Galaxy S4 S View Cover case review

The Galaxy S4 S View cover is a new addition to the Samsung case and covers range. Offering a touch sensitive window on the front that allows the user to view alerts, incoming calls and notifications without opening the cover. Calls can be answered or rejected by swiping the window, again without ever having to open the cover.

The addition of a small magnet triggers a sensor in the S4 to lock and unlock the Galaxy S4 just by opening and closing the cover.

The Galaxy S View cover. Now what’s quite special about this S View cover. Like the previous covers it replaces your battery compartment cover as well, the back cover but it also has the front cover with a cutout. And that’s actually got a piece of plastic there.

Now this plastic is actually conductive as it were, so when we place it on the smartphone on the Samsung Galaxy S4 what will happen is we can use this window here to quickly check for alerts or notifications or if the phone rings we’ll be able to answer a call.

So, first of all, how do we actually attach this to the device.

So what we first have to do is remove the old back cover and it can be reasonably tight to remove so you’ll have to get your finger in and just pries it away.

The great thing with the S View case is there’s a small magnet inside here so as you can see there notifications popped up and I’ve got my notification there, I can quickly see the information but it’s still leaving you with my clock nicely there.

Now when you open the case because of the magnet that’s been attached into the inside of the case the device actually knows that you want to look at it so it will immediately drop into homescreen view.

Likewise, when I close the case it knows the case has been closed and it switches over to this S View mode which allows you to see the information.

One of the things I found slightly awkward  with this case as you can see in the video it has an absolute love of just popping open on its own.

One thing Samsung really should have done here if they were putting a magnet in to detect when the cover was over the screen or not is maybe put a stronger magnet that would keep the actual cover attached to the front of the S4.

It does seem to be a little bit of a design flaw that really.

A lot of people found that the best thing you can do is just try and flex the spine in a few different directions just to remove some of the kind of starchiness from it.

After a couple of weeks worth of use you will find that it sits much more comfortably on the top of the phone.

But, from a functionality point-of-view the S View cover is an absolute dream.  It’s a great idea having this cutout.

The fact that this is a touch sensitive cutout as well using Samsung’s glove tech effectively means that you can use  this to interact with  the S4 if you  get a phone call or to check what actually going on with your latest alerts without even having to open the cover.

The idea of being able to reject a call really quickly and easily is just fantastic. Like I say, the only drawback is this slightly springiness coming from the Galaxy S4 S View cover when you first get it but that can be solved with a little bit of work.