The slightly confusingly named Samsung Galaxy S 4 Active ($199.99-594.99) isn't quite a Galaxy S 4 in a waterproof case. It's a different phone, albeit with the S 4's processor and Android skin. Some of the changes are for the better (a super-loud speakerphone), others are for the worse (a less-capable camera), and yet others are a matter of taste (a different screen technology). Since camera quality is critically important nowadays, I'll say that factor slightly outweighs the others, but I wouldn't be amazed if you judged differently. This is still an excellent Android smartphone.

Physical Features

The Galaxy S 4 Active is a bit thicker than the standard S 4 at 5.5 by 2.8 by .36 inches (HWD). Irritatingly, that seems to make some standard S 4 cases not work because the hole for the headphone jack is in ever so slightly the wrong place; you can fix that by cutting a bigger hole in your case.

I strongly prefer the Active's three physical Menu, Home and Back buttons to the S 4's single Home button and capacitive Menu and Back buttons. Above those buttons, there's a 1080p TFT LCD screen rather than the original S 4's Super AMOLED HD. It appears marginally brighter, but with slightly less saturated colors. The LCD also doesn't use the PenTile pixel arrangement, which bothers some people but which I insist is invisible at a pixel density this high (441ppi.)

The Active comes in gray and turquoise. Our model had a blue back and sides with textured gray plastic panels at the top and bottom of the back. The back appears to have a texture, but that's just an illusion; it's the usual slick Samsung plastic, and it peels right off to reveal the microSD card slot and removable battery. 

The Galaxy S 4 Active is water-resistant and "dust resistant," but not rugged. Although those gray plastic panels are somewhat tougher than the original S 4's back, the screen isn't protected, and it's just as likely to scratch as on the standard S 4. That said, the water resistance is real here. I submerged the Active for half an hour in about eighteen inches of water, and later did camera testing for half an hour in a warm bathtub. The Active didn't leak, but the touch screen became useless under water and for up to a minute after removing it from the water. Because almost all of the Active's features depend on the touch screen, that made the phone pretty useless.

The one exception was the camera. By kicking the camera into "Aqua" mode before you put it in the water, you turn the volume rocker into a shutter button, triggering either photos or videos. That and the power button are the only controls you get underwater.

Voice Calls, Battery and Networking

The S 4 Active is a good voice phone, but not quite as good as the original S 4. I found inconsistent voice quality using the earpiece in a few tests. Sometimes the Audience-powered noise cancellation worked well, sometimes it didn't. Earpiece volume was loud enough for most environments, although the phone vibrated a bit at top volume, something I didn't notice on the regular S 4. The phone has a stunningly loud speakerphone which vibrates the device body noticeably. The speakerphone also has excellent noise cancellation and a nice, warm tone through its microphone. It was easy to activate voice dialing with a Plantronics Voyager Legend Bluetooth headset, but Samsung's S Voice had trouble recognizing some names for dialing.

The Active's 2600mAh battery is the same as the Galaxy S 4's, so you should get the same talk time. I can't explain why I got such spectacular battery results here, with 16 hours, 41 minutes of talk time and 5 hours, 41 minutes of video streaming compared to the ordinary S 4's 10 hours, 50 minutes of talk time and 4 hours, 48 minutes of streaming. You should expect similar battery life here to the HTC One on AT&T.

Speeds on AT&T's 4G LTE network were also blazing. AT&T's network is the fastest in the USA, and we got awe-inspiring speeds of 14-18Mbps down and 6-8Mbps up in Manhattan. The phone will work on AT&T's network here in the US; it will also roam to foreign HSPA+ networks. Other connectivity includes 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi on the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and a GPS chip that locks in very quickly and accurately.

Software and Performance

Here's where the S 4 Active is most similar to its sedentary cousin. Just like the ordinary S 4, the Active runs Android 4.2 with Samsung's additions on a 1.9GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, making it the fastest phone on the market right now. Benchmark scores were similar to the S 4, except for a little hiccup where it was imperceptibly slower to toggle Bluetooth on and off.

I wrote about Samsung's extensive "S Everything" skin in my original Galaxy S 4 review, so you can take a look by jumping to that page here. My Galaxy S 4 Tips and Tricks story shows what happens when you go a level deeper.

In summary, there's a massive jumble of ideas here: great ones like customizable call audio, split-screen multitasking and a built-in pedometer; so-so ones like a slightly sluggish IR remote control; and unreliable ones like Smart Scroll, which is supposed to let you scroll pages by tilting your head.

As I said in the original review: It's like Microsoft Office, in that it's packed with features. But you know what? People love Microsoft Office, because everybody finds what they need in it, and they don't all find or need the same things. The Samsung Galaxy S 4 has a million ideas and needs to share all of them, right now, and it doesn't matter if five of them are ridiculous because you're going to think the next five are brilliant.