• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Galaxy S4 - Watch Thread....

One other thing that I've found pleasant about the GS4 is that it can reliably lock GPS indoors. None of my previous phones even came close to doing that.
 
Good to hear, considering that my old GS barely gets lock even when standing in the middle of football field.
 
I got the neo hybrid case, it looks good but I don't think it's worth the 30 they were asking for it. The black back is a thin rubber piece. It'll offer basic protection and nice style but it's not a heavy duty case in the least.
 
onedestinazn2 said:
I got the neo hybrid case, it looks good but I don't think it's worth the 30 they were asking for it. The black back is a thin rubber piece. It'll offer basic protection and nice style but it's not a heavy duty case in the least.
Click to expand...

How's the corner protection? That's the most important part in the end (the GS4 will survive landing on its back most of the time even without the rubber).
 
MrCrispy said:
Does the S4 have better signal reception than S3?
Click to expand...

I would think that is dependent on mobile service provider.

Also I am surprised not to see someone trying to make aluminum back covers for the s4, since I saw quiet a few people complain about the plastic one.
Kickstarter anyone?
 
ChronoReverse said:
How's the corner protection? That's the most important part in the end (the GS4 will survive landing on its back most of the time even without the rubber).
Click to expand...

The colored border is rather soft but it fits fairly snug on the S4 so I'd imagine it's better than nothing but its no otterbox. I mainly got it for the style tbh, but the little added protection is a plus. If you're really that worried about corner/drop protection I;d get something else.

Verass said:
Also I am surprised not to see someone trying to make aluminum back covers for the s4, since I saw quiet a few people complain about the plastic one.
Kickstarter anyone?
Click to expand...

I thought I heard from someone that it may interfere with the S4's nfc/radio.
 
Depends, the back cover shouldn't intefere too bad since its just a cover and doesn't house the antenna. When samsung released their previous tablets with the aluminum back cover it was a mess with GPS as they connected it with their antenna's and got terrible signal strength.
 
Aluminum back covers exist for the SGS2 as well. When in use, GPS is 99% useless. It will occasionally lock.
 
Medion said:
I don't want to assume that they have the same limitation on the S3 and S4. Just stating what I know about the S2.
Click to expand...

I had heard differently, never tried it myself, I just heard wrong or from very un-informed people.

I work with a person who bought the aluminium cover and swears its the best buy ever, I wonder if its even metal.
 
Doesn't the Htc One use double home press to activate multi-task? And doesn't the iPhone do the same? Why does Samsung's implementation lag so much more?
 
ChronoReverse said:
Doesn't the Htc One use double home press to activate multi-task?
Click to expand...

Yes.

ChronoReverse said:
And doesn't the iPhone do the same?
Click to expand...

Yes.

ChronoReverse said:
Why does Samsung's implementation lag so much more?
Click to expand...

It doesn't. We were talking about S-Voice being activated by the double home press, not the multi-task menu. To open the mulit-task menu on Samsung phones, you just hold down the physical home button, which is just as fast (and easier IMO) as double tapping the home button on the One/iPhone.
 
T4rd said:
It doesn't. We were talking about S-Voice being activated by the double home press, not the multi-task menu. To open the mulit-task menu on Samsung phones, you just hold down the physical home button, which is just as fast (and easier IMO) as double tapping the home button on the One/iPhone.
Click to expand...

No, that's not what I meant.

I meant that clearly the One and iPhone both need to read the double tap as well since they assigned it to multi-task. But if you just single-press home, both don't have a lag before heading home.

With the GS4, it does have such a lag which is what I'm pointing out as a piece of poor coding by Samsung.


I have a GS4, I know how to multi-task on it =P
 
ChronoReverse said:
No, that's not what I meant.

I meant that clearly the One and iPhone both need to read the double tap as well since they assigned it to multi-task. But if you just single-press home, both don't have a lag before heading home.

With the GS4, it does have such a lag which is what I'm pointing out as a piece of poor coding by Samsung.


I have a GS4, I know how to multi-task on it =P
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it's not poor coding, it's just their method of activating S-Voice, which you can disable by following the directions in that link above. After disabling S-Voice, there's no lag at all getting back to your home screen. At least there isn't on my Note 2, I'm sure it fixes it on the GS4 too as it does on the GS3.
 
But that's the thing. Activating s-voice isn't any different than activating multi-task (the launch time isn't relevant).

Samsung's implementation is clearly delaying too long after the first press waiting for the second press whereas Htc and Apple's implementations do not. This is a mistake in the coding (hence my poor coding comment).


In any case, I wasn't bothered too much by the time it took to get to home after pressing home on my GS4 but this was a noticeable change (I guess it doesn't have be something that was bothersome for the improvement to be appreciated).
 
The S2 had the same problem. Even removing/disabling voice command/s voice, the device was slow to respond to a single press. Since JB, the delay is removed when disabling that app. And I agree, they left too long a window for that second button press.
 
ChronoReverse said:
But that's the thing. Activating s-voice isn't any different than activating multi-task (the launch time isn't relevant).

Samsung's implementation is clearly delaying too long after the first press waiting for the second press whereas Htc and Apple's implementations do not. This is a mistake in the coding (hence my poor coding comment).


In any case, I wasn't bothered too much by the time it took to get to home after pressing home on my GS4 but this was a noticeable change (I guess it doesn't have be something that was bothersome for the improvement to be appreciated).
Click to expand...

Ehh, I think we're getting confused here.

Activating S-Voice IS different from activating the multi-task menu. For S-Voice, you double-tap the home button to activate it. For the multi-task menu, you hold it in for a second.

If you disable home-button activation in the S-Voice settings though (or just disable S-Voice completely as I did) there is no longer a delay at all after pressing the home button. So you can fix that delay if you want to. I don't think that's a poor coding issue or a mistake, it's just a feature implementation issue.

Unless you're saying that the home button delay is still there after disabling S-Voice on the GS4..?
 
I'm saying that on the One, you double-tap Home to Multitask. But if you single-press Home on the One, there's no lag. Likewise with the iPhone.

Basically, there's no reason for the GS4 to lag when pressing Home even if double-tap Home is mapped to S-voice.


This has nothing to do with Multitasking on the GS4
 
Last edited:
I think what ChronoReverse is saying is this:

HTC Sense 5 also has a double-tap home button function. And yet a single tap
home on Sense 5 does not lag like on TouchWiz UX 2.
 
ChronoReverse said:
I'm saying that on the One, you double-tap Home to Multitask. But if you single-press Home on the One, there's no lag. Likewise with the iPhone.

Basically, there's no reason for the GS4 to lag when pressing Home even if double-tap Home is mapped to S-voice.
Click to expand...

Do you program? No matter what, a delay HAS to be implemented to distinguish between single and double taps. That delay can differ. Lower delay means lower noticeable delay (obviously!) but requires you to double tap quicker. Samsung probably just used a delay unnecessarily higher than HTC such that it's noticeable. If there were no delay then the phone would have to start processing a single tap, then when the second tap comes, it would have to stop processing, undo anything it did, and start processing the double tap, without making the phone look to the user like it has no idea what it's doing.

On a semi-related note, I'm still using my GS2 Epic 4g Touch. I've used many ROMs on it but none seem to fix the issue that if I turn the screen off (or let the idle timer turn it off) with an application in the foreground, when I turn it back on, the phone won't recognize any of the soft keys (home/back/whatever) for at least 5 seconds. If I don't have an application active then it responds immediately to said buttons. Related? Anyone else have this problem? Do the new phones suffer it, if anyone has experienced the same on a GS2? I can't imagine it's the exact same issue we're talking about, unless Samsung REALLY messed things up. I'm still using an ICS-based ROM if it matters, not JB.
 
Last edited:
dandragonrage said:
Do you program? No matter what, a delay HAS to be implemented to distinguish between single and double taps. That delay can differ. Lower delay means lower noticeable delay (obviously!) but requires you to double tap quicker. Samsung probably just used a delay unnecessarily higher than HTC such that it's noticeable.
Click to expand...

I specifically meant they screwed it up the delay. Seriously guys, you don't have to argue semantics there.
 
Heads up guys, the T-Mo update this morning supposedly broke root access (though all known means of gaining root on the device) .... Thread at XDA on it, god i hope that the unit I get tomorrow doesn't have this update on it.

On the plus side, people who used the update are reporting most of the lag is gone ...

edit: Wonder if the fix described here, http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/0...os-galaxy-s4-update-but-this-is-a-good-thing/ , can be used on the Snapdragon CPUs .... rather be ported over, since essentially its the same lockout method correct?
 
Last edited:
anyone know when the 32GB version will be out internationally? I can't wait any more :(
 
Looks like the Devs @ XDA have got the new May 7 update on T-Mo varient rooted again :D
 
It's easy when you have an unlocked from the start bootloader. You simply replace the kernel with a modified one.
 
ChronoReverse said:
I specifically meant they screwed it up the delay. Seriously guys, you don't have to argue semantics there.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I just realized what you're saying; since the One and iPhone have a double-tap action (multi-task) and don't have a(n excessive) delay when you single-tap the home button, there's no reason why Samsung's phones do even with S-Voice enabled.

I agree, but I'm not sure if that's true about there not being a delay when single-tapping the button to go home, at least on the iPhone. I've played around with my mom's iPhone 4S when I gave it to her last year as a gift (helped set it up for her) and I did notice a slight delay (not quite a full second, I'd say) after hitting the home button until it actually returned home. I'm not sure if it's comparable to the Galaxy phones or not as the first thing I remove from my Note 2 when I flash a ROM is S-Voice. I'm curious if there is in fact much of a delay on the HTC One because of the multitasking action too. They may have less of a window to register the second tap in order to seem more responsive when you want to go home, but if you make the window too short then it could make activating the multi-tasking menu frustrating, so it's really a matter of preference as to whether you prefer the longer window or not.

Regardless though; since you can fix it by disabling the feature in S-Voice, I still say it's a moot issue. You shouldn't be using S-Voice anyways since Google Now has 90% (if not all) of the functionality and is faster and more accurate at executing your commands.
 
If only Samsung would open source their camera drivers and special features, or at least provide support. I like AOSP but there's no denying TouchWiz has a bunch if useful features, with the S4 they have even more, e.g. the neat camera effects.

There was an old CM project to bring those features in, I think it was on blamesamsung.org, and nothing ever came of it I think.
 
The AOSP camera seems passable at least:

Indoor but decently lit. ISO-200, 1/15s


Dimly lit, indoors. ISO-1000, 1/15s


I'll try some sunlit photos when the sun comes out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top