People want their television to work like a TV. Sending tweets on Twitter, posting photos on Facebook and browsing the Web are best left to smartphones and tablets. Indeed, more than 40% of U.S. households with Internet-enabled TVs haven't even bothered to hook them up to the Web, according to market researcher NPD Group.

This is not the future TV manufacturers expected.

RIP, Smart TV

In 2010, reimagining TVs as computer hybrids with big screens for the living room seemed to make lots of sense. Why not play games, run applications and surf the Web from the same box that shows movies and programming from a cable or satellite provider? Proponents quickly dubbed the new device the "smart TV."

Intel, sensing a new market for its microprocessors, was a huge supporter, saying the smart TV "could be the most significant change in television history." Yet by end of 2011, Intel had abandoned the smart TV business to focus on smartphones and tablets.

The main problem was that what Samsung, LG big TV makers delivered was a mishmash of applications that had nothing to do with watching TV — the main reason people gather around the big box in the first place. Unsurprisingly, very few consumers wanted to spend more for supposed next-generation television sets that included a bunch of features they didn't want in the first place.

Today, the TV is evolving much differently. Internet video now comes to the set via other devices such as the Apple TV, Roku and Boxee Box. Nearly six in 10 consumers who own an Internet-connected high-definition TV use such services to supplement pay TV subscriptions, NPD says.

As for other once-vaunted "smart TV" activities — reading or posting on Twitter or Facebook, reading digital books or magazines, video calling, shopping or gaming — well, they attract well below 10% of such people.

Second-Screen TV

Video is clearly what people want on their TVs, so pay TV providers have turned their attention to tablet apps. Instead of shipping expensive set-top boxes, service providers want people to use tablets to find movies, see what friends are watching and browse their favorite programming.

The apps will add to the enjoyment of watching TV by providing player stats in a baseball game or actor bios and behind-the-scene clips from the users' favorite shows. These apps could yield be a goldmine of subscriber data that can be fed to advertisers who could then turn around and use the information to target advertising.

Having an app that knows your viewing habits could be useful when you're traveling. Imagine connecting your tablet to the TV in a hotel room and immediately having the same viewing experience you have at home.

"The TV needs to be more like a docking station," Paul Gray, analyst for DisplaySearch, an NPD company, told me. "It needs to play nice with these mobile devices."

Panasonic is one of the first manufacturers to ship televisions capable of communicating wirelessly with a tablet. Rivals will surely follow suit, as manufacturers emphasize seamless integration with mobile devices.

Dumb Monitors Need Not Apply

To call these sets "dumb monitors" would oversimplify things. A lot of good engineering is needed to provide reliable interoperability with any tablet or smartphone, irrespective of whether it runs Android or Apple's iOS.

"I do contest people who say that TV ends up as sort of a big dumb monitor," Gray says. "You actually probably need quite a lot of intelligence, but it's kind of under the hood."

TV manufacturers, however, are still stuck in the same box they've long tried to escape: Their products are mostly all alike and thus hard to differentiate. Shifts in broadcast technology — such as NTSC to HD, and before long, HD to 4K — or screen technology (LCD vs. LED, for instance) enable some innovation, but once things shake out and picture quality is comparable across models, TV sets once again become commodites. That leaves Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and the rest with price cuts and not much more to lure buyers.

Commoditization is the curse of the consumer electronics industry. TV makers will look for ways to add value after the use of second-screen apps become mainstream. The trick will be to avoid another failure like the smart TV.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

A smartphone can be nothing more than just a phone. Or, it could be a companion that helps you navigate this crazy world. Samsung thinks that it has designed its newest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, to be a life companion to help you with the intricacies of existence. The truth is a bit more complex.

Samsung says that the design of the Galaxy S4 was inspired by,  “A precious stone glittering in the dark, or countless stars sparkling in the night sky.”

That would be awesome if it made any lick of sense. 

It is hard to get inspired by the design of a smartphone that feels like a piece of plastic. That is not to say that Samsung did a poor job with the Galaxy S4, it is a quality phone (even if it has its faults). But it is difficult to put it up against some of its sleeker rivals (HTC One, iPhone 5) and say that Samsung knocked it out of the park in terms of design. 

In a video released by Samsung today, the company explains its design decisions in a very Apple-esque type of way. Samsung roles out its Korean design team to tell you how the Galaxy S4 was, “inspired by nature” and “plays to your emotions” and is a life companion. It would be funny if it was a parody, but Samsung released the video without a hint of sarcasm.

Life Companion

Once you get past all the platitudes and corporate speak of why the Galaxy S4 is super awesome (from Samsung designers’ point of view), the video does hit on one key notion that is increasingly relevant when a person interacts with a smartphone. Namely, smartphones have become “life companions.”

In many ways this is true. Smartphones are becoming truly smart with the ability to intuit where people are, why they are there and what they are doing. Your smartphone can help you find friends who are near you or the best restaurant to eat at in an unfamiliar neighborhood. It manages your schedules, sleeps when you do and you can talk to it. If you do not have any other friends, a smartphone indeed can make a decent life companion.

Yet, Samsung did not really come up with this idea. The notion of a “personal assistant” was popularized by Apple with Siri. Intuiting the world around you is a concept championed by Google as can be seen with Google Now and Maps. In many ways, these are some of the first mass-culture steps into the realm of artificial intelligence where a device you carry around with you at all times becomes an extension of your own body and mind. Companies like Nuance (which makes Dragon language software and helped develop parts of Siri) or Kimera are working on semantic software solutions that help your smartphone understand data that is inputted into the device to help you understand the world around you. An entire ecosystem has grown to provide life companion-like qualities that Samsung is touting as its own. 

Samsung’s role is to provide the vehicle for these types of solutions. It does that by providing a high-quality device where these semantic solutions can be integrated. The Korean manufacturer may like to think that it is the panacea of all things smart, but, as the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a life companion. 

By putting its own media content store next to Google Play on its new Galaxy S4 smartphones, Samsung is essentially turning all of its users into beta testers that could determine the future of the Android operating system.

Think about it. Apple has iTunes. Android has Google Play. Amazon has its own Video On Demand with music and books. BlackBerry as its App World and Microsoft has its Windows Phone Marketplace. What do all of these companies have in common? To a certain extent, they all make their own operating systems, have application stores and sell content such as books, movies, music and television shows through their own proprietary channels. 

Where, exactly, does Samsung fit into this equation? 

With the release of the new Galaxy S4 flagship, Samsung has taken all of its media “hubs” and consolidated it all into one Samsung Hub that sells books, movies, television shows, games, apps and music. Samsung Hub comes preloaded on all new Galaxy devices and is pushed front and center with a widget on a home screen panel on its devices. 

Samsung is a little bit of a misnomer in this equation. It is not like Apple, which makes its own operating system. It uses Google's Android. By juxtaposing its Media Hub next to Google Play, Samsung is basically asking users to make a choice. Where will you get your content? From us or from Google?

What is Samsung's goal here? Is it preparing to fork Google's Android operating system and go it alone? With Media Hub, Samsung may be turning users into millions of "beta testers." If people end up using Media Hub for their content and apps instead of Google Play, Samsung may see reason to fork Android and go it alone. If not, Samsung can try to create its own hub of content that runs across all of its devices, just as Sony tried (and failed at) a couple years ago.

This… is a little awkward.

Tense Relations Between Samsung & Google?

Much was made earlier this year about how Samsung has grown so dominant in the Android ecosystem that it has become a threat to Google. In certain ways this is true, in many ways it is not. The hinge of the argument is that Samsung could fairly easily strip out all of Google’s services from Galaxy devices and serve similar services up itself. So, no more Gmail, Chrome, Google Play and so forth. 

Google executives have reportedly acknowledged that Samsung, while being its biggest Android ally, is also a cause of anxiety. It would not take much for Samsung to fork the open source kernel of Android and go it alone. Google would then lose out of the all-important user data and profiles that are the core of its advertising business strategy through mobile.

Samsung already makes many of its own alternatives to Google’s offerings through its TouchWiz interface. Samsung has its own email app and browser. Galaxy smartphones come loaded with dual apps for almost every core function – one from Samsung and one from Google. Usually, the Samsung ones are inferior.

And now there is Hub.

Hub Next To Google Play

Why do these mobile operating system makers put content in their app stores? Really, the profit margins are not great as companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have to license the content from the creators (movie studios, record labels etc.) and barely eke any money out of it for themselves. 

But what content does do is sell devices. The best thing that Apple ever did with the iPhone was create the App Store and open up iTunes so music and movies could be downloaded to people’s smartphones. You could argue that the App Store/iTunes has been responsible for selling more Apple devices than any other force combined. 

This fact is not lost on Samsung.

Yet, Samsung is a little bit different from Apple. Its product portfolio is broader, especially when you factor in that it makes televisions (which are some of the best available). Samsung is not just looking to sell smartphones, it wants users to go down the full profile and own a Samsung tablet, computer and TV.

That, Samsung’s director of product marketing Ryan Biden tells me, is the biggest push for Samsung Hub.

“Hub is really intended for people that own multiple Samsung devices,” Biden said. “It now allows us to deliver content to other devices from Samsung.”

That is why Samsung has baked in “screen-mirroring” into its recent Galaxy devices. Through Wi-Fi Direct, you can broadcast what is on your phone to your Samsung TV or vice versa. Apple can do this in a limited fashion with its Apple TV box and AirPlay but that then creates three devices – TV, smartphone, box – Samsung can do it with two. The kicker? It has to be two Samsung devices. 

Biden downplays the fact that, just by its very existence, Samsung Hub battles Google Play. In Samsung’s mind, they are for two very different use cases for a media store. 

That may not exactly be the case though. Google’s Android runs on smartphones and tablets and it has Google TV, where Android has been fitted for the big screen. Samsung has even made some of its Smart TVs with Google TV integration. So, the differences that Biden cites may not be as far apart as Samsung likes to think.

Your smartphone should not be a source of stress. With its new Galaxy S4, it seems Samsung may not have gotten the memo.

It seems that every feature Samsung could possibly dream up ended up in the Galaxy S4. The company pushes the envelope with technologies and features that keep the rest of the industry on its toes. Yet it packs the Galaxy S4 with so many of its own branded apps, so many features of questionable value that don't even work properly, that it detracts from the overall quality of the device. 

Samsung does allow you to strip away many of those features. Its custom-made widgets can be thrown out, and functions like Air Gesture and Smart Pause can be turned off. Once you strip away all the superfluous garbage, the Galaxy S4 is actually a pretty nice device. And there are indications that Samsung recognizes the problem. 

“Galaxy S3 and Note II are very feature-rich products. As is the S4. That is very core to the brand of ‘next big thing,’” said Nick DiCarlo, VP of Portfolio Planning and Product Marketing at Samsung Telecommunications America. “With the S4 you will notice that we have done a ton of things to make things simpler. We hope that this could be a phone that you would recommend to your mom.”

The Smartphone For Your Mom?

The term “fear of missing out” – FoMo – has been applied to the sociological concept of not wanting to miss anything your friends are doing in relation to social media, but it could just as easily apply to the Galaxy S4. With all the things that this smartphone can do, it's easy to get the feeling that you are missing out on the capabilities of your own device.

Let’s take a look at some of the new features in the Galaxy S4:

Air View: Hover over an item like an email or a calendar date and Air View will display a preview of what is inside. This feature originally appeared in Samsung's Note 2 with the built-in stylus but now can be done with a finger. 

Air Gesture: Theoretically, you can answer a phone call, change songs on a music playlist, swap browser tabs or perform a variety of other functions just by waving your hand over he device. An extra infrared sensor picks up the motion and executes the command. At least it is supposed to. Except for one limited instance (moving an app from one home screen panel to another), I was not able to get Air Gesture to work. And this turned out be a disappointing theme with the Galaxy S4. 

Smart Stay/Smart Pause/Smart Scroll: With Smart Stay, the screen stays on as long as you are looking at it. Smart Pause is intended to pause a video if your eyes look away. Smart Scroll is supposed to follow your facial motion and the tilt of your device to automatically scroll down a website. But no matter how hard I tried, with a wide variety of apps, I could not get Smart Pause to work. Smart Stay seems to work OK, but it was often hard to tell since I mostly seem to look at my smartphone for only a few seconds at a time. It was also difficult to get Smart Scroll to work. The instructions for these features note that your face and the background behind you must be well-lit, so Samsung seems to acknowledge that these functions won't work all the time. 

Multi-Window: You Can use two apps at the same time. A little tab appears on the left of the screen and essentially acts as a “recent apps” menu. 

[See Also: Samsung Galaxy S4: The Phone So Complicated, It Has An 'Easy' Mode]

Easy Mode: For people who ave trouble using complicated devices, the Galaxy S4 has an entire mode with bigger fonts, icons and less home screen space. This works, but there's no surer sign of the S4's feature bloat than the need for an "easy mode." 

WatchOn: OK, this feature is cool. WatchOn uses the device's infrared sensor to turn the S4 into a programmable TV remote control. It even recognize your TV and cable/satellite provider and displays a programming guide. 

Samsung Hub: Samsung used to have several different media “hubs” for books, music, video and so forth. They have now all been consolidated to one Hub.

Group Play: This feature lets you to connect to other Samsung devices and play the same song through all of them at the same time, with one person acting as the DJ. This could be fun in some situations, but it's mostly just a gimmick. 

Expanded Settings/Notifications: Android comes with a simple drop-down notification center. Samsung’s TouchWiz has historically added radio buttons to it to control Wi-Fi, GPS, rotate and other functions. Since the S4 has so many new functions, the company added an entirely new section to the drop-down settings to toggle all the various features on and off. 

“What we have done is create a form here which allows people to learn about the feature and decide if you want to turn it on our off. It is another way making these really, really powerful features more accessible,” DiCarlo said.

The Galaxy S4 comes pre-loaded with widgets and apps on its Android home screen panels out of the box, but these can be easily removed. See the composite image below for the pre-loaded apps and widgets on a Sprint version of the S4. (Note: Spotify does not come pre-loaded. I put that in to the only available space I could find on the Galaxy S4. )

With all this… stuff, is this really the phone that I would recommend to my mother? Or anyone's mother?

Camera

The S4's cameras have so much going on it deserves its own focus. Fortunately, though, the advanced camera functions are easy to use and understand. The Galaxy S4 has a 13-megapixel back camera and 2MP front camera - more than most competitors.

The goal of the Galaxy S4 camera is to give regular people (not just professional photographers) the ability to use more of its features. “Where we really focused was allowing people to really get a professional kind of photo experience super, super easy,” DiCarlo said. The camera interface uses a simple “mode” button on the display to toggle through the different ways the Galaxy S4 let you take a picture.

• Best Photo: Takes a burst of eight pictures and selects the best. 
• Auto: Classic smartphone camera feature, automatically adjusts for light settings. On by default.
• Beauty Face: Enhances facial features automatically.
• Best Face: Combines five photos of a face to create the ideal image.
• Sound & Shot: Takes a still photo and records nine seconds of sound to go with it. Annoyingly, the clips play automatically when you flip through photos in the gallery.
• Drama: Takes multiple pictures of a moving object and transposes them to one shot. A standard feature on most digital SLRs.
• Animated Photo: You take a picture of someone waving at you. You can then go back into the picture and freeze portions of it, but keep the waving hand moving. Kind of like taking a picture to create an animated GIF. 
• Rich Tone: Hi-definition. Most smartphones do this nowadays. 
• Eraser: Is there something moving in your photo you want t oeliminate. Eraser lets you edit the photo to remove people walking in the background, or traffic in the foreground. Eraser does not work on stationary objects (like someone photo-bombing your pictures).
• Panorama: Creates a simple multiple panel shot - already standard on Apple and HTC smartphones.
• Sports: Speeds up the camera take capture pictures of fast movement.
• Night: Improves low-light pictures without flash.

Its quite a list, although a few functions, like Animated Photo, don't work quite as well as they could. The camera also has a dual-function mode where you can insert your face from the front camera into the view finder of the back camera. All in all, except for maybe the HTC One, there may not be a better smartphone camera on the market. 

Panorama mode

One note: Some of the functions (animated photo, sound and photo) are saved to the Galaxy S4 in a proprietary Samsung file and can be shared only with other Samsung devices. 

Hardware & Design

The specs on the Galaxy S4 are comparable to other top smartphones on the market. The U.S. version sports the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor as the HTC One and LG Optimus Pro G.

It has all the usual sensors – Gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity – as well as that extra infrared sensor that powers the gesture-based controls. It also is said to have a barometer and humidity sensors, but I have no idea what they do or how to use them.

The Galaxy Sr's 2600 mAh battery, biggest in a non-"phablet" smartphone, will definitely last all day and then some. 

The Galaxy S4 has the same flimsy plastic removable back as other Galaxy S models. DiCarlo explained the company's reasoning:

In terms of the material, we definitely heard the criticisms and comments. It definitely did not go unheard. Our thinking on that is that a removable battery is a good thing. If you are at CES working all day or at a concert or whatever, having an alternate battery is certainly a good thing. A lot of people still like removable memory. And a lot of our accessories allow the device to stay thin by replacing that back cover for wireless charging or whatever. There are a lot of user benefits as well as durability factor, something you can carry around with you in a case. Not to make any excuse for it, but just to explain the thinking.

Samsung’s accessories, like the flip cover back, are definitely a big reason for the removable back. So is weight. At 4.59 ounces, it is almost a half-ounce lighter than the full-metal-casing HTC One.

Even though the S4 is a little smaller than the Galaxy S3, its screen is a little bigger, growing from 4.8 inches to 5 inches. The very nice screen is HD Super Amoled, coming in at 441 pixels per inch. If anything, the colors may seem a little over saturated. 

You Might Want This Smartphone, You Might Not

Samsung will sell a lot of Galaxy S4s. Consumers will like the size and shape, the screen and the camera. Developers will like the chance to play with the gesture-based controls like AirView (if they can actually get them to work). Enterprises won't mind employees bringing the device to work with its capability to use Knox, Samsung’s mobile enterprise management solution. 

Really, the Galaxy S4 is a solid smartphone, in just about every way. 

You just have to put up with Samsung’s insistence on loading you down with bloatware, pre-loaded apps and features that you will likely never use and just get in the way. Once you cut through all that, the Galaxy S4 is a first rate smartphone. 

Samsung has packed its Galaxy S4 with dozens of new features. If you happen to know nothing about smartphones, it's probably not the smartphone for you. 

But that leaves poor Samsung in a quandary. If its most popular smartphone is too complicated, it's just alienated a large portion of its potential market. Samsung is nothing if not egalitarian. It wants to be everything to everybody.

So, to cater to the less mobile savvy users of the world, Samsung gave the Galaxy S4 an Easy Mode.

Yes, really. 

Meet Easy Mode

Easy Mode in the Galaxy S4 limits the home screen to three panels. The icons are much bigger, as are the fonts. It provides access to a limited number of essential apps and offers very basic functions like a clock, weather, calendar, phone, messaging and camera. You can create memos, use the calculator, send email, listen to music and change the settings. 

The three panels of the Galaxy S4's Easy Mode

[See Also: Samsung Galaxy S4: Sometimes More Is Less]

You can access the Android app drawer from Easy Mode, but it doesn't look like the normal app folder. It's just an alphabetical list of apps on the phone. 

You can toggle between Easy Mode and standard mode by going to Settings – My Device – Home Screen Mode and applying Easy Mode. You can go back to standard by going to Settings and performing the same procedure in reverse.

Samsung believes that Easy Mode will be good for users that might find the rest of the features in the Galaxy S4  and there are a lot of them — confusing. Easy Mode is the setting your grandmother or a small child might use. Samsung is of the belief that it can ease people into learning how to use the Galaxy S4 with Easy Mode. Then, when they're ready, they can “graduate” to standard mode. 

I can't decide whether to give Samsung kudos for creating a setting that allows the phone to be much, much simpler, or to chastise it for making a phone so complicated that an Easy Mode was necessary. 

What do you think of Samsung’s Easy Mode? Is it something you'd recommend to Grandma? Let us know in the comments.

Here's one for you: how is it that some of the smartest, richest, market-savviest companies on the planet - allegedly - can't seem to figure out how to name their products in a way that isn't strikingly confusing?

The "new iPad" is not to be confused with the iPad 2. The new iPad is in fact, iPad 3. Only, Apple doesn't call it that - nor do they market it as "new iPad" anymore, either. Rather, it is now branded as "iPad with Retina display" - with the "R" capitalized, though not the "d."

Don't ask me why.

While the iPad with Retina display is newer than iPad 2 it does not come with a model number. Nor does the iPad Mini. At least, not yet. I assume that Apple will still sell "iPad Mini" - likely at a lower price - when the newest "Mini" model is released. Which I'm also guessing will be called "iPad Mini with Retina display." Or maybe iPad Mini 2. 

After that, all bets are off.

Which brings up the question: how is it that some of the smartest, richest, market-savviest companies on the planet - allegedly - can't seem to figure out how to name their products in a way that isn't strikingly confusing?

Welcome To Branding Hell

What comes after iPhone 5? iPhone 5S, perhaps? Or iPhone 6? Is there any real difference? 

And will it come pre-loaded with iOS 7?

Yet despite the inexplicable naming conventions that Apple uses for its products, it's not the worst perpetrator - not even close. 

Which is better? The HTC One or the HTC First? How is it possible that HTC offers multiple "Ones" at the same time? Which "one" do you want?

• HTC One
• HTC One S
• HTC One SV
• HTC One V
• HTC One X
• HTC One X+ (no, I did not make that up)

I'm not even going to attempt to wade through the angrily confusing versions and price points of software products, such as Microsoft Office. There's "Premium," "365," "Enterprise," Mid-Sized Business" - to name only a few!  

Technology is here to help us. Otherwise, it does not belong. Technology with a confusing name is, therefore, suspect. If you can't even get the name right, what else might be wrong with it?

A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Consider Samsung. Go into an AT&T store, for example, and there you find at least six different "Samsung Galaxy" devices. These are not to be confused, however, with the various "Galaxy Nexus" devices. In other words, the Galaxy brand name now means essentially nothing.

If you don't believe me, just answer this question: which Galaxy is right for you? A Samsung Galaxy S III or a Samsung Galaxy Note II? Will you even bother to find out? Should you have to try?

What? There's a line of various Galaxy "Tabs"? 

Does Samsung not want my business?

And is the Galaxy Note 8.0 four times better than the Galaxy Note II? (Or do Roman numerals count for more?) Wait. Will the next version of the Galaxy Note 10.1 be a 10.2? 

Nor is it possible to divine the brand meaning - and thus the brand value - of the Motorola Droid line versus Android versus Nexus - all of which is owned by Google. Which I've heard is now overseen by the Google Chrome team.

Do companies just pick names out of a hat?

If not, then how much money did Nokia pay its marketing staff to promote the Lumia 820 as "our most versatile phone?" Was it more or less than they paid the team that branded the Lumia 920 as "our most amazing phone?" 

In just the U.S., there is a Lumia 710, 800 810, 820, 822, 900 and 920. I dare you to uncover the meaning, intent, price, value, speed and/or ability of any of those based on their actual name. According to Nokia's own site, the Lumia 900 is available "from $0.01" whereas the Lumia 800 is "from 526.72." 

Why? It seems backwards.

And, no, I am even going to try and select which of these fourteen different Blackberry smartphones is right for me.

Are these companies even paying attention? Maybe it's time for some brand simplification to put some sense in the market place.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Listen up and we will tell you a secret: Apple's iPad is not the only tablet in the world. There a lot of them, actually, and most of them run on Android. App publisher Animoca estimates that there are 75 million Android tablets in use around the globe. But which ones are the most popular?

Animoca ran the numbers of its users to figure out what Android tablets most often show up in actual users' hands. Any guesses on what tablet takes the top spot? Could it be the Google Nexus 7, made by Asus? Or maybe one of Amazon’s Kindle Fires? 

Nope and nope.

It's A Samsung World, We Just Live In It

It’s a Samsung. This should not be surprising considering that Samsung basically controls the entire Android industry, from smartphones to tablets and everything in between. In Animoca’s network, the top Android tablet is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, holding 11.8% of the market. Second place also goes to a Samsung device, the Tab 10.1 with 8.3%. After that come two generations of 7-inch Amazon Fire tablets, with the original grabbing 7.5% market share and the HD weighing in at 4.9%. 

Google's Nexus 7? Number 6 with a bullet at 3.8%.

Now, no offense to Animoca, but the app publisher’s strengths are not exactly in analytics. The company ranked the top Android tablets by tracking users who accessed the Google Play Android app store and played an Animoca game between Feb. 18 and March 20, 2013. The sample size comes to 978,000, a respectable and representative number of users. Animoca acknowledges it's study has a margin of error of about 0.1%, which makes it difficult to judge anything on the list after the eighth spot.

ReadWrite wanted a second opinion on the top Android tablets from a company that makes its living tracking numbers and figuring out what they mean. So we asked Boston-based Localytics to run the numbers of the top Android tablets. Localytics tracks mobile analytics based on whether apps use its software as an analytics service. That means that Localytics tracks a much larger data set - 750 million devices - and is not tied to Google Play or its own apps for data. The company would not let us publish the total number of Android tablets in its network, but it is many, many millions more than the Animoca's sample size. To create its report, the company took a statistically representative sample from March 1 to March 31, and ended up with a margin of error described as "negligible." 

Localytics agrees with Animoca that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 sits atop the Android tablet heap. After that, the two company diverge a bit.

Perhaps because Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets cannot access Google Play, Kindles are underrepresented in the Animoca data. Localytics puts the original Kindle Fire in the No. 2 spot and set the Nexus 7 at No. 4, both with much stronger showings percentage-wise than in the Animoca data. 

Here are the top 15 Android tablets from Animoca and Localytics:

Small Is Beautiful

If there is one thing that Apple’s iPad has told us is that tablet consumers are very sensitive about both price and size when it comes to tablets. Consumers were basically screaming for a smaller, cheaper iPad by the time Apple released the iPad Mini in November 2012. So it's no surprise 

Most of the tablets on both lists are of the 7-inch to 8-inch variety. And most of them retail for $200 to $400. 

Samsung dominates both lists, especially Localytics'. This makes perfect sense considering Samsung’s approach to the market. The Korean manufacturer iterates quickly and tests many, many different size devices in the market. For tablets, it has both the Tab and Note (with the S Pen stylus) series with sizes of 7-inches, 7.7-inches, 8.9-inches and 10.1-inches. That is quite a spread - and it doesn’t even account for the “phablet” (half smartphone, half tablet) category that Samsung created. (The newest phablet: Samsung's monstrous Galaxy Mega, a 6.3-inch smartphone… thing.)

Do you own an Android tablet? Let us know which one and how you like it in the comments. 

Top photo: Nexus 7 by Dan Rowinski.

I want a smartwatch. Not just because I am a gadget nerd or because owning one will be, more or less, a professional requirement. I want one because I see the potential of having a data connected device on my arm with a variety of sensors provides extraordinary value… if done right.

That is the kicker – Done Right. The danger with the coming smartwatch revolution is that the various vendors vying to dominate this new market may try to do what is right for them and not necessarily what is right for consumers. That means creating proprietary ecosystems that don't work together across platforms.

Smartwatches Shouldn't Need Smartphones

A watch, almost by definition, is a closed loop (otherwise it might fall off your wrist). That doesn’t mean a smartwatch should be a closed loop, too.

Smartwatches are going to be a big deal: Apple appears to have the iWatch, Google looks like it has a smartwatch and Samsung is working its magic on a watch as well. 

Google Watch Patent Picture And they all want you to stay immersed in their own competing environments. If you are using iOS, Apple is doing everything it can to make sure you mate the iWatch to your iPhone and iPad and even your Mac. Samsung has developed its latest Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone to heavily integrate its own custom-built apps, often instead of similar apps made by Google for Android. Google itself is more interested in getting you online and using Google apps like Gmail, Talk, Maps and so on.

This is a classic defintion of a closed loop (sometimes also referred to as a "walled garden"). Everything happens with the environment - there is no reason to leave the loop and outsiders are usually not welcome.

Dictionary.com defines a "closed loop" this way:

“The complete path followed by a signal as it is fed back from the output of a circuit, device, or system to the input and then back to the output.”

When it comes mobile operating systems like iOS or Android, the user is the signal. 

There is a very real danger that Apple, Google and Samsung will include their new smartwatches in their own proprietary loops. For instance, you won't get the full benefits of an iWatch without using an iPhone, a Google Watch will be suboptimal unless your have a Nexus smartphone or a Samsung Watch will require a Galaxy to access all its features. 

The Ideal Smartwatch

Apple Watch Patent But the ideal smartwatch would not need a smartphone to work. It would have its own data connection, touch-screen interface, sensors to track location and (hopefully) sensors to monitor heart rate and other biometric functions. It would have Bluetooth if you want to connect it to wireless headphones or, yes, a smartphone. It would also have enough battery life to last at least a full day.

I want to be able to ride my bicycle 60 miles on a Saturday morning, for example, and have my smartwatch track my speed, location and heart rate. It should be able to stream or store music and send it to headphones. It should do all of these things by itself - without requiring help from another device. If I am on my bike in the middle of nowhere, I do not want to be toting my phone too. 

The only “real” smartwatch on the market right now is the Pebble - born from a Kickstarter project. It can do many of the tasks listed above, but it needs to be paired with a smartphone for a data connection. At least the Pebble can attach to either an iPhone or an Android.

Closing The Loop

Apple could be planning to make a smartwatch without a data connection, requiring an iPhone full functionality. Substitute Nexus or Galaxy for iPhone and yous ee the problem. Buyers should not be forced towards a specific smartphone to use a given smartwatch. It should just work.

The vendors, though, want to use smartwatches to sell more smartphones. That's OK - up to a point. I don't mind the ability to enhance my smartwatch by using a specific brand of smartphone. I just don't want it to be a requirement.

It's no doubt very tempting for smartwatch vendors to "close the loop" on consumers. But please, for the sake of smartwatch buyers - and ultimately the smartwatch market itself - don't do it!

Top image courtesy Shutterstock.

Samsung can teach us a lot of lessons. Sometimes, you just need to change everything you are doing. 

In 1995, Samsung chairman Lee Kun Hee piled 2,000 inoperable cellphones on the pavement at the company’s manufacturing plant in Gumi, South Korea. He then burnt them all to the ground. What was left was ground to dust by bulldozers.

According to an in-depth report on the internal processes of Samsung by Sam Grobart at Bloomberg Businessweek, Chairman Lee had given the cellphones to employees as Christmas gifts. They turned out not to work and the bonfire that ensued has been a defining moment in the way Samsung approaches its business ever since.

Chairman Lee, as he affectionately known, took over Samsung in the late 1980’s after the death of the company’s founder, his father. He then set out to build his own global empire. That included completely rethinking everything that the company had ever done. Lee assembled his executives in Frankfurt, Germany in the early 1990s and delivered a three-day speech, known now as the Frankfurt Declaration.

“Change everything but your wife and children,” was the main message, according to Grobart. In a way, this was the real bonfire that spurred Samsung to the heights of global manufacturing and the leader in the smartphone wars years later.

This is a lesson that Samsung’s competitors can learn from.

Burn Your Crappy Smartphones To The Ground

The competitive landscape in the smartphone business is … well, it’s not good. There is Samsung. There is Apple. Then there are a bunch of has-beens and wannabes. That list includes former powerhouses of the gadget world, companies that nobody ever thought would be in decline. Nokia, BlackBerry, Motorola, HTC and Sony are the headliner has-beens, while Huawei, LG and ZTE are among the wannabes. 

Media gets its hands on the Samsung Galaxy S4

What is the lesson that each can learn from Samsung? Each should take its mediocre and middling smartphones and burn them to the ground. Then get that bulldozer and grind them to dust. 

Anybody who has ever lived with an HTC Thunderbolt would probably be extremely happy to see a pile of them in flames. Or maybe a group of Motorola Razrs or Atrix smartphones. Or anything running BlackBerry OS 7. These companies got complacent and made mediocre products aimed at the top of the market. Samsung ate their lunch. 

And now they need to completely rethink their products to compete. In the end, that should lead consumers to better choices of smartphones and, hopefully, cheaper prices. 

Already Burning

Some burning has already begun, of course. Google is clearing the Motorola pipeline and working on a so-called “X” smartphone that has had some wild rumors attached to it, such as personally customizable hardware and a 4000 mAh battery. (For comparison, Samsung's new Galaxy S4 will sport a 2600 mAh battery.)

Similarly, after the debacle that was 2011 — see: Thunderbolt and its ilk — HTC redesigned its products and came out with the critically acclaimed HTC One X in 2012 and now the HTC One 2013. Great phones in hand, HTC just now needs to burn everything else down about its approach, from its marketing to distribution. The company has started this approach with aggressive marketing efforts aimed against Samsung’s newest Galaxy S4 smartphones. BlackBerry basically set fire to its entire smartphone lineup and is coming fresh with BlackBerry 10, which has shown early signs of success. 

Samsung Electronics president and head of mobile JK Shin introduces Galaxy S4

Nokia may be in a tough spot. Its “burning” metaphor has already come and passed when CEO Stephen Elop wrote the infamous “burning platform” memo, ditched the company’s MeeGo and Symbian operating systems and went all-in with Microsoft’s Windows Phone mobile operating system. As yet that bet has not really paid off for Nokia and it's hard to envision a future where it will.

The smartphone industry is a fickle beast. Nokia’s example shows that, even when you do pile up your old strategy into a rhetorical pile and set it on fire, that does not guarantee you will succeed on the other end.

There is more to Samsung’s ascendancy than Chairman Lee’s pile of burning plastic and metal, of course. Samsung succeeds because it is hyper-focused, controls most of its own component processing and spends a ton of money on marketing. It can iterate on ideas faster than its rivals and spread its distribution further. Its rivals, HTC in particular, just don't have the bandwidth to match it. 

Top image courtesy Shutterstock

In June 2007, Apple launched the first iPhone, marking a new era in corporate mobility. Before the fashionable mini-computer, people used smartphones for voice, texting and email. With the iPhone and its remarkable touchscreen users could also be entertained with music, video and games. Corporate executives became so attached to their hip device, they wanted to use it for business, so they bullied IT departments into providing access to email and corporate data. Employees soon joined their bosses and the bring-your-own-device trend began.

Six years later, what started out with one smartphone has grown into an army - far too much for the Wild West atmosphere of BYOD to continue as it has been. Many companies that have allowed BYOD will soon be pulling back on such freedoms. While BYOD may not die altogether, it will carry stricter restrictions meant to finally get this trend under control.

The Fate Of BYOD

"BYOD is clearly an important trend, but we expect it to plateau in the coming one to two years as enterprises decide that the cost and security issues associated with unlimited BYOD do not warrant the anarchy and increased support costs it has often caused," a recent report from tech analyst J.Gold Associates said.

Where the iPhone use to be in a class by itself, the smartphone now competes with Android phones from Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony and 10 other vendors.  In addition, there is the BlackBerry and multiple devices running Microsoft's Windows Phone.

In 2010, Apple added the iPad to the chaos, creating a whole new market for tablet computers that brought lots of competitors from manufacturers in the Android camp.

From the beginning, BYOD was a challenge for IT departments, which had to wrestle with data security, device manageability, support and app control. Nevertheless, enterprises went along with the trend and the majority allowed at least some workers to use their personal devices for business.

But configuration, workflow and security issues were always making things difficult for IT. For instance, cyber-criminals saw an easy target in Android - with so many devices running older versions of the OS, hackers could target known vulnerabilities that were left unpatched by manufacturers and wireless carriers.

BYOD Limits

A survey of enterprises that allow employees to use their own notebooks, smartphones and tablets found that nearly half had experienced a security breach. As a result, more than 40% of the companies either restricted mobile data access or installed security software, according to the poll of more than 400 IT professionals and chief executives conducted by Decisive Analytics and released in August 2012.

Despite the breaches, only 12% of companies outright cancelled BYOD programs, an indication that most remained committed to providing flexibility to employees, while moving toward imposing rules.

Indeed, Gold found that companies are realizing "the current mostly wide-open, laissez fare approach to BYOD is not sustainable longer term, and that more controls and better strategy are needed."

As companies clamp down on BYOD, employees will likely find they will have to surrender their devices in order for IT departments to install technology to protect corporate data and communications. At the same time, manufacturers are providing more enterprise features in order to ensure their products get approved for work and play.

Samsung recently launched technology called SAFE that the vendor boasts brings enterprise-class security to selected devices. People who buy the Galaxy S III or S 4 smartphones, the Galaxy Note II smartphone/tablet hybrid or the Note 10.1 tablet have the option of including SAFE, which provides a container for corporate data and email in order to separate it from personal applications.

BlackBerry, which has always been considered the gold standard in device security, has added similar data-separating technology in the new Z10.

In time, enterprises are likely to give the nod to those devices that can meet the demands of consumers and businesses and shun those that don't. So instead of BYOD, the policy of the future will be BYODA, or bring-your-own-device-for-approval.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

The race for dominance in wearable gadgets is on. To the surprise of no one, the same players that rule the smartphone market are trying to be the leaders of this market as well.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Samsung has been readying a smartwatch to release to market for quite some time. “We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long,” Samsung Mobile executive vice president Lee Young Hee told Bloomberg. “We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them.”

Samsung’s disclosure to join the arm race comes about a month after we learned that Apple has a team of designers working on creating a smartwatch of its own, dubbed in rumor circles as the iWatch. Apple has already filed design patents that show off the basic outline of what the supposed iWatch might eventually look like.

Consumer Engineering: History Repeats Itself

Waltham, the first wristwatch (Wikipedia) The watch, in its most basic form, has not been thoroughly reinvented 40 years. The first digital watches came to market in the 1970s. Quartz watches, the first electronic watches, evolved at the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s. Before that, watches used mechanical movements of springs that often needed to wound on a frequent basis to function. Wristwatches came in vogue during World War I and into the 1920s. Before that, most watches were of the mechanical spring variety, attached to a chain and kept in people’s pockets. 

The watch, and clock making before it, has long been seen as the pinnacle of consumer engineering. Watches need to be small and precise, packing many moving parts into a small shell that is durable and highly reliable. Among craftsmen, the meticulous nature and precision of the watchmaker was seen as High Art. 

Just as watchmakers shrunk the concept of the clock into a portable timepieces, today’s gadget manufacturers are shrinking the smartphone into a piece of wearable technology that can perform similar functions. In many ways, history is repeating itself. From the grand metronome clock, to the desk clock, to the watch, timepieces evolved from big to small. In the digital era, computers morphed to PCs, PCs to laptops, laptops to smartphones and tablets and smartphones to, soon,  smartwatches. 

What Will A Smartwatch Be, Really?

Apple iWatch Patent Pictures Smartwatches will likely run on mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. Samsung’s executive did not give Bloomberg details on when it will produce the watch, what it will entail or when it will come out so at this point we know little about it other than the fact that Samsung has been working on the concept. There is no guarantee that Samsung will use Google’s Android operating system for its smartwatch either, with choices like Tizen available that theoretically could be morphed into a small form factor.

Since the kernel of these smartwatches will be mobile OS based, we can assume some basic functionalities to be morphed from the smartphone environment. That would likely include data capabilities, a browser of some sort, notifications (for the likes of messaging and emails), perhaps voice capabilities and certain apps like maps, music and exercise. 

The biggest advantage of a smartwatch could come in the ability to track activities through sensors. A great advantage to a smartwatch would be to take the basic capabilities of a smartphone, add in the capability to monitor heart rate, speed and distance and shrink it down into something stylish that can be worn while running or cycling. Whereas a smartphone like an Samsung Galaxy S or an iPhone is designed to perform many functions, a smartwatch could be more focused on what it does. 

This approach of basic apps plus sensors is what we see from one of the first smartwatches to hit the market, the Pebble Watch. Pebble can deliver email, SMS, Facebook, calendar, Twitter and weather updates. Pebble connects via Bluetooth to an iPhone or an Android to enable its data connection and tracking features. 

The fact of the matter is that we do not yet know what Samsung and Apple have in the works, except for the fact that each company definitely do have smartwatches in the pipeline. It will be exciting to see what each company comes out with, hopefully later this year.

What is your vision for a smartwatch? Let us know in the comments. 

Top image courtesy Shutterstock. Waltham watch image courtesy Wikipedia.

Samsung stuffed a lot of features into its latest Galaxy S4. Enough to pack a Broadway play, apparently. With all the new apps, functions, gestures, camera controls and kittenkaboodles, it's plenty difficult just to figure out what's actually new and exciting about the Galaxy S4. 

There's a good chance that you're never going to use half of these apps. Others may make you throw your smartphone through a window -- say, for instance, if because every time you look away from your phone, the video you were watching stops playing. What is Dual Video Calling anyway? What, exactly, is the deal with all these different camera features?

(See also: Samsung, Meet Icarus: Galaxy S4 Features Aim High, Risk Melting Waxy Disappointment)

Product pages filled with specs and flashy names (WatchON! ChatOn! Smart Scroll! Drama Shot!) for features don't really tell the whole story. Sometimes you just need to see things in action.

Samsung did us a favor and made this four-minute favor overviewing everything new in the Galaxy S4. Check it out below.

What's the most useful new feature of the Galaxy S4? What's the most innane? Let us know in the comments. 

(See also: Samsung Galaxy S4 First Impressions: Beautiful But Bloated [Gallery])

(See also: Samsung Galaxy S4 Revealed: Spectacular Specs & Impressive Features)

You remember Icarus, right? Greek boy with wax wings takes errant flight path, meets watery death. A classic metaphor for reach exceeding your grasp.

Samsung: Meet Icarus

Samsung threw so much at us during the keynote launch of its flagship Galaxy S4 that it's difficult to unpack all of it. 

Samsung is big on naming things. Every new function or feature in the Galaxy S4 comes with a snazzy title and, undoubtedly, a huge marketing campaign for convincing us how remarkable it is. Unfortunately, the Galaxy S4 is not exactly reinventing the smartphone. 

Samsung may need to brace itself for some blowback, given its over-the-top approach. There's something to be said for understatement, as Apple so frequently demonstrates and as Google has done with its Nexus series. Samsung wants to be everything to everybody. It's a fool’s errand. Keep trying and ultimately you become the fool.

So what are some of these mind-blowing features that you're going to hear so very much about? Let’s take a closer look.

(See also: Samsung Galaxy S4 First Impressions: Beautiful But Bloated)

Dual Camera: A feature that allows you to use both the front and back cameras of the Galaxy S4 at the same time. Also allows for Dual Video Call where you can show people what you are looking at during a video call with the front facing camera.

• Takeaway: OK Samsung, you got me here. This is a cool and innovative use of the dual-camera concept... that was introduced a couple of years ago with FaceTime on the iPhone. This basically taking FaceTime and stretching it to the extreme. 

Drama Shot, Sound & Shot And Story Album: Samsung is stretching out its camera functions. Drama shot allows you to see all the action in a photo in one continuous loop while Sound & Shoot allows you to capture the sound and voice happening during the photograph. Story Album organizes your photos by metadata — time, geo-tag, people etc. specific to that event. 

• Takeaway: None of this is really groundbreaking, as companies like HTC, Apple, BlackBerry and Nokia all have very similar features. Sound & Shoot is creative but, ultimately, probably not terribly useful.

Group Play & Share Music: Allows users to share music, photos, documents and games with people around them (at least those also toting Samsung devices) without a data connection. Share Music allows users to play the same song on multiple phones, basically creating multiple mobile speakers.

• Takeaway: Group Play and Share Music are basically extensions of previous Samsung features that allowed users to share photos with other Samsung users. Samsung has turned this to other types of media and music.

S Translator: Instant translation using voice or text for apps like email, text message and ChatOn (a feature in Dual Video Call that allows you to share your screen).

• Takeaway: Google already has a fairly robust translator in Android. Samsung’s own translator will only be a great feature if it cooperates with Google’s apps like Gmail, Talk and Voice. If not, it's just another redundant Samsung app.

Smart Pause & Smart Scroll: Pause enables the users to control the screen by where they look. For instance, if you're watching a video, the phone will pause it if you look away. Smart Scroll allows you to scroll up and down emails or a browser without touching the screen.

• Takeaway: We didn't get a lot of hands on time with the Galaxy S4, so it is hard to say if this is cool or annoying. It will definitely be a different type of experience. Hopefully Samsung gives users the option to toggle it on and off.

Air Gesture & Air View: Gesture allows a user to interact with the screen without actually touching the screen. Just hover your finger over the screen and swipe between apps or pages. View lets you preview an app, email or page by hovering your finger over it.

• Takeaway: If you have ever played with the Galaxy Note II and its S Pen, you are well aware of the Air features. Functional and useful at times but perhaps superfluous features.

WatchOn: Allows you to control your various home utilities (TV, DVD player) by turning your Galaxy S4 into a remote.

• Takeaway: So, Samsung basically just put infrared into the Galaxy S4 and turned it into a remote. Just like a universal TV remote. Hey, why the hell not.

Tired Yet?

The primary problem with Samsung’s last two flagship smartphones is that it was very easy to get lost in all of the various features that Samsung threw at us. Add in Android apps that do basically the same thing and your phone can start getting confusing very quickly. 

The same principal applies to the Galaxy S4 as to the Galaxy S3 when we reviewed it last year: more is not always better. Sometimes more is just more. Taken individually, each of these functions is fine and good. Some are more impressive than others, but none (outside of Smart Scroll, perhaps) are really groundbreaking. 

More is what Samsung does, and generally speaking, it does more very well. If that's the type of experience you're looking for in a smartphone, you'll probably love the Samsung Galaxy S4. If you want something simpler but still powerful, the HTC One or an iPhone 5 may be the way to go. 

If there is one thing you can say about Samsung, it sure knows how to throw an extravagant party.

After the showstopping launch event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City for the new Samsung Galaxy S4, there's only one question left to answer... is this smartphone any damn good?

During the event, at least, Samsung's theatrics overshadowed the phone itself? Really. We had Jeremy Freaking Maxwell, Samsung's "secret messenger" doing a tap dance routine. We had skits of adolescents traveling the world taking pictures, women sharing music over cocktails and something about an actor and his agent. Oh, and somewhere amidst the festivities, a new smartphone made an appearance. 

Oh, and somewhere amidst the festivities, a new smartphone made an appearance. There was some very limited hands-on time after the show, er... keynote. 

Here it is:

S Travel and Flipboard pre-installed

Samsung Hub is the center of Samsung's media experience

But it wasn't just the phone, Samsung showed off some gadgets that will go with the Galaxy S4, including this cool-looking controller that appears torn out of an Xbox. The Galaxy S4 fits into the controller, which is powered by its own AAA batteries. Instead of using the touchscreen to navigate, you use the controller. In this case, the demo was a Sonic The Hedgehog game.

The Galaxy S4 is expected to be shipped with a quad-core processor in the United States. An enterprising reporter ran a test on the processor during his demo time (not me, and I did not get his name) and confirmed that the test devices at Radio City were running quad-core processors. When putting that processor to the test, we looked at the Fast & Furious 6 game coming to the phone from Kabam. It played smooth and fast.

But what about the phone itself?

First Impressions

• The body of the Galaxy S4 is thin and light. If you are familiar with a Galaxy S3, that light, almost cheap-feeling plastic body, is reprised in the S4. 
• From a shape perspective, the S4 is more squared-off (like the Galaxy S2) than rounded (like the Galaxy S3). It is thinner than both.
• The screen is totally beautiful, at least from my initial look, and highly responsive. This matches what users have come to expect from Galaxy S devices - the S3 was an extremely smooth touchscreen.
• It is bloated with all the "S" apps and everything else that Samsung has thrown into its new flagship smartphone. On the one hand, all the new and unique features Samsung definitely bring some real benefits. On the other hand, the "S" apps and all the stuff in the S4 add up to a very busy user experience.

President Samsung Mobile JK Shin rises from the floor at Radio City

Overall, it is hard to tell with a just quick impression exactly what the experience of using the Galaxy S4 will be like. There are so many new features that could be terrific - if they actually work as advertised. The danger is that Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone could turn out to resemble its own launch event: overblown, overproduced and visually appealing - but more annoying than pleasant.

Photos by Dan Rowinski.

Samsung unveiled its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone Thursday evening, in a showy Broadway-style production inside a packed Radio City Music Hall in New York City. As expected, the S4 will deliver a slightly larger screen (5 inches), improved camera and faster processor - along with some innovative new features. But Samsung won't ship the Galaxy S4 until "late April," according to the company.

While promoting its impressive hardware specs (see below for a complete list) and an array of new Samsung-specific features, the company managed to promote its "premium smartphone" as a "life companion."

(See also Samsung Galaxy S4 First Impressions: Beautiful But Bloated [Gallery].)

The "polycarbonate" - read "plastic" - device officially weighs in at 130g (4.6 ounces) and is 7.9mm (0.31 inches) thin. By comparison, the iPhone 5 weighs less (3.9 ounces) and boasts a mere 4-inch screen. Samsung calls the S4 the  "first Full HD Super AMOLED display."  Whereas the iPhone 5 display has a resolution of 1136 x 640, the S4 sports a 1920 x 1080 display, with more pixels per inch as well. 

Just Look, You Don't Even Need To TouchScreen

Perhaps the most anticipated feature is Samsung Smart Scroll, which is designed to let users control the screen by where they look. You can scroll the browser or emails up and down without even touching the screen. "It recognizes your face looking at the screen and movement of your wrist and then scrolls the pages up or down accordingly." 

Similarly, using Samsung Smart Pause, "when you are watching a video, the video pauses when you look away then it starts right up again when you are back."

It will be very interesting to test these features in the real world to see just how well they work. 

Simultaneous Photo Shoots

The Galaxy S4 sports a 13-megapixel rear camera and a Dual Camera function that allows simultaneous use of both front and rear cameras. Similarly, Samsung also described what it branded a Dual Video Call - a feature that lets users make and receive a video call while showing the recipient what you are looking at during the call.

With the S4's Group Play function, users can share music, photos and games with those around them without requiring a Wi-Fi or cellular signal. According to the company, "this innovative feature enables users to connect directly with others to share, play and co-create content and entertainment instantly. 

Another interesting feature is the S Translator, which provides "instant translation" via text or voice for email and text messaging. 

Specs

The Galaxy S4 supports broadband via HSPA+42 Mbps and 4G LTE. According to Samsung, the LTE version supports up to six different band sets that should let it function in most LTE coverage areas - and enable global LTE roaming. 

Network   

2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE): 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz

3G (HSPA+ 42Mbps): 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz

4G (LTE Cat 3 100/50Mbps) : up to 6 different band sets (Dependent on market)

Display     

5-inch Full HD Super AMOLED (1920 x 1080) display, 441 ppi

Processor

1.9 GHz Quad-Core Processor / 1.6 GHz Octa-Core Processor (varies by market)

OS     

Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)

Camera     

Main(Rear): 13-megapixel Auto Focus camera with Flash & Zero Shutter Lag

Sub (Front): 2-megapixel camera, Full HD recording @30fps with Zero Shutter Lag

Video Codecs: MPEG4, H.264, H.263, DivX, DivX3.11, VC-1, VP8, WMV7/8, Sorenson Spark, HEVC

Recording & Playback: Full HD (1080p)

Audio Formats  

MP3, AMR-NB/WB, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, WMA, OGG, FLAC, AC-3, apt-X

Connectivity     

WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (HT80)

GPS / GLONASS

NFC, Bluetooth® 4.0 (LE)

IR LED (Remote Control), MHL 2.0

Sensors    

Accelerometer, RGB light, Geomagnetic, Proximity, Gyro, Barometer

Temperature & Humidity, Gesture

Memory     

16GB / 32GB / 64GB User memory + microSD slot (up to 64GB)

2GB RAM

Dimensions

136.6mm (5.4 inches) x 69.8mm (2.7 inches) x 7.9mm (0.31 inches), 130g (4.6 ounces) 

Battery     

2,600 mAh

 
Lead image by Dan Rowinski.

After months of hype, rumors and leaks, Samsung is finally ready to unveil its newest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4. The launch is set to start at 7:00 p.m. ET at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. 

Depending on whom you believe, we know a lot about the Galaxy S4 or very little about the Galaxy S4. The basic rumors go like this: it will have a 5-inch display, 3 megapixel front camera, 13 MP back camera, 2 GB of RAM and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. The processor is likely to differ by where the phone is released. Users in the United States are rumored to get the Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 processor while those overseas are supposedly getting Samsung's Octa-Core Exynos 5.

The interesting stuff will be in the software. Samsung will unveil a variety of new features. That will likely include a variety of Samsung-branded S apps, “Eye Scrolling” (or not, again depending on the source of the rumor), 2D/3D camera and more. 

We also expect that little ninny Jeremy Maxwell to make an appearance. 

We are present at the Samsung Galaxy S4 event at Radio City and will be throwing out news and first impressions as soon as we can. Follow ReadWrite (@RWW) and @Dan_Rowinski on Twitter for the full blow by blow from the event.

For those who can't be in attendance, Samsung has been nice enough to provide a live stream through YouTube. We have it embedded below.

What are you looking forward to? Let us know in the comments. 

Today is the big launch of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone — and Apple has clearly taken notice. Earlier this week, Apple released two new iPhone commercials, which were well-crafted if boring. It is unlikely the timing of these new ads was coincidental.

Yesterday, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller gave a rare interview to the Wall Street Journal. Schiller was clearly on the attack.

Schiller insisted that surveys reveal that iPhone users are more "satisfied" with their device than Android users. Schiller mentioned that Android is plagued by fragmentation and that Android users are often running outdated versions of the operating system. 

Schiller wasn't finished: 

Android is often given as a free replacement for a feature phone and the experience isn't as good as an iPhone.

While Apple's advertising focuses almost exclusively on its own product, Schiller spent much of his time with the Wall Street Journal knocking Android.

When you take an Android device out of the box, you have to sign up to nine accounts with different vendors to get the experience iOS comes with. They don't work seamlessly together.

While Schiller mostly talked Android, Samsung was clearly on his mind. For example, he took a swipe at Samsung and its larger-sized Galaxy displays, suggesting that the bigger screen is necessary to mask a larger battery with which to compete with the iPhone 5's battery life.

Schiller even disputed the recent smartphone market share numbers, touted the claim that Android users are more likely to switch to iPhone, and stated:

I'm not sure that the estimates and the modeling accurately gives an accurate picture of it all.

There is good reason for Schiller to be concerned, at least with Samsung, if not Android. According to the most recent comScore figures, Apple has a 38% share of the US smartphone market. Samsung is second, with 21%. But according to mobile analyst, Tomi Ahonen, Samsung is the clear global smartphone winner — having sold 215 million devices in 2012, compared to Apple's 136 million.

The disparity could grow throughout the year. Samsung has recently stated that its flagship Galaxy line has sold over 100 million units since its May 2010 launch and that it expects to sell over 300 million smartphones in 2013.

Another point of concern for Apple: Samsung has been outspending Apple on advertising. Samsung spent $401 million just in the U.S. last year to promote its smartphones. Apple spent $333 million. Just as important, Samsung's advertising has been more impactful. As ReadWrite noted this week, Samsung's commercials "are the kinds of ads that strike a chord." 

Apple remains the leader, however, where it may matter most: profits. As we noted last week, "Samsung is winning every way but one" against Apple. That one way, of course, is profits. Nonetheless, Apple clearly is watching Samsung carefully — and isn't above having the likes of Schiller toss a brushback pitch from time to time.

It's déjà vu all over again in Apple Land.

Steve Jobs took the stage in 2010 to trumpet the iPhone's dominance in the smartphone market. A few short months later, that dominance was gone. In 2011, with Android consuming Apple's market share, Jobs pilloried Android for its anemic market share, boasting 90% market share for the iPad. He also sardonically labeled 2011 the "year of the copycats," calling out Samsung and everyone else that wasn't Apple.

Two years later, the copycats have basically won, according to a new forecast from IDC:

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, March 2013

It turns out that those smaller, cheaper tablets that Jobs derided as "D.O.A." are actually alive and well -- and this year should account for one of every two tablets shipped.

None of which is to denigrate Apple, which makes the device upon which I'm typing this post. Rather, it is to echo Jay Yarow in suggesting that Steve Jobs' reality distortion field is needed more than ever. With a stock price that has plummeted off its peak and real questions being raised about Apple's future, Apple needs a Jobs.

Or maybe it just needs to think different.

For example, Apple needs to figure out how to be relevant outside North America and Western Europe, where people can't afford to pay a premium for iPads and iPhones. As Asymco analyst Horace Dediu reveals, 99.4% of Android's growth is outside the U.S., with that growth 150 times faster than U.S. Android growth:

Source: comScore, Google, Asymco (2013)

Apple needs to answer this global demand for devices, and keeping with a high-price, high-margin strategy isn't the right answer.

However much Apple or its fans point to Apple's profits, Samsung, in particular, is catching up. Profit share follows market share, particularly when competitors like Samsung can not only build cheap Android devices but also high-end Android devices that are equal to or better than Apple's devices. Android is already eating into Apple's profit margins, pushing it to release smaller, cheaper devices that generate smaller profits.

So maybe Apple is thinking different. But it needs to accelerate this. And not just in the U.S., which is one of the few markets where users can get the lower-end Apple devices (e.g., iPhone 4S) heavily subsidized.

John Paul Titlow argues that Apple needs to go for broke with iOS 7. Given the innovation we're seeing from Google with things like Google Now, that's a great suggestion, but a jump in iOS innovation may merely be table stakes.

(See Microsoft Is Basically Screwed In The Tablet Sector, IDC Says.)

Apple needs to play the market share game. Wholly fixating on profit margins has kept it from aggressively targeting the global market where most of the growth is, now that the Western world is largely saturated with smartphones and, increasingly, tablets. Could Apple build lower-end devices that manage to maintain Apple's polish and design flair? Of course it could.

The only thing holding Apple back is an unwillingness to think different.

A rogue Korean group has professed a desire to take over the United States.

No, we are not talking about Kim Jong Un, nuclear missiles or an army of North Koreans on U.S. soil. This rogue Korean group is decidedly more friendly. Some might even call them downright pleasant. Samsung, the South Korean gadget manufacturer, is launching its new Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone Thursday at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. And it is most definitely gunning for the iPhone on Apple’s home turf.

Attack Apple On Its Home Turf

The Korea Times, citing insider sources at Samsung, reports that the company wants to dethrone the iPhone in the U.S. Samsung apparently chose New York City for the launch event because it, “is nicknamed the Big Apple, which is also the symbol and heart of the United States, Samsung picked that city for the event.’’

“By releasing the S4 on Apple’s home-turf, Samsung wants to show we can effectively manage our smartphone business even in the United States,’’ said an insider in The Korea Times interview. 

Samsung is the biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world. Everywhere on the globe it kicks the snot out of Apple with multiple smartphones at varying prices and sizes. Everywhere, that is, except for the United States. 

Ah, America. Baseball. Apple pie. Carolina barbecue. And… the iPhone. Apple dominates the U.S. through the top three carriers – AT&T, Sprint, Verizon – selling subsidized smartphones to hungry masses. In the last quarter of 2012, Verizon sold more iPhones than Androids for the first time ever. About 50% of Sprint’s smartphone sales are of the Apple derivation and AT&T (which launched the iPhone and had exclusivity for years) sells between 70%-80% iPhones in any given quarter. See the chart from mobile analyst Ben Evans below.

According to a recent report from research firm comScore, Apple holds 38% of the U.S. smartphone market. Samsung places a distant second at 21% (HTC, Motorola and LG round out the top five). 

So, you can understand Samsung’s desire. 

Hardware, Software & Marketing, Oh My

Samsung thinks it can conquer the U.S. with great hardware and software features. For the upcoming Galaxy S4, that includes the alleged Exynos “Octa-core” processor, a five-inch display and 2GB of RAM, according to The Korea Times. Samsung’s approach will also include custom-built apps and software features, which may or may not include “Eye Scrolling.” Eye Scrolling is supposed to be a way to navigate your smartphone with visual cues, as opposed to touch. 

“These wow factors will draw attention. If we can beat Apple on its home turf, then we will be seen as the real global leader in smartphones by consumers,” the Samsung insider said. 

We firmly expect the Samsung to come out with some interesting features at Radio City on Thursday. But, whatever the Galaxy S4 entails, that will be window dressing to the marketing that will erupt from Samsung in the U.S. this year.

The first salvos have already been launched. Samsung enlisted A-list U.S. actors Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen (and Lebron James) for its Super Bowl commercial. The company has been teasing the Galaxy S4 launch with a series of videos starring the preppy brat known as Jeremy Maxwell. Once the Galaxy S4 hits shelves, look for Samsung-specific commercials to come from T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Samsung thinks it can win the advertising and marketing war and will spend a ton to do so.

That’s all well and good (especially to ad-hungry U.S. media corporations), but Samsung’s ideas of what plays in the U.S. might be slightly off-kilter. Exhibit A: Jeremy Maxwell. Really, who the hell is this kid? Is this what Samsung thinks of when it imagines the prototypical American child? This Richie Rich clone has his own butler and power ties. It is like something out of a Wes Anderson movie. If Samsung wants to conquer the U.S., it cannot pander to the white elite demographic represented by such figures as Jeremy Maxwell. 

The Smartphone Battle Of America will definitely be intriguing as 2013 progresses. Can the Koreans unseat the Almighty Apple? We will be at Radio City in New York on Thursday to see the first shots fired. 

Top image: Samsung Galaxy S4 teaser photo from Samsung Mobile US Twitter account

Say what you will about Samsung, it sticks to its guns. Even if that means once again inflicting a whiny, snobby little brat on an unsuspecting world as its mascot and "secret messenger" for the upcoming Galaxy S4 smartphone.

Yes, Jeremy Maxwell is back — and annoying as ever — in Samsung's latest Galaxy S4 teaser video. Almost as bad as that is the fact that very little about the S4 is actually teased here, except for the fact that a product with that name is on its way.

Samsung is releasing a series of videos starring Little Jeremy, some suburbanite preppy who gets early access to the Galaxy S4. The first video showed him signing a non-disclosure agreement and getting a peek in the box that, presumably, holds the Galaxy S4 (though all we can really tell is that the damn thing glows). We are left with Jeremy getting harassed by a girl neighbor demanding to know what his secret is.

Samsung has now treated us to the next installment of this imp's journey. We see Jeremy poking his head into the (still glowing) box, getting yelled at by the neighbor girl and marveling at the thing inside. ("It's my favorite color," Jeremy coos. I hope he likes pearl grey.) Jeremy then goes to bed with his faithful dog, all alight with excitement.

In the morning, Jeremy's mother calls out, "I've put out your power ties for your big day!" Jeremy, in a fit of pure Zen, chants, "big day, big day."

The video is embedded below. Tell us in the comments what you think of Jeremy Maxwell. More importantly, what do you think of this hype-machine marketing campaign from Samsung? Is it helpful in any way, shape or form? What about the demographic choice of a kid with a butler and power ties?

Samsung will debut the Galaxy S4 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City this Thursday, March 14th. We'll be there to bring you all the action. With any luck, Jeremy Maxwell won't be invited. 

Lead image courtesy of the Samsung teaser video