The highly-anticipated global release of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S4 was welcomed with a lukewarm -- “good but not incredible” -- response from a number of major U.S. news outlets.

The latest model of South Korean tech giant’s flagship Galaxy series is to hit the global markets on Saturday, a day after it was released in South Korea.

Armed with a five-inch screen and powerful hardware that allows users to cruise through apps and videos, the smartphone is expected to present a serious challenge for its rival, Apple’s iPhone 5.

While Galaxy S4 was generally hailed as a quality phone, IT journalists from big-time U.S. media that reviewed the phone were reluctant to lap it up just yet. They stressed its weak software and lack of innovative changes.

“The Galaxy is still a beautiful, high-horsepower Android phone. But basically, it’s an updated Galaxy S3,” David Pogue, tech columnist for the New York Times, wrote in his review of the phone. He suggested if the Galaxy S4 was an Apple product, it would be called “Galaxy S3S,” implying the new phone was just a slightly upgraded model from Galaxy S3.

According to Pogue, Samsung is now “playing it safe.” He said the new Galaxy model was basically the same size and still made of plastic, and “nobody at the office will notice that you’ve bought the latest and greatest.”

Hayley Takayama of the Washington Post gave glowing reviews of Galaxy S4’s hardware, praising its big screen, processing power and camera that takes “stunning photos.”

Takayama, however, said the phone’s software features were “more hit and miss.” She said while some features were useful, some did not work “consistently enough to be useful” and others were just strange.

Overall, Takayama said it was a good phone but came short for wow factor. Plenty to like, but nothing to love, she put it.

Michael Calore of Wired pointed out one of the key problems of the abundant software features Galaxy S4 boasts; they do not work on many of the frequently used programs.

When testing the new phone, Calore said he spent five minutes just being amazed at its features. “Then, over the next five days, I never used them again,” he said.

The problem was that many of the phone’s state-of-the-art features just worked on Samsung’s software or Android Browser. Features like “Smart Scroll” and “Air Gestures,” which allow the user to scroll with just their eyes or wave of a hand, did not work on Chrome, Google Reader, or Kindle app, and other popular programs.

To sum up, he gave Galaxy S4 seven out of 10, saying the phone itself was “outstanding” but that its software was “a big bag of ‘why?’”

Perhaps the biggest blow came from Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, whose review of the new gadget was less than friendly to say the least.

“I found Samsung’s software often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional,” he wrote.

The renowned journalist gave the phone the most fatal thumbs down of recommending another phone. Mossberg said the readers should consider HTC One, which is “more polished-looking (than Galaxy S4) and quite capable.”



By Yoon Min-sik
(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)