I picked up my Samsung S4 with a skip in my step and a good deal of excitement of what the new flagship device held.
I’d been part of the group testing the Samsung Galaxy S3 and had since been using that same device for Samsung for well over a year. You could see my previous travel logs here from the London 2012 Olympics and my stories from that time.
I was one of the last ones to get the device and I picked up an Ivory White coloured device. My fellow bloggers had picked out the black ones and I was wished I had one. I’d had the S3 in white as well and was eager to explore another variant.
White it was and with that same excitement I unboxed the pearlescent device from it’s casing. Turning it on, however I found that the phone wasn’t in its best shape. It got stuck in a boot loop forcing me to give back the phone to Samsung and have them check it. Not what I expected but they were graceful enough to consider a new device but opted to fix the one I had and handed it back to me afterwards. Device back in hand after that, I was good to go.
I had taken some trips in the interim while the phone was undergoing firmware repairs and one of those trips was to Bonn, Germany where I had the pleasure of hanging out with Just A Band as they went to play at TED Global in Edinburgh. Our chance meeting in the queue to board the KLM flight and hanging out that morning was a lovely experience that I was too much of a reluctant fanboy not to capture.
I was in Bonn to take part in a global digital storytelling workshop put on by the Grimme Institute and Deutsche Welle. This tied with the German media conglomerate’s conference the DW Global Media Forum where I’d be on a panel as well.
The curious thing I loved and took full advantage of was the Sound and Shot feature of the camera which really impressed me.
My friend Apar Gupta, a lawyer from India who I met had quite the time as we strolled through the streets of Bonn and got acquainted with the city.
I also had the chance to visit a phone shop where I got onto the grid thanks to a German SIM card I’d received courtesy of my buddy Jeurgen at re:public 2013 in Berlin where I’d given a talk alongside my partner at Afrinnovator Will Mutua.
So there it was a first day in the city of Bonn, watching the lazy sun go down past 10:30pm or so. I had a lot planned for the S4 and this would be my chance to put it through the paces as I discovered more about the phone and how it handled the bright lights and bigger cities ahead.
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Full disclosure: I’ve had 3 Samsung phones in my life the Samsung Galaxy S, the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Samsung Galaxy S4 and I’ve signed a contract to test and update social media with them as part of the test (a copy of which you can view here) at no cost to me and for a period of 60 days upon which I am at liberty to return the phone as stipulated in contract or keep it as often I’ve done.