Samsung Galaxy S III Evaluation: This Is The Phone You’ve Been Waiting For

Short Version

The Samsung Galaxy S III is the Android phone of the moment and in several means it equals the nonsense. Lots of people are delighted to see this thing hit outlet shelves. Our take? They won ’ t be let down.

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Outstanding software functions paired with a beautiful display and specifications that can compare anything else on the marketplace makes the Galaxy S III nothing short of an absolute delight. Physically it ’ s not a lot of a looker – the plastic case feels a bit chintzy – but usually you ’ re looking at the greatest of the most effective.

Features:

4.8-inch 720 × 1280 Super AMOLED display
Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich
Samsung ’ s TouchWiz overlay
S-Beam/NFC
2GB of RAM
1.5 GHz dual-core processor
8MP rear video camera (1080p video capture)
1.9 MP front video camera
4G LTE at accessible carriers
MSRP: 16GB is $ 199 on-contract, 32GB is $ 249 on-contract

Pros:

Bundles of cool software like S-Beam and Buddy Photo Share
Beautiful, huge display
Strong battery life

Disadvantages:

The plastic feels reasonable and grabs prints
TouchWiz is heavy and uninviting

Long Variation

Hardware/Design:

As I briefly discussed, the Galaxy S III is made almost totally of plastic, conserve for the Gorilla glass layer its face. The design is implied to be influenced by nature, which seems silly considering all the plastic. There isn ’ t a straight line in sight, with rounded corners and tapered edges.

The plastic along the back has actually a brushed look to it, but it feels slick and grabs up prints. The blue model is worse than the white, however, with the white version just sticking to dirt, dust and other unsightly grains while the blue simply loves the blemish.

The phone is incredibly thin (.34 – inches), thinking about the size of the display, and with a weight of 4.3 ounces it feels a bit of too light. You know– the inexpensive kind of light. Once again, we come back to the plastic.

Now, I recognize that developing this phone from metal or some other (more premium) materials might have made ease-of-use a bit more complicated. There are a number of radios in this man, along with an NFC chip, and virtually every little thing runs effortlessly. With a metal frame, the same soft ease-of-use might be far more tough to attain.

An elongated house button sits just below the display, with a volume rocker on the left edge, lock button on the right, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the best left corner. The camera is square on the back of the phone with a speaker grill on the right and LED flash on the left. MicroUSB access is on the bottom.

Software program:

The Samsung Galaxy S III is loaded with software application attributes. To begin, the phone runs Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, with Samsung ’ s TouchWiz UI slapped on top. I ’ m not a significant supporter of TouchWiz in regards to visual (I much like pure Android ICS), but a minimum of the custom overlay comes with a few helpful tidbits like resizeable widgets and navigational shortcuts in contacts.

But that ’ s nothing compared to the things Samsung has done with NFC and WiDi (WiFi Direct).

For one, Samsung has actually introduced a new means to make some cash, called TecTiles. TecTiles are practically stamp-sized NFC stickers, and work with any of Samsung ’ s NFC-equipped phones, enabling individuals to program specific floor tiles to do different actions when touched. So a TecTile on my night stand may set an alarm and lower the ringer volume (in preparation for sleepy time), while a TecTile on my front door could link me to my residence WiFi network. The service works well, and the only actual complaint I have about TecTiles is the fact that they cost $ 14.99 per a pack of five.

Another NFC-friendly attribute is Samsung ’ s S Beam. It works likewise to Android Beam but operations over a greater distance, letting individuals share material in seconds without a WiFi or cell signal. This consists of the sharing of photos, video recordings, music, web pages, etc.

. In my experience S Beam worked well and transferred content rather rapidly between machines. The major issue is just exactly how much utilization S Beam will definitely get. Sure, the Galaxy S III will certainly be a favored phone, but that doesn ’ t imply that every person in a given group of buddies is going to go buy one.

The GSIII additionally comes loaded with Samsung ’ s brand-new GroupCast characteristic, which syncs Galaxy S III tools so you can share a PDF, PowerPoint, or pic gallery presentation. The characteristic seems like it might be beneficial for employees in the arena or from the office, especially thinking about that Samsung is providing an enterprise-friendly variation of the tool. It also lets individuals make marks on the demonstration, though I wouldn ’ t consider this a collaboration tool because the marks vanish relatively rapidly and can easily ’ t be saved.

The phone features Samsung ’ s cloud-syncing/sharing service AllShare Play, letting individuals share content on any type of AllShare-connected machines like Galaxy tablets, DLNA-capable Televisions, set-top boxes and Blu-Ray members, and also Samsung ’ s Smart TVs and Windows PCs running the AllShare Play app. This lets individuals pull information that are kept on home tools and throw a motion picture from their Galaxy S III to the TV.

Along with these major attributes, the Galaxy S III even has some little touches that make it a much easier gadget to use. Things like movement controls (tilting the phone to zoom in on images, or panning the phone to move images from one house screen to the next) seem a bit arbitrary, as it ’ s merely as rapid and seamless to tap to zoom or move my finger around the screen to rearrange images. However, functions like the capacity to raise the phone to your face while in a text message chat to initiate a call makes sense. The phone even dims brightness when it ’ s set down, conserving you battery, and provides a little added alert when you ’ ve been away from your phone if you ’ ve missed a phone call or message.

The most significant dissatisfaction in software program (and let it be known, I ’ m genuinely pleased with the feature set supplied right here) is S Tone. It ’ s essentially a Siri opponent, allowing you to make commands with your voice. To begin, it ’ s not as wise as Siri when it pertains to hearing natural foreign language (“ program me the nearby hamburger joint ” perplexed the heck out of it). Second, it has less performance than Siri. It ’ s a great attribute yet it just seems like a copy that isn ’ t done quite also. (And trust me, that ’ s not to say that Siri works well by any sort of means).

Pop Up Member, which lets you proceed playing a video in a smaller sized window above some other job, is additionally a brilliant feature as multi-tasking becomes ever-important to us. Flipboard is pre-loaded on the tool, as are plenty of carrier applications.

Camera:

The camera on the Galaxy S III is super quick, though I can easily ’ t say I ’ m completely blown away by picture quality. Contrasted to images taken with my iPhone 4S, all the things shot with the Galaxy S III seems cleaned out and drab. Luckily, there are lots of different scene modes, focus settings, exposure, ISO, white balance, and different results that must assist you find your way to the photo you want.

However possibly to make up for the less-than-impressive picture quality, the Samsung Galaxy S III camera has a few software surprises that make sure to satisfy. There is rush shot, which uses up to 20 pictures at a rate of 3 pics per 2nd and best shot, which snaps eight pictures and systematically supplies you the greatest one based upon criteria like blinking, grinning, lighting, etc. The Galaxy S III will also let you take still images as you tape-record 1080p online video, and has an HDR method.

More notably, the GSIII camera has a shooting mode called Buddy Picture Share. It recognizes faces in images and lets you tag them with the contact ’ s name. From there, the phone will certainly consistently see the distinction between John Biggs and Matt Burns and let me share images with them straight from their name-tag.

Share Shot is another important video camera feature, as it enables you to share images as you take them with up to 5 GSIII gadgets with WiFi Direct. So let ’ s state you ’ re at a birthday party with your pals and would like to make certain everyone can easily appreciate the photos later. Merely uncover Share Shot and link with the machines you prefer to share with. From there, every pic you take will definitely appear in their galleries too till you select a different shooting method.

All in all the GSIII camera has rather a couple of tricks up its sleeve, but if it ’ s simply a beautiful photo you ’ re looking for, you could need to keep looking.

Contrast shot between the Samsung Galaxy S III (left) and the iPhone 4S (right):

Display:

You truly can ’ t fail with this display. Samsung ’ s HD Super AMOLED screens are the most effective out there, and at 4.8 inches there ’ s plenty of incredibly crisp content to take pleasure in. Blacks are deep, colors are bright, and there ’ s really no differentiation between pixels. In fact, the 4.8-inch display has 306 pixels per inch, making it one of the largest pixel-dense displays I ’ ve ever seen.

Past that, there ’ s the dimension of the display to consider. Nudging up against the 5-inch mark, the Galaxy S III display is a lot bigger than I ’ m relaxed with. But the key to slapping giant screen on a phone and keeping it comfortable is machine and bezel thickness. The phone is already very thin, allowing even smaller hands to grip the device solidly.

However the bezels of the Galaxy S III is just what actually saves the day. They use up less than half a centimeter on each side, permitting a huge screen to fit on a relatively relaxed phone. The rounded corners and curved edges additionally assist with grasp and executing one-handed actions.

Performance:

HTC has actually been kicking ass recently when it concerns benchmark testing, however there ’ s a new sheriff in town. The Samsung Galaxy S III defeats out every Android phone I ’ ve ever before tested in all three tests we run. In Quadrant, which tests all the things from CPU to memory to graphics, the Galaxy S III scored an excellent 4911. The HTC One S is available in 2nd with 4371, while the majority of other phones (featuring the Galaxy Note) remain well below the 3000 mark.

Where browsing is concerned, the Galaxy S III pulled in a score of 103,780 contrasted to the One S ’ s 100,662. Compared to most phones, nevertheless, the GSIII wins by a long shot as we typically see scores around the 60,000 mark.

And as a testimonial to both the phone and the power of AT&T ’ s 4G LTE network, I can carefully say that this phone is fast. We saw an average of 9.6 Mbps down and 8.39 Mbps up, which is outstanding. I have yet to see the Galaxy S III have any type of concerns in regards to performance, which points out a great deal thinking of that this phone is going above and further than in terms of both hardware and software. I can easily ’ t advise you just how grateful I am for that second GB of RAM.

Battery:

Here ’ s the offer with battery life. The Samsung Galaxy S III has a 2100mAh battery, which is fairly large compared to other phones on the marketplace. Be that as it could, all the additional attributes that make the Galaxy S III incredible (like the NFC and WiFi Direct stuff) end up tugging fairly vigorously at the battery. Pair that with a 4G LTE radio and there ’ s bound to be some problem.

That said, the Galaxy S III lasted a complete 5 hours and fifteen minutes in our battery exam. That ’ s rather damn great, thinking of that the screen is never ever off during a continual Google Photo search. In real-world situations, it must at the very least make it through dinner time, and depending on your use, it may even hang with you with those late evening parties.

To provide you a little context, the Droid 4 just hung in there for 3 hours and forty-five minutes while the Droid RAZR Maxx (Motorola ’ s battery beast) stayed with me for a spectacular eight hours and fifteen minutes. The HTC One S lasted just under five hours.

Another plus is that the battery is detachable, so if you ’ re a serious power-user you can easily always acquire an additional battery and exchange them out throughout the day.

Head-To-Head With The One X And iPhone 4S:

Conclusion

In the end, the Samsung Galaxy S III is the phone you ’ ve been hanging around for. It ’ s usually durable, it has an incredible display, solid battery life, a lot of fascinating features and it merely works well. That ’ s not something I discover myself saying extremely typically of Android phones.

When individuals ask me what phone they should purchase, or if they must wait for this or that (and trust me, I get asked this a bunch), I constantly point out, “ No, never wait. Merely buy the greatest phone readily available today, and don ’ t worry about spending a little more than you ’ d wish to due to the fact that you ’ ll usage it every day for about two years. ”

However over the past few months, when phandroids come at me requesting phone recommendations, I ’ ve been informing them to wait. And you recognize exactly what, I ’ m pleased I did. Merely like the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy S that came prior to it, this is the Android phone to top.

It ’ s the phone you ’ ve been awaiting.