Samsung Galaxy S3 review
Samsung has made a big deal about this new phone, not only choosing
to launch it at a big and glitzy standalone event in London but also
claiming nearly 10 million pre-orders before it's even launched.
The
price is pretty palatable for a top-end phone – the likes of Three are
already offering it for just £34 a month with oodles of minutes and
data, which is already much, much cheaper than any iPhone would ever
launch for
But let's get down to the main question – is this the phone you should be spending your hard-earned cash on?
Design
While this is all a little hyperbolic, the nature theme is certainly present when you handle the phone for the first time. 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 we're 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
Screen
Let's take a minute and talk about the screen: it's beautiful. We
almost feel sad that this isn't the first HD screen we've seen on a
mobile phone, as it's kind of lost its lustre since the likes of the Nexus, Note and One X have all managed the same trick – but if you've not seen one before and you compare it to a Galaxy S2, it's worlds apart.
If
we think back to just four years ago, when HVGA (320 x 480) resolution
screens were the norm on phones and 720p TVs were still the plaything of
the bigger spenders, it's incredible to think that pixel count has been
shrunk
down to fit into your palm.
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.
Interface
Samsung has unsurprisingly re-tooled the Touchwiz overlay for the Galaxy
S3, and has really gone to town with the whole 'inspired by nature'
business.
It's clear with the S3 that Samsung has worked out there's only so
much it can do on the hardware side these days – not to say that we're
unimpressed with the spec list - and as such has tried to bring the
unique flavour through the interface instead.
The 1.4GHz quad core
Exynos processor is among the fastest Samsung has launched - it's not
got the 40% speedier A15 core from ARM involved, but that's not
available in quad-core format yet, so we'll make do with the popular
Cortex A9 design.
The widgets selection has also been given an overhaul with the new
software update - meaning you've got the ability to choose from largr
calendar widgets, All Share Cast and more - have a play around as the
new options will vary, but do check it out. owever, there is always worry that the quad core 1.4 GHz Exynos CPU
could suck power a little too dramatically – and to that end Samsung has
come out with an innovative eye-tracking method called Smart Stay.
This
idea will track your eyes when looking at the display, and dim it when
you're not checking out your phone. We're giving it a proper test in a
later section of the review, so keep an eye out for that later on.
The trick is reproduced in the application management pane: when holding
down the Home button at the bottom of the phone you're presented with a
long list of all the applications you've recently opened – another
flick of the finger and they're shut down.he menu system is very easy to use as before – sort your apps
chronologically or alphabetically – and if you're not a fan of the
standard grid system you can chuck them all into one long list
Messaging
There are some that say that messaging isn't important on today's
smartphones – but then again, there are some that say the moon is made
of cheese and dinosaurs didn't exist.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is one
of the best messaging devices around – although we're saying that about
a lot of smartphones at the moment such is their prowess at talking to
another person.he 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.
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.
Web pages are rendered in clear and crisp formations that lacks for
nothing compared to a larger PC screen - Flash video plays right out of
the gate, although we recommend you look to pick up the Flash Player 11
app before trying out all the sites (and make sure you have Flash player
enabled in the settings as well).
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 with the sequel to the S2.It's not a next-generation sensor though - we're seeing very similar
hardware as that used in the Galaxy S2 with improved (and much improved,
at that) software optimisation on the phone rather than bringing
stonking picture performance.One of the big claims for Android 4.0
is the speed with which snaps can be shot when out and about, and that
zero shutter lag is very much in effect here with the Galaxy S3. While
there's no dedicated shutter button, getting into the camera is a piece
of cake thanks to the number of options you've got.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. We're 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.
Video
Video recording follows the power of the camera on the Samsung Galaxy
S3, meaning you've got a strong tool for movie making that doesn't come
over-stuffed with modes to play with.
In truth, the options are
pretty streamlined – and it's good that it defaults to 1920 x 1080 video
recording from the off, as other phones don't manage the same trick and
will have people recording in lower resolutions for ages before they
notice.
he Galaxy S3 will record at 30fps as well, but apart from that the
settings are pretty limited – no slow motion video here. You can tweak
the important things though, such as white balance and anti-shake (which
actually does a relatively good job and keeps your footage looking all
slick when you're jiggling around like a bowlful of jelly).
During the filming there are some decent options though, such as
being able to turn the auto-focus on and off. One of the worst parts of
any self-made movie is when the camera inexplicably will start blurring
up your beautifully balanced scene, so you can tap to make it focus on
the area you want and then simply turn off the AF so it doesn't happen
again.
Zooming in and out is also well catered for, as you can
just pinch to zoom to get a larger or smaller image. The quality doesn't
degrade too much either, which we were pretty impressed with, and
overall, there was very little we wanted for on the video recording side
of things from the Samsung Galaxy S3.
Music
The Music player on the Samsung Galaxy
S3 is certainly a decent enough effort and offers all the functionality
we'd be looking from in a mobile phone - from smart playlists to
wireless streaming, it's all there.
For instance, the second you
connect headphones to your Samsung Galaxy S3 you get not only the chance
to fire up the music player, but look in the notifications pane and
you'll see all the apps that are optimised for headphones, be it the
music player, FM radio or YouTube.
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 our 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.
Battery life
Battery life. One of the most contentious element still on smartphones
and one we're keen to see stop being an issue – and it's thankfully
nothing to worry about on the Samsung Galaxy S3. 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 we butted up against regularly.
Let's
put it into some context: subjecting the Galaxy S3 to the same test we
do all smartphones, it's come out as the second longest-lasting device
of all we've checked out.
We 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 4S and you can see why we're impressed.
Under
heavy load, the phone will last about 8 hours. And we mean heavy: the
battery test we 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.
