With a much worse indoor/low light conditions despite having 3 times more pixels? I believe the outdoor shot of One will get better as firmware is upgraded (iPhone 4 also has 5MP only, and is still a very capable shooter), but don't see firmware will help S4 in low light shoots.

To TS, personally I dislike TouchWiz, look comical and has a funny colour scheme. The newer Sense UI feels much more serious (in pictures, reviews etc.). Try both and pick the one you like the most.

Well, S4 is indeed more powerful than HTC One - Snapdragon variant having higher clock speed and Exynos variant probably being superior as A15 is better than Krait. S4 still has a plethora selection of sensors (barometer, hygrometer and the likes), and all those gimmicky features involving gestures and hovers or whatever. But how much of this extra things are going to benefit users remain to be known. That's not to mention S4 runs on the newer OS, and will likely to keep up with the Nexus given that Samsung probably has the best engineers to keep S4's firmware up to date.

Sad thing is people won't know you have an S4. Probably very few can observe the increase screen size (or the narrower bezel), and people will not give you an extra sight seeing you using a Samsung. I think the plasticky HTC Butterfly is also more handsome than this S4, not to mention the mighty aluminium beast HTC One.

The way Apple designs their OS is different. It may stay on a same screen waiting to load for quite some time, but it will not drop a frame for any animation. Apple dedicates a lot of RAM to run just the launcher (in Android term), while Android distributes them evenly.

Apple is also the one to build the OS in and out, so they can push releases extremely fast. The Android equivalent here is the Nexus, where Google builds the OS in and out themselves, push to Nexus right away. Samsung (even though they may have acquired the code earlier before release) will still need to spoil the OS a bit by adding their stuff, so the lag time is always there. At least be appreciative that S4 is among the first of non-Nexus to get 4.2 officially.

So the answer is always, root and custom ROM to get the best out of Android.

Apple's multitasking ability is not as extensive as Android, because it will kill the apps off to reserve enough memory for its core applications. Android gives probably equal loves to most apps (more used apps will get more love still though, with less used apps usually clean off the memory), while there are tricks to keep launcher in memory, there are times we simply see the launcher gets restarted, the phone/contact app loads again everything - all these you don't see in Apple. Apple could pull it off because it's an OS built for a limited number of devices, and for the most parts, they have control over the hardware in the already small pool of devices.

A Nexus comes very close to the smoothness level of iOS, while still enjoying all the extensive features an Android could offer. As Android evolves, it will remains its versatility, and slowly getting smoother and smoother. iOS? I don't see how they get versatility when they dare not give up the smoothness.
That said, within the Android camp, I think the Samsung team probably is the best - they manage to come up so many features, push the quickest updates (apart from Nexus). Just look at HTC who struggles with a half-baked BlinkFeed (custom RSS feed yet to come) and Highlight Reel (custom audio yet to come), and ships with 4.1 (out since mid-2012). Don't get me started on Sony, and I think LG has enough reputation to claim themselves the slowpoke in Android.

EDIT: My last rooted phone is a HTC Desire (yet to itchy to root my current devices), and I can boast it probably is smooth enough to rival the iPhone 4, even if it runs on Gingerbread. So I expect a rooted Android to be able to get the same performance level as the iOS devices, especially Nexus. (Often the times, Android users install Task Manager or RAM Booster and enforce Power Saver mode ALL THE TIME which affects the performance and smoothness. Else I think phones in 2013 should be fine.)

This post has been edited by tanjinjack: Apr 30 2013, 01:48 AM

In fact, I think if Android has enough RAM, they'll run extremely smoothly. I have yet to own a 2GB phone but I suppose that is pretty enough as long as you don't run games (or benchmark) one after another. But once the app is fully loaded, it should be alright unless background apps kicks in to kacau. That's why if Android has enough RAM, it should be smooth on its own. This is not to be mistaken with the 'free RAM' though, which tells you how many 'wasted' RAM you have. Ideally, it should be low but not too low that it will needs killing apps together while launching new apps.

I don't think Google delays release of codes to HTC and others. It's just that they are just not as fast as Samsung (which I believe they throw in a lot of money to hire engineers to work on the firmware). HTC is an example of small companies small team. Sony seems to me like a large company but too many phones to handle, end up slow.

LTE should matter in the next few years. If anyone wants to use the phone for a few months (less than a year), and may not live in the LTE area, they could just ignore it for now.

Not much smoother I would say. You should see more improvements with a better kernel, or a better optimised ROM.

Back when the old days I still recall my SE 990i could scan business card just fine (I think it's a 3.2MP), not sure about text. I have taken documents using 5MP and find no issue whatsoever. I find it more positive that HTC could fix the problem (given that they can reserve extra manpower for the firmware development to One as they have only 2 phones (One and First) in 2013, but probably many more in the same stage last year or previous year). S4's low-light capability is already as it is, nothing more we can do to improve it, and to me, taking indoor pictures (like an outing with friends in a restaurant with cozy and dimmer lighting) or getting viewable low-light photos matter more to me than getting the extra pixels. (They are all being oversharpen anyway.)

Phones are never investments, but they are expensive toys that people may get bored in 6 months. This should still be the minority of all shopping smartphones, but I suppose quite a number of them are hopping around in LYN, just go Garage Sales one round and you'll know.

It's actually because Samsung wants to push their S4 out early, to fight with One and Z, and probably create enough gap until the next most amazing thing come out from the Apple camp. I believe they only manage to start mass manufacture the Exynos chip, and couldn't get enough time to stock up their inventory and thus have to source from Snapdragon. To sugarcoat their sourcing of Snapdragon (which is because of the delay in the Octa-core), they try to make the Snapdragon LTE-enabled but not for the Exynos. However, the Exynos can do 4G just fine, so some regions still get it in the end.

I think that depends if our telco wants to wrestle that in for you or not - distributor will likely not care unless the sales of S4 has been underwhelming and LTE being a reason (which I don't see that happening). Both Celcom and Maxis went for the 3G Octa-core, chances are they will just stick with this, unless they need another 4G phone to push for their 4G network. If Digi and Umobile could launch their 4G network (I have no news about this), maybe they could try to bring that in to promote their network. But it's all up to Samsung if they want to give away 8-core 4G S4 outside Korean or not.