Samsung Galaxy S IV Live Blog: All The News As It Happened


The day is finally here! Today we found out all the news about the Galaxy S IV. No more rumours or speculation. Get in here and read how it’s all going down in Times Square, New York City.

The event has just wrapped up in NYC. Scroll down to see all the events as they unfolded at Radio City Music Hall, complete with shiny pictures and detailed specs.


[09:00]
We’re an hour away from the Samsung Unpacked event in New York!

[09:31]
Remember, you can watch the announcement live here. Don’t forget to refresh this page every few minutes to get all of the updated Galaxy info from Gizmodo!

[09:32]
What do you want to see on the new Galaxy S IV?

[09:50]
If you don’t like the music playing on that weird live feed, we’ve got our own playlist to groove along to.

[10:01am]
The stage is set at the Radio City Music Hall in NYC. I’m half expecting Seth MacFarlane to be hosting this thing!

[10:04am]
Samsung is running a bit late, but we’re assured it’s all kicking off in a few minutes.

[10:08am]
Whatever the pleasant orchestral music playing right now is better be a ringtone on the new Galaxy. It’s so pleasant.

[10:10am]
There are almost 400,000 people watching the Samsung live stream right now!

[10:11am]
Oooh. Lights out. We’re underway!

[10:12am]
We’re starting off with a video of that weird kid who is the “courier” at the centre of Samsung’s viral campaign. He certainly looks cute in his bow tie. #bowtiesarecool.

[10:13am]
JK Shin, president and head of mobile computing for Samsung is up. Getting a bit of a rowdy reception at Radio City.

[10:14am]

[10:16am]
Looks like JK is giving us a sneak peek at camera features we’ll see in the next hour or so.

[10:16am]
Smart Scroll and Smart Pause confirmed as features, looks like those rumours were true. More detail soon.

[10:18am]
Group Play is also coming, looks like some kind of content sharing feature that “doesn’t need a network”. Weird.

[10:19am]
It’s official: meet the Samsung Galaxy S IV! Cue sexy teaser video.

327 operators in 155 countries will carry the Galaxy S IV at the end of April. 3G and 4G/LTE versions will be available globally. Samsung supporting FT/LTE and TD/LTE networks, so Aussie carriers will be happy with new standards there. I imagine that will make updates difficult to new versions of Android…

[10:23]
Ryan Biden, head of Samsung Mobile USA is up. Telling us about the 5-inch screen! Full HD SuperAMOLED. 441 pixels per inch in this screen.

Only a Category 3 device, not one of the super-fast Category 4 devices Telstra and Optus will be using later on in the year.

[10:27]
Here are all the specs:

• 2GB RAM
• 16GB/32GB/64GB of storage will be available, memory expandable up to 64GB
• 2600mAh removable battery.
• 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, 2-megapixel front-facing
• Infrared spot so you can control your TV. That’s a win.
• Bluetooth 4.0
• New sensors on-board include humidity and infrared sensors.

…and a handy specs sheet from the presentation!

[10:30]
We’re now getting a weird little theatre presentation of a dance recital to demonstrate the dual-camera function.

Dual-camera technology means you can insert yourself into videos so the person behind the camera doesn’t have to miss out on all the memories. Both the rear- and front-facing camera record at the same time and overlay the footage in-phone.

[10:32]
That Jeremy kid can really dance. He’s ripping out a tap-dance right now. We’re now seeing a feature called Drama Shot, which sees the camera take 100 shots in 4 seconds and compile the best ones into one frame. You’ve also got something called Eraser, which lets you cut people out of the shot if they photobomb.

Interestingly, those are both features on the HTC One…

[10:33]
Hovering over an image now lets you get a preview of the content, like on the Galaxy Note II.

[10:34]
Cut to a scene with two guys backpacking through Asia.

[10:35]
There’s an auto-translate feature in the Galaxy S IV called S-Translate. You type a question in English, the phone translates into another language and back again when someone speaks at it in another language. It understands 10 languages (bet Australian isn’t one of them), and it understands text to speech and speech to text. French, German, Italian, Latin-American, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese are supported. There’s even an optical reader app that lets you translate stuff you look at via the camera.

That’s an amazing feature.

[10:37]
The screen has a feature called Adapt Display which fixes up the contrast, brightness and saturation on the screen dependent on what you’re looking at (games, emails, movies).

[10:38]
You can create story albums of all your journeys, except the two people they have up to act it out is a little creepy.

[10:42]
We’re hearing about S-Voice which pairs with your car as you drive.

[10:45]
New S-Voice sounds like GLADoS. That’s terrifying.

[10:45]
Meanwhile, HTC is doing its best to troll this event from all angles:

[10:46]
The S IV will let you use the screen even with gloves on. Hooray! Bring on Winter.

[10:47]
Samsung Knox will divide your Galaxy S IV into work and home sections so that it’s got enhanced security for the Enterprise. It’s the first device Knox will ship on.

[10:51]
Group Play lets you use multiple Galaxy S IVs as different speakers in a surround sound array. One phone acts as the left, one as the right, one as the centre. So if you’re friends all have S IVs, you can have a killer sound system just by using all your phones together. That’s nifty. Cue weird dancing.

[10:52]
ChatOn updated to include video calling with three people. That all combines with dual-camera features, so you can have you on the front-facing camera, what you’re looking at through the rear-facing overlaid with the people you’re calling.

[10:54]
Smart Scroll and Smart Pause works exactly as you’d think. Tilt the phone up and down to scroll, and the sensors watch your eyes so it can tell when you look away.

[10:55]
This is getting worryingly close to sexist territory.

[10:56]
New fitness features are built-into the Galaxy S IV to help you with all your fitness gadgets.

[10:56]
The Galaxy S IV will also support smart cover-like technology that sleeps the display when you close the cover. It also has a window in the case that lets you see who is calling without having to open the cover.

[10:57]
And now we’re wrapping up! That was fast.

[10:58]
Love a quick event! We’ll have details on who will be selling the Galaxy S IV and when in Australia within the hour. Stay tuned!


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