Review: Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini for Sprint
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini comes close to providing the full GS4 experience in a smaller package, but there are some notable omissions.
The biggest disappointment to me is the screen. I understand that Samsung needed to reduce the size in order to shrink the phone's footprint, but it dialed the resolution back to 2011. The rest of the hardware looks good and functions well. Voice calls are generally good, signal performance was adequate, and battery life delivers a day's worth of use.
The software is nearly as advanced as the full-sized phone, but nixes some of the features for reasons unknown. For example, Smart Stay and Smart Scroll are gone, but you can still use Face Unlock. The TouchWiz user interface is as flexible (and complex) as ever. The camera offers plenty of neat features, but loses the GS4's most exciting capture modes. Thank goodness the Mini takes good pictures. Media options are plentiful, even though the GS4 Mini doesn't have the best screen on which to watch movies.
Sprint is selling the Galaxy S4 Mini for $100 with a new contract. That's a fair price for what you get: a smaller, more user-friendly handset that isn't quite the flagship it pretends to be.
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