Galaxy S4 mini

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aami.aami

Senior Member
Apr 17, 2012
443
62
Samsung annonced officially, the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini.

it has 4.3" qHD disply, android 4.2.2 but with out most of the features of S4 (like no double shot, no 360 panorama), has S Health but with out S4 sensors like temperature sensor, barometer and humidity sensor o_O

chipset is most likely Snapdragon 400 at 1.7Ghz with 1.5Gb of RAM and internal storage is 8Gb with Micro SD card slot for expanding it.
rest of connectivity options and usual, wifi, bluetooth,GPS with GLONASS etc...
also has IR blaster for remote controlling.

the phone has dimensions of 124.6 x 61.3 x 8.94mm and weighs 107g which is cool :D
battery is user replacable and is 1900mAh.

no word on pricing. samsung will show it off on June 20 and most likely to reveal pricing then.
available color options are Black Mist and White Frost.

i kinda like it except the qHD screen. it should have been at least 720p but all its success depends on its pricing.

what do u guys think?
 

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Beefheart

Senior Member
Dec 5, 2007
5,043
1,754
England
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
The SIII Mini always struck me as a bit pointless, having neither the spec to appeal to those that like phones with a bit of muscle or the price point for those that want a decent phone on a budget. It didn't really satisfy anyone and I have a sneaky feeling we're going to see more of the same with this.
 

fortunz

Senior Member
Apr 19, 2009
859
130
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Definitely not more of the same, but then the s3 mini was especially useless. Rumors/leaks have the ATT version of the s4 mini at 720p (presumably pentile, but no confirmation). But gsmarena just confirmed that the version announced for europe is NOT pentile. It's got the same RGB s stripe as the Note 2. At 4.25" with qHD, it has a very respectable 259ppi that is at least as sharp as a Galaxy S3, and maybe slightly sharper. I'd almost as soon have RGB qHD as 720p pentile, so at least I know for sure what I'm getting. It comes with air view and multiwindow, which is kinda surprising.

http://www.androidbeat.com/2013/05/gs4-mini-720p/
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s4_mini-review-932.php

If this is $300, I'm gonna be very happy. If $350, I'm gonna be a little happy. If $400, I'm gonna be not very happy, but might get it anyway.
 
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hung2900

Senior Member
Apr 3, 2012
347
91
Definitely not more of the same, but then the s3 mini was especially useless. Rumors/leaks have the ATT version of the s4 mini at 720p (presumably pentile, but no confirmation). But gsmarena just confirmed that the version announced for europe is NOT pentile. It's got the same RGB s stripe as the Note 2. At 4.25" with qHD, it has a very respectable 259ppi that is at least as sharp as a Galaxy S3, and maybe slightly sharper. I'd almost as soon have RGB qHD as 720p pentile, so at least I know for sure what I'm getting. It comes with air view and multiwindow, which is kinda surprising.

http://www.androidbeat.com/2013/05/gs4-mini-720p/
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s4_mini-review-932.php

If this is $300, I'm gonna be very happy. If $350, I'm gonna be a little happy. If $400, I'm gonna be not very happy, but might get it anyway.

I saw it in a video (closely), and it's not as sharp as S3.
I don't know but it's clueless to compare the number of subpixels to say which is sharper.
With the lower ppi, Note 2 is still a little bit sharper than S3 because they scale it the same as S3 (by adjusting ppi) and no pentile effect on Note 2. But they cannot do the same on a smaller screen like S4 mini-
 
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fortunz

Senior Member
Apr 19, 2009
859
130
inside
I saw it in a video (closely), and it's not as sharp as S3.
I don't know but it's clueless to compare the number of subpixels to say which is sharper.
With the lower ppi, Note 2 is still a little bit sharper than S3 because they scale it the same as S3 (by adjusting ppi) and no pentile effect on Note 2. But they cannot do the same on a smaller screen like S4 mini-
It's clueless to think you can make a screen sharper through scaling (presumably, you meant adjusting "dpi"). And to claim subpixels have nothing to do with sharpness but still hail the Note 2's lack of a pentile effect as responsible for it's sharpness. What do you think the pentile effect is? And to think you can divine screen sharpness through an encoded web video. Trust me, you can't.

You can pixelate software elements through improper scaling, but you can't sharpen a low density screen through software scaling. For example if you zoom in enough (a form of 'scaling') on a small image even viewing it on a super sharp screen, yeah, it'll look bad, but that's not the screen's problem. If you've got a low density screen, the sharpest of images will look crappy no matter how you scale them. The S4 mini is sharp for the same reason the Note 2 looks sharp: because they share the same complete RGB matrix and almost the same density.

Pentile is nothing more or less than false advertising, a way of artificially inflating the raw spec. It's not the worst thing in the world, it just requires a much higher purported ppi to reach the same sharpness as an RGB matrix screen.
 

chickentuna

Senior Member
Feb 13, 2012
1,464
576
Again like the S3 mini, Samsung is trying to milk more money out of the S4 series but now targeting the mid-range side. Average consumers will probably buy this as there is an "S4" tag on it and is much cheaper than it's big brother.
 

hung2900

Senior Member
Apr 3, 2012
347
91
It's clueless to think you can make a screen sharper through scaling (presumably, you meant adjusting "dpi"). And to claim subpixels have nothing to do with sharpness but still hail the Note 2's lack of a pentile effect as responsible for it's sharpness. What do you think the pentile effect is? And to think you can divine screen sharpness through an encoded web video. Trust me, you can't.

You can pixelate software elements through improper scaling, but you can't sharpen a low density screen through software scaling. For example if you zoom in enough (a form of 'scaling') on a small image even viewing it on a super sharp screen, yeah, it'll look bad, but that's not the screen's problem. If you've got a low density screen, the sharpest of images will look crappy no matter how you scale them. The S4 mini is sharp for the same reason the Note 2 looks sharp: because they share the same complete RGB matrix and almost the same density.

Pentile is nothing more or less than false advertising, a way of artificially inflating the raw spec. It's not the worst thing in the world, it just requires a much higher purported ppi to reach the same sharpness as an RGB matrix screen.

I don't think you understand my opinion, maybe due to my bad English. To say clearer, what I mean is the Note 2's screen's scale is basically the same as Galaxy S3 with the same 320 dpi - zooming from 4.8 to 5.55 inch. This means, a same font of texts, a word with a length of 120 pixels on S3 (1/6 of the total length) is still 120 pixels on Note 2 (also 1/6 of the total length), but 15.625% bigger in real-size (what you actually see). So is the result is what you can see clear on S3, you can see it CLEARER on Note 2. That's is the technichque Samsung usually implements, like on Note 8.0 that make it much more sharper than iPad mini in browsing. If we compare a same line of texts with 5mm of "real size", the result from a screen like One X basically has 18% more pixels to illustrate the detail of the text, which results in being clearer than Note 2. And if you really have a Note 2 (i'm using it), when visiting some websites in desktop mode (like xda forum, lol), the text is very small and not crisp anymore.
But how about Galaxy S4 Mini? "The S4 mini is sharp for the same reason the Note 2 looks sharp"? OK, now we will consider the same thing as Note 2 above. For a line of texts equivalent to 1/6 total length of the screen, it takes only 93.33 pixels, which means noticeably less than S3 and Note 2 with smaller "real size" also, so it cannot be as sharp as S3. And in fact, Samsung did rescale from 320dpi to 240 dpi on Galaxy S4 Mini, which also means for a same font of texts, the number of pixels for displaying increases about 15.3%, so from 93.33 pixels I said above now it is appox. 108 pixels, which is not too far from Galaxy S3, and the payoff is the screen is cramped. So we cannot say "because Note 2 is sharp so Galaxy S4 Mini is also sharp"

About Pentile screen, it is not totally "nothing more or less than false advertising", but more like "false understanding of the major and the misleading criticisms". Why? Because most of people don't understand what is "Pentile". In fact, this "technology" can ONLY be used on OLED (AMOLED) technogy, which has the uneven luminance and lumious time of different color subpixels. Even experts cannot show the "exactly" ppi of an Pentile Amoled screen (because even with Pentile, different stripes layout leads to different result), while some people try to do an easier way that comparing the total number of subpixels, which is totally false. In fact, Galaxy S4 has 623 subpixels/inch, slightly higher than Blackberry Z10 (615) and iPhone 5 (565), but it is MUCH more sharper and not really different from the normal RGB 1080p screen like Xperia Z.
screen-comparison-galaxy-s4.jpg


With Pentile screen, the main culprit of all criticism is not the lack of subpixels, but the uneven scale of pixels (because they're not real pixels) and uneven big-small gaps redundant. That's why they call the subpixels layout of S4 is innovative while still Pentile, because it is much much better than the traditional matrix on Galaxy S3 and together with the high ppi reduces most of Pentile problem (in fact, with traditional matrix, even with 441 ppi probably there will be something there)
Pentilecomparison_zps39891fc4.png
 

metaxaos

Senior Member
Nov 18, 2012
91
42
Bogorodsk
I'm considering this too as my next phone.
Compact, powerful, enough RAM and a non-pentile qHD display.

It was recently announced that CM10.1 is being prepared for i9195 version. Is there any info of whether it will also be supported for i9190 international version (without LTE and NFC)?
I also suppose we need a separate ROOT thread for it as nor 9192 neither 9195 procedures might fit.
 

Whosat

Senior Member
May 9, 2013
789
267
Hi :) Is there usb otg on galaxy s4 mini ?
Not at the moment. MHL isn't supported either.

It was recently announced that CM10.1 is being prepared for i9195 version. Is there any info of whether it will also be supported for i9190 international version (without LTE and NFC)?
I also suppose we need a separate ROOT thread for it as nor 9192 neither 9195 procedures might fit.

No info. There isn't a root for the 9190 yet - the 9192 and 9195 procedures do not work on the 9190 and will probably brick your device.
 

bobwal70

Member
Dec 31, 2010
48
0
hello, does anyone know when this phone will be available in the usa? can not find any info on this

if this is in the wrong forum please move, thanks
 

Whosat

Senior Member
May 9, 2013
789
267
Get the S4 mini if you want to future-proof yourself.

The S3 mini specifications are quite outdated
 

Whosat

Senior Member
May 9, 2013
789
267
No, i said between the normal s3 4.7" and s4mini. S3is cheaper here and has more ROMs and development

Hmm, you've mentioned the main benefit of getting the S3 I guess.

Also, the S3 has quad-core as opposed to the dual-core S4 mini. S3 has 1 GB of ram only though.


There are also more accessories for the S3 than for the S4 mini because the mini has a smaller market and is also a newer device.
 

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  • 2
    It's clueless to think you can make a screen sharper through scaling (presumably, you meant adjusting "dpi"). And to claim subpixels have nothing to do with sharpness but still hail the Note 2's lack of a pentile effect as responsible for it's sharpness. What do you think the pentile effect is? And to think you can divine screen sharpness through an encoded web video. Trust me, you can't.

    You can pixelate software elements through improper scaling, but you can't sharpen a low density screen through software scaling. For example if you zoom in enough (a form of 'scaling') on a small image even viewing it on a super sharp screen, yeah, it'll look bad, but that's not the screen's problem. If you've got a low density screen, the sharpest of images will look crappy no matter how you scale them. The S4 mini is sharp for the same reason the Note 2 looks sharp: because they share the same complete RGB matrix and almost the same density.

    Pentile is nothing more or less than false advertising, a way of artificially inflating the raw spec. It's not the worst thing in the world, it just requires a much higher purported ppi to reach the same sharpness as an RGB matrix screen.

    I don't think you understand my opinion, maybe due to my bad English. To say clearer, what I mean is the Note 2's screen's scale is basically the same as Galaxy S3 with the same 320 dpi - zooming from 4.8 to 5.55 inch. This means, a same font of texts, a word with a length of 120 pixels on S3 (1/6 of the total length) is still 120 pixels on Note 2 (also 1/6 of the total length), but 15.625% bigger in real-size (what you actually see). So is the result is what you can see clear on S3, you can see it CLEARER on Note 2. That's is the technichque Samsung usually implements, like on Note 8.0 that make it much more sharper than iPad mini in browsing. If we compare a same line of texts with 5mm of "real size", the result from a screen like One X basically has 18% more pixels to illustrate the detail of the text, which results in being clearer than Note 2. And if you really have a Note 2 (i'm using it), when visiting some websites in desktop mode (like xda forum, lol), the text is very small and not crisp anymore.
    But how about Galaxy S4 Mini? "The S4 mini is sharp for the same reason the Note 2 looks sharp"? OK, now we will consider the same thing as Note 2 above. For a line of texts equivalent to 1/6 total length of the screen, it takes only 93.33 pixels, which means noticeably less than S3 and Note 2 with smaller "real size" also, so it cannot be as sharp as S3. And in fact, Samsung did rescale from 320dpi to 240 dpi on Galaxy S4 Mini, which also means for a same font of texts, the number of pixels for displaying increases about 15.3%, so from 93.33 pixels I said above now it is appox. 108 pixels, which is not too far from Galaxy S3, and the payoff is the screen is cramped. So we cannot say "because Note 2 is sharp so Galaxy S4 Mini is also sharp"

    About Pentile screen, it is not totally "nothing more or less than false advertising", but more like "false understanding of the major and the misleading criticisms". Why? Because most of people don't understand what is "Pentile". In fact, this "technology" can ONLY be used on OLED (AMOLED) technogy, which has the uneven luminance and lumious time of different color subpixels. Even experts cannot show the "exactly" ppi of an Pentile Amoled screen (because even with Pentile, different stripes layout leads to different result), while some people try to do an easier way that comparing the total number of subpixels, which is totally false. In fact, Galaxy S4 has 623 subpixels/inch, slightly higher than Blackberry Z10 (615) and iPhone 5 (565), but it is MUCH more sharper and not really different from the normal RGB 1080p screen like Xperia Z.
    screen-comparison-galaxy-s4.jpg


    With Pentile screen, the main culprit of all criticism is not the lack of subpixels, but the uneven scale of pixels (because they're not real pixels) and uneven big-small gaps redundant. That's why they call the subpixels layout of S4 is innovative while still Pentile, because it is much much better than the traditional matrix on Galaxy S3 and together with the high ppi reduces most of Pentile problem (in fact, with traditional matrix, even with 441 ppi probably there will be something there)
    Pentilecomparison_zps39891fc4.png
    2
    The stock rom contains all the Samsung bloatware which you wish to remove so flashing a stock rom will not help you.

    You should look at what software the Nexus devices have to have an idea of what apps you are looking to keep.
    1
    Does or can S4 Mini have stock or by a custom rom have Air & Motion gestures ??
    No, the sensor isn't there.
    1
    You should recommend whoever did it to create a thread here on xda-dev forums with the steps and maybe arco or any other developers here can help with creating a proper toolkit for the 9190 as arco doesn't have a 9190 device to mess with.
    1
    Is everyone with this phone happy? And how easy to unlock and root? Thanks

    I certainly am. My priorities have always been:

    1) Raw processor speed;
    2) No acidic AMOLED craziness (S4 Mini has a setting to switch the palette to more attractive TFT LCD-like)
    3) Battery life

    It excels in everything: the Snapdragon 400 is a 600 with 2 less cores (and a simpler GPU), but I don't need them that badly - PPSSPP runs super-smooth, check the PPSSPP youtube videos for S4 - the Mini has the same performance; being generally disgusted by eye-hurting AMOLED colors made for space aliens - I like the screen with TFT-like setting very much: my favorite old games look the same as they were on any PC monitors of old, but with perfectly dark black color; the battery should come as no surprise to anyone that got used to, say, owning a phone with 1500 MAh and is now evaluating the added 400 = the effect is exactly that he would expect of 1900 MAh (especially after following 1-2 tutorials on reducing the stand-by battery drain, which is the fault of TouchWIZ).

    With said subjective bonuses you're getting a perfectly modern piece of gadgetry that still has some S4's selling points like the infra-red thingy, Smart Stay and S-voice, dialing the contact when you move your phone up to your head, plus the wonders of generic Android 4.2.2 and LTE / NFC if you choose the i9195 model.

    Oh, and the screen glass (which in itself is a true Gorilla Glass) has oleophobic coating. I, for one, will never use any touchscreen smartphone without one - it is amazingly good. And the screen reacts to the touch almost as fast as an iPhone, if not exactly as fast (this may be the Samsung's feature, I am not sure since this is my first device of the brand).

    Bottom line - it is a joy to use as a mobile phone, and it has raw power for years to come, but I wish it had sliding-out gamepad like my previous phone :D

    Oh, and today you can root any model without any problem - see this forum: http://xdaforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2380