Prior to its unveiling back in March, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was one of the most anticipated smartphones of 2013. It has big boots to fill after following the hugely successful Galaxy S III, and to do that it’s been equipped with a new 5-inch 1080p display, a quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, and an entire plethora of software features you won’t find anywhere else.

But is the Galaxy S4 worth the upgrade if you already have a Galaxy S III, and does this device have what it takes to stay one step ahead of its competitors? I’ve been using it for the past few weeks to find out.

Nokia has today announced the Lumia 925, a new Windows Phone flagship that will be hoping to steal market share away from Apple and Samsung in 2013. The device boasts an aluminum frame and offers an 8.7-megapixel rear-facing PureView camera — both of which are firsts for Nokia’s Windows Phone devices.

Samsung has had to defend the Galaxy S4’s plastic form factor quite a bit since the device was announced back in March, and one of the ways it has done that is by touting the handsets durability. Plastic, Samsung claims, makes the device much more robust than competing smartphones because it bends and absorbs impact.

But as we suspected all along, aluminum is stronger. In a smartphone torture test performed by warranty provider SquareTrade, the Galaxy S4 fails to beat the iPhone 5 in drop tests, and even proved to be more fragile than its predecessor, the Galaxy S III.

If you’re disappointed that your HTC One didn’t come with a microSD card slot, then you’re going to be extremely jealous of users in China. Not only will the device have a removable back cover and a microSD card slot when it launches there, but it’s also have two SIM card slots as well.

Samsung has already explained its love for plastic, and why it chose to stick with it for the flagship Galaxy S4. But after receiving a lot of criticism for that decision, the company’s head of design, Dennis Miloseski, was forced to defend the Galaxy S4’s plastic build once again at Engadget’s Expand conference in San Francisco this weekend.