A few pictures of the upcoming ruggedized Galaxy S4 Active device leaked yesterday, and I have to say I was quite impressed. Not only does it look like it has a pretty good design language, especially on the back, but it also finally brings some real color to Android devices. HTC had the Butterfly J in Japan, but they missed their chance to really promote it to the world. So as far as I’m concerned this looks to be the first Android phone from a major manufacturer that brings bold colors, and shakes things up from the same boring black and white colors.
I remember not too long ago, Android OEM’s were even afraid to launch white versions of their devices, because they didn’t think they will sell well, and pretty much every phone was black. Now almost all manufacturers are offering a white version of their flagship devices, which adds to the fact that it has become a boring color, too, especially when we can see all sorts of bright colors on Nokia or even HTC’s WP8 phones.
I think there’s a market for people who want phones that are not just black and white, and I think this market will be growing fast over the next few years. You can already get a hint of this happening by simply watching how many iPhone users (owners of other phones, too) are putting their phones in so many different color cases. But the cases tend to look less beautiful than the phones themselves in most cases, and I think many would prefer if the phones themselves were beautiful in design and had a very nice color on them, too.
I believe the Galaxy S4 managed to achieve this, even though I’m not sure I’m a fan of the screws on the back, as having screws these days on a device usually means that it’s lazy manufacturing work. However, in this case Samsung might’ve done it intentionally to add to the ruggedized look, and also quite possibly because it’s easier to make a tough phone that doesn’t split into pieces if you use such screws instead of gluing the case together.
The Galaxy S4 is supposed to have a Snapdragon S4 Plus processor, which is more like mid-end processor, and also an 8MP camera. I assume this is because they wanted to keep the pricing of the device relatively the same, but since making a thin ruggedized phone is more expensive, they had to cut costs somewhere else.
Now here’s the video with the leaked Galaxy S4 Active (only the front, though):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxkQavIz9wA
[Via MobileTechReview]