Android Samsung Galaxy S4 - Discussion Thread

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S4 with stock android(google edition) would be a nice addition to the Nexus lineup!? does that also mean that it will get all it's updates directly from google instead from samsung.
 
Ok so now we have a S4 google version. Although this will never come to India officially, if it would have come, the general public would be sold on the gimmicky samsung features and would buy samsung version instead of google S4.
But for the more informed, the Google S4 would probably make more sense so they are assured of updates on day 1 unlike samsung which will take infinite time to first put its bloatware and then deliver the new OS version.
This is applicable more to people who like manufacturer updates and not the custom ROM folks.
 
^ If Galaxy S4 GE comes with Exynos, we can port it to current Galaxy S4 Exynos (I9500) phones in no time. But since they said, it will be a LTE compatible device, we are pretty sure that they are coming up with Snapdragon thing.
 
Was there a price drop ? Samsung estore sent a mailer with new price as 40300, this was much earlier than expected :mad:
 
Used the S4 for a full 2 hours at a Vodafone Store, downloaded games and apps at the store itself.

I noticed no lag in normal usage at all. It was fast and responsive, plus temple run, subway surfers ran excellently, didn't test other apps...
 
@Rahul++

You do understand about androids more than many of us because you are into development of ROMs and all. What possibly could Samsung do here for reclaiming space ?
 
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Maybe unheard of but something where the user can select an option of moving unused features to the SD card. Don't see what else they can do. Some experienced rom cookers might be able to help.

Everyone keeps talking about TW bloat, but the fact is that XXHDPI assets also take space. Look at the HTC One, that too uses between 6-7 gb of the 32 gb out of the box.
 
raksrules said:
@Rahul++

You do understand about androids more than many of us because you are into development of ROMs and all. What possibly could Samsung do here for reclaiming space ?
Click to expand...


Well, the system uses some part of the ROM (internal storage) for its own files. Here Samsung has bloated up all its TouchWiz stuff, which turned out to be a lot because from 16 GB only 8.5-9.5 GB remains.

What could Samsung possibly do?
De-bloat their files, remove many unnecessary software features and other goodies that are just plain bloat. Re-allocate internal ROM to give more free space to user (and lesser space for the System files in turn).

I think Samsung should easily be able to offer about 10.5-11 GB.
 
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Samsung cannot afford to remove any of the features they advertised to get more space. One way they should have tried to avoid this mess was to have 32 GB as the base size for the S4.
That's why i mentioned in another thread that it will be interesting to see the free space on the 16GB Google S4.
 
Well, I tried doing some reverse engineering with storage issue. It seems they have dedicated around 7GB for Operating System itself, and it was full (very little space left). People are making noise over TW bloats, but TouchWiz framework and apps are not taking MUCH space here. What Samsung probably can do here is

1. Optimize all the xxhdpi assets (as @dafreaking said), yes xxhdpi takes a lot of space. They should probably optimize and reduce size. I did some PoC on how much memory XXHDPI requires. Well, the total size of an app SecSettings.apk is around 94mb. XXHDPI images (most of them are duplicated in different layout assets) occupy 35mb. That means, around 40% size of an app is consumed by XXHDPI images. So practically if Samsung can remove duplicates and optimize, they can save 20%-25% of space.
2. Remove all the third party applications (and there are some GAMES in /system/apps too.. I don't know why Samsung developers put games in it)
3. Remove unused libraries. SGS4 has many unused libraries laying in system dump.
4. Restructure partition and add the obtained free space to internal storage (/storage/emulated/0)


If done correctly, we can get 1.5-2GB extra. If no Samsung, someone from us (XDA) would have done it because it is needed. One more thing, We should force Google to reactivate feature "Move apps to SD Card". Being on Android means to give more control to user and I don't think Android is going on that path :-(
 
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raksrules said:
Why did google in the first place remove the "move apps to SD Card" thing ?
Performance reasons ?
Click to expand...
Nope. I don't know how one would take it. Google's intention was good for some reason but bad for MANY reasons. They wanted to force Manufactures to provide more internal storage. But nowadays, apps are getting huge (more than 1-2gb easily). It is hard to install everything on internal storage. I always preferred installing huge games and apps on external sdcard. But now that option is gone. I hope Google will include "App to SD Card" feature again.

I know it is easy to move game files / apps in External SD Card using apps that requires root access. But everyone will not be using Android the way we use.
 
Rahul++ said:
They wanted to force Manufactures to provide more internal storage.
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Not quite true. The primary reason for Google trying to do away with external storage is User Experience. There are a lot of scenarios that need to be taken care of by App Developers (what happens if App is on external storage and someone removes the external storage from phone?) which not only is an overhead but also unnecessary. Ultimately it would have resulted in a big mess if Google had allowed that. I still believe that Apps/Games should always be in the internal storage for performance reasons and also because they are "always" available. What developers should do (and I think a lot of them are doing it already) is have the main App/Game installed on internal storage and download additional app/game data (which may run into GBs) and store it on external memory.
 
@Pat

If we go by that theory, we probably can never expect a Nexus device with external storage.
 
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Isn't the Internal Storge treated same as the SD card in Android? As in android is essentially treating it as UsbStorage. By that logic why doesn't Google differentiate between an External SD and an Internal SD (phone memory). Obviously the Internal SD will be of the same speed of the System Partition (As they are partitions on the same chip)
 
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