Samsung Galaxy S4 mini Pro Reviews

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini is a solid midrange Android smartphone, with a good set of features at an affordable price.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini is a solid midrange Android smartphone, with a good set of features at an affordable price.

The GALAXY S 4 Mini is a wonderful little cell phone, and is surprisingly reminiscent of the older Galaxy S 2, though bringing with it all the trimmings of a newer device. The smartphone sits well in one’s hand (the position of the power button aside), and is small enough to slip into just about any pocket or sleeve. Despite feeling small in the hand, the Mini avoids feeling too small when it comes to the display. If you’re in the market for a small smartphone that doesn’t drag poor performance and low-end specs along with it, the GALAXY S 4 Mini is a solid choice.

As a compact mid-range smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini is worth considering – especially if you’re on Sprint and looking for a bit of future-proofing with the phone’s LTE Spark network support. But if we were hopping on a new two-year contract, we’d be concerned about how well S4 Mini phone will perform a year or two down the road. It stutters a bit straight out of the box with its ageing dual-core processor. Websites and apps are, after all, only going to get more demanding. And while the S4 Mini’s price sounds appealing on contract, you’ll still have to pay about $150 more for the Mini in monthly installments than you’d pay for the Moto G if you buy it outright. Sure, the Moto G doesn’t support LTE and has no removable storage. But its quad-core processor means the G is more responsive now, and should continue to deliver decent performance for longer than the dual-core S4 Mini. And its screen has a superior resolution (720p). To put it simply, the Galaxy S4 Mini is a decent mid-range phone at a mid-range price. Its battery life and expandable storage make it slightly more appealing than the HTC One Mini. But the Moto G is a good mid-range phone at a budget-phone price. You can pick up the S4 Mini for less out of pocket than the Moto G. But you’ll pay for it in the long run, both with a higher monthly bill and increasingly sluggish performance as time wears on.

As much as we'd like to see a device that fits the literal description of the Galaxy S4 Mini -- you know, a phone that's all but identical to the original GS4, just smaller -- Samsung clearly had something else in mind. Instead, the Mini is meant for those who love the GS4 design and firmware but are looking for a lower price point. To that end, the company has mostly succeeded, with the exception of that poor display. Indeed, our experience with the device was on par with most other mid-range handsets we've tested. Sadly, the cost is a little too steep when compared to similar devices, so definitely weigh your options closely before plunking down the cash.

We were happy to spend time with the Galaxy S4 mini. When we got the chance to first meet it, on June 20, in London, we didn’t know, form our brief hands-on, that there’s so much more to this miniature Galaxy S 4 than meets the eye. Who is it for? Anyone, really, but especially for those who consider a five-inch phone to be too big, or too expensive. Some will argue that last year’s flagship, the Galaxy S III, might be a better option, and they might be right, if we consider specs on paper. But a 4.8-inch screen might just as well be too big, like the five-inch screen on this year’s flagship. With the GS4 mini, Samsung has set the bar for mid-ranger, “mini” phones. Let’s not forget that the main rival, HTC, is about the release a One Mini too, later this year, if the rumors turn out to be true. That’s going to be an interesting fight!

If you care for things like camera, storage and battery backup the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini is the phone for you. The build and finish, audio quality and screen resolution are HTC One mini's bid to match the Samsung offer. Perhaps even beat it? That depends on who you are and what you need in a smartphone. To us, the HTC One mini seems like the more attractive package - it's just better at making a good first impression. The Galaxy S4 mini has the higher clock speed, superior battery backup and expandable memory but squeezing every bit of processing power, every last drop of juice and megabyte of storage is of utmost importance to power users, who rarely are the target here. Then again, the Galaxy S4 mini is cheaper and is the better cameraphone. OK, this is beginning to look like the two sides of the same coin. But hopefully - if you stayed thus far - not one you'll need to toss to make up your mind.

Samsung Galaxy S4 mini is doing most things right. It's probably not everyone's dream version of a flagship in miniature but definitely closer than the S III mini got last year. It's by no means a super-mini but one that can be a pleasant ride.

A cheaper, more compact Galaxy S4 with amazing battery life, but the S4 Mini doesn’t stand out compared to the competition

The Galaxy S4 mini is a great mid-range option, offering the same styling – which includes the same mediocre build quality – as its flagship counterpart, with a cheaper price tag. The cameras are good but the screen and storage are both under par. Consider the HTC One mini or the Nexus 4 as serious alternatives.

When it comes down to it The SGS4 Mini is a terrific little phone. Solid battery performance, brilliant sound quality and a really nice form factor make it lovely to use. The lack of internal memory is a big issue though. While music and videos can be offloaded to an SD card, apps can't, and apps are starting to get really big in some cases. While we accept that gamers won't flock to this phone, we still think that the 5GB of internal storage is mean beyond words. This is not a cheap phone, but it has the capacity of a low-end handset. Yes, cloud storage is becoming more important, but at the same time Google appears to be pushing manufacturers away from external storage, and re-writing Android to make their jobs harder. We checked to make sure that Play Music could see SD card music, and it can, but what if Google decides to stop that in the future? Certainly, most users will never come up against an app limit. We've only recently had it once - amusingly, on a Note II - and it's a pretty frustrating occurrence, because you have to decide what you're going to delete, and the chances are you won't actually want to delete anything.

With the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, the South Korean manufacturer hit a bull's-eye once again. The smartphone is aimed at consumers who are looking for high performance but don't want to carry around a device practically half the size of a tablet. With a clock rate of 1.7 GHz and 1.5 GB of working memory, the Snapdragon 400 SoC has enough performance that no current program induces the device to break into a sweat -- at a suggested retail price of 529 Euros (~$693) that ought to be the case. The current street price is about 100 Euros (~$131) less. The smartphone is also equipped with a ton of features and transmits over almost every thinkable module. Its manufacturing quality and feel are very good, despite its plastic case.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 mini is a remarkable mid-range smartphone that brings power and portability under one roof. It is fast, responsive, and surprisingly capable, but at the same time it is easy to operate and fits perfectly in pockets of any size. Sure, the smartphone may not be as feature-rich as its bigger brother – the Galaxy S4 – but when we take its petite proportions into account, we'd gladly take the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini as it is. Drawbacks? Well, we were hoping to see a 720p screen on the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and not a qHD panel. Not that the display chosen by Samsung ins't usable, but we think that something better should have been picked for a smartphone that has “S4” in its title. Also, perhaps the low amount of on-board storage is worth noting. However, that's not too big of a deal since the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini offers a microSD card slot for storage expansion. Overall, users who need an average-sized Android smartphone that doesn't skimp on specs and features would be extremely pleased with the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini. Those who are on the looks for a decent dual-SIM handset should go try it out as well.

Provided the Galaxy S4 mini doesn't offer poor performance (we'll let you know as soon as we benchmark it), then the main reasons to opt for it over the full-size S4 are that you want a physically smaller smartphone or you can't afford the flagship.