Samsung goes after corporate clients with new Galaxy S4 smartphone

Not content with the share of the mobile market it’s carved away Apple’s iPhone, Samsung has built its latest version of the Galaxy smartphone to squeeze some juice from BlackBerry.

The Galaxy S4 ships to customers who preordered on April 27 and will be in stores on May 3. The $800 smartphone ($200 with a contract) includes features that are designed to appeal to corporate accounts.

Which is not to say that Samsung isn’t trying to get more everyday people switching to the Galaxy. “We haven’t sold to everybody,” said Ken Price. “Yet.”

While demonstrating the features of the S4 to the Straight last week, the director of marketing for Samsung Canada said that his department’s research indicates there is a substantial number of people who are coming to the end of a three-year plan and who have never had a smartphone before.

The “easy” setting on the S4, which hides the deep customization options that are expected in an Android device, is intended for those who are looking at getting their first smartphone.

The S4, with a quad-core, 1.9 GHz chip and 2 GB of RAM, runs Android’s Jelly Bean (4.2.2) operating system. The 16 GB of storage space is expandable with Micro SD cards (which are available in capacities up to 64 GB these days). It is available in black or white.

From the outside, the S4 looks much like its predecessor, the SIII. It has a full 5-inch screen and is constructed of a polycarbonate plastic. That makes for a light (130 grams) but somewhat flimsy device, depending on what you’re used to.

Existing Galaxy users looking to upgrade will find some new features to consider, the most significant of which is the Super AMOLED display, which brings crisp, full high-definition video (1920 x 1080 pixels) to the handheld.

There’s one screen to enable or disable the numerous connectivity choices—including Bluetooth, infrared (IR), NFC, Wi-Fi, and others—which is convenient. The IR port can be used to control televisions and set-top boxes, too. 

The voice recognition on the phone, which can be used with the slick S Translator software that supports 10 languages, is solid, and in a test was able to differentiate a string of contractions.

The S4 will also look to see if you’re looking at it before it automatically powers down. The eye scanning feature can also be set to autoscroll the screen on the mobile device as you read. 

Using the autoscroll is a bit like riding a Segway; if you try and control what’s happening it will seem awkward. With a bit of practice to stop thinking about what you’re doing it can be very convenient. 

But what enriches the S4 most are the features that appeal to those corporate clients. As Price said, “work is not a place, it’s an event”. The most striking of which is the ability to have two profiles on each device which cannot be accessed by the other. So if you’re using your S4 as a personal phone, you can’t check your corporate email account. 

And the information technology (IT) departments of large businesses can configure the business profile completely. Any S4 function can be disabled or modified to meet the business needs of the corporation. If the employee leaves the company, the business profile can be wiped without affecting the consumer data and profile.

New security features include secure boot and hardware encryption on anything in the smartphone’s memory, or on SD cards being used with the device.