Top ten (10) Galaxy s4 Features

Samsung Galaxy S4

Gestures, Voice, and Motion Control

1. Air Gesture: If waving your hand over your phone to control it seems silly, you might be tempted to skip the Air Gesture settings altogether. Our advice: don’t. The Air Browse function might not appeal, but the ability to answer a call and turn the speakerphone on by just waving a hand over the phone is useful and pretty cool. We also suggest trying Quick Glance – wave your hand over the screen when it’s off to see the time and important notifications, such as new email.

2. Motion Control: The more smartphones become the center of our lives, the less time we want to spend tapping at them to make stuff happen. Efficiency is what these motion controls are about, particularly the Turn Over To Mute/Pause and Direct Call, which will automatically call the contact on the screen if you hold the S4 up to your ear.

3. S Voice Drive: Samsung’s answer to Siri, S Voice, isn’t as impressive as Apple’s digital assistant, and most owners probably won’t spend a lot of time talking to it. One place it will prove useful is in the car, so Samsung created a special version of S Voice for that environment. Users activate it by voice (Driving Mode On) and the interface changes slightly to show larger text and icons that can be read at a glance plus simplified and easy-to-remember commands. We found that S Voice is good at recognizing commands and gets better the more you use it.

Smart Settings

4. Wi-Fi Smart Mode: Using Wi-Fi whenever possible is a good way to cut down on carrier data usage and save battery life, but unless you leave the wireless radio on all the time you might forget to connect when you’re near a known router. With this smart mode turned on, the Galaxy S4 will detect when you’re in frequently visited locations and turn on the Wi-Fi for you. On our review unit, this feature was on by default. If your phone keeps connecting to a router even if you turned the radio off, this is why. To toggle it off and on, go to Wi-Fi in the Settings menu.

5. Smart Screen: We’re big fans of the Smart Stay feature, first introduced with the Galaxy S3, which keeps the screen turned on if it knows you’re still looking at the phone. This is back on the S4 along with a few other eye-detecting tricks. Smart Scroll is supposed to let you scroll through text by tilting the phone slightly as you look at the screen, though we couldn’t get it to work consistently; it also only works with a few apps. Instead, turn on Smart Rotation to keep the screen oriented to your eyes. We’ve all had that moment of using the phone while on your side in bed or on the couch and having to turn off screen rotation so it doesn’t go landscape when you want to stay in portrait. Or even times when the phone tilts just enough to activate the rotation though that’s not what you were trying to do. With this feature, rotation won’t activate if it can tell that you’re looking at the screen, even if you’re doing so while horizontal.

Android Enhancements

6. Notification Panel: The Jelly Bean Notification shade is a step up from previous versions of Android utility-wise. Samsung adds to this by placing a row of toggles at the top for quick access to important features: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Airplane Mode, S Beam, and more. Way more. So many that the company leaves it up to you to prioritize the order. Tapping the grid icon in the top left gives access to all the toggles at once and an editing tool, so you can shuffle and order them according to your needs. In addition, you can tap and hold on any toggle to go directly to the settings for it. We also appreciate the quick access to Brightness controls.

7.Keyboard: The Galaxy S4′s keyboard utilizes SwiftKey technology for more accurate word predictions than the stock keyboard offers as well as a Swype-like Flow feature. Compared to the actual Swiftkey keyboard, Samsung’s is lackluster. There are fewer options for controlling the predictions and typing pattern, and the comma key still requires a long press, which is ridiculous. However, the keyboard has some extra features that make it worth keeping around.

Long press the mic key to access the handwriting, optical recognition, and floating keyboards. The handwriting keyboard is just as quick and accurate as the one on the Note 2 even without using a stylus. The OCR input takes advantage of the Optical Reader app – just point it at text, take a picture, crop it to include the text you need, then edit the results. One-handed users will like the floating keyboard since it’s smaller and can be placed anywhere on the screen. We also used the enhanced clipboard often as it retains the last 10 things copied to it and allows users to paste multiple items.

8.Multiwindow: Though the Galaxy S4′s display is quite large at 5 inches, splitting it in two for the Multiwindow feature might feel cramped. Multiview makes it possible to use two apps at one time. Unfortunately, it only works with a handful of apps. Still, we recommend giving it a try since the size of the app windows is adjustable and toggling back and forth between two apps can get frustrating.

Pre-loaded Apps

9.Optical Reader: This is one of the best apps included with the Galaxy S4 and is the perfect companion to the phone’s superior camera. It can scan and transcribe large blocks of text from a picture as well as recognize text in real time and translate it to and from English and dozens of other languages. The app will recognize business card data and, once transcribed, will add it to a Contact card’s appropriate fields automatically. You’re not limited to just one screenful of data since the wide sweep setting makes it easy to scan large pages of text, you just need a steady hand. That’s the app’s one weakness: it requires the text to be clear, and that means unsteady hands can hinder the operation. When we did get a crisp shots, the recognized text came up instantly and was almost always accurate. In addition to all this, Optical Reader also scans barcodes, so you don’t have to download an extra app for that anymore.

10. S Translator: You might not ever find an occasion to open up this app unless you travel widely or live in an area where not everyone speaks your language, such as a large city. If you do, you’ll find that S Translate can be a useful way to facilitate a conversation, as long as everyone is patient. Just choose a language, speak to the phone, and you’ll get a text translation and the words spoken aloud. The real power of this app is that it’s another one with tendrils in multiple places throughout the Galaxy S4′s software. Aside from the Optical Reader, you can also use it in the Samsung email app when reading or composing and it pops up as an option when you select text in most other Samsung apps. The translations aren’t always perfect, but we expect they will improve over time. Just watch out when it comes to data usage since the engine requires uploading and downloading the input to and from a server to work.

Top 10 Biggest Festivals in the World

1. Mardi Gras, New Orleans, United States

The Mardi Gras lasts for a couple of weeks before the beginning of Lent. Mardi Gras itself stands for Fat Tuesday and is celebrated the day before Ash Wednesday. Parades are usually held everyday, if the weather permits. A king and a queen head the parade and they go around on floats that are manned by people who throw trinkets to the crowd below. Female members of the crowd are encouraged to show their breasts in order to get a trinket. All inhibitions are let loose during Fat Tuesday, as Ash Wednesday marks the official start of the Christian Lent Season and is marked by abstinence and penance.

2. Carnival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Roughly a million people attend the festivities each year. The festival lasts for four days, with the highlight being the Sambodromo parade. It features neighborhood parades going up against each other to see who will get bragging rights as the best samba school. The yearlong preparation features gaudy floats and nearly naked women. A Masquerade Ball is also held, where participants wear masks, wigs and costumes. Celebrities grace this anonymous affair.

3. Kanamara Matsuri, Kawasaki, Japan

This one is definitely not for the prude. The festival features transvestites carrying a giant pink penis all around town. Onlookers, from the young to the old, are given lollipops that are shaped like a phallus. Radishes are carved up like penis, and even playground staples like the swing are shaped like the male organ. The festival originally came into being in the 17th century with the aim of raising awareness on the dangers of syphilis. It is now staged to raise money for AIDS research.

4. Semana Santa, Guatemala

It is like Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” but in this festival, you can view it live and in full glory. Different statues of Jesus are paraded around town, with most decked with lavish decorations of several meters long. Re-enactment of the sentencing and crucifixion of Jesus are held, complete with a Pontius Pilate and Roman soldiers. The city is covered by black crepe paper and you can just smell the aroma of incense in the air.

5. Il Palio, Italy

This is horse racing extreme. Representatives from the 17 neighborhoods of Siena gather to compete in a bareback horse race that is staged around the Piazza del Campo. The neighborhoods rival one another, with intermarriages between members largely discouraged and even forbidden. The race oftentimes turns violent and you would hear a lot of bone crunching as the riders hit the pavement. It is a good thing that the race usually lasts less than a couple of minutes only. Winners celebrate with a baby bottle of wine, as the victory signals a rebirth for their neighborhood.

6. La Tomatina, Spain

Imagine a food fight that involves the entire town, with 125 thousand kilos of tomato being trucked in so that it could be used as weapons. This is the culmination of the celebration of the town’s patron saint. Tens of thousands attend this festival. Just dive in, hurl tomatoes at everyone and anyone, keep throwing until the street turns red and wait for the signal to end within one hour.  This is definitely not for the short-tempered.

7. Burning Man, Nevada, United States

Nobody really knows what it is about, but every August or September, tens of thousands of people gather for one week to barter goods related to the year’s theme. Selling is forbidden in the area during the festival, except for the official sellers of coffee and ice. And when the festival ends, a giant effigy will be set on fire.

8. Diwali, India

It is also known as Deepavaali, or the Festival of Lights. It lasts for five days and the end of the festival expects new beginnings. Lamps and candles light up homes all over the country. Firecrackers are set off to ward off the evil spirits. Sweet delicacies are exchanged even between enemies. Quarrels are settled, grudges are set aside and hatchets are buried during this time of the year. Homes also undergo spring-cleaning and new clothes are bought that will bring in good luck and renewed fortune. The festival enjoins everyone, regardless of religion, belief or creed.

9. Dia de Muertos, Mexico

Officially in the Catholic calendar, November 1 and 2 are All Saints and All Souls Day, respectively. In Mexico, it is celebrated as the Day of the Dead. Family reunions are held in cemeteries so that even those who have already passed away are included. But rather than be a sad occasion, you will actually see a lot of food and alcohol, colorful costumes, parties and mariachi bands performing next to the graves. It is like Halloween, with lollies shaped like skulls and skeletons propped up on stilts adorning the place. But unlike Halloween, this festival does not fear death. Rather, it celebrates the continuation of life even beyond death. It will also remove the fear of crossing over as it recognizes the value of communing beyond this dimension of life.

10. Noche de los Rabanos, Mexico

Two days before Christmas, Mexican artisans gather to compete in a radish-shaping contest. Tableaux are carved out of the massive radishes with the one creating the most beautiful radish sculpture being adjudged as the winner. The festival traces its roots to the 16th century when Spain brought radishes into Mexico. The Spaniards then carved out fancy shapes in order to attract buyers for the crisp, but pungent, roots.