Samsung Galaxy S4 Active review

One of the main concessions made on the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is in the camera department, where the 13MP snapper from the Galaxy S4 has been replaced with an 8MP version.

For those all important "selfies" there's a 2MP camera on the front which isn't too shabby, plus it means things such as Skype video calls are also possible on the Galaxy S4 Active.

While the downgrade in sensor may be a disappointment to some there is still comfort in the fact the S4 Active sports the same myriad of options in the camera app giving you a wealth of picture taking ability in your pocket.

The UI and shooting modes are borrowed straight from the Samsung Galaxy Camera, just hit the mode button to bring up the scrolling wheel of options.

You can view all the options at once by hitting the button in the bottom left corner of the screen if the wheel is a bit too much, and we found it was much easier to find what we wanted in this exploded view.

Standard options such as Night, Panorama and Sports modes are pretty straight forward, but Samsung's "innovation" comes into play with some of the more left field options such as Sound & Shot, Beauty Face and Animated Photo.

A unique mode to the Galaxy S4 Active is Aqua, optimising the performance of the camera for taking pictures underwater.

As you might know, touchscreens don't work particularly well underwater but dive into the settings menu of the camera app and you can swap the volume rocker switch from a zoom control to a shutter key for some submerged action.

Of course you'll have to tinker with all the settings before you take your S4 Active for a splash, as once submerged there's no going back.

If you're someone who likes taking photos of people then Best Photo and Best Face will likely be attractive options for you to use, with the former taking a eight snaps for you to then select the best one to keep.

The latter is a similar concept, but focuses on the face only and it's capable of picking out several faces in a picture. This is great for group shots as once you've taken the picture you can select each person's face and choose from five snaps to find their best smile.

These functions are all well and good, but you have to actually remember to turn them on when you come to take the photo, as the Galaxy S4 Active can't do these things on auto-mode.

This is a little annoying as often we forgot to put the mode on, and the times we did the added process meant our subjects weren't quite as we'd hope they'd be.

We found that most of the time auto mode was good enough, be it taking in a city landscape or going up close and personal with dinner.

Something we found irritating on the camera app was the shutter sound, with the only way to turn it off being to put the whole handset on silent - very annoying. Next time Samsung, just have a toggle in the settings menu. Thanks.

We were thoroughly impressed with the camera on the Galaxy S4 and while the Galaxy S4 Active doesn't quite reach the same heights as its namesake, it doesn't do a bad job.

In well lit areas inside and out the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is capable of taking some glorious photos, with a good level of detail and decent level of colour saturation to make any part-time shooter proud.

Up close macro mode works a treat - and automatically too - with the S4 Active not seeming to struggle when it came to focussing on objects.

It wasn't all plain sailing with the odd grainy picture experienced and some blurring in a handful of shots, but considering the S4 Active has less of an impetus on the camera situation compared to its 13MP brother you won't be disappointed with what it can do.

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