THE GOOD:-
- Stunning HD look
- Fastest phone ever in the planet history
- Excellent quality 8 MP Camera
- MicroSD slot for expanding the memory
THE BAD :-
DESIGN AND BUILD:-
You may say the Samsung Galaxy S3 has been highly anticipated. After a huge success of Galaxy S2 last year it is this follow up that many people have expected to again be the flagpole of this Android Smartphone.
Anyone that's already been familiar with Galaxy S3 will know that it's design and build has courted controversy. It's glossy plastic back which, although by no means inherently budget, is a finish more associate with it.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is, according to the Samsung , inspired by nature- it seems , listen, respond and allow people to do whatever they want.to share.
Brush Polycarbonate- You've got a choice of "Marble White" and "Pebble Blue" - Adorns this large device, which runs in with dimensions of 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm, despite still having a pack in 4.8 Super-Amoled HD screen.
The plastic feeling of Galaxy S3 would not actually appeal to all. It makes the device very light weighted in the hand, and some people might feel little cheap in their hands. However the same sensation I've got found in Galaxy S2. I think there's more than a market for a phone that you will barely notice in your pocket more of the time.
In practical perspective there are few genuine issues with Galaxy S3 though. While the polycarbonate that the backplate is made from is very tough due to its pliability. even with an extra scratch resistant coating.
Speaking of the new black Samsung Galaxy S3, I am glad for its arrival because while both the blue and white are awful when I compare it with old traditional black color.
The other potential issue is that, particularly given the Galaxy S3 is such a large and thin phone, it could succumb to being crushed. Particularly I'm thinking in comparison to the iPhone 4S and its tough steel sides here. That phone can take a right squishing and squashing when in a pocket whereas I'd be a little more wary of cracking this phone's screen if crouching down or some such. Then again, this could equally apply to many other large, thin phones and I pretty sure you'd have to be rather unlucky for it to actually happen. In our few months of use I've not have any issues yet.
But I'll be very clear on this - the Galaxy S3 is not a cheap-feeling phone. It's got a really solid Gorilla Glass 2 front, a well-packaged interior and a more robust battery cover. It's polycarbonate rather than bog-standard plastic, although I'am not sure some people will like the more rounded nature of the design.
The button design around the phone has been well thought out in our opinion - for a phone this big it's very difficult to make all the keys accessible, so putting the lock button on the right-hand side rather than the top makes a large degree of sense.
The addition of the lozenge-shaped home button, and its softkey 'Back' and 'Menu' buttons are great additions in our eyes, as it means contextual menus can be found easily without needing to mess around looking for the on-screen icon.
The volume up and down button is parallel to the lock key on the left-hand side of the phone, and also within easy reach when holding the Galaxy S3 in the hand. The microUSB slot is placed at the bottom of the phone - easy to find with a charger but it will be interesting to see how it's used when placed in docks and car cradles.
You also get a large 2100mAh battery that not only can you swap out for a spare when needed but also in the future you may be able to get extended batteries that last longer on a single charge. While the SIM slot on the Galaxy may look large it actually houses a microSIM, like the iPhone 4S and HTC One X. One counterpoint to the removable battery is that you can't hot-swap SIM cards like on the One X.
Also under here, to the left of the battery, are two gold contacts. These are for a future wireless charging backplate and dock that will allow you to simply place your Galaxy S3 on its dock to charge it, without the need to plug in. Its technology I first saw built into a phone on the Palm Pre, and I think it's downright brilliant. Sadly the required accessories are still not available.
But overall, in the hand, the Samsung Galaxy S3 feels superb. The design contours well against the palm, and while the screen size may be a little big for some (you'll need a bit of shuffling to reach the upper section of the screen) it's definitely useable in the hand.
So in short: if you don't mind a slightly lighter-feeling polycarbonate shell and you like big HD screens in your pocket, this is a phone definitely worth checking out.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION:-
- Style:- Full touchscreen
- Screen size:- 4.7
- Operating system:- Android OS
- Physical keyboard:- No
- Touchscreen:- Yes
- CPU:- 1.5 GHz Quad-Core, Samsung Exynos 4412
- Screen resolution:- 720 x 1280
- Height:- 136.6
- Depth:- 8.6
- Weight:- 133
- Width:- 70.6
- Talk time:- 700
- Standby Time:- 790
- Internal storage:- 16, 32, 64 GB
- Memory slot:- Micro SD up to 32 GB
- Camera:- 8 MP
- Front facing camera:- 1.9 MP, 720p@30fps
- Video camera:- 1080p@30fps
- Camera flash:- 1 x LED
- Bluetooth:- v4.0 with A2DP, EDR
- Radio:- Stereo fm radio with RDS
- Wifi:- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot
- 3G:- HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100
- Email:- Yes
- 3.5mm Headphone Jack:- Yes
- App Store:- Yes, Google Play
- USB:- microUSB
- GPS:- Yes
- Available color:- Pebble Blue, MarbleWhite
SCREEN:-
It seems Samsung has tweaked the colour balance on the Galaxy S3 as well – things don't look as saturated as before, which will certainly help entice those that previously were against Super AMOLED before due to the harshness of colours.
This has been overhauled with the new update, giving you a notifications bar option to change the brightness or select auto mode. It's not perfect by a long way - I can't count the amount of times each day I get frustrated with the automatic mode not catching up to the conditions.
When it does work, the brightness is great... but when the brightness drops mid-Temple Run I get hugely frustrated. It's not too bad in direct sunlight though - the contrast ratio of 3.5:1 Samsung is touting in direct sunlight is just about enough to see what you're doing, and if you're using the camera you can fire the brightness even higher to see what you're snapping
The Galaxy S3 does have more visible colour sections within each pixel, but only when viewed at very close range. As you can see, the sharpness is much higher.
CONTACTS AND CALLING:-
You may have noticed that Twitter is missing from that list - and that's because the social networking service has been removed from the contact integration. I first noticed this on the S2 ICS update but I'm dismayed to see the same thing from the Galaxy S3.
Given it's been a stalwart for so many years on Android phones, I'm not sure why it's been omitted from the S3 - the One X is all over it like a beaver at a wood-carving convention.
One of the big plus points of Ice Cream Sandwich on the Galaxy Nexus is the ability to see large, high-res pictures of your friends rather than teeny stamp sized pixellated messes - so I'm really confused as to why the S3 has chosen to go down the latter route. Despite there clearly being a large enough space next to the square pic to have a much longer icon, the S3 won't let you choose such a thing.
Calling on the Samsung Galaxy S3, to put it bluntly, couldn't be better in our eyes. Sure, it's a relatively simple function in today's smartphones, but it's still often ruined by brands not giving it enough attention
Signal quality seemed to be average - I didn't notice any significant drops, but in the areas where I've had notoriously poor signal before (on the 3 network) there weren't any more bars of signal available to me.
But given dropped calls were very rare, I can't label this as a negative.
Then there's smart dialling - again, nothing special but I really miss it when competing phones like the iPhone or those in the Windows stable don't allow it. Simply pressing the numbers will call up the corresponding letters, making tapping 323 the easiest way to get to 'Dad'.
MESSAGING:-
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is one of the best messaging devices around – although I'm saying that about a lot of smartphones at the moment such is their prowess at talking to another person.The Galaxy S3 comes complete with a large number of ways to talk to your buddies in much the same way Android phones have been doing for years. This means that you can email, SMS, message and IM all from within the phone.
The messaging system looks much the same as before, with yellow and blue conversation bubbles the order of the day. You can also check to see if your Android-powered buddies are online through a little green dot next to their name in the contact list – this signifies if they're available through GTalk.
You've also got ChatON as standard with the Galaxy S3 - this is Samsung's version of BBM and is designed to allow you to talk to others on Samsung devices with the app installed. I struggled to find many friends running the service though - even those with Samsung phones didn't have the app enabled or downloaded.
INTERNET:-
When it comes to the internet, there's not reason to think that a phone with a quad core chip, HD screen and powerful GPU shouldn't be able to present a stellar internet experience, and the Samsung Galaxy S3 doesn't disappoint from the zoomed out web pages that offer still-legible text to the speed with which web pages render even over 3G, I'm massive fans of this phone as an internet tablet.
The UI has been overhauled to present a smaller URL bar, a Forward button for easier navigation and an overall more fluid feeling to the handset.
There's only one flaw, and I'll get it out of the way first: when zooming into text you can't make it all reformat to fit the page the closer you zoom in. There's a decent level of auto-fit to be had when double tapping the words, but you can't select your own level sadly. However, the rest of the sensation is excellent - and it's only going to get better for some regions. The UK is on the cusp of getting DC HSPA (which is capable of delivering 42Mbps connectivity), but sadly it appears the Galaxy S3 is not able to access this signal speed.
CAMERA:-
The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S3 is one of the biggest surprises from the Korean firm, and shows quite a step-change in the way it approaches mobile design: it's stuck at 8MP. I don't think this is much of a problem - the humble mobile phone doesn't need any more than 8MP to take good quality snaps but Samsung has always chased specs in the past, so this is an interesting move.
Making sure one of the icons on the lock screen is definitely going to help, but there's also a little trick I uncovered that allows you to boot the camera even more quickly: hold the screen and turn the S3 into landscape mode (when on the lock screen) and the camera opens up instantly - and it's even faster with the new update.
One of the most novel features on the Galaxy S3 is the ability to recognise faces from within photographs - this is meant to make it simpler to find the people you care about. I'm sad the results don't go into the contact's profile within your phone (which would make sense given you have to assign a contact to the tag to make it work) but if you've got them in a group you can see that simply from within the Gallery app.
There are a number of other features we like too: Burst mode works well, taking 20 photos in a row at around 10 per second, which is great if you trying to take a picture of your cat doing a back flip and want all of the sections. Best Shot can also be used with Burst mode (where the S3 works out the best pic for you from the selection) but you're limited to eight shots in this scenario.The front facing camera is closing in on being a decent sensor in its own right – at 1.9MP it's capable of taking non-grainy self portraits and can even record in 720p video as well – we're fans.
GAMING:-
The gaming experience on the Samsung Galaxy S3 is meant to be one of the best thanks to that Mali-400MP GPU running at the heart - Samsung is promising big things from the gaming side of things as a result.
It's still something of a tradeoff though - in my opinion, the ability of the Nvidia Tegra 3 chip at harnessing all those polygons at pixels is still the most impressive on a smartphone or tablet.
You get two zones: one for premium games, and one for the more casual player (noted as 'Social Games). However, the premium offerings are far away from a. taxing the phone in any way and b. worth paying for in reality. Sure, there are some half decent ones in there, but nothing that compares to the likes of Riptide GP on the HTC One X.
However, Google's Play Store needs to up its game (so to speak) as there's really very little to help out the more interested gamer. You can find casual gaming as its own section, but the more resource intensive titles are hidden among the cutesie tower defence and stick man games. But try the likes of Grand Theft Auto 3 or Dead Space and you CERTAINLY won't be unimpressed by the polygon management or general responsiveness of this, Samsung's greatest gaming device yet.
BATTERY LIFE:-
The 2100mAh battery is designed to make sure that the large screen, with millions of pixels, isn't going to suck down the power as fast as it might do.That's not to say the screen isn't thirsty – it takes up a good portion of the battery meter each time you check in – but overall, battery life was not an issue .
Let's put it into some context: subjecting the Galaxy S3 to the same test I do all smartphones, it's come out as the second longest-lasting device of all I've checked out.
I ran a 90 minute video at full brightness and applied all accounts (Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, Exchange etc) and set them all to the most regular updates over Wi-Fi.The Samsung Galaxy S3 managed to get to only 82% battery power by the end of the test – compare that to the 60% of the HTC One X and 74% of the iPhone 4Sand you can see why I was impressed.
Under heavy load, the phone will last about 8 hours. And I mean heavy: the battery test I mentioned plus an hour of photography and video. After than half an hour of playing Riptide GP and then some web browsing for a further hour. Then around twenty minutes of music listening before an hour's session on video.
I also had the voice-control activated from the lock screen the whole time, which Samsung tells you is a real battery killer as it listens to what you say. This pushed the battery to about 20%, after which I killed it trying to synchronize over Wi-Fi direct in about 45 minutes (although this can be a real battery drainer).
In real use, as in not checking it every seven seconds to play with it (the curse of the new phone) you'll get a much more reasonable battery life. I regularly saw power drops of only 30% by 2PM, and a healthy 25% by bedtime.This will change during use, obviously, but it's much harder to hammer the battery through actually doing things the phone is supposed to compared to the HTC One X.
This has also been improved by the software update AGAIN. While some days saw the battery meter swing a little bit lower than usual on the odd day of hardcore usage - this was improved and since updating I haven't gone lower than 25% at bedtime. Excellent work, Samsung.
Courtesy: AARUSH
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