Samsung Galaxy S4, aka the Galaxy S3S: The hardware race is over – software wins again

[Archean]

Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S4 — but looking at its hardware and software specs, I wonder if the Korean chaebol should’ve instead taken a leaf out of Apple’s playbook and called it the Galaxy S3S. Beyond its larger, 1080p screen — which by all accounts is a wonder to behold — there is almost no difference between the Galaxy S3 and S4′s hardware. At the presentation in New York, various Samsung execs spent a couple of hours detailing the S4′s new features — and, really, with almost no exceptions, they were all software-based.

Mostly I can agree with that, only difference apart from better screen is a better SoC, but it still remains a quad core phone in reality. That out of the way, I too can't see utility of adding redundant features such as S translate or S Voice etc. Anyway, my personal feeling is S3 owners doesn't really need to upgrade to S4, unless they really want that display.

 

[Kunming]

I agree you probably don't need to upgrade if you've got an S3 already.
However the important thing is this: Staying ahead of the iPhone ^^.
People should know there's better stuff than that junk. So Samsung is
just trying to stay in the lead ! : D

 

[Archean]

There is one big plus for iPhone, I.e. iOS, which can run efficiently on reasonable hardware. Whereas, Android is nearly rubbish if the specs aren't there to back it up.

 

[Kunming]

I would've thought it was the other way around, as Android is
based on Linux. And as is known by many, Linux has been forged in
the fires of epicness; which we'll hopefully be seeing with the advent of
Ubuntu on smartphones for example.

 

[SNGX1275]

Being based on linux has little merit though. Sure you can run some form of linux on damn near anything, but the bare bones linux is completely useless for a desktop or smartphone environment.

Apple's strength, forever, has been that they only have to support a limited number of hardware senarios. Their competition, needs to be able to run on almost any configuration you can imagine. So, Archean is right, iOS is going to be more efficient because it is optimized for a very limited set of hardware, Android needs to be able to work on a much larger hardware base.