http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/14/41046 ... ed-upgrade

A nice upgrade and spec wise up there with the current pack leaders but you do get the feeling that we're reaching the end of the 'innovation curve' with smartphones. The new stuff all feels as much gimmicky as anything and nothing that you'd look at and say 'I wish my phone had that'.

The only thing that might be interesting to me is the 1080p AMOLED screen but that is not essential. The IR remote for the TV looks very gimmicky as does Group Play. They are clearly waiting for Apple to come out with something new to copy.

I just looked at the specs for the S4. The 440ppi screen is overkill since the eye cannot see the difference. As for the NFC has anyone actually used it yet?

The HTC one has that as well and I just don't see the demand for it frankly. If you want a universal remote you can buy one for like 20 quid, why would you upgrade to a new phone for it?


I've stood in the queue behind people trying to a couple of times . As it is I don't think you can actually use a phone to pay for stuff in the UK anyway - the phones have the tech inside but there's no certified provider. Google Wallet isn't available in the UK and none of the banks & phone companies have managed to get their act together yet. It's definitely a solution looking for a problem that is.

You could still bump to transfer contact details & the like, but i can't say that's something I do very often even without NFC..

As I say, a lot of the stuff in the S4 seems to me to be them throwing the kitchen sink at it because they've run out of ideas (or more accurately because Apple have run out of ideas). I mean, building their own variant of the Nike fuelband in? Temperature and humidity sensors? WTF?

I have to agree, in fact why spend as much as £20, I am sure you can get a universal remote for less from eBay. Though if there was an app that really made setting up multiple remotes a doddle and storing the relevant codes that might be useful. Though as you said I also wonder who might use it other than Samsung TV owners.


Last year I thought that Apple were making a mistake not to include NFC in the iPhone 4S, but when they described how Passbook would work, I could see why it was irrelevant then. I do not any progress in the numbers of NFC sales points, and I still have security concerns, so my view has not changed.

I think that duplicating the Nike Fuelband is necessarily a great move either. I suspect that the market for such devices is pretty small and I suspect that the best option would be to male sure that the Nike Fuelband works on the S4 is of higher use to people than another such device.

We use it here. We have a couple of tags, so that when you enter a meeting room, you pass your mobile over the tag and it is automatically set to silent mode.

I've thought about setting up one at home, so that when I come in, it turns email from push to manual or every hour and turning off email notification.

There are many great potential uses for NFC, but there are also privacy concerns. I was told about the impact of RFID when all the NSA agents were outed with names and photos at a security conference in Las Vegas a couple of years ago because of their ID Tags. They all wandered by to sign into a conference when all their ID was sniffed and a photo was taken at the same time. The talk started with the names and photos being displayed on the big screen, much to the amusement of the attendees, except for the NSA agents who all sneaked out.

There was talk of NFC in an iPhone being used to change security settings on macbooks etc when the iPhone is close. So yes there are lots of uses but few for shopping which is where many expected it to be.

More impressed by the Xperia Z in all honesty. But then I was never a fan of the S3...

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

Not having seen on I decided to look at web page for the Xperia Z.

It is a better looking phone that the S4, the waterproofing is a very good idea, especially since many people drop mobiles into toilets or sinks. The smart tags could be very useful if used cleverly. The Smartwatch looks interesting concept especially if you decide to use it for keeping track of your phone, though not 100% sure that it is much more than another screen for a phone.

Yubikey authentication for smartphones, very useful:
http://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey- ... scription/

Yeah, I've seen similar things in those kind of businesses but as a consumer technology it doesn't seem to have taken off at all...

I've got an Xperia Z. Any questions, ask away.

Yes but that is an exceptionally niche market. I can see it being exceptionally useful for computer security specialists but not so much for the average person.

Like Koli my general instinct is that it will in the end prove very useful, I just think the whole 'paying for things by bumping' is a blind alley. Paying for things with money is just not a hassle for the vast majority of people, so it's trying to solve a problem they just don't think is a problem and that never really works.

I think it's much more likely to contribute to making the world around us more generally 'smart', in similar ways to Dave describes touch pads to 'book in' to things, or to allow for more location based systems on phones. I can see phones replacing tickets, either in the NFC or passbook style 'scan a QR code' way, certainly.

I just don't think getting your phone out of your pocket and bumping it is massively less hassle than taking a few coins out of your pocket and handing them to someone.

One of the new AiOs has a plinth under the monitor, which you can rest your smartphone on and it will automatically log on to the system for you, if the smartphone has NFC. We use a similar system at work on the more sensitive workstations, although it is older technology, with smart cards, which have to be inserted into the terminal in order to able to log onto the system.

Not true. You can use with Lastpass password manager in the same way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlx1G_wYqAY

And I believe everybody should be using password managers with two factor authentication.

I use 1Password, and a key generator dongle for Paypal so I can see its uses, though with my amnesia I need it.