Reception

Critical reception

The Galaxy S4 received mostly positive reviews. GigaOM's Tofel says he would recommend the S4 "without hesitation" and says that it's "Samsung's defining phone". ReadWrite's Rowinski described the phone as a "solid smartphone," but criticised Samsung's use of "bloatware, pre-loaded apps and features that you will likely never use," but called the S4 "a first-rate smartphone." Time's McCraken says the S4 is a smartphone with everything, it has the biggest screen and the most built-in features. He wishes the S4 marks the end of Samsung's plan to just add too many new features with its flagship smartphones.

Technology journalist Walt Mossberg described the S4 as "a good phone, just not a great one". Mossberg wrote "while I admire some of its features, overall, it isn’t a game-changer." Mossberg criticized the software as "especially weak" and "often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional." He stated "I urge readers looking for a new Android smartphone to carefully consider the more polished-looking, and quite capable, HTC One, rather than defaulting to the latest Samsung."

Consumer Reports named the Galaxy S4 as the top smartphone due to its screen quality, multitasking support, and built-in IR blaster.

Despite only using about 1 GB more than the S III, critics noted that about half of the internal storage on the S4's 16 GB model was taken up by its system software; leaving only 8 to 9.15 GB for the storage of downloaded apps—which cannot be moved to the SD card—and other data. Samsung initially stated that the space was required for the S4's new features, but following a report regarding the issue on the BBC series Watchdog, Samsung stated that it would review the possibility of optimising the S4's operating system to use less disk space in a future update. Storage optimizations were brought in a update first released in June 2013, which frees 80 MB of internal storage, and restores the ability to move apps to the device's SD card.

Commercial reception

It reached 10 million pre-orders from retailers in the first two weeks after its announcement. In the United States, this prompted Samsung to announce that due to larger than expected demand, the roll out of devices on U.S. Carriers Sprint and T-Mobile will be slower than expected.

The S4 sold 4 million in 7 days, 2 million in 15 days, and sold 10 million to retailers in 27 days; this is the fastest selling smartphone in Samsung's history and the fastest selling Android device in history. The Samsung Galaxy S III sold 4 million units in 21 days, the Samsung Galaxy S II took 55 days, and the Samsung Galaxy S took 85 days.