The Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition was launched with much anticipation, as to how it will work and how the updates will roll out. While the immediate roll out of 4.3 inspired confidence there was always a worry that buying the S4 Google Play Edition will strip out all the important features of TouchWiz. While that still stands true, we found that one neat feature of the TouchWiz enabled S4 still works for the Google Play Edition, and that is the S4 View Cover functionality. We snapped the S4’s S-View Cover on to the S4 GPE and shot a quick demo of it for you –
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVMK2JC7z5Y
As you can see above, the functionality of the S-View cover is just the same as before. Closing the cover will neatly display the screensaver clock and glanceable notifications. Of course this means that all the other functionality works too, like calls –
Yes, the cover also lets you interact with calls as they arrive, again, just like the way you could do it before. For a better look at the S-View cover, the box contents and its functionality, check this video –
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B9-o8OhnF4
Interesting that a Samsung specific function is working for the Google branded S4 too. Does this mean there are more firmware dependent features on S4 GPE that we don’t know about? We will try to find out more about this and let you know. Till then, lets wait for the next version of Android 4.4 KitKat to launch in full glory.