens.

Front	Front

Located on the top-plate is a thin power button. Hold this down for the first time and the Galaxy S4 stutters into life, taking quite a while to display a series of graphical screens, with the rear screen switches to camera mode a couple of seconds later. The startup time from Standby is thankfully much quicker at just under 2 seconds, roughly what we'd expect from a point-and-shoot camera, although no speed demon.

There's no physical shutter-release button on the Galaxy S4, replaced instead by a soft key on the touchscreen. To focus, simply tap anywhere on the screen and the AF point appears in green along with the customary confirmation 'bleep', then tap the shutter button to take the shot. A full-sized 13 megapixel image is committed to either the built-in memory (16/32/64Mb) or an optional micro-SD card in one to two seconds, which is impressive. You can even take a picture using the power of your own voice, with "capture", "shoot", "smile" and "cheese" commands all available. Voice control can also be used to zoom the lens, fire the flash, set the timer options, and change the shooting mode, amongst other settings.

Camera On	Image Displayed

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has an array of beginner and more advanced shooting modes. The subject recognizing Auto setting is point and shoot all the way, the camera getting it mostly right, although - typically - busier scenes can confuse the auto-focus and the shutter will still fire even if the image is noticeably soft, so you can occasionally come away with blurred results. There's also a range of 11 different clever scene modes, including the useful HDR and Panorama modes, and 13 creative filters which are accessed by pressing the arrow icon at the bottom of the touchscreen, useful for previewing and adding a not-too-cliched effect.

In terms of photographic features, the default camera app also allows you to choose the ISO speed (100-800), metering (centre-weighted, matrix and spot), white balance, exposure compensation, turn burst shot, face detection and anti-shake on or off, set the photo and video sizes, configure the self-timer, and set the flash to on, off or auto.

Mode Menu	Effects Menu

Pressing the Home button fires up the Galaxy S4's default screen, which displays the time and date, allows you to perform a Google Search, includes icons for the Paper Artist, Instagram, Photo Wizard, Video Editor, Camera, and Gallery apps, plus Dropbox, Play Store and a further Apps icon which accesses all the default apps and the Widgets screen.

Having the ability to connect to a wi-fi network or cellular data if using a SIM card, then edit your images and video with either the Samsung apps, Instagram or any one of hundreds of other Android apps, and then upload them to your favourite online network quickly becomes compulsive and makes the traditional process of downloading to a computer seem laborious and old-fashioned.

With the 5-inch screen swallowing up the entire backplate of the Samsung Galaxy S4, apart from the Home button, there are very few other physical controls apart from a headphone port and a volume control button. Note that the battery can be removed, but charging is still done in-camera.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 13 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 5Mb.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 produced images of good quality during the review period. Noise is the main issue, already becoming obvious at the relatively slow setting of ISO 200, and then getting progressively worse at the still modest settings of ISO 400 and 800.

Chromatic aberrations were well controlled, with limited purple fringing effects appearing in high contrast situations. The 13 megapixel images were a little soft straight out of the camera at the default sharpen setting and require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera sharpening level. Macro performance is fine, allowing you to focus as close as 10cms away from the subject.

The built-in flash worked well indoors, with no red-eye and good overall exposure. The anti-shake system works well when hand-holding the Galaxy S4 in low-light conditions, but the maximum shutter speed doesn't allow the camera to capture enough light for most after-dark situations. The HDR and Panorama modes are the best of the so-called Smart scene modes.

Noise

There are 4 ISO settings available on the Samsung Galaxy S4. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Samsung Galaxy S4's fixed lens provides a focal length of 31mm in 35mm terms, as demonstrated below.

31mm

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little soft at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can't change the in-camera sharpening level.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Samsung Galaxy S4 handled chromatic aberrations very well during the review, with limited purple fringing mainly present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations, as shown in the example below.

Chromatic Aberrations (100% Crop)

Macro

The Samsung Galaxy S4 allows you to focus on a subject that is 10cms away from the camera. The first image shows how close you can get to the subject (in this case a compact flash card). The second image is a 100% crop.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Samsung Galaxy S4 are Off, On and Auto. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off (31mm)	Flash On (31mm)

And here are a couple of portrait shots. Both the Fill-in and Red-Eye Reduction modes didn't cause any amount of red-eye.

On	On (100% Crop)

Night

The Samsung Galaxy S4's doesn't have a very long maximum shutter speed and you can't set it manually anyway, which is not great news if you're seriously interested in night photography.

Night	Night (100% Crop)

Digital Image Stabilisation

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a digital anti-shake mechanism, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital cameras. To test this, we took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken with anti shake turned off, the second with it turned on. With anti-shake turned on, the images are noticeably sharper than with anti-shake turned off.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti Shake On (100% Crop)
1/17th sec / 31mm

Rich Tone (HDR)

The High Dynamic Range scene mode captures more contrast than a single exposure can handle by combining multiple exposures into one image.

Off	On

Panorama

The Samsung Galaxy S4 allows you to take panoramic images very easily, by 'sweeping' with the camera while keeping the shutter release depressed. The camera automatically does all the processing and stitching. The main catch is that the resulting image is of fairly low resolution.

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Samsung Galaxy S4 camera, which were all taken using the 13 megapixel JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

As of February 2025, we are no longer providing full size sample images or videos for download.

Please contact us if you have any feedback on our new policy.

Product Images

Front of the Samsung Galaxy S4

Front of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Turned On

Front of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Apps Screen

Front of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Camera

Front of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Camera

Front of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Image Displayed

Rear of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Settings

Rear of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Mode Menu

Rear of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Camera Menu

Rear of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Video Menu

Rear of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Settings Menu

Rear of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Front-facing Camera

Rear of the Samsung Galaxy S4 / Effects Menu

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is one of the most popular Android smartphones on the market, and its camera is a solid, if unspectacular, performer that's good enough for most uses that its owners will put it to.

By compact camera standards, the Samsung Galaxy S4's image quality isn't that great, suffering from obvious noise at relatively slow ISO speeds, but it is a marked improvement on most smartphones. It is perfectly fine for cropping and resizing for posting on Facebook or Instagram, or for making regular-sized prints. The digital image stabilisation system kind of works by forcing the shutter speed to 1/30th second, but it does so by choosing a higher ISO with an accompanying increase in noise artifacts, so the Samsung Galaxy S4 is best suited to taking photos in good lighting conditions.

So while the camera on the Samsung Galaxy S4 isn't good enough to choose this smartphone over another rival device, it is more than adequate for daily use, especially in good light where the quality begins to rival a compact camera.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	4
Value for money	3.5

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Samsung Galaxy S4 from around the web.

Specifications

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