Samsung Galaxy S4 Pre-Paid , Black Mist 16GB (Verizon Wireless)

I'm 62 and have never had a portable phone or pager in my life. I finally decided it was time to give in to the inevitable and got a Samsung S4 for Christmas. Most of the reviews here are by experienced power users who offer insight based upon their wealth of experience. I hesitated to add my greenhorn 2 cents, but then thought that it might be of use to the 6 or 7 people left in the world who haven't already owned and discarded dozens of cellphones.Observations of a Newbie:1) The Good. - The camera is astonishingly good (This coming from a now retired, but former professional). It handles quick snapshots, low light, back light, mixed light, and fast-moving situations flawlessly. And the 13MP give a resolution that is almost unbelievable. I took a picture of a bunch of people at Christmas, then noticed something in the shirt pocket of one of them. I zoomed in using my fingers, then zoomed in further and further. It was like being in an episode of NCIS. I finally could read the writing on the brochure in the shirt pocket of the guy in the back row of the group photo. Fantastic. No need to ever take along a separate camera. - The screen resolution is awesome. It's 1080p and it looks it. Clear, bright, saturated colors. No blurring or smearing or jittery motion. Videos taken with the built-in camera are brilliant. No need for a video camera either. - It's fast! At home I use it over the house Wi-Fi system and it loads pages and scrolls through websites faster than the laptop and seemingly as fast as the mighty 6 processor desktop machine. Surfing with Flipboard or one of the portals is fast and fun. - Voice Search is worth the cost of the phone by itself. If I had known about this I would have caved in years ago. I had, of course, watched the video of Siri vs Android and laughed about "Would you like me to show you a picture of a stallion?" The Google Search as implemented for Android works flawlessly. And quickly. "What was the score of the Bears game?" brings a response in less time than it would take me to even open a browser. "Where's the nearest Redbox?" brings a direct answer along with 8 or 9 alternatives, all with detailed directions and a link so that I could reserve a movie before heading out. Sometimes we just sit here thinking of crazy things to ask. "How do you say 'What would you charge to trim my palm tree?' in Spanish?" Bueno.2) The Bad. - Battery life is lousy. Granted, we use it predominantly with Wi-Fi, but still: it seems like we're always charging it. I imagine power users wouldn't make it through a day on one charge. - The quality of the sound is terrible. I mean really. Here you've got a 1080p HD screen and they want you to use Netflix and Hulu and what all to stream movies and the sound that comes out of the speaker hidden somewhere out of the way is thin and shrill and tinny and barely audible. The same songs that boom powerful and brilliant in the car or out of an MP3 player sound like they're being sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks or Mickey Mouse.3) The Ugly. - The software that comes with the phone is a mess. There's tons of stuff from Samsung. Then Verizon added another ton or two of their stuff. Then they threw in a bunch of stuff they thought might be useful (or for which they were paid money to include - yes, I'm such a cynic!). When you first get the phone there are 4 pages of apps and 13 pages of widgets. And this is before you've even had a chance to download Candy Crush Saga. Even worse is that almost all of it refuses to be off-loaded onto the SD card. I understand that some programs are too important to risk being on the SD card, but Audible? IMDb? YouTube? Really? When you get a memory cleaner and take a look at what is running every time you turn on the phone it's enough to knock you flat. With time I'll delve into it and start shutting things down and removing them, but man, they sure do make things difficult.

My previous girlfriend was the Samsung galaxy nexus LTE Verizon. Just like how I met the galaxy nexus, I met the galaxy s4 online after missing a link on an Android OS fan website. I glanced at her with the tainted glaze of a man in love, but looked again at her alluring curves and quad core processor.After a few moments my galaxy nexus was wondering what I was doing, gazing longingly at another smartphone, and I closed my browser as fast as I could. Weeks later, when the galaxy nexus was recharging in the bedroom, I was able to have a free moment at the computer. I browsed in chrome to find information on this new alluring Galaxy S4 and I was perfectly surprised.LTE, super fast wireless internet1080p screen which shines with the power of the sun, and in just as good resolution for my perfect vision.She just seemed to tease me with her expandable memory, and inclusion of S voice.But just like a girl on prom night, she was the Belle of the ball, in her fancy dress with touchwiz features. Sure it looked so pretty from far away. So, glimmering, white, shiny, etc. And it drew me in with all the handy wavy features that I could wave my hand at.I went to bed that night with dreams of a better tomorrow in my future... maybe.So, when I got up the next day, and the galaxy nexus was pissed. See with this Google environment, if you browse in chrome on your computer with your Google account that you have synced to android, then that android device will know that you were looking up information on another phone. She was judging me for days, and calling me mean names about longing for a new phone that wasn't even born yet.A few weeks later, after I hadn't thought about the S4 in months, and my relationship with my galaxy nexus was going fine, there was the release date announcement. This time I couldn't contain my excitement and the galaxy nexus could tell. But this time, she was a bit more understanding. Anything that I'm passionate for, she should encourage, so long as it's healthy behavior.I should have said on the outset that Galaxy nexus and I are in an open relationship, and include other phones as guests from time to time. But this was different.Fast forward to my decision to purchase my new girlfriend, and everyone was so excited. The galaxy nexus and the s4 got along with sharing so much information about me and each other using DLNA, and NFC. And the speed of that S4, was just amazing.There's the usual, "familiarity" period with introducing someone new to the family like this, so I thought I'd just make a light transition, spending more and more time with the S4 everyday. Ignoring some, specific flaws in my "love has blinders on," "honeymoon," phase of our relationship.After a time, it was hard to ignore certain things that came up.The bloatware that can't be removed takes up space of my darling's poor 16GB of storage, leaving only about 6 GB of usable space.The smartwatch touchwiz feature is annoying after you realize how often you look away from your phone while watching a video.And the handy wavy gestures thing, is just like... getting up to that beautiful dress at prom/ball/whatever, and finding that it was indeed stitched together by some backwoods seamstress making minimum wage and clearly missed the point of some features of the dress.But, I've come to terms with her flaws. She loves me, and I love her. We're both willing to risk surgery via custom ROM to fix some more of her glaring flaws. But maybe that's down the road. We're both fine right now.