Samsung Galaxy S III Review: This Is The Phone You have actually Been Waiting For

Short Version

The Samsung Galaxy S III is the Android phone of the second and in lots of ways it lives up to the nonsense. A lot of individuals are thrilled to see this thing hit outlet shelves. Our take? They won ’ t be disappointed.

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Outstanding software application characteristics paired with a stunning display and specs that can easily contend with anything else on the market makes the Galaxy S III absolutely nothing short of a total delight. Physically it ’ s not a great deal of a looker – the plastic case feels a bit chintzy – but normally you ’ re examining the best of the very best.

Attributes:

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 chip
8MP rear video camera (1080p video presentation capture)
1.9 MP front video camera
4G LTE at readily available carriers
MSRP: 16GB is $ 199 on-contract, 32GB is $ 249 on-contract

Pros:

Bunches of cool software application like S-Beam and Buddy Photo Share
Beautiful, sizable display
Strong battery life

Disadvantages:

The plastic feels affordable and grabs prints
TouchWiz is substantial and unsightly

Long Model

Hardware/Design:

As I quickly mentioned, the Galaxy S III is made almost entirely of plastic, conserve for the Gorilla glass coating its face. The design is suggested to be influenced by nature, which appears ridiculous thinking of 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 cleaned look to it, but it feels slick and grabs up prints. The blue version is worse than the white, though, with the white version merely sticking to dirt, dirt and other ugly flecks while the blue simply adores the smudge.

The phone is exceptionally thin (.34 – inches), taking into consideration the dimension of the display, and with a weight of 4.3 ounces it feels a little too light. You recognize– the cheap kind of light. Once again, we come back to the plastic.

Now, I understand that creating this phone from steel or some additional (more superior) materials would certainly have made ease-of-use a bit more challenging. There are multiple radios in this man, along with an NFC chip, and virtually every little thing runs efficiently. With a steel frame, the same soft ease-of-use would certainly be far more complicated to achieve.

An elongated home button sits simply 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 top left corner. The video camera is square on the back of the phone with a speaker grill on the right and LED flash on the left. MicroUSB accessibility is on the bottom.

Software application:

The Samsung Galaxy S III is loaded with software features. 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 terms of visual (I a lot favor pure Android ICS), but at least the custom overlay comes with a couple of valuable bits like resizeable widgets and navigational shortcuts in contacts.

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

For one, Samsung has offered a brand-new way to make some money, called TecTiles. TecTiles are essentially stamp-sized NFC stickers, and work with any of Samsung ’ s NFC-equipped phones, permitting individuals to program specific tiles to do different actions when tapped. So a TecTile on my night stand may set an alarm and lesser the ringer volume (in preparation for sleepy time), while a TecTile on my front door may connect me to my house WiFi network. The service works well, and the only genuine complaint I have about TecTiles is the fact that they cost $ 14.99 per a pack of five.

One more NFC-friendly characteristic is Samsung ’ s S Beam. It works likewise to Android Beam but operations over a higher distance, letting individuals share material in seconds without a WiFi or cell signal. This features the sharing of pics, video presentations, music, net pages, etc.

. In my experience S Beam worked well and moved content rather rapidly between tools. The major worry is merely precisely how much use S Beam will get. Sure, the Galaxy S III will be a popular phone, however that doesn ’ t imply that everybody in a provided group of good friends is going to go purchase one.

The GSIII also comes loaded with Samsung ’ s brand-new GroupCast attribute, which syncs Galaxy S III gadgets so you can share a PDF, PowerPoint, or pic gallery presentation. The feature appears like it would certainly be valuable for laborers in the area or out of the office, specifically taking into consideration that Samsung is delivering an enterprise-friendly variation of the gadget. It also lets individuals make marks on the presentation, though I wouldn ’ t consider this a collaboration device since the marks vanish reasonably rapidly and can ’ t be saved.

The phone characteristics Samsung ’ s cloud-syncing/sharing service AllShare Play, letting individuals share material on any sort of AllShare-connected devices like Galaxy tablets, DLNA-capable Televisions, set-top boxes and Blu-Ray users, as well as Samsung ’ s Smart TVs and Windows Personal computers running the AllShare Play app. This lets users pull information that are kept on house gadgets and throw a film from their Galaxy S III to the TELEVISION.

Along with these significant attributes, the Galaxy S III additionally has some small touches that make it a much simpler gadget to utilize. Things like motion controls (bending the phone to zoom in on images, or panning the phone to move images from one home screen to the following) seem a bit arbitrary, as it ’ s just as fast and seamless to touch to zoom or move my finger around the screen to reorganize icons. Nevertheless, characteristics like the ability to lift the phone to your face while in a text message talk to trigger a telephone call makes sense. The phone also dims brightness when it ’ s set down, conserving you battery, and provides a little extra alert when you ’ ve been away from your phone if you ’ ve missed a call or message.

The biggest frustration in software application (and let it be understood, I ’ m seriously impressed with the function set supplied right here) is S Voice. It ’ s essentially a Siri opponent, enabling you to make commands with your tone. To begin, it ’ s not as clever as Siri when it concerns hearing natural foreign language (“ show me the nearest burger joint ” puzzled the heck out of it). Second, it has less functionality than Siri. It ’ s a great attribute yet it simply appears like a copy that isn ’ t done fairly too. (And trust me, that ’ s not to point out that Siri works well by any sort of ways).

Pop Up User, which lets you continue playing an online video in a smaller sized window above some additional activity, is even a good function as multi-tasking comes to be ever-important to us. Flipboard is pre-loaded on the machine, as are plenty of carrier apps.

Video camera:

The camera on the Galaxy S III is super quick, though I can ’ t say I ’ m totally blown away by image quality. Contrasted to pictures taken with my iPhone 4S, every little thing shot with the Galaxy S III appears cleaned out and drab. Fortunately, there are lots of different scene modes, focus settings, exposure, ISO, white balance, and different effects that should aid you locate your means to the photo you want.

But maybe to balance the less-than-impressive photo quality, the Samsung Galaxy S III camera has a few software program revelations that ensure to thrill. There is burst shot, which takes up to 20 photos at a price of 3 pictures per 2nd and best shot, which snaps eight images and automatically supplies you the very best one based upon criteria like blinking, smiling, illumination, etc. The Galaxy S III will definitely also let you take still pictures as you tape 1080p video presentation, and has an HDR method.

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

Share Shot is an additional essential video camera function, as it allows you to share photos as you take them with up to five GSIII gadgets through WiFi Direct. So let ’ s state you ’ re at a birthday party with your pals and desire to make sure everyone can appreciate the pictures later. Simply open up Share Shot and link with the tools you wish to share with. From there, every image you take will appear in their galleries too until you choose a different shooting mode.

All in all the GSIII camera has fairly a few tricks up its sleeve, but if it ’ s simply a beautiful photo you ’ re seeking, you may need to keep looking.

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

Display:

You actually can ’ t fail with this display. Samsung ’ s HD Super AMOLED screens are the greatest out there, and at 4.8 inches there ’ s plenty of incredibly crisp material to enjoy. Blacks are deep, shades are bright, and there ’ s actually 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 think about. Proding up against the 5-inch mark, the Galaxy S III display is a great deal larger than I ’ m comfy with. But the key to slapping giant screen on a phone and keeping it comfortable is device and bezel thickness. The phone is already extremely thin, allowing even smaller hands to hold the tool solidly.

However the bezels of the Galaxy S III is what truly saves the day. They use up less than half a centimeter on each side, allowing a huge screen to fit on a relatively comfortable phone. The rounded corners and curved edges also aid with grip and carrying out one-handed actions.

Performance:

HTC has actually been kicking ass recently when it comes to benchmark screening, 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 3 tests we run. In Quadrant, which checks 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 most other phones (featuring the Galaxy Note) remain well below the 3000 mark.

Where surfing is concerned, the Galaxy S III pulled in a score of 103,780 contrasted to the One S ’ s 100,662. Contrasted to most phones, nonetheless, the GSIII wins by a long shot as we normally 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 point out that this phone is fast. We saw an average of 9.6 Mbps down and 8.39 Mbps up, which is superb. I have yet to see the Galaxy S III have any sort of concerns in terms of performance, which says a whole lot taking into consideration that this phone is going above and further than in terms of both hardware and software application. I can ’ t inform you just how grateful I am for that 2nd GB of RAM.

Battery:

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

That said, the Galaxy S III lasted a total 5 hours and fifteen minutes in our battery exam. That ’ s quite damn great, thinking of that the screen is never off in the course of a consistent Google Photo search. In real-world situations, it must at the very least make it through dinner time, and being dependent on your usage, it might also hang with you with those late evening parties.

To offer you a little context, the Droid 4 just hung in there for three hours and forty-five minutes while the Droid RAZR Maxx (Motorola ’ s battery beast) kept with me for a spectacular eight hours and fifteen minutes. The HTC One S lasted merely under 5 hours.

An additional plus is that the battery is completely removable, so if you ’ re a serious power-user you can always buy another battery and switch 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 waiting for. It ’ s typically well-rounded, it has an incredible display, strong battery life, lots of interesting features and it merely works well. That ’ s not something I find myself pointing out very commonly of Android phones.

When individuals ask me exactly what phone they should purchase, or if they should anticipate this or that (and trust me, I get asked this a lot), I always state, “ No, never wait. Merely purchase the greatest phone available today, and don ’ t concern about spending a little greater than you ’ d would like to due to the fact that you ’ ll utilization it every day for about two years. ”

However over the past couple of months, when phandroids come at me asking for phone suggestions, I ’ ve been advising them to wait. And you understand what, I ’ m pleased I did. Much like the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy S that came before it, this is the Android phone to top.

It ’ s the phone you ’ ve been waiting for.