Last night Samsung unveiled the Samsung Galaxy S4 in front of a packed Radio City Music Hall in New York. AppNewser was there to get some hands-on time with the company’s new flagship phone.

Radio City was a madhouse. Doors opened at 6 with the presentation supposed to start at 7. Despite arriving right at 6, the line was already wrapped around itself down the block (see the photo to the left). I didn’t get in the doors til 6:50.

Once inside, I was ushered up to the mezzanine, as the orchestra level had filled up. The glow of phones, tablets and laptops filled the theater in the minutes leading up to the presentation. As for that presentation, it was… interesting. You can watch it here to get all the details on the phone, and see all of the odd (yet attractive) set pieces they used.

The crowd was excited for the phone, not the presentation. I had never been in a crowd that cheered so loudly when the words “4G LTE” were uttered, or how a number of audible gasps and “whoa”s were heard when a burst mode on the camera was demoed.
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Samsung’s next smartphone will have eye-scrolling technology, according to Brian Cheng of the New York Times. The article cites an unnamed Samsung employee who gave details about the company’s latest smart phone that will use the scrolling technology to move mobile content based on a user’s gaze.

Samsung already has European and US trademarks on its

Computer application software having a feature of sensing eye movements and scrolling displays of mobile devices, namely, mobile phones, smartphones and tablet computers according to eye movements; digital cameras; mobile telephones; smartphones; tablet computers.

The trademark indicates that Samsung is ready to bring its technology to the marketplace, where it will be competing with other eye controlling technology from Tobii and possibly Google Glass. Samsung is showcasing its latest phone on March 15 with the opening of its new flagship store. Leaked sources indicates that the new device will have some great hardware capabilities in addition to its new software technology.

CNET made headlines around the tech community this week, deciding that the Samsung Galaxy S3 is the first device “to knock the iPhone off its pedestal.”

Samsung mocked Apple in an outdoor advertisement in Australia this week, mocking the company’s map app for some potentially dangerous errors. What do you think? Could Samsung climb to the top of the smartphone market in 2013?

Here’s more from CNET: “It took years of iPhone dominance and many months of Android market leadership for a phone with Google’s mobile operating system to knock the iPhone off its pedestal. The Samsung Galaxy S3 won that honor. The GS3 is a truly global phone, available on nearly every carrier, nearly everywhere. Its large, vibrant HD display represents a growing class of phones with broader form factors, and its delicate balance of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a sharp 8-megapixel camera, 4G LTE or HSPA+ support, and an accessible price make the Galaxy S3 a worldwide hero.”

Research firm Strategy Analytics reported that Samsung’s Galaxy S3 had topped Apple’s iPhone 4S as “the world’s best-selling smartphone” in the third quarter of 2012–the first time this has ever happened.

However, the company projects that iPhone 5 sales will top Samsung’s Galaxy S3 in the next quarter and once again dominate the world smartphone market. What do you think?

Check it out: “Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphone model shipped 18.0 million units worldwide during the third quarter of 2012. The Galaxy S3 captured an impressive 11 percent share of all smartphones shipped globally and it has become the world’s best-selling smartphone model for the first time ever … Apple shipped an estimated 16.2 million iPhone 4S units worldwide for second place, as consumers temporarily held off purchases in anticipation of a widely expected iPhone 5 upgrade at the end of the quarter.”

The various lawsuits between Apple and one of their largest suppliers/competitors, Samsung, are humming right along with a Pyrrhic victory for Apple in South Korea and an ongoing case in US.

That US lawsuit has inspired a fair amount of humor among comedians and jokesters, including the faux ad posted below. One satirist has taken Apple’s argument about Samsung’s smartphones and turned it on its head. According to this snarky ad, the Samsung S3 is the best iPhone yet. Read more