A Short Review of Samsung Galaxy S4 Active Smartphone

Galaxy S4 Active is a brand new Samsung smartphone, and it is a variant of the most important smartphone from Galaxy S family, Galaxy S4. There is not much difference in Galaxy S4 Active except that this time the phone is dust-proof as well as water-proof. You can check out this picture that shows you the slightly modified design of Active.

This post is a short review of Galaxy S4 Active; let’s check out the technical specs and features.

Technical Specs

This smartphone is a close relative of Galaxy S4. It doesn’t have any noticeable hardware differences except for a couple. If you are already familiar with the tech specs of Galaxy S4, then you won’t be surprised. Here, we have the major technical specifications of the device.

Display: 4.99 inch LCD TFT 1920x1080 display

Processor: 1.9 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 (the LTE version of Galaxy S4 has the same processor)

Operating System: Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 with TouchWiz overlay

RAM: 2 Gigabytes

Camera: 8 Megapixels

Battery: 2600 milli amp-hour

Features: LTE, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0, USB 2.0, NFC (Near Field Communication), Infrared blaster

The major differences between Active and S4 is in the display and in the camera as you can see above. Most of the Samsung smartphones that have been released in the last few years have included AMOLED and Super AMOLED display panels. They have slight advantages over the regular TFT LCD panel in that they consume less power. However, this special version of S4, Active has LCD TFT unlike Galaxy S4. Other smartphones that come with LCD TFT include iPhone, Sony Xperia Z, etc.

Camera on Active is another major difference between them. S4 has the highest megapixel count in the camera department in the current smartphones, with 13 MP shooter, while Active only has an 8 MP camera at the back. The front facing camera on Active is 2 MP and both of them have LED flash option.

Design Differences

You can find that the Active smartphone is designed differently from Galaxy S4. Active is less durable than its big brother, it seems. It has a plastic back, quintessential to all Samsung devices, and it is not as robust as S4. The one advantage that Active has over S4 is that the phone is resistant to both water and dust. This makes the phone a little bit durable around pools and other water bodies.

Another smartphone in the market that features water and dust resistance is Sony’s Xperia Z. Galaxy S4 Active will be Samsung’s answer to that phone.

In terms of the power and performance, Active is on par with Galaxy S4. The hardware specifications of both these phones are essentially the same, and hence you won’t notice much drop in performance on this smartphone as well.

While Samsung Galaxy S4 international edition has Exynos Octa processor made by Samsung itself, the LTE edition in the US uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 processor which runs at 1.9 GHz. It is the processor that Active comes equipped with. On the top of this, there is a 2 GB RAM option on Active that makes it pretty fast and powerful.

Camera and Battery

While S4 has a 13 MP camera, Active comes with a slightly smaller 8 MP camera. The megapixel war was ended by HTC with its UltraPixel camera on One. 8 MP camera on Active is quite similar to most of the other Samsung smartphones. Two of the previous phones that had 8 MP cameras are Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S2.

The phone has a standard 2600 mAh battery that is not different from S4. There is a problem though. Since the phone uses LCD TFT, it is going to take more power than AMOLED panel on S4. And due to this reason, the battery performance on Active is expected to be slightly worse compared to the flagship.

Conclusion

With some slight alterations, Galaxy S4 Active improves over S4 on certain aspects while lags behind on some others. All in all, if the price is right, this is a great smartphone to buy. Tweaked water-proof design, same performance at smaller price tag, etc., are its important features.

About the Author:

Laurel Shah worked for a few IT and support businesses before moving into technical writing as a full-time work. She is now working for Blue Bugle tech magazine, where she contributes technical entries. She is also active on Twitter.