Galaxy S4 radiant, but has black holes

Lag??

I have to say, I have a Note I & a Note II, I am sure the portrate / landscape lag is intentional, those times where you accidenty tilt the phone slightly over its threshold to switch would be a real pain in the backside if it flipped the second it was triggered. I prefer the slight lag for the above reasons. The phone (especially Note II) is blisteringly fast, when you use one ,or an SIII it is apparent that merely fliping views views instanly is far beneath the devices capability, I'm sure this holds true for the SIIII also.

Lag on screen rotation...

I haven't used an S4 but I presume that is intentional. Most phones have a lag on rotation to confirm that you actually want to turn the phone around.

If it was instant and you were lying down you might find it flipping rapidly between the two formats otherwise.

Most of the time you don't move between the two formats (apart from testing the phone) continuously. You choose to use it in portrait or landscape based on your situation or app and don't return it until after you have finished that app or your situation changes.

Decrufting

I'm sure that it's a perfectly nice phone, as long as you're prepared to spend half an hour in a quiet corner with a cup of coffee turning off the spurious Samsung "features" before really using it.

I had to do that with my S3, turning off "smart stay", the stupid gesture stuff, NFC (potentially useful one day, but not yet, and probably not that well tested) and Bob-knows what else. Once I had done that, it was much more like a sensible, useful Android device. Great hardware, but Samsung's "customisations" or "premium features" are just tat.

I keep saying this, but if such manufacturers sold two variants, the "enhanced" version with all the tchotchkes and wossnames, and the other more or less plain Android, the world would be a better place. The latter could just be a subset of the former, and not even require maintaining a massively different code base, mostly being just a case of only updating the right bits.

Oh, and last thing.. don't bother with a bloody Samsung account. It's useless, spammy and pointless, and their web services are beyond horrid. The device works just fine without one- in fact, arguably better.

Still, they do make nice devices..

Windows Phone 8 OS is clear and easy to use with no confusion.

Droid and iOS both need to be dragged into 2013!

I have one on order for friday, and as long as its as good as my S3 was, i'll be happy, I will be surprised if it is sluggish though, from my understanding Android had done a lot to improve visual performance...

Probably caused by the samsung extras features, most of which will be turned off upon getting into my hands... I don't want most of the features except maybe the translate that works offline... google translate is great otherwise!

A happy S2 user

Me too. I've just upgraded mine to JB (samsung version) and after rooting/removing the samsung tat I'm a happy bunny. I've tried the S3 and couldn't see a good reason to upgrade, nor do I for the S4, despite the exra whizzy bits.

I'm the kind of user who keeps a phone for years&years (ie, till it breaks), then upgrades to whatever's top of the line at the time, after trying everyone else's phone to see what I do/don't like. This allows reverting to sim-only pricing for the interim period.

BTW: the best "upgrade" I would like to see is a battery capacity whihch will let the phone run for 2 days or more.

"One reason is weak integration with social networks: the photo app doesn't offer a share to Twitter or share to Facebook option until those apps are installed"

You mean it doesn't shove FB and twitter down my throat unless I want it to?

Huzzah! That's great news!