What I want to present to you today, is my experience with the brand new Samsung Galaxy S3! Thanks to Nuffnang Malaysia, I had the opportunity to review the phone over a period of 2 weeks. Well the 2 weeks have ended *big sigh*, and let's just say if there is ever an Android device that could convert an Apple fanboy, the Galaxy S3 would do the trick! I wouldn't wanna bore you down with a long piece of essay, so I'm gonna split this review up into 3 main parts: Design, Features and Performance. I'll be posting some self-taken pictures soon, but for now Internet-stolen images will have to do.
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| The brand new Samsung Galaxy S3 (image: www.designsoak.com) |
Design
When the HTC One X was launched, I remember saying to myself "Damn, this is one good-looking phone". As I held it in my hands during its launch at Pavilion, KL, it's matte polycarbonate finish felt solidly built and one would have no doubt about its durability. So before Samsung announced their successor to the highly popular Galaxy S II (which I knew would be the One X's main competitor), my expectations were over the clouds. However, I got a blow to the face when Samsung released the official pictures of the Galaxy S3, because to be honest, its plastic built looked cheap on paper. And it's round pebble inspired curves did not help either (I'm more of a clean-cut design kinda guy). Nevertheless, as the saying goes, the best way to know a product, is to experience it first-hand (or something like that).
And that was exactly what I did at the media launch of the Samsung Galaxy S3 held at One World Hotel a couple of weeks back. Although it sports a full-plastic chassis, the phone did not feel cheap at all. Of course its build quality is nowhere near the HTC One X or the iPhone 4/4S, but it actually felt surprisingly comfortable to hold (in my hands at least). The handset comes in White and Pebble Blue, but I've heard from a little blue bird that Samsung might be ditching the Pebble Blue version for a Metallic Blue one so give it a look out.
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| The S3 comes in White and Pebble Blue (image: www.ubergizmo.com) |
With a depth of 8.6mm, weighing 133g, the Samsung Galaxy S3 sports a large 4.8-inch (1,280 x 720 pixel) HD Super AMOLED display churning out a pixel density of 306 ppi. I can hear some of thinking "only Super AMOLED? Where is the Plus that gave the S II its vivid, bright and sharp display? Has Samsung downgraded the display?" Well, I've only toyed around with the Galaxy S II in display booths, so I can't make a direct comparison. But after 2 weeks with the Galaxy S3, I promise you that its display will have you glued to the screen for hours at a time! The contrast, brightness and color depth are remarkable on this phone, it could be deemed the best in the market right now. If you put it side by side with the HTC One X, you would notice that the S3 manages to reproduce blacker blacks, giving its display a sharper, more vivid outcome. If you were to argue that Apple's Retina Display still churns out a higher pixel density, my friend you clearly have not seen the size of this beauty! A 306 ppi HD display at 4.8-inches? You don't even have a threshold to begin with, seriously none.
Besides the gorgeous display, Samsung has also chose to use a traditional physical home button and touch-sensitive keys for the S3, similar to its predecessor. However, due to its larger screen, some might feel that the home button might be placed just too low for finger-stretching comfort. I personally did not have a problem with this though, but those with smaller hands may beg to differ. Also, I would have the occasional accidents with the touch-sensitive menu and back buttons, but I'm sure it's something we all can get used to.
Samsung has also made its 2,100mAh battery removable, which is, in my opinion, one of its best selling points since so many of us complain about lousy battery life in high-performance smart phones. In addition, it has a microSD card slot that allows users to top up another 64GB of storage over its built-in 16GB/32GB capacities, which is also another selling point compared to the One X or the iPhone.
Located on the bottom is the microUSB port used for charging and transferring files. And lastly, the S3 sports an 8-megapixel rear camera and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera.
Features
Coming to this day and age, we can't really compare smart phones based on their hardware anymore because the similarities are so obvious it's easily predictable. For the Samsung Galaxy S3, it is the software tweaks to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the form of the TouchWiz UI that makes it stand out. Now, I do not have any prior experience with earlier versions of Android, so I can't really comment on the difference Samsung's TouchWiz UI has compared to the stock ICS. However, I did spend some quality time with the HTC One X and its Sense UI ('cuz my Dad owns one), and I would say that Samsung's UI adds more smoothness to its operation, as each page fades in and fades out in a very natural way. One things that I especially like is the ability to scroll through pages infinitely, meaning that if you continue scrolling pass the last page, you'll end up in the first page again. This differs on the HTC One X. Say you have 5 pages of apps and you're on page 5, you'll have to scroll back the other way to get to page 1 instead of going forward.
Besides to custom UI, Samsung has packed some interesting bells and whistles into the Galaxy S3 as well. Among those that I've discovered is the S Beam (an NFC-based feature) which lets you transfer large files using Wi-Fi Direct in surprisingly fast speeds.
I've also played around with Samsung's Motion feature which includes some very convenient, although unnecessary add-ons which include:
Direct Call
Allows you to call contact whose log details, contact details, or message details are currently on screen when the device is brought near the face.
Pan to move icon
Move device left or right while holding selected icon to reposition it to another page.
Palm swipe to capture
This is by far the most interesting way to take a screenshot. All you have to do is just swipe the screen from one side to the other with the side of your hand, the effect is pretty cool!
There is also an interesting feature called Smart Stay, which utilizes the front-camera to detect if you are looking at the screen or not. When this feature is switched on, the front-camera would switch on when the display is about to go into sleep mode, to check if you're looking at it, and if you are it'll prevent the screen from turning off. However, from my experience, it doesn't really work well especially in dimly-lit places. So I'd rather leave it off so the front camera wouldn't drain my battery by turning on every 30 seconds.
I've also tried out Samsung's contender to Apple's Siri voice control system, the S Voice. Which I regret to announce that it is not even close to reaching the borderline of Siri standards. Let's just say talking to S Voice is like talking to a Cambodian maid who only speaks Cambodian.
On the contrary, the Samsung Galaxy S3's cameras manage to churn out some pretty good quality photos, especially in macro mode. You will notice how smooth the bokeh would be, not to mention that the color reproduction was up to my expectations. The cameras also sport attention-worthy features such as zero-shutter lag, face recognition, contact tagging and auto photo grouping based on who's in the picture, and also a fast 3.3 frames per second burst shutter mode. Despite its high performance in broad daylight, I have found the cameras to be slacking in low-light conditions, which produces noisy and blur images especially when you try to capture moving objects.
Performance
Like the HTC One X, the S3 sports a speedy quad-core processor, except that it uses Samsung's own Exynos chipsets, which performs slightly better over Nvidia's Tegra 3 chipsets in certain benchmarks. However, I'm sure most of us would barely notice any difference. Overall operations were very fast and smooth with little presence of lag.
Battery life was beyond my expectations, especially after my experience with the One X's battery performance. The S3 could last a full day of moderate use. This includes having 3 email accounts, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on push, occasional photo and video taking and also a few rounds of Angry Birds and Temple Run.
Lastly, voice quality and reception was very good. Speaker volume was also sufficiently loud, given the fact that it's only a single mono-speaker.
Conclusion
Retailing at RM2,199 without an operator contract in Malaysia for the 16GB model, the Samsung S3 will no doubt be the best Android phone to hit our shores this year. The lightweight plastic chassis may not be to everyone's liking, but the hardware and the software improvements are good enough to make up for what it lacks in the aesthetics department.
Let's put it this way, the HTC One X is how an Android flagship device should look like, and the Samsung Galaxy S3 is how an Android flagship device should perform like. In my very own personal opinion, performance should always come first, and I would confidently say that the Samsung Galaxy S3 is a true Android badass. So if you're looking for a high-performance Android device in the year 2012, this is a recommended buy.
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