Introduction
Ah, the great outdoors - not enough reception to put the "phone" in smartphone, but plenty of dust and water keep it out. Good thing there are IP67-certified phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active then, combining premium specs with enough durability to survive a hike or a dive.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active official images
We've become a little wary of the Galaxy S label, which Samsung flagships share with a number of almost unrelated devices, which simply piggyback on their reputation. That's not the case of the Galaxy S4 Active though, it's a proper flagship.
The 5" 1080p screen has been moved to TFT tech instead of Super AMOLED like on the regular S4, but LCD's are typically brighter, and plus LCDs are less likely to suffer water damage.
The camera situation is less clear though - Samsung downgraded it from 13MP to 8MP and while we've seen plenty of good 8MP cameras, 13MP is the current flagship standard. Everything else seems in order, however, here's the yay and nay list for the Galaxy S4 Active.
Key features
- IP67 certification - can spend up to 30 minutes in up to 1m of water
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; quad-band 3G with HSPA; LTE
- 5" 16M-color 1080p TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass 3
- Android OS v4.2.2 Jelly Bean with TouchWiz UI
- Quad-core 1.9 GHz Krait 300 CPU, Adreno 320 GPU; Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset
- 2GB of RAM
- 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash,1080p video recording @ 30fps, continuous autofocus and stereo sound
- 2 MP front-facing camera, 1080p video recording
- Dual shot and dual video recording, Drama shot, Shot and sound
- Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA
- GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
- 16GB of built-in storage
- microSD card slot
- microUSB port with USB host and MHL 2.0
- Bluetooth v4.0
- NFC
- IR port for remote control functionality
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Accelerometer and proximity sensor
- Barometer
- IR gesture sensor for Air gestures
- Smart screen: Smart stay, Smart pause, Smart scroll
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- Ample 2,600 mAh battery with great endurance
- Smart volume and Adapt Sound features for the music player
Main disadvantages
- Camera downgraded to 8MP
- Screen is TFT, not Super AMOLED
- Thicker and heavier than regular Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z
- No FM radio
- Shared camera interface makes framing tricky
- No thermometer or hygroscope
Samsung is not new to rugged Androids - the Galaxy Xcover line (along with carrier-specific versions) has been around for a while, but those favored durability over specs. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is not as rugged as those phones, it is a premium package.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active in the office
That includes the powerful chipset, the advanced connectivity, exclusive features, the works. Of course, it's not without competition - the Sony Xperia Z has been around for a while and it's clean, elegant design doesn't pay the rugged tax - the IP57-certified Xperia Z is a suave survivor. But anyway, if you search "quad-core, 1080p and water resistance" you'll find a very short list of options.
The internal hardware and the software of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active are almost identical to those of the regular S4, the real changes are on the outside. And as luck would have it, this is what we'll start off with on the next page.
Samsung I9295 Galaxy S4 Active 360-degree spin
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is slightly larger than the regular Galaxy S4 in every dimension, and the more than 1mm of extra thickness is the easiest to spot. It's also 21g heavier due to the water-proofing, the different plastic used and the different screen. It certainly adds to the solid feel of the device, but does make the smartphone a bit harder to carry around.
Compared to the Sony Xperia Z, the Galaxy S4 Active has virtually identical footprint and weight, but again, it's thicker by over a millimeter. Whether or not the added flexibility of a bigger, removable battery is worth it, is a question everyone should answer for themselves.
Design and handling
The basic floor plan of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is that of the regular Galaxy S4 (the thin bezels around the screen are a hair thicker) but there are many design cues taken from the Xcover phones. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active comes in three color versions - the bold Orange Flare and Dive Blue and the more muted Urban Grey.
The Galaxy S4 recently got some new color options as well, but they are not quite as eye-catching as the Orange and Blue versions of the Active, which accentuate its rugged nature very well. The four screw caps on the back are a clear sign of "rugged".
Samsung Galaxy S4 and S4 Active side by side
Then there are the physical buttons on the front (capacitive buttons don't work when wet) and the new plastic on the back. It's has a honeycomb texture under a transparent glossy layer.
The Galaxy S4 Active unit we used for the preview (the Orange Flare version) had a matte, patterned back, which we quite liked. However, the version we're reviewing - the Urban Grey - has a smooth glossy back and so does the Dive Blue version. We're yet to see a production version of the Orange Flare, but chances are it has the same smooth plastic on the back.
The patterned plastic was better at hiding fingerprints and also provided more grip - the smooth glossy plastic is slippery even dry and it will only get worse when wet. We also wish Samsung put the same ribbed sides as on the Galaxy Xcover, they made the grip really solid.
Still, we like the design of the Galaxy S4 Active - it strays away from the S III derived design that has turned Samsung's lineup into a clone army. Also, some people just prefer hardware buttons over capacitive keys, especially when the bezels are so thin, increasing the chance of accidental taps on the capacitive controls.
In terms of handling, the Galaxy S4 Active is roughly similar to the regular S4. The extra thickness and weight are noticeable, but don't impede one-handed operation. It's not as sleek as the Sony Xperia Z, but that one clearly rated elegance higher than rugged appearance.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active in the hand
We should note that when we say "rugged" we mean in comparison to regular smartphones. The Galaxy S4 Active will handle dust and some water like a champ, but it's not really meant to take hard knocks so you should still be careful with it.
Display
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active uses a 5" 1080p LCD screen, unlike the Super AMOLED on the regular S4. It has 441 pixels per inch and while it has more sub-pixels per inch (since Super AMOLED uses a PenTile matrix), the perceived sharpness is virtually the same (the high pixel density and new sub-pixel arrangement in the latest generation Super AMOLED take care of that).
The S4 and S4 Active use a Super AMOLED and TFT respectively
The LCD does have some tangible advantages - it's brighter, for example. The contrast and black levels aren't as great though and there's some slight contrast loss at an angle. It's a minor issue and the screen on the Galaxy S4 is among the better LCDs we've seen.
Color rendering is another difference between LCD and AMOLED - colors in a gradient are more distinct on the Galaxy S4 Active display than they are on the regular S4.
| Display test | 50% brightness | 100% brightness | ||||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | |||
| Samsung I9190 Galaxy S4 mini | 0 | 166 | ∞ | 0 | 396 | ∞ |
| Samsung I9295 Galaxy S4 Active | 0.20 | 207 | 1053 | 0.57 | 594 | 1046 |
| HTC One | 0.13 | 205 | 1580 | 0.42 | 647 | 1541 |
| HTC Butterfly | 0.14 | 173 | 1200 | 0.45 | 501 | 1104 |
| Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4 | 0 | 201 | ∞ | 0 | 404 | ∞ |
| Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III | 0 | 174 | ∞ | 0 | 330 | ∞ |
| Sony Xperia Z | - | - | - | 0.70 | 492 | 705 |
| Oppo Find 5 | 0.17 | 176 | 1123 | 0.51 | 565 | 1107 |
| Samsung N7100 Galaxy Note II | 0 | 215 | ∞ | 0 | 402 | ∞ |
| LG Optimus G Pro | - | - | - | 0.41 | 611 | 1489 |
| Nokia Lumia 920 | - | - | - | 0.48 | 513 | 1065 |
| LG Optimus G | 0.14 | 197 | 1445 | 0.33 | 417 | 1438 |
| Apple iPhone 5 | 0.13 | 200 | 1490 | 0.48 | 640 | 1320 |
You can find all about our display testing routines here.
The 5" TFT is slightly more reflective than its Super AMOLED counterpart, which hurts sunlight legibility despite the higher brightness.
Sunlight contrast ratio
- Nokia 808 PureView4.698
- Apple iPhone 4S2.269
- HTC One X2.158
- Nokia N82.144
- Oppo Find 52.088
- BlackBerry Z102.051
- Samsung Galaxy S4 Active2.022
- Apple iPhone 42.016
- Sony Ericsson Xperia ray1.955
- Samsung Galaxy Camera1.938
- Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.31.913
- HTC Butterfly1.873
- Samsung Galaxy mini 21.114
All in all, we can't call the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active display much of a downgrade - it's the same size and resolution and it's brighter and color rendering is a tiny bit more accurate. We'll see how the different screen affects the battery life though.
Air and Motion gestures, Smart Screen
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active comes with a number of advanced features enabled by the powerful hardware and dedicated sensors.
The first is Air View, which debuted on the Galaxy Note II and worked with the S Pen. There's no S Pen on the Galaxy S4, or a need for it - the phone can detect your finger hovering over the screen.
This enables information preview (e.g. SMS text, calendar entry text and so on), previewing videos just by pointing to a spot in the timeline, the next track in the music player by hovering over the next button (works with previous button too), previewing folders, speed dial contacts, and magnifying links in web pages. Air view detects fingers 1cm / 0.5" away from the screen, so there's no danger of accidentally tapping the screen when you wanted to use Air View instead.
Air View turns your finger into an S Pen
Another set of "air" features are the Air Gestures. Quick Glance is one of them, but there's more. These air commands are triggered by waving your hand over the Galaxy S4 Active.
You can use this to scroll web pages in the browser (vertical waves), switch between tabs (horizontal waves), move between tracks in the music player and photos in the gallery, accept a call, move app shortcuts and S Planner events.
Air Gestures turns the S4 into a mini-Kinect
Air Gestures can detect your hand up to 7cm (just under 3") and might prove useful in some situations. Note that only the native apps support them, third party apps will not work with them (even Chrome that comes preinstalled on the phone).
The familiar Smart Display features, Smart Stay and Smart Rotate, are enabled too. Stay prevents the screen from locking as long as the front-facing camera can see your face (great for reading) and Rotate uses the orientation of your face rather than accelerometer info to decide how to rotate the screen (the accelerometer gets this wrong if you're lying on your side).
Smart Scroll is one of the two new features - it allows you to scroll up and down by tilting the phone or by tilting your head. It's a bit hard to get it right the first time, but after that you can tilt your head down to scroll down and up to scroll back up.
The second new feature is simpler and more useful - Smart Pause. While watching a video, it uses the front-facing camera to track your face and will automatically pause the video when you look away. Look back and the screen and the playback continues.
Smart Scroll and Smart Pause
Samsung's older motion gestures are here too. There's direct call (dial the contact whose info you're currently viewing by lifting the phone up to your ear), smart alert (makes the phone vibrate when you pick it up if there are missed events), zooming and panning in the gallery, a shake of the phone to refresh the list of Bluetooth devices and muting alarms or pausing music playback by putting the phone face down.
The gestures from S III and Note II are on board too
You can also pause the music player by putting your palm on the screen. A palm swipe takes a screenshot (but so does holding down the Home and Power buttons, which we find easier).
S Voice and Google Now
S Voice is Samsung's answer to Apple's Siri and is preloaded on the Galaxy S4 Active. S Voice can be used to initiate a call, dictate text, play music, open an app, change a setting, make a memo (including voice memo), add a reminder, schedule an event, set an alarm or timer, check the weather, do a search on the internet, look for local listings (e.g. nearby restaurants) and even get an answer to a question.
S Voice
S Voice does duplicate parts of Google Now, but being less search focused it tries to do more on the actual phone and it has some added features. Some of these are available outside of S Voice too, so you can set the Galaxy S4 Active to answer a call, snooze an alarm, take a photo and what not by voice commands even when S Voice isn't running. The problem with S Voice is not nearly as fast or as accurate at recognizing your speech input as Now.
Naturally, being a Jelly Bean smartphone, the S4 Active also comes with Google Now.
Google Now integrates with your Google account and can access your daily routine, internet searches, email, etc. and give you information relevant to your interests and daily needs.
It provides traffic information to your work or home, knows those scores of sports teams you follow, gives you the weather forecast for your city and can even tell you who Kevin Spacey is.
Google Now
Google Now also has its own separate widget for the homescreen or lockscreen.
Gallery does it all
The gallery on the Galaxy S4 Active has a new layout. It can be sorted into albums, all photos and videos, time, location, etc. There's also a spiral option, which revamps the gallery into a Scalado-like spiral of images and video, which after a while gets really nauseating.
You can pinch to zoom in the gallery and thus manage the size of the thumbnails (two or three thumbnails per row). Air view lets you hover your finger above and image and you'll get a bigger thumbnail overview of the image or you can use it to peek inside folders.
Air view
Upon choosing an album (for instance Camera) you're taken into that albums' stack of photos but a swipe to the right will reveal a bar on the left with the albums. In this mode you can browse images in a dual-screen mode.
Viewing image • Sharing options
You can easily retouch photos right in the Gallery itself. The photo editor gives you options like crop, rotate, color and effects. You can also make a memo on top of the picture.
Editing an image
The Gallery also supports highly customizable slideshows with several effects to choose from, customizable music and speed. You can also highlight specific images to be included in the slideshow.
Customizable slideshow
There's a nifty detect text option in the Gallery's context menu, which does as advertised - it detects text on an image and converts it into a text file, which you can share via mail, messages, etc. Keep in mind that it requires a data connection to work.
Detecting text
File manager
The My Files app hasn't changed really - it is an efficient and simple to use file manager. It can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files to another phone. My files will only browse the memory card and the large internal storage (it can't access the system drive).
File manager
Music player adapts its sound to your headphones
The TouchWiz music player on the Galaxy S4 Active is jam-packed with features and supports a wide variety of file formats, including FLAC, Wave, etc.
Music is sorted by the usual Artist, Album, Playlist, etc. but there's also Folder support, which is quite handy as it saves you the need to sort songs into playlists like on so many other players. There are more tabs available - you can hide or show tabs from the Settings menu.
Samsung Music player
Then there's Music square - it's quite similar to the SensMe feature of Sony smartphones. It automatically rates a song as exciting or calm, passionate or joyful and plots those songs on a square (hence the name).
Mood options
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active can also search for content on third party players like PCs on the same network.
Nearby devices
Samsung has enabled equalizer presets (including a custom one with 7 bands) along with the sound-enhancing SoundAlive technology, which features 7.1 channel virtualization. Samsung uses SoundAlive in some of their MP3 and Android-powered media players.
SoundAlive equalizer
The Now playing screen gives you the usual options - a timescroll of the song, play/pause and back/forth controls, repeat and shuffle, volume control but it also adds lyrics support, AllShare shortcut and a direct sound settings shortcut.
Now playing
While listening to a song you can find music controls in the notification area and the lockscreen.
Music player options • controls in the notification area and lockscreen
The Galaxy S4 Active has a couple of features that will improve your listening experience further. One is Smart Volume, which equalizes the volume between tracks. The other is Adapt Sound - it plays a series of beeps (both high and low frequency) and asking if you can hear them. This way the phone can map the capacities of your specific headset and fine-tune its output for optimal sonic experience.
Adapt Sound
After the calibration is complete, the Galaxy S4 Active plays you a demo of the kind of gain you're receiving by keeping Adapt Sound on.
The best video player in business
The best video player found on smartphones just got better. The new video player, found on the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active has the last watched video on top for quick access. Under it there are three tabs - personal (showing you the videos on your local storage), Download (which lets into the Videos store) and Nearby devices, which shows the PCs and players on your local Wi-Fi network.
The grid view is our favorite as it is a true quad-core tour de force - the visible video thumbnails are actually playing the videos instead of being static images. They play at a reduced framerate and generating those previews takes a couple of minutes the first time around, but it's an awesome preview and it shows what can be done when you have processing power to spare.
Video player
The video player lets you choose between three crop modes for how the video fits the screen. The same SoundAlive audio-enhancing technology is available here too. The video player lets you squeeze the best viewing experience out of the large, high-res screen. You can adjust video brightness, color tone and enable outdoor visibility too.
The chapter preview detects chapters in the video and shows a rectangular grid, with live thumbnails (just like the grid view above).
Hovering your finger over the timescroll lets you preview part of the video in a small thumbnail - just like YouTube videos do when you hover the mouse.
Video player
Pop up play is here too - it moves the video in a small floating window and you can use other apps on the phone while still watching the video. You can use pinch zoom to adjust the size of the video.
Pop up play
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active offered a list of subtitles and let us pick. It scans for all subtitles, so the file doesn't have to have the same name as the video file.
Subtitles support
The Galaxy S4 Active managed to play all files we threw at it. DivX and XviD along with MP4, AVI and MKV were no problem for the Galaxy S4 Active and there were no issues with the audio codecs either - not even the usually problematic AC3 videos caused any trouble.
Audio quality is great
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active did greatly in our audio quality test. We can't really say we are surprised as it matches the output of the two regular Galaxy S4 versions and we already know those to be some of the nicest sounding smartphones around.
The Samsung I9295 Galaxy S4 Active had absolutely flawless output when connected to an active external amplifier, producing excellent scores all over the field. Its volume levels aren't the highest we have seen, but it should just just fine for 99% of the occasions.
Impressively enough, there's next to no degradation when you plug in a pair of headphones. Save for the barely detectable (in the lab, let alone with a naked ear) hike in stereo crosstalk the output remains perfect. A really solid showing by the rugged droid here.
And here go the results so you can see for yourselves.
Good 8MP camera
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active packs an 8MP camera, just like the Galaxy S II and S III. It snaps photos with a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels. There's a 2MP camera on the front too and both can shoot 1080p video.
The user interface is based on the Galaxy Camera interface. The viewfinder is handles both still and video capture, so you don't have to switch modes. However, this is certainly not the most convenient solution as, if you're shooting full resolution 8MP photos, you'll have to frame your videos using a 4:3 viewfinder.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active user interface
Anyway, the cool settings are found in two places. The first is the Mode button under the shutter keys. It brings up a carousel with different shooting modes, each mode comes with a descriptive image and text. When you get familiar with those modes, you can switch to the grid, which drops he text but is faster.
Carousel and grid views for the Mode selector
The other one is the arrow at the bottom of the screen, which brings up a row of color effects. Each effect gets a live preview, so you can see what the particular scene will look like with it. There's a download button so you can grab more effects.
There are more settings in the top left corner, but they won't be used very often. Still, there a number of interesting options here like the setting for the volume rocker to act as a still shutter key, a video shutter key or a zoom lever. The HDR mode (Rich Tone) can be set to save a normal and an HDR photo or just the HDR one. Another interesting option is contextual file names - the Galaxy S4 Active will name photos with your location.
Color effects get a live preview
One thing we did notice is that there are fewer manual settings - the Galaxy S II and S III used to let you tweak all photo parameters, while the Galaxy S4 Active just gives you an ISO setting.
Let's go over the different modes. There are standard modes like Rich Tone (HDR), Panorama, Night and Sports but also the exclusive Aqua mode for underwater shooting.
The first time you launch Aqua mode it asks you what function you want to assign to the volume rocker - the capacitive screen won't work, so you have to use the volume rocker. Then you get a reminder to close the microUSB port to prevent water damage (you get this every time). Aqua mode tunes image processing as shooting underwater is quite different than above water.
Panoramas are pretty impressive, they go a full 360° circle or more and has about 8MP (the regular S4 panoramas go up to 60MP). Note that if you hold the phone vertically, the panorama image will have nearly more than twice the resolution. Here's a sample panorama - the stitching is pretty good, unless there are moving objects to trip it up.
Panorama sample
Other modes we've seen on previous Samsung phones like Best Photo and Best Face, which snap multiple photos and let you pick the best one (in the case of Best Face, you can tweak each face in the photo individually). Beauty Shot does some automatic beauty touch up.
Drama mode takes a moving object and clones it several times. Note that the resolution for this mode drops to 1080p. Another way to capture moving objects is Animated Photo, which creates cinemagrams. The result is an animated GIF file, though we have to say we liked Nokia's implementation better.
Sound & shot captures a photo and records ambient sound. It sounds pretty cool - for example, you can hear the sea gulls in a beach photo or the roaring of car engines if you're at a race - but we had problems sharing the shot. All the Galaxy S4 Active would send is the still image, a JPEG, and the sound remains on the phone.
Photos shot with the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active are comparable to Galaxy S III photos. The noise levels are low and there's plenty of detail. Colors are mostly accurate, though the green channel saturation has been boosted (typical for Samsung phones), which also throws off the white balance a bit. While we would have preferred a 13MP camera, the 8MP shooter of the Galaxy S4 Active produces very good photos.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active camera samples
The field of view is virtually identical to that of the Galaxy S III and wider than the Galaxy S4 camera.
The Galaxy S4 Active also has an HDR mode (called Richtone), which can help with high dynamic range scenes. It does a good job of bringing out detail both in the highlights and in the shadows, but it affects color rendering.
HDR off • HDR on • HDR off • HDR on
Photo quality comparison
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active camera is very much the same as the cameras on last year's flagships. You can also pit it against the 13MP camera of the regular Galaxy S4 and the water-resistant Sony Xperia Z using the upscale/downscale options in our Photo compare too.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active in our Photo quality compare tool
1080p video camera gets the job done
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active stores videos in MP4 files with 17Mbps bitrate on average. Stereo audio is recorded at 128Kbps bitrate and 48kHz sampling rate.
The video camera doesn't have many fancy shooting modes like the still camera, but dual shot is available and you can do slow-motion and time lapse videos. Slow-motion videos can go up to 8x slow down, but resolution drops to 800 x 450 and framerate to 15fps. Time lapse videos can speed things up to 8x, with resolution and framerate remaining at 1080p @ 30fps (time lapse actually requires less processing power than regular video capture).
Touch focus is available before and during video recording and you can switch back to continuous autofocus if you prefer. You can capture 6MP (16:9) photos during recording as well, but images come out with very different image processing than what you get from the still camera - the contrast and saturations are boosted way up and there's a good deal of overshaprening.
Still photo captured during video recording with the Galaxy S4 Active
Videos captured with the Samsung Galaxy S4 have a good of fine detail and little noise. Colors and white balance are similar to those in still images, overall accurate but slightly oversaturated (especially in the green channel). The continuous autofocus triggered a bit too often.
As before, the field of view for the camera is similar to that of the Galaxy S III and wider than the Galaxy S4.
Final words
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is certainly worthy of carrying the Galaxy S4 name, but are there genuine reasons to pick it over the regular S4? The IP57-level water resistance is nice, but it's not something that can't be added with a third-party case. Admittedly, a thick, heavy and ugly case, not suitable for everyday use (but then you can put it on only when needed).
Then again, your Facebook photo album from the summer can look very different with the Galaxy S4 Active - you can take photos where you wouldn't before (not with your phone, not with a digital camera).
You'll also be less wary taking your phone fishing or on a boat. There are apps for marine navigation and weather, for example, so you can use your S4 Active for that instead of a dedicated unit. Apps for fishing exist too, but the most important point to be made here is that a water resistant smartphone has uses you may not have thought of before.
Escaping from the ubiquitous design of the Galaxy S4 and the Super AMOLED display may be an additional perk for some - we've heard and read plenty of complaints about both and this is a chance to get Galaxy S4 specs without either of those.
The Galaxy S4 - either the I9500 with Exynos 5 Octa or the I9505 with Snapdragon 600 - make a fine alternative if you prefer thin and light over water resistant. They also pack a Super AMOLED screen and a 13MP camera without costing extra.
Samsung I9500 Galaxy S4 • Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4
The Sony Xperia Z is thin too and certainly prettier, unless you are into the rugged charm of the S4 Active. But its LCD screen has poor viewing angles, the Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset is not up to par with Snapdragon 600 and the smaller battery (2,330mAh vs. 2,600mAh) is non-removable.
The Sony Xperia ZR has a smaller screen - 4.55", 720p - which makes it slightly more compact (and potentially cheaper too, it's not on sale yet). It also carries an IP58 certification, making it even more resilient to water.
Sony Xperia Z • Sony Xperia ZR
Huawei also has its hat in the game - the Ascend D2. While the K3V2 chipset is no performance monster, with a 5" 1080p screen, 13MP camera and 32GB of built-in (non-expandable) storage and 3,000mAh battery, the D2 is a worthy contender.
Huawei Ascend D2
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is not the best smartphone in the Samsung lineup, but if you add "that I can put in water," things definitely change. It's a very good 2013 flagship aimed at people who until recently had very few options - as you can see there aren't many high-end smartphones with water resistance.
Sure not everyone needs to have an IP57 certified handset, but if it doesn't cost anything in terms of overall smartphone performance than it certainly doesn't hurt having it. Initially it may just give you peace of mind, knowing that you won't ruing your vacation by dropping your expensive smartphone in the water, but at some point you'll inevitably want to explore the opportunities that an element-defying handset gives you.
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