Posts Tagged ‘you’ve’
Instagram launches ‘Photos Of You,’ a collection of every photo you’ve been tagged in
Author: Matthew Baker
One of Facebook’s greatest inventions is the photo tag, which made it simple for anyone to browse photos tagged of their friends, no matter which friend uploaded each photo. Today Instagram is following suit with the launch of Photos of You, a new profile section that includes every photo friends have tagged with your username. The feature is rolling out today as part of Instagram 3.5 for both iOS and Android.
“One of the most common things people do on Instagram is @ mention their friends when they want to add them to a photo,” Facebook says, and Photos of You plans to address that. Once you’ve taken a photo, a new button lets you tag people and places, like your friend Dana or a slice from Joe’s Pizza. As you browse your feed,…
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Samsung says the Galaxy S4 design is ‘like nothing you’ve ever seen before’
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If the Galaxy S III was gently mocked for its design, the S4 has been the unwitting focus of a full-on roast. In a video explaining its design choices, Samsung explains that while the Galaxy S III was inspired by nature, this time it decided to ask the question “how can we change people’s lives for the better?” It concluded that it should be more rational with the S4′s design, toning down the curves and eliminating some of its predecessor’s flourishes. This focus apparently helped the company make the phone thinner while including a larger display. The product designers say they still managed to introduce “emotional elements” through CMF (color, material, and finish) choices, though.
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You’ve Got The Whole World In Your Hands As Leap Motion Gains Google Earth Support
Author: Jamie Colby
Leap Motion’s gesture-based controller launch is less than a month away, but so far we’ve heard relatively little about app support, besides the fact that the company is working hard on filling out its Airspace app store. Now, Leap Motion and Google are announcing support for Google Earth for Leap Motion tech, which will be built-in to the desktop Google Earth app for Windows, Mac and Linux as of version 7.1 (out today).
That’s a good initial user pool for Leap Motion, since Google Earth has been downloaded by over 1 billion people according to Google’s stats. The endorsement by Google is crucial because of the company’s stature, and the fact that it builds a whole lot of software, including the Chrome browser, and because it gives potential Leap Motion owners a very tangible, natural and commonplace app to test out Leap Motion’s utility with.
And we won’t have to wait until mid-May to find out how effective it is – 10,000 developers arleady have access to Leap Motion Controller hardware as it is. Leap motion is looking for devs to try it out and submit their own YouTube videos of the experience, by flagging the posts with #LeapInto. Those will go into a playlist the company will share to show off its tech.
Leap Motion continues to rack up the pre-launch hits, with major retail and OEM partnerships. The HP arrangement that will see its 3D gesture tech built-in to future laptops and other devices in particular is huge news. But all that hype means it will face high expectations at launch, and Google endorsement drives those expectations even higher.
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The Lumio Lamp Looks Like The Most Beautiful Book You’ve Never Read
Author: Janet Odell
Sometimes the best Kickstarter projects are the simplest ones. Lumio is a lamp masquerading as a beautiful hardcover book with a wooden finish. To turn the lamp on, you open it up. To turn it off, you close. It’s equal parts simplicity and ingenuity.
Lumio came into being when architect and designer Max Gunawan was trying to design a modular home that could fit inside a compact car. When Max realized he didn’t have enough funds to build a working prototype, he decided to use the his built up expertise somewhere else.
“When I decided to pivot and translate the concept into a folding lamp, it was a natural progression to use the form of the sketchbook as a way to package the lamp,” says Max on his Kickstarter page. “That’s how Lumio was born.”
An LED powers the Lumio, which can last up to 8 hours when fully charged. The cover comes in dark walnut, warm cherry, and blonde maple options and is also embedded with magnets that allows you to easily attach the Lumio to metal surfaces.
Gunawan has raised over $ 400,000 on his Kickstarter page, shooting well past his original $ 60K goal. You only have a few more days days to pledge and nab a Lumio for yourself, so if you want one I’d suggest you get going now.
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94Fifty smart basketball can tell when you’ve got game, teaches when you don’t
Author: Stefanie Jenkins
Everyday street basketball players (and would-be pros) don’t have many tools to quantify their progress. InfoMotion Sports thinks they’re owed more than just a pat on the back, so it’s bringing its 94Fifty smart basketball to everyday hoop fans. Like the existing model for teams, sensors inside the amateur basketball detect the forces involved in a dribble or shot, relaying details such as the throw angle or power through Bluetooth; Android and iOS apps will be available out of the gate. The stats are for more than just bragging rights, too. InfoMotion’s custom software centers on training sessions and competitions, including challenges from seasoned veterans. No matter how hard they play, owners will just have to rest the ball on a Qi wireless charging pad at the end of a session. InfoMotion Sports’ $ 295 asking price will be steep when the 94Fifty arrives in the summer — but it may be one of the better options for amateurs who want to improve the finer points of their game without donning a uniform.
Filed under: Misc
Source: 94Fifty
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Behold The Best Samsung Galaxy Note Sales Pitch You’ve Ever Seen
Author: Ian Simpson
Samsung is in the procedure of launching a new Samsung Galaxy Note II, but we ’ ve simply got strong proof the original may be even better. Courtesy of a Craigslist Toronto categorized ad (through Twitter), check out at this charm of a pitch that tells you every little thing you should learn about Samsung ’ s initial phablet. In the words of the original poster, “ Fasten your seatbelts assholes ”:
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Researchers measure 3D objects using just a camera and projector, can tell if you’ve ironed your shirt (video)
Author: Jenny Zhao
For years the projector and video camera have served us well, performing their respective activities. Now, researchers at Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Innovation institute are using them together to determine 3D things. By projecting a special pattern onto the subject and then utilizing the camera to “check out” the amount of distortion in the picture, a three-dimensional model can be constructed. This thing is accurate, too, with preciseness down to 1 – 2mm which implies it can easily determine wrinkles in clothing, or also information in hands. The innovation can easily also be scaled to deal with microscopes. The creators state that it can be utilized in computer game (a lot like Kinect), and even for tracking athletes’ movements thanks to its capacity to capture fast-moving pictures– something existing systems can struggle with. Jump past the break to see the tech in action.
Filed under: ScienceResearchers measure
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Just how Something You’ve Never ever Become aware of Is Changing Your World
Author: Jenny Zhao
Editor ’ s Notes: John C. Zolper, Ph.D. is the Vice President of Research and Development at Raytheon, an American company with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. So yeah, orderly stuff.
I have actually got a riddle for you. Just what do Blu-ray hard drives, military radars and LED light bulbs share? Possibilities are, if you work outside of the defense or electronic devices industries, you may not conveniently make the hookup. However the common thread is a little-known technology called Gallium Nitride (GaN for short). GaN is developing quickly behind the scenes to improve numerous areas of modern-day day life, while additionally serving extremely crucial parts within our nation’s military.
GaN is a wide band gap semiconductor product with unique properties that are optimal for applications in optoelectronics, and high-power, high-frequency amps. Aerospace and defense pioneers have actually long recognized the important competitive advantages GaN represents for high frequency electronic devices– including considerable expense, dimension, weight and power reduction abilities– and have spent years refining and consistently pushing GaN technology to brand-new restrictions. For instance, GaN is playing an integral role in establishing more trustworthy military radars that can easily be five times more effective than standard systems or only half the dimension. In current years, technologists throughout a number of commercial industries have heeded these pioneering innovations for the military, and have started placing GaN to work to power every day innovations in ways that significantly lower energy prices and ecological influence.
Take the Blu-ray disc, for instance. The next generation DVD is altering the means the world enjoys flicks. Blu-ray discs store video clip and audio information packets in “pits,” or small grooves, which are about half the size of those in conventional DVDs. The small, extremely accurate Blu-ray laser beam– powered by GaN-based violet laser diodes– can precisely review these hyperfine pits. This allows closer spacing of information packets and up to 5 times the storage space capacity of a conventional DVD (roughly 27 GB of information). GaN modern technology makes it possible for higher resolution for the crystal clear imagery modern-day flick enthusiasts have actually pertained to anticipate. With support from two of the globe’s leading COMPUTER producers, HP and Dell, Blu-ray innovation is poised as the next-generation optical disc style– with prospective to raise PC data storage space exponentially in the coming years.
You have actually likely seen the light bulb change that’s taking spot, however may not have actually understood gallium nitride is at the center of it. As standard, century-old incandescent bulbs are slowly phased out by national mandate, LED light bulbs represent the future of the illumination business. A GaN-powered LED light bulb can quickly outlast conventional bulbs by several years, while consuming a tenth of the power and minimizing CARBON DIOXIDE emissions by 90 percent. The Division of Energy just recently commended Philips Lighting for creating a LED bulb that would last more than 20 years– an impressive design with the possible to save Americans an incorporated $ 3.9 billion in annual energy prices and decrease U.S. carbon emissions by 20 million metric loads. A number of young companies, including new venture Sorra, stay concentrated on driving developments in affordable LED illumination for the masses.
And LCD televisions, backlit by GaN-powered LED lighting, are thinner, lighter and up to 40 percent more energy-efficient than those hiring CCFL backlighting. In an effort to lower the price point for customers, pioneering companies such as Sony are now introducing the next wave of LED televisions, which will utilize edge-lit LED as the TELEVISION ’ s light source, decreasing the number of LED lights needed as contrasted to very first generation LED televisions.
For mobile users, GaN can assist ensure an affirmative answer to the old question, “Can you hear me now?” The efficiency and resistance to heat and electronic disturbance of microwave amplifiers created with GaN enables broader, more reputable cellular coverage, while doing away with the requirement for power-sucking cooling fans called for by older cellular phone tower modern technologies. RFHIC Corp of Suwon, South Korea, which makes GaN-based radio frequency and microwave components for telecoms and transmitting markets, approximates U.S. service providers can conserve about $ 2 billion per year by hiring GaN technology for their wireless infrastructures. Huge service providers, consisting of Sprint, have actually already launched GaN-powered towers in several markets.
While GaN-powered modern technologies quickly progress to modify lots of facets of current life, GaN electronics are expected to play a progressively more crucial function within our country’s military systems. Raytheon has been granted an agreement by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop next-generation GaN digital devices bonded to diamond substrates, which is expected to triple present GaN circuit abilities. The application of a markedly more reliable GaN-on-diamond material is expected to substantially benefit next-generation radar, communications and digital warfare systems that utilize GaN-based radio regularity tools.
When you think of exactly how much innovation is empowered by a small microchip, it’s not difficult to picture exactly how GaN will swiftly accelerate advancement throughout numerous sectors in the years ahead. Undoubtedly, future innovators will find new ways to apply GaN innovation to our iPads and smartphones, delivering the networked globe to customers’ fingertips more rapidly and comfortably. Business from start-ups to bigger business aiming to reinvent their business would certainly flourish to consider just how GaN can drive development within their business styles. In the meantime, rest guaranteed, innovators, capitalists and military engineers are currently hard at work, organizing the next technical transformation.
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Samsung Galaxy S III Review: This Is The Phone You’ve Been Waiting For
Author: Laura Clark
Short Version
The Samsung Galaxy S III is the Android phone of the moment and in many ways it lives up to the hype. Plenty of folks are excited to see this thing hit store shelves. Our take? They won’t be disappointed.
Stellar software features paired with a beautiful display and specs that can compete with anything else on the market makes the Galaxy S III nothing short of a total delight. Physically it’s not much of a looker – the plastic case feels a bit chintzy – but generally you’re looking at the best of the best.
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
- 1.5GHz dual-core processor
- 8MP rear camera (1080p video capture)
- 1.9MP front camera
- 4G LTE at available carriers
- MSRP: 16GB is $ 199 on-contract, 32GB is $ 249 on-contract
Pros:
- Tons of cool software like S-Beam and Buddy Photo Share
- Beautiful, large display
- Solid battery life
Cons:
- The plastic feels cheap and grabs prints
- TouchWiz is heavy and ugly
Long Version
Hardware/Design:
As I briefly mentioned, the Galaxy S III is made almost entirely of plastic, save for the Gorilla glass coating its face. The design is meant to be inspired 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 a brushed look to it, but it feels slick and grabs up prints. The blue version is worse than the white, though, with the white version simply clinging to dirt, dust and other unsightly particles while the blue just loves the smudge.
The phone is incredibly thin (.34-inches), considering the size of the display, and with a weight of 4.3 ounces it feels a little too light. You know — the cheap kind of light. Again, we come back to the plastic.
Now, I understand that building this phone out of metal or some other (more premium) materials would have made ease-of-use a bit more difficult. There are multiple radios in this guy, along with an NFC chip, and almost everything runs smoothly. With a metal frame, the same smooth ease-of-use would be far more difficult to achieve.
An elongated home button sits just below the display, with a volume rocker on the left edge, lock button on the right, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top 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:
The Samsung Galaxy S III is packed with software features. To start, the phone runs Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI slapped on top. I’m not a huge fan of TouchWiz in terms of aesthetic (I much prefer pure Android ICS), but at least 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 introduced a 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, allowing users to program specific tiles to do various actions when tapped. 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 may connect me to my home WiFi network. The service works well, and the only real complaint I have about TecTiles is the fact that they cost $ 14.99 per a pack of five.
Another NFC-friendly feature is Samsung’s S Beam. It works similarly to Android Beam but functions over a greater distance, letting users share content in seconds without a WiFi or cell signal. This includes the sharing of photos, videos, music, web pages, etc.
In my experience S Beam worked well and transferred content rather quickly between devices. The main concern is just how much use S Beam will get. Sure, the Galaxy S III will be a popular phone, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in a given group of friends is going to go buy one.
The GSIII also comes loaded with Samsung’s new GroupCast feature, which syncs Galaxy S III devices so you can share a PDF, PowerPoint, or photo gallery presentation. The feature seems like it would be helpful for workers in the field or out of the office, especially considering that Samsung is offering an enterprise-friendly version of the device. It even lets users make marks on the presentation, though I wouldn’t consider this a collaboration tool since the marks disappear relatively quickly and can’t be saved.
The phone features Samsung’s cloud-syncing/sharing service AllShare Play, letting users share content on any AllShare-connected devices like Galaxy tablets, DLNA-capable TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-Ray players, as well as Samsung’s Smart TVs and Windows PCs running the AllShare Play app. This lets users pull files that are stored on home devices and throw a movie from their Galaxy S III to the TV.
Along with these major features, the Galaxy S III also has some small touches that make it a much easier device to use. Things like motion controls (tilting the phone to zoom in on images, or panning the phone to move icons from one home screen to the next) seem a bit arbitrary, as it’s just as fast and seamless to tap to zoom or slide my finger across the screen to rearrange icons. However, features like the ability to lift the phone to your face while in a text message conversation to initiate a call makes sense. The phone also dims brightness when it’s set down, saving you battery, and gives a little extra alert when you’ve been away from your phone if you’ve missed a call or message.
The biggest disappointment in software (and let it be known, I’m seriously impressed with the feature set offered here) is S Voice. It’s essentially a Siri competitor, allowing you to make commands with your voice. To start, it’s not as smart as Siri when it comes to hearing natural language (“show me the nearest burger joint” confused the heck out of it). Second, it has less functionality than Siri. It’s a fine feature yet it just seems like a copy that isn’t done quite as well. (And trust me, that’s not to say that Siri works well by any means).
Pop Up Player, which lets you continue playing a video in a smaller window above some other task, is also a smart feature as multi-tasking becomes ever-important to us. Flipboard is pre-loaded on the device, as are plenty of carrier apps.
Camera:
The camera on the Galaxy S III is lightning fast, though I can’t say I’m totally blown away by picture quality. Compared to photos taken with my iPhone 4S, everything shot with the Galaxy S III seems washed out and drab. Luckily, there are plenty of different scene modes, focus settings, exposure, ISO, white balance, and various effects that should help you find your way to the image you want.
But perhaps to make up for the less-than-impressive picture quality, the Samsung Galaxy S III camera has a few software surprises that are sure to delight. There is burst shot, which takes up to 20 photos at a rate of 3 pics per second and best shot, which snaps eight images and automatically offers you the best one based on criteria like blinking, smiling, lighting, etc. The Galaxy S III will also let you take still images as you record 1080p video, and has an HDR mode.
More importantly, the GSIII camera has a shooting mode called Buddy Photo Share. It recognizes faces in images and lets you tag them with the contact’s name. From there, the phone will always recognize the difference between John Biggs and Matt Burns and let me share photos with them straight from their name-tag.
Share Shot is another important camera feature, as it allows you to share photos as you take them with up to five GSIII devices through WiFi Direct. So let’s say you’re at a birthday party with your friends and want to make sure everyone can enjoy the pictures later. Simply open up Share Shot and connect with the devices you want to share with. From there, every photo you take will appear in their galleries too until you choose a different shooting mode.
All in all the GSIII camera has quite a few tricks up its sleeve, but if it’s simply a beautiful image you’re looking for, you may need to keep looking.
Comparison shot between the Samsung Galaxy S III (left) and the iPhone 4S (right):
Display:
You really can’t go wrong with this display. Samsung’s HD Super AMOLED screens are the best out there, and at 4.8 inches there’s plenty of super crisp content to enjoy. 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 size of the display to consider. Nudging up against the 5-inch mark, the Galaxy S III display is much bigger than I’m comfortable with. But the key to slapping giant screen on a phone and keeping it comfortable is device and bezel thickness. The phone is already super thin, allowing even smaller hands to grip the device solidly.
But the bezels of the Galaxy S III is what really saves the day. They take 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 help with grip and performing one-handed actions.
Performance:
HTC has been kicking ass lately when it comes to benchmark testing, but there’s a new sheriff in town. The Samsung Galaxy S III beats out every Android phone I’ve ever tested in all three tests we run. In Quadrant, which tests everything from CPU to memory to graphics, the Galaxy S III scored an impressive 4911. The HTC One S comes in second with 4371, while most other phones (including the Galaxy Note) stay well below the 3000 mark.
Where browsing is concerned, the Galaxy S III pulled in a score of 103,780 compared to the One S’s 100,662. Compared to most phones, however, the GSIII wins by a long shot as we usually see scores around the 60,000 mark.
And as a testament to both the phone and the power of AT&T’s 4G LTE network, I can safely say that this phone is fast. We saw an average of 9.6Mbps down and 8.39Mbps up, which is excellent. I have yet to see the Galaxy S III have any issues in terms of performance, which says a lot considering that this phone is going above and beyond in terms of both hardware and software. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that second GB of RAM.
Battery:
Here’s the deal with battery life. The Samsung Galaxy S III has a 2100mAh battery, which is fairly large compared to other phones on the market. Be that as it may, all the extra features that make the Galaxy S III amazing (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 full five hours and fifteen minutes in our battery test. That’s pretty damn good, considering that the screen is never off during a constant Google Image search. In real-world scenarios, it should at least make it through dinner time, and depending on your usage, it might even hang with you through those late night parties.
To give you a little context, the Droid 4 only hung in there for three hours and forty-five minutes while the Droid RAZR Maxx (Motorola’s battery beast) stayed with me for a staggering eight hours and fifteen minutes. The HTC One S lasted just under five hours.
Another plus is that the battery is removable, so if you’re a serious power-user you can always purchase another battery and swap 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 generally well-built, it has an incredible display, solid battery life, plenty of interesting features and it just works well. That’s not something I find myself saying very often of Android phones.
When people ask me what phone they should buy, or if they should wait for this or that (and trust me, I get asked this a lot), I always say, “No, never wait. Just buy the best phone available today, and don’t worry about spending a little more than you’d want to because you’ll use it every day for about two years.”
But over the past few months, when phandroids come at me asking for phone recommendations, I’ve been telling them to wait. And you know what, I’m glad I did. Just like the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy S that came before it, this is the Android phone to beat.
It’s the phone you’ve been waiting for.
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Samsung Galaxy S III Review: This Is The Phone You’ve Been Waiting For
Author: Heather Brown
Short Version
The Samsung Galaxy S III is the Android phone of the moment and in many ways it lives up to the hype. Plenty of folks are excited to see this thing hit store shelves. Our take? They won’t be disappointed.
Stellar software features paired with a beautiful display and specs that can compete with anything else on the market makes the Galaxy S III nothing short of a total delight. Physically it’s not much of a looker – the plastic case feels a bit chintzy – but generally you’re looking at the best of the best.
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
- 1.5GHz dual-core processor
- 8MP rear camera (1080p video capture)
- 1.9MP front camera
- 4G LTE at available carriers
- MSRP: 16GB is $ 199 on-contract, 32GB is $ 249 on-contract
Pros:
- Tons of cool software like S-Beam and Buddy Photo Share
- Beautiful, large display
- Solid battery life
Cons:
- The plastic feels cheap and grabs prints
- TouchWiz is heavy and ugly
Long Version
Hardware/Design:
As I briefly mentioned, the Galaxy S III is made almost entirely of plastic, save for the Gorilla glass coating its face. The design is meant to be inspired 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 a brushed look to it, but it feels slick and grabs up prints. The blue version is worse than the white, though, with the white version simply clinging to dirt, dust and other unsightly particles while the blue just loves the smudge.
The phone is incredibly thin (.34-inches), considering the size of the display, and with a weight of 4.3 ounces it feels a little too light. You know — the cheap kind of light. Again, we come back to the plastic.
Now, I understand that building this phone out of metal or some other (more premium) materials would have made ease-of-use a bit more difficult. There are multiple radios in this guy, along with an NFC chip, and almost everything runs smoothly. With a metal frame, the same smooth ease-of-use would be far more difficult to achieve.
An elongated home button sits just below the display, with a volume rocker on the left edge, lock button on the right, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top 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:
The Samsung Galaxy S III is packed with software features. To start, the phone runs Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI slapped on top. I’m not a huge fan of TouchWiz in terms of aesthetic (I much prefer pure Android ICS), but at least 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 introduced a 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, allowing users to program specific tiles to do various actions when tapped. 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 may connect me to my home WiFi network. The service works well, and the only real complaint I have about TecTiles is the fact that they cost $ 14.99 per a pack of five.
Another NFC-friendly feature is Samsung’s S Beam. It works similarly to Android Beam but functions over a greater distance, letting users share content in seconds without a WiFi or cell signal. This includes the sharing of photos, videos, music, web pages, etc.
In my experience S Beam worked well and transferred content rather quickly between devices. The main concern is just how much use S Beam will get. Sure, the Galaxy S III will be a popular phone, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in a given group of friends is going to go buy one.
The GSIII also comes loaded with Samsung’s new GroupCast feature, which syncs Galaxy S III devices so you can share a PDF, PowerPoint, or photo gallery presentation. The feature seems like it would be helpful for workers in the field or out of the office, especially considering that Samsung is offering an enterprise-friendly version of the device. It even lets users make marks on the presentation, though I wouldn’t consider this a collaboration tool since the marks disappear relatively quickly and can’t be saved.
The phone features Samsung’s cloud-syncing/sharing service AllShare Play, letting users share content on any AllShare-connected devices like Galaxy tablets, DLNA-capable TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-Ray players, as well as Samsung’s Smart TVs and Windows PCs running the AllShare Play app. This lets users pull files that are stored on home devices and throw a movie from their Galaxy S III to the TV.
Along with these major features, the Galaxy S III also has some small touches that make it a much easier device to use. Things like motion controls (tilting the phone to zoom in on images, or panning the phone to move icons from one home screen to the next) seem a bit arbitrary, as it’s just as fast and seamless to tap to zoom or slide my finger across the screen to rearrange icons. However, features like the ability to lift the phone to your face while in a text message conversation to initiate a call makes sense. The phone also dims brightness when it’s set down, saving you battery, and gives a little extra alert when you’ve been away from your phone if you’ve missed a call or message.
The biggest disappointment in software (and let it be known, I’m seriously impressed with the feature set offered here) is S Voice. It’s essentially a Siri competitor, allowing you to make commands with your voice. To start, it’s not as smart as Siri when it comes to hearing natural language (“show me the nearest burger joint” confused the heck out of it). Second, it has less functionality than Siri. It’s a fine feature yet it just seems like a copy that isn’t done quite as well. (And trust me, that’s not to say that Siri works well by any means).
Pop Up Player, which lets you continue playing a video in a smaller window above some other task, is also a smart feature as multi-tasking becomes ever-important to us. Flipboard is pre-loaded on the device, as are plenty of carrier apps.
Camera:
The camera on the Galaxy S III is lightning fast, though I can’t say I’m totally blown away by picture quality. Compared to photos taken with my iPhone 4S, everything shot with the Galaxy S III seems washed out and drab. Luckily, there are plenty of different scene modes, focus settings, exposure, ISO, white balance, and various effects that should help you find your way to the image you want.
But perhaps to make up for the less-than-impressive picture quality, the Samsung Galaxy S III camera has a few software surprises that are sure to delight. There is burst shot, which takes up to 20 photos at a rate of 3 pics per second and best shot, which snaps eight images and automatically offers you the best one based on criteria like blinking, smiling, lighting, etc. The Galaxy S III will also let you take still images as you record 1080p video, and has an HDR mode.
More importantly, the GSIII camera has a shooting mode called Buddy Photo Share. It recognizes faces in images and lets you tag them with the contact’s name. From there, the phone will always recognize the difference between John Biggs and Matt Burns and let me share photos with them straight from their name-tag.
Share Shot is another important camera feature, as it allows you to share photos as you take them with up to five GSIII devices through WiFi Direct. So let’s say you’re at a birthday party with your friends and want to make sure everyone can enjoy the pictures later. Simply open up Share Shot and connect with the devices you want to share with. From there, every photo you take will appear in their galleries too until you choose a different shooting mode.
All in all the GSIII camera has quite a few tricks up its sleeve, but if it’s simply a beautiful image you’re looking for, you may need to keep looking.
Comparison shot between the Samsung Galaxy S III (left) and the iPhone 4S (right):
Display:
You really can’t go wrong with this display. Samsung’s HD Super AMOLED screens are the best out there, and at 4.8 inches there’s plenty of super crisp content to enjoy. 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 size of the display to consider. Nudging up against the 5-inch mark, the Galaxy S III display is much bigger than I’m comfortable with. But the key to slapping giant screen on a phone and keeping it comfortable is device and bezel thickness. The phone is already super thin, allowing even smaller hands to grip the device solidly.
But the bezels of the Galaxy S III is what really saves the day. They take 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 help with grip and performing one-handed actions.
Performance:
HTC has been kicking ass lately when it comes to benchmark testing, but there’s a new sheriff in town. The Samsung Galaxy S III beats out every Android phone I’ve ever tested in all three tests we run. In Quadrant, which tests everything from CPU to memory to graphics, the Galaxy S III scored an impressive 4911. The HTC One S comes in second with 4371, while most other phones (including the Galaxy Note) stay well below the 3000 mark.
Where browsing is concerned, the Galaxy S III pulled in a score of 103,780 compared to the One S’s 100,662. Compared to most phones, however, the GSIII wins by a long shot as we usually see scores around the 60,000 mark.
And as a testament to both the phone and the power of AT&T’s 4G LTE network, I can safely say that this phone is fast. We saw an average of 9.6Mbps down and 8.39Mbps up, which is excellent. I have yet to see the Galaxy S III have any issues in terms of performance, which says a lot considering that this phone is going above and beyond in terms of both hardware and software. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that second GB of RAM.
Battery:
Here’s the deal with battery life. The Samsung Galaxy S III has a 2100mAh battery, which is fairly large compared to other phones on the market. Be that as it may, all the extra features that make the Galaxy S III amazing (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 full five hours and fifteen minutes in our battery test. That’s pretty damn good, considering that the screen is never off during a constant Google Image search. In real-world scenarios, it should at least make it through dinner time, and depending on your usage, it might even hang with you through those late night parties.
To give you a little context, the Droid 4 only hung in there for three hours and forty-five minutes while the Droid RAZR Maxx (Motorola’s battery beast) stayed with me for a staggering eight hours and fifteen minutes. The HTC One S lasted just under five hours.
Another plus is that the battery is removable, so if you’re a serious power-user you can always purchase another battery and swap 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 generally well-built, it has an incredible display, solid battery life, plenty of interesting features and it just works well. That’s not something I find myself saying very often of Android phones.
When people ask me what phone they should buy, or if they should wait for this or that (and trust me, I get asked this a lot), I always say, “No, never wait. Just buy the best phone available today, and don’t worry about spending a little more than you’d want to because you’ll use it every day for about two years.”
But over the past few months, when phandroids come at me asking for phone recommendations, I’ve been telling them to wait. And you know what, I’m glad I did. Just like the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy S that came before it, this is the Android phone to beat.
It’s the phone you’ve been waiting for.
