**Samsung Galaxy S4 Active Review**

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is a ruggedized version of the popular Galaxy S4 smartphone, designed to withstand rough handling and harsh environments. In this review, we put the phone through its paces to see how it performs in everyday use.

One of the first things you notice about the S4 Active is its impressive display capabilities. The phone comes with an HD display that can load YouTube videos without any issues, even at high resolutions. We tested this by playing a 1080p video on the phone's built-in player and swiping down to see if there were any issues. To our surprise, everything worked seamlessly, including swiping gestures.

We also tried testing the phone with third-party video players, such as MX Player, which is known for its smooth playback experience. The results were impressive, with the phone playing 1080p videos without any hiccups or lag. This suggests that the S4 Active has a capable multimedia system that can handle demanding content.

In addition to its display capabilities, the S4 Active also supports USB OTG (On-The-Go) technology, which allows users to connect external devices such as thumb drives or memory cards to access additional storage space. We tested this feature by connecting a thumb drive to the phone and using MX Player to play back videos stored on it. The results were impressive, with the phone playing 1080p videos without any issues.

The camera capabilities of the S4 Active are also noteworthy. The rear-facing camera features an 8-megapixel sensor that can record video at 1080p resolution, while the front-facing camera has a 2-megapixel sensor that can also record video at 1080p. We tested both cameras and were pleased to find that they performed well, with good image quality and smooth autofocus.

One feature that's worth noting is the absence of the dual-shot camera mode found on some other Samsung Galaxy S4 models. However, this is not a major concern for most users, who will likely be happy with the phone's single-lens camera setup.

Gaming performance was another area where we were impressed with the S4 Active. We tested several games, including casual titles and more demanding experiences like Asphalt 8, and found that the phone handled them all without any significant lag or stuttering. While we did notice a slight drop in performance during gameplay, this was likely due to the game's developer not yet optimizing it for mobile devices.

The S4 Active also features several sensors that provide additional functionality beyond its core hardware capabilities. These include a compass, accelerometer, gyroscope, and proximity sensor, all of which work seamlessly with the phone's software.

Finally, we took a look at the phone's performance in terms of memory usage. With 2GB of RAM, the S4 Active should be able to handle most tasks without any issues. We tested this by running several apps simultaneously and monitoring the available free RAM, which was consistently around 1.158MB when no apps were running.

**Conclusion**

Overall, we're very impressed with the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, which offers a great balance of performance, features, and durability. Its ruggedized design makes it an ideal choice for users who need a phone that can withstand rough handling, while its impressive display capabilities and camera setup make it a great option for anyone looking for a high-quality multimedia experience.

While the absence of dual-shot camera mode may be a disappointment for some users, we believe that the S4 Active's strengths outweigh this limitation. Additionally, the phone is priced similarly to the regular Galaxy S4, making it an attractive option for those who want a high-end smartphone without breaking the bank.

Unfortunately, the S4 Active has not yet been launched in India, which may be a drawback for some users in that market. However, we're confident that Samsung will eventually release this phone in other regions, and when it does, it's sure to be a popular choice among Android enthusiasts.

For now, we hope that this review has provided you with a comprehensive overview of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, and we look forward to seeing how it performs in the real world. If you have any questions or comments about our review, please don't hesitate to reach out.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi there this is ranit from Tech tass.com and I have this Samsung Galaxy S4 Active with me and we're going to do the full review of this phone in this video the Galaxy S4 Active is the rugged version of the original Galaxy S4 and it is IP uh 67 certified that means it's dust and water resistant and actually if you look uh with the regular S4 the back is actually a little bit different uh the original Galaxy S4 has a 13 map camera but uh the S4 Active has a 8 map camera also if you look at the front we see a striking difference that the S4 Active has all the uh buttons That's the menu home and back are physical buttons but on the regular S4 just the home button is a physical button coming to the screen size both have a 5in screen and it's a 1080b screen but uh the Galaxy S4 has a super amulet screen on the other hand the S4 Active has a LCD screen but again the LCD screen as you can see is very good and see the viewing angles they are amazing and I want to thank Fel Communications for providing this unit uh for review and this Galaxy S4 Active has not yet been launched in India but in us it's priced around $620 to $630 unlocked and actually this is the urban gray color that we have and phasal Communications had also sent me one more color this is the uh dive blue color and as you can see from the front actually I very similar we have these accents here the Finish is gray here you have that blue finish and on the back again uh the cover is in a different color so we have actually one more color and that's I think so orange one but for the review we going to use this uh gray one and uh let me start with a physical overview on the top we have the 3.5mm headphone jack and we also have a IR Blaster and we have the WatchOn app using which you can control uh devices like television DVR Etc so it works like a remote also we have an indent here to open the back cover I'll show you that a bit later we have the power onoff button over here and this looks like the chrome finish that we have but uh it's actually plastic and one of my friend was using this phone for almost 45 days and this gets nicked very easily and on his S4 Active uh the coating just went away pretty quickly so you need to be aware of that moving towards the bottom we have this flap and this reveals the micro USB cable that'll be using for charging we have the flap because this is a water resistant and a dust resistant phone and this is the main microphone moving towards the back uh this end we have the volume rocker the volume rocker and the power button are pretty tactile so I have no ISS shoes moving towards the back we have a 8 map camera LED flash Samsung branding and at the bottom we have the opening for the speaker actually the speaker quality on this is much better and much louder compared to the original Galaxy S4 and you can open the back cover by just opening it up like this and you will see this this is again made by uh and again it's standard Samsung plastic but you see these rubber gasket and this prob provides a little bit of Water Production to the internals again the camera is still exposed and here you can add your micro SIM and the micro SD card the battery is the same as the regular Galaxy S4 that's a 2600 mamp battery and in my testing I would say the battery life was comparable to the Galaxy S4's battery life and uh you need to be careful while putting back this back cover and you need to make sure all of these are uh put in properly otherwise you won't get the water uh protection and uh I have seen some in some forums that uses complaining that their S4 got damaged due to water and even if you after you have pluged uh put it in like this and make sure that all it's snuggly fit you need to press here and make sure that it's sealed I would say it's a water resistant phone but again don't dip it in a pool or uh what do you say in Ocean or something and uh expect it to survive it's water and dust resistant moving towards the front we have the 5 in screen which is a 1080p screen and it has the same pixel density of 441 so everything looks actually very good on this phone let me just zoom in and I'll show you that the screen quality that Samsung has put in is very good and as you can see the quality is excellent I would say so for people who do not like super amulet screen uh this is a LCD screen and it's a very good panel and moving towards the Android version let me show you the same if we go to more and about the device it's running on the Android version 4.2.2 that is Jelly Bean and again the striking difference that you'll find if you're using any other Samsung Galaxy phone is the physical buttons it took me a day or two to get used to this but again it feels a lot different in your hand compared to a regular S4 uh and I would say it's a good thing coming to the storage you can add a Micro SD card and uh but I did not add it here and out of the box I have installed a lot of apps and games right now out of the box you get around 11 odd uh GB of space uh coming to the processor this is powered by a Snapdragon uh 600 processor that's a quadcore processor clogged at 1.9 GHz HZ and the GPU on this is adreno 320 Ram is 2 gigs so overall in my testing I would say the phone was very fluid to operate and I have also done some benchmarking with this phone so if you're interested in that you can check out those and I would say even in benchmarks I got some very good scores and you'll get the standard uh touch whz interface that we find on the Galaxy phones it's the same on this one also and for the most part I would say it's a pretty fluid phone but here and there uh I did notice a minor lags here and there that we generally find with touch with so there's no exception but again I would't say it's a uh laggy phone it's a pretty responsive phone coming to the voice call Clarity uh I would say the voice call Clarity was very good and had no issues with the phone uh one thing I did notice is that if you do this two finger swipe you do get a lot less options here out of the box compared to the regular S4 for example this is the regular S4 and you do get a lot of options here but again don't worry almost all of these options are also available on the S4 Active baring just one or two and regarding the weight if you compare it with the regular Galaxy S4 I would say it's a little bit heavier and also a little bit thicker as you can see but not by a big margin but again it's a more rugged phone so I would say that's okay now as we are connected to my internet connection uh let's uh fire up the web browser and let's quickly just go to uh the teas site our site that's Tech tow.com the keyboard is very roomy as you can see and you get this number pad also here so it's easy to type around and uh it's loading our website and as you can see it loaded it actually very quickly no issues uh pinch to zoom guesture is also very smooth scrolling also is no issues and uh let me just open up one of the stories because we have a YouTube video that's embedded on this web page and let's change the orientation now and as you can see that was also quick and let's play back this uh YouTube video that's embedded and let me just zoom in this is.com and I have the Sony Xperia Zed Ultra which is a massive Android phone by Sony and I just took it out of the box just want to show you the phone put some so as you can see it could play uh YouTube videos embedded uh within the web page without any issues also as I said uh the speaker is actually uh pretty loud I didn't expect it to be this loud it's louer than the regular Galaxy S4 and let us also Force this to desktop mode and let's uh try to load one more site let's say news.com so in terms of web browsing I would say I had no issues with this phone it was very responsive and you'll have a good time doing web browsing on this phone and as you can see this is the news.com website it's a pretty heavy site and even though it's a pretty heavy site the pinch to zoom guesture Etc is very responsive also another thing uh that I want to say is the screen quality actually is very good just look at it it's a very good screen that Samsung has put on this S4 Active so let's get out of this one and you can hold this home button and you do get this multitasking tray like this and let's say if you want to kill all the apps you can swipe away the apps like this but if you want to kill all the apps you can just hit this and this kills all the apps that are running coming to Media playback also I had the very good experience uh let me show you the YouTube app and uh let's just go to my own channel and let's look at this aspal 8 uh game play uh that I did with the uh S4 active so as you can see uh this is the YouTube video that's loaded and actually loading it in HD without any issues and uh it plays a YouTube videos so without any issues and you can also swipe down and as you can see it works pretty well so uh also I tried some other videos with uh this one and I also doed the third party video player called MX Player and uh let me show you the same uh this phone also does support usb OTG I have some videos on this thumb drive and I'll just connect this usb OTG cable and we'll use the uh MX player to play it back so as you can see the USB uh it shows that it's connected and uh our thumb drive is glowing and uh this is the these are some of the videos and this is a 1080p video let's use the MX Player and and as you can see it's playing it without any issues it's playing from the thumb drive so it can even play 1080p video clips without any issues let me get out of this one and remove this usb OTG so even usb OTG support is there on this uh S4 Active coming to the camera the rear face in camera is a 8 map shooter and we also have a LED flash the rear facing camera can also do video recording at 108p even the front-facing camera which is a 2 megap shooter can do video recording at 1080P and I would say uh the camera performance of this uh S4 Active was pretty good it does uh focusing very good you do get this tap to focus and the pictures that come out are uh I would say pretty good you also get this new kind of interface that we saw with the original Galaxy S4 and it's very easy to change to modes one thing I did notice is that the dual shot camera option uh that we found on the S4 is simply not there but overall I would say the camera performance of this Galaxy S4 was pretty good so uh you won't be disappointed with the same now coming to gaming also I had some very good experience with this S4 Active I tried a lot of games from casual games to even high-end games and I would say I got some very good results it could play any game I threw on it uh even aspal 8 I tried this is actually a new game and in this game uh I saw a little bit of stuttering but that was also I saw that on the regular Galaxy S4 so I would attribute that to as it's a new game the developer needs to tweak it a little bit but uh all the other games that I tested ran actually very well I have made a separate video regarding the gaming performance of this phone so if you want to know more about that you can check out that video all these extra videos that I made about the S4 Active will be in the show notes also Samsung did not skimp on any sensors and for example we do have this compass and all the sensors that are required are available on this phone and let me just quickly end all the apps that are running and let's also free up the Ram uh let's and end all these applications let's clear the RAM and now let me just uh fire up this Android system Ino and this will show us the available free RAM on this S4 Active out of that 2 gigs as you can see uh 1 158 MB of RAM is free with this phone and I would say uh in my day-to-day testing as I said I hardly faced any issues of lagginess the phone was very responsive so it's a pretty powerful phone and this is the dialer and this does support 3G video calling we also have the S Health app and the pedometer but it does not have the temperature and the barometer sensor on this S4 actor so what do I feel about this Samsung Galaxy S4 Active it's a nice phone and I would say it's ideal for for people who are looking for a slightly rugged phone for example uh it provides dust protection and it's also water resistant so if you're looking for a phone that provides those options I would say the Samsung Galaxy S4 uh is a good phone uh it's priced similarly to the regular S4 sadly it's not yet launched in the Indian market and it looks like Samsung India is not going to launch uh this phone in India so overall I would say the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is a good Android phone and it's a great phone for people who are looking for a slightly rugged phone I hope you found this video review helpful if you found it helpful I'll appreciate if you can click the like button given below thank you for watching this review that's it for now this is ranit and I hope to see you in my next videohi there this is ranit from Tech tass.com and I have this Samsung Galaxy S4 Active with me and we're going to do the full review of this phone in this video the Galaxy S4 Active is the rugged version of the original Galaxy S4 and it is IP uh 67 certified that means it's dust and water resistant and actually if you look uh with the regular S4 the back is actually a little bit different uh the original Galaxy S4 has a 13 map camera but uh the S4 Active has a 8 map camera also if you look at the front we see a striking difference that the S4 Active has all the uh buttons That's the menu home and back are physical buttons but on the regular S4 just the home button is a physical button coming to the screen size both have a 5in screen and it's a 1080b screen but uh the Galaxy S4 has a super amulet screen on the other hand the S4 Active has a LCD screen but again the LCD screen as you can see is very good and see the viewing angles they are amazing and I want to thank Fel Communications for providing this unit uh for review and this Galaxy S4 Active has not yet been launched in India but in us it's priced around $620 to $630 unlocked and actually this is the urban gray color that we have and phasal Communications had also sent me one more color this is the uh dive blue color and as you can see from the front actually I very similar we have these accents here the Finish is gray here you have that blue finish and on the back again uh the cover is in a different color so we have actually one more color and that's I think so orange one but for the review we going to use this uh gray one and uh let me start with a physical overview on the top we have the 3.5mm headphone jack and we also have a IR Blaster and we have the WatchOn app using which you can control uh devices like television DVR Etc so it works like a remote also we have an indent here to open the back cover I'll show you that a bit later we have the power onoff button over here and this looks like the chrome finish that we have but uh it's actually plastic and one of my friend was using this phone for almost 45 days and this gets nicked very easily and on his S4 Active uh the coating just went away pretty quickly so you need to be aware of that moving towards the bottom we have this flap and this reveals the micro USB cable that'll be using for charging we have the flap because this is a water resistant and a dust resistant phone and this is the main microphone moving towards the back uh this end we have the volume rocker the volume rocker and the power button are pretty tactile so I have no ISS shoes moving towards the back we have a 8 map camera LED flash Samsung branding and at the bottom we have the opening for the speaker actually the speaker quality on this is much better and much louder compared to the original Galaxy S4 and you can open the back cover by just opening it up like this and you will see this this is again made by uh and again it's standard Samsung plastic but you see these rubber gasket and this prob provides a little bit of Water Production to the internals again the camera is still exposed and here you can add your micro SIM and the micro SD card the battery is the same as the regular Galaxy S4 that's a 2600 mamp battery and in my testing I would say the battery life was comparable to the Galaxy S4's battery life and uh you need to be careful while putting back this back cover and you need to make sure all of these are uh put in properly otherwise you won't get the water uh protection and uh I have seen some in some forums that uses complaining that their S4 got damaged due to water and even if you after you have pluged uh put it in like this and make sure that all it's snuggly fit you need to press here and make sure that it's sealed I would say it's a water resistant phone but again don't dip it in a pool or uh what do you say in Ocean or something and uh expect it to survive it's water and dust resistant moving towards the front we have the 5 in screen which is a 1080p screen and it has the same pixel density of 441 so everything looks actually very good on this phone let me just zoom in and I'll show you that the screen quality that Samsung has put in is very good and as you can see the quality is excellent I would say so for people who do not like super amulet screen uh this is a LCD screen and it's a very good panel and moving towards the Android version let me show you the same if we go to more and about the device it's running on the Android version 4.2.2 that is Jelly Bean and again the striking difference that you'll find if you're using any other Samsung Galaxy phone is the physical buttons it took me a day or two to get used to this but again it feels a lot different in your hand compared to a regular S4 uh and I would say it's a good thing coming to the storage you can add a Micro SD card and uh but I did not add it here and out of the box I have installed a lot of apps and games right now out of the box you get around 11 odd uh GB of space uh coming to the processor this is powered by a Snapdragon uh 600 processor that's a quadcore processor clogged at 1.9 GHz HZ and the GPU on this is adreno 320 Ram is 2 gigs so overall in my testing I would say the phone was very fluid to operate and I have also done some benchmarking with this phone so if you're interested in that you can check out those and I would say even in benchmarks I got some very good scores and you'll get the standard uh touch whz interface that we find on the Galaxy phones it's the same on this one also and for the most part I would say it's a pretty fluid phone but here and there uh I did notice a minor lags here and there that we generally find with touch with so there's no exception but again I would't say it's a uh laggy phone it's a pretty responsive phone coming to the voice call Clarity uh I would say the voice call Clarity was very good and had no issues with the phone uh one thing I did notice is that if you do this two finger swipe you do get a lot less options here out of the box compared to the regular S4 for example this is the regular S4 and you do get a lot of options here but again don't worry almost all of these options are also available on the S4 Active baring just one or two and regarding the weight if you compare it with the regular Galaxy S4 I would say it's a little bit heavier and also a little bit thicker as you can see but not by a big margin but again it's a more rugged phone so I would say that's okay now as we are connected to my internet connection uh let's uh fire up the web browser and let's quickly just go to uh the teas site our site that's Tech tow.com the keyboard is very roomy as you can see and you get this number pad also here so it's easy to type around and uh it's loading our website and as you can see it loaded it actually very quickly no issues uh pinch to zoom guesture is also very smooth scrolling also is no issues and uh let me just open up one of the stories because we have a YouTube video that's embedded on this web page and let's change the orientation now and as you can see that was also quick and let's play back this uh YouTube video that's embedded and let me just zoom in this is.com and I have the Sony Xperia Zed Ultra which is a massive Android phone by Sony and I just took it out of the box just want to show you the phone put some so as you can see it could play uh YouTube videos embedded uh within the web page without any issues also as I said uh the speaker is actually uh pretty loud I didn't expect it to be this loud it's louer than the regular Galaxy S4 and let us also Force this to desktop mode and let's uh try to load one more site let's say news.com so in terms of web browsing I would say I had no issues with this phone it was very responsive and you'll have a good time doing web browsing on this phone and as you can see this is the news.com website it's a pretty heavy site and even though it's a pretty heavy site the pinch to zoom guesture Etc is very responsive also another thing uh that I want to say is the screen quality actually is very good just look at it it's a very good screen that Samsung has put on this S4 Active so let's get out of this one and you can hold this home button and you do get this multitasking tray like this and let's say if you want to kill all the apps you can swipe away the apps like this but if you want to kill all the apps you can just hit this and this kills all the apps that are running coming to Media playback also I had the very good experience uh let me show you the YouTube app and uh let's just go to my own channel and let's look at this aspal 8 uh game play uh that I did with the uh S4 active so as you can see uh this is the YouTube video that's loaded and actually loading it in HD without any issues and uh it plays a YouTube videos so without any issues and you can also swipe down and as you can see it works pretty well so uh also I tried some other videos with uh this one and I also doed the third party video player called MX Player and uh let me show you the same uh this phone also does support usb OTG I have some videos on this thumb drive and I'll just connect this usb OTG cable and we'll use the uh MX player to play it back so as you can see the USB uh it shows that it's connected and uh our thumb drive is glowing and uh this is the these are some of the videos and this is a 1080p video let's use the MX Player and and as you can see it's playing it without any issues it's playing from the thumb drive so it can even play 1080p video clips without any issues let me get out of this one and remove this usb OTG so even usb OTG support is there on this uh S4 Active coming to the camera the rear face in camera is a 8 map shooter and we also have a LED flash the rear facing camera can also do video recording at 108p even the front-facing camera which is a 2 megap shooter can do video recording at 1080P and I would say uh the camera performance of this uh S4 Active was pretty good it does uh focusing very good you do get this tap to focus and the pictures that come out are uh I would say pretty good you also get this new kind of interface that we saw with the original Galaxy S4 and it's very easy to change to modes one thing I did notice is that the dual shot camera option uh that we found on the S4 is simply not there but overall I would say the camera performance of this Galaxy S4 was pretty good so uh you won't be disappointed with the same now coming to gaming also I had some very good experience with this S4 Active I tried a lot of games from casual games to even high-end games and I would say I got some very good results it could play any game I threw on it uh even aspal 8 I tried this is actually a new game and in this game uh I saw a little bit of stuttering but that was also I saw that on the regular Galaxy S4 so I would attribute that to as it's a new game the developer needs to tweak it a little bit but uh all the other games that I tested ran actually very well I have made a separate video regarding the gaming performance of this phone so if you want to know more about that you can check out that video all these extra videos that I made about the S4 Active will be in the show notes also Samsung did not skimp on any sensors and for example we do have this compass and all the sensors that are required are available on this phone and let me just quickly end all the apps that are running and let's also free up the Ram uh let's and end all these applications let's clear the RAM and now let me just uh fire up this Android system Ino and this will show us the available free RAM on this S4 Active out of that 2 gigs as you can see uh 1 158 MB of RAM is free with this phone and I would say uh in my day-to-day testing as I said I hardly faced any issues of lagginess the phone was very responsive so it's a pretty powerful phone and this is the dialer and this does support 3G video calling we also have the S Health app and the pedometer but it does not have the temperature and the barometer sensor on this S4 actor so what do I feel about this Samsung Galaxy S4 Active it's a nice phone and I would say it's ideal for for people who are looking for a slightly rugged phone for example uh it provides dust protection and it's also water resistant so if you're looking for a phone that provides those options I would say the Samsung Galaxy S4 uh is a good phone uh it's priced similarly to the regular S4 sadly it's not yet launched in the Indian market and it looks like Samsung India is not going to launch uh this phone in India so overall I would say the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is a good Android phone and it's a great phone for people who are looking for a slightly rugged phone I hope you found this video review helpful if you found it helpful I'll appreciate if you can click the like button given below thank you for watching this review that's it for now this is ranit and I hope to see you in my next video\n"