I have had the S4 for about 5 days. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster as there are certain aspects of the phone that are excellent. It feels great in the hand. It has a replaceable battery and a micro sd slot for expanding your media.

It is loaded with the kitchen sink of specs and software. Some of the air features are useful but on the bright sunny days we have had recently, they don’t seem to work. Shame. Then there is the smoothness of the phone, or the lack of it at times. It has lag. For a phone of this calibre there is no excuse. Then there is the low internal memory. Samsung really need to make this clearer that there is only 9gb free out of the 16gb. There is also the issue I’ve had of screen smearing, although it hasn’t been that much of a problem. Stock apps are force closing too.

Then I became aware of the headphone clipping as mentioned already.

All these problems remind me of my S3. When I first got it, it had bug after bug. Music stuttered too. But 4 months later following loads of software updates it was cured. The S4 is the same, unfinished at release. But it does have compromises. Clearly Samsung didn’t install a decent headphone amp.

So I’m left in two camps at the moment.On one hand I really like it, then I turn and hate it. If you ask me would I recommend it, I wouldn’t. I would suggest the HTC One or the Samsung S3.