Could we transform our Galaxy S3 phones into a Galaxy S4?

Samsung have recently announced their highly anticipated new flagship smartphone the Galaxy S4. I as many people were completely hyped up about the upcoming announcement as Samsung are known to always bring something new to the table, something innovative and revolutionary as previous rumours suggested.

Unfortunately as soon as the Galaxy S4 was unveiled literally out of a box at the Samsung unpacked event I was not impressed. First I thought it was a joke as it looked exactly like the Galaxy S3. Then suddenly reality hit me and well it was actually the S4, but hey maybe they had something revolutionary hidden under the bonnet? The answer to that is a yes and no.

Why the Samsung Galaxy S4 is a decent upgrade

The Galaxy S4 has an upgraded camera sensor of up to 13 megapixels on the outer camera and a 2.1 megapixel front facing camera. This is miles ahead of the iPhone as we stand.

The screen has been upgraded in terms of quality and size. The Galaxy S4 has a screen measuring 5 inches which is 0.2 inches bigger than its predecessor, it also supports full HD at 1080P. The phone itself has only become slightly taller than its predecessor not having to bloat up in size, oh and it is slightly thinner too!

I believe the Galaxy S4 is a dual sim smartphone, allowing you to carry just one phone for both business and personal use. Great for people who carry around 2 separate phones such as myself!

The phone boasts 2GB ram along with an 8 core processor – although 4 of those cores are used for being power efficient. It also comes packed with 8 sensors which could be used with various applications – particularly health related.

Why the Samsung Galaxy S4 isn’t enough for an upgrade

I believe the most emphasised of the features shown off in the event were pretty much software based which could be easily replicated via a custom rom. For those who don’t know what a custom rom is – it is basically an operating system (Android) that is customised and can be installed on your phone. Usually these custom roms give you more features than your stock rom (original operating system) you had on your phone.

The features I believe that could be replicated on your Galaxy S3 via a custom rom:

• Dual camera video recording
• Sound accompanied by photo – “Get well soon” *snap*
• S-Translator
• Story album
• S Voice Drive (personal assistant whilst driving)
• Samsung Hub (home cloud networking)
• Dual video call (video call using both cameras simultaneously
• Group Play (play music together in a group)
• Tilt up and down to scroll
• Automatic pause/play when watching a video using front camera

These features were heavily boast and a lot of time was spent in the event showing off and demonstrating these features. Whilst watching the event live I thought to myself aren’t these just software add ons? If you ask me the situation is similar to when Apple upgraded the hardware slightly on the iPhone 4S and introduced Siri (where iPhone 4 surely could have handled it too).

So what do you think? Are you going to sell or trade in your Galaxy S3 for the new Galaxy S4? Or are you going to wait for a custom rom to install on your phone? Let us know in the comment section below!