Hands-On, Photos, First Impressions

The comments we kept hearing made here and there to the product demo team were somewhat lacking in energy, in effervescence, in excitement. It was almost as if were were at the iPhone 4S presentation, being shown that infamous "upgrade" of the iPhone 4. The thing is that specialist tech journos are demanding people, inevitably hoping that each time a replacement for a top-selling smartphone like the Galaxy S3 comes along it'll make a clean break with its predecessor and trigger a brand new "wow" effect. But that element of surprise was nowhere to be see last night. In comparison, Sony and HTC have been far more daring with the design of their latest high-end mobiles.

The S4 that's due to land in the UK and Europe runs on a 1.9 GHz quad-core Qualcomm S600 processor rather than Samsung's own Exynos 5 octa-core processor. From what we saw in our brief hands-on, the handset seemed smooth and responsive, although that's no smart card. Everything ran perfectly smoothly—from games and web browsing to flicking though menus.

The Galaxy S4 will be available with 16, 32 or 64 GB of onboard storage, which can be boosted by up to 64 GB via the microSD card slot. There are photo/video cameras with backlit sensors on the front and back of the S4, with 2 Megapixels for the front-facing webcam and 13 Megapixels for the main rear-facing camera, which films 1080p Full HD video and has an LED flash.

The Galaxy S4 lets users launch all kinds of functions without even touching the screen. You can, for example, preview a photo album without necessarily having to physically open it—just place your finger a few millimetres above the screen and the phone responds accordingly. That works for e-mails too. You can then flick through web pages or a photo album by making a swipe motion (left to right) with your finger just above the surface of the display. Great! But what's the point? Well, it means you can keep using your phone even when your hands are dirty (in the kitchen or garden, for example) or wet.

Similarly, the Smart Scroll function offers hands-free scrolling. You can therefore scroll up or down a web page by tilting the phone backwards or forwards, or by simply moving your eyes. In our tests, the phone-tilting option seemed to work pretty well but the head/eye tracking mode proved rather less reliable.

Samsung has also added all kinds of new features to the camera. For starters, Dual Camera lets you simultaneously shoot the scene and the photographer, who's face gets stuck onto the final photo as a little thumbnail (there are several layouts to choose from). There are loads of photo filers to play around with and a new burst mode that captures several shots before stitching the various poses together into a single picture. It seems pretty cool, but we need more time to play around with these functions to see just how practical and/or effective they are to use.

Dennis Baker, who programs the festival's short films and manages its data and internal technology, joined as a volunteer in 2003 after retiring from his job teaching auto shop at Silverado High School in Mission Viejo. His work for the festival extends year-round. When he's not busy planning the next shorts program, Baker updates the database of contact phone numbers and emails and maintains records of past programs.

"I can list the films we showed in the film festival eight years ago, and the ones we didn't," Baker said Tuesday morning while taking a momentary breather at the festival's Newport Beach headquarters.

He and other volunteers operate in a tight cluster of second-floor offices in a nondescript building near UC Irvine. Inside, posters of "Milk," "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and other recent hits line the walls; plastic bins, DVDs and paperwork are crammed in between desks and TV screens. Often, workers squeeze past each other in the narrow hall.

If the paste starts going a little brown then don’t stress because apparently that’s totally fine and it just means the flour is cooking. Okay now REMOVE FROM HEAT. My mother wrote this in all caps on the recipe card and so it must be important. I don’t know what happens if you keep it on the heat but I don’t think I wanna find out.

3. Next, add the milk and get whisking. Don’t stop whisking. Are you using full cream milk? Mum says that reduced fat milk won’t work in this sauce, she seriously told me this at least six times while we were out buying the ingredients and so I think we should all listen. As you're whisking periodically check that there are no lumps hiding out in the grove of the saucepan. [I just made up a little IC card about checking for lumps, to the tune of TLC's “No Scrubs” and it's definitely making this bechamel process more enjoyable. You can have that idea, take it.

4. When the milk looks fully blended into the sauce and lump free, return it to the heat and keep whisking continuously until the bechamel boils and thickens. Anticipate that this part of the process will take forever, or at least 10 minutes. Pro tip: Don’t give the whisking job to someone with a limited attention span. [My mother keeps yelling “DON’T STOP! KEEP WHISKING!” at my girlfriend every time she loses focus and forgets to whisk which is approximately every 30 seconds and it would be hilarious if my girlfriend didn't look so terrified]. Keep whisking!