The S4 has different priorities of active design for S4. Being thin and light are of the utmost importance as this phone more healing to survive everyday life.
It is a bit thicker than 7.9 mm thick teeny S4 to 9.1 mm in thickness and about 20 g heavier at 153 g. The S4 active galaxy feels more robust, as if it has been pounding some pre-release protein shakes.
The building is, perhaps surprisingly, not all that different from S4, though. Has a removable plastic battery cover which is pretty flimsy and lightweight. There are rubber ends for S4, though, that will help you avoid light scratches, for a while at least.
This is one of the few parts of the phone that is structured, though. While the rear cover has a metallic finish honeycomb-fantasy that aims to make it look harder than a construction worker with a 9 5 o'clock shadow, is really just smooth plastic.
While the name suggests that you can active survive blows and shocks, in real terms it is much more robust than any other top smartphones. Certain aspects which in reality is less harsh than the S4, as did a layer of Gorilla Glass screen 2 instead of 3 Gorilla Glass, which is significantly stronger. Let us make no mistake – the S4 active do not appreciate being dropped on a hard surface, and while the top and bottom edges are rubberized, not actual rubber that are would you absorb an impact.
Perhaps the most significant hardware's departure for the S4 active galaxy is that it uses soft keys, clicky, rather than touch sensitive ones. There is an obvious reason why – this is a waterproof phone and capacitive sensors of touchscreen buttons underwater go haywire.
There's no magic involved here. Samsung uses two main rubber gaskets to provide both water and dust resistance. The main one is on the battery cover, creating a sealed barrier between the outside world and vulnerable items such as slots SIM, battery and other electrical contact points.
The second rubber gasket is the strip of plastic on lower edge, active S4 used to cover the slot microUSB.
If there is a part of waterproofing that impress is the headphone jack. It is not sealed, but is waterproof, completely blocked by the phone's internals. Water-resistant Xperia Z uses the groundwater, including that for the headphone jack, making it less graceful in its execution.
You should grasp quite how ' nuts and bolts ' water resistance of the Galaxy S4 active ' is before you buy. If the phone fell, somehow damage the seal, it's game over for impermeability. However, it seems reasonable that the tire has on the battery lid is easily replaceable.
The Galaxy S4 has a Super AMOLED display, the S4 an LCD Panel. They work in very different ways. Super AMOLED screens don't have a universal backlight LCD type of assets, allowing them to provide excellent contrast and black levels.
This becomes evident when the S4 is taken in a dark room – the universal backlight becomes quite visible when the screen is tilted, making blacks greyish appearance. This effect is more pronounced than the IPS display – plus HTC's One.
However, typical of an LCD screen, high brightness is slightly higher than the Galaxy S4, and the colors are more fresh and less wealthy. There are few ways to different color saturation (a feature shared with other high-end galaxies) and the display may look a shade blown-out high-brightness with a less vivid mode switched-on, but otherwise is a good view.
Super AMOLED Display are generally more expensive to produce, explaining why the type of LCD is used in active, but both screens are impeccably crisp, with pixel density of just over 440ppi. This level of sharpness is a calling card of the top phones by 2013, and won't find it in all midrange phones yet.