Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini review

The S4 gets shrunk and we put it through its paces

Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini
Good things sometimes do come in small packages

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Rather than having two separate apps (or one app with a little toggle switch in the corner), the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini bundles both the stills camera and video camera tidily into one app.

To start with, it was more than just a little confusing. We tapped the Video recording button, expecting it to switch to video mode, but no, it started recording. This took us a few seconds to get used to, but it is a bigger feature than we would initially have given it credit for.

It means that switching between taking photos and recording videos is a lot, lot smoother and lot, lot easier. Oh and it's a lot, lot quicker, meaning that the unmissable event you want to record is more likely to be recorded, rather than being just a memory.

The video recording also includes the ability to zoom while filming. This is a feature that is too often missed on other devices for our liking, even though it is probably just a minor feature. Anyway, it's there, so smiles all round.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini review

We also found that the video recording quality was rather good, being able to record at 30fps at 1080p HD quality.

We know that HD video recording is slowly hitting more and more phones, but it is nice to be able to have higher quality recordings, meaning it is suitable for a much wider range of occasions.