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Can the Galaxy S3 take the phone throne without a revolution?
We all held our breath, expecting the revolution. In part, it was Samsung’s fault, surrounding their announcement with shallow digs at the competition and promising to set the bar so high we’d have to squint to see it. The S2 is still one of the best phones ever created, how would its successor match up? But as they revealed the pebble-shaped Galaxy S3, I was left in doubt. This can’t be a revolutionary phone - it’s ugly.
While opinions on aesthetics will vary, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is just not a photogenic phone to me. No matter how many official photos I looked through, it always looked a little shiny, a little uninspired. A smudge-magnet with a weird camera and speaker setup that mars its back. Fortunately, looks can be deceiving.
Design
While the phone certainly picks up more smudges than we’d prefer, the pebble-blue color is incredibly striking (white is, well, white). After we’d grown accustomed to the shape, we not only loved the way it looked, but the way it felt.
The pebble shape helps distribute the phone’s weight, and at 133g (or .29 pounds), the phone felt as light or lighter than the HTC One X (130 grams), and loads lighter than the compact iPhone 4S (140 grams).
If we had to describe this phone in a single word: sleek. The feel, the color, even the weird water drop overlay and gushy sound effects all scream of its sleekness.
But even after growing accustomed to it, the Samsung S3 is simply not the prettiest phone on the market. Could Samsung seize the throne through sheer power?
Internals
While the UK received a 1.4GHz quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM, the US version received a 1.5GHz dual-core processor with an extra gig of RAM. While it’s a bit of a bummer to lose the quad-core, the phone pretty much outperformed any phones we’ve tested recently and felt unsurprisingly snappy.
The phone could boot apps as fast as any other phone we've tested, multitask with the best of them (thanks in part to the incredible 2GBs of RAM), and Samsung’s TouchWiz overlay rarely feels bloated or over encumbers Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
This is an incredibly powerful phone.
Camera
But it’s not all great, royal sleekness and our first major complaint is the phone’s humdrum camera. It’s not just that the S3 stuck with an 8MPs years after they released the 8MP S2, but rather that nothing seems to have improved since then. The lens still seems mediocre, and the phone still struggles with low-light. Even the iPhone 4’s camera mops the floor with this phone’s, and that’s a problem.
The camera software is a good deal better than it has been in the past, delightfully stripped of ridiculous or redundant options and, obviously, with the increased power of the phone, pictures can be snapped, saved, and snapped again in fractions of the time it used to take – meaning you’ll get better pictures in the long run.
There’s no dedicated camera button. In fact, there’s not many dedicated hardware buttons at all. Samsung has foregone all hardware buttons except a volume rocker, lock button, and home button in favor of a smooth chassis. The two buttons on either side of the home button are touch capacitive, and disappear into the body when not in use, lighting up only when activated.
Interestingly, the S3 has opted for a back button and a menu button, as opposed to Ice Cream Sandwich’s preferred back and recent app buttons – but this works in the phone’s favor.
Display
Without the hardware buttons, all the focus is on the S3’s 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD at a 1280 x 720 resolution. While the display is bright and crisp, it’s not quite in the same league as the HTC One X’s LCD screen or Apple’s Retina Displays. Further exacerbating our display woes was the S3’s tendency to leave the phone a bit too dark, especially indoors.
But the display is still a good one, and proves that you don't have to have the best display on the market, with the largest viewing angles and pixels per inch to still be a treat to look at. At 4.8" the display might cause the phone to be too large for some, but makes watching movies on your phone a very possible reality - several times we opted to leave our tablet in the bag and simply use the S3.
OS Features
There’s a handful of features that add to the newness of the device, but ultimately feel more like gimmicks than actual fully-developed features. Take, for instance, Direct Call, which allows you to call whomever you’re texting by lifting your ear to call them automatically. None of these anemic features are detrimental to the product, because none fall as flat as S Voice does.
S Voice is Samsung’s answer to Apple’s Siri, and it’s really not much of an answer at all.
While Siri suffers from near-constant hiccups, S Voice still sucks a good deal worse. The difference is Siri is at least covered under the pretense of being in Beta. No such excuse exists for S Voice.
To be honest, I’m not even sure I completely like this talk to your phone fad. When it works it seems novel, and when it doesn't it leaves you feeling embarrassed - not just that you're talking to your phone, but that your phone doesn't even understand you.
The phone froze up a few more times than we were comfortable with and a vast majority of these freezes were during S Voice. Hopefully, like Siri, S Voice will keep improving, but for now it feels more like a “me too” than a meaningful addition.
That might seem like a lot of negativity, but rest assured, none of these half-baked features are directly harmful to the S3 if you just don’t use them. After all, the S3 has more than enough gems in its crown without them.
LTE, Battery Life, and Expandability
The battery on the S3 is another one of its strongpoints. The HTC One X's battery is 1800mAH but notoriously drained by its display, the iPhone 4S's 1430mAH battery holds up well enough, but doesn't have LTE to drain it. We were able to nurse almost 20 hours out of the S3 before its battery bit the dust (including a long standby to replicate sleeping without charging).
While LTE is a notorious battery killer, the Samsung Galaxy S3 faired well even after a day of intermittent internet surfing (which was, like everything on the S3, blazing fast). Even better, the 2100mAH battery is replaceable, so after a year or so of use, you can swap your slightly burned out battery for a little extra juice.
There's also a microSD slot for expandable memory - making the 16GB version a compelling and cheap option. While we've loved increasing our phones' capacities with the countless microSD cards we've acquired through the years, plenty of phones have been ditching this option in favor of unibody designs. The S3 zags where the popular movement looks to be zigging, and we're very glad.
Except for T-Mobile’s weird $279 price tag, all major carriers are offering a 16GB version for $199. That makes it comparable to the HTC One X and iPhone 4S, and well worth the price.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is the full package - it's pretty (of course, not too pretty), it's screaming fast (both online and off), it's expandable, and it's reasonably priced.
If you're a fan of the S2 (and who wouldn't be?), you won't be disappointed by the Galaxy S3. Almost everything is better here - and while it might seem incrementally improved over its predecessor, don't forget its predecessor was the best phone out there for a very long time.
The S3 is easily one of the best phones on the market, and is currently only rivaled by the HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE. While we prefer the EVO’s design, and HTC’s overlay (Sense 4.0) is certainly prettier than TouchWiz, the Samsung Galaxy S3 and TouchWiz beats the competitors at just about every other turn.
Of course, Samsung’s been notoriously bad with software updates, and with Jelly Bean right around the corner, it’s up to Samsung to make sure the S3 feels as fresh as it should in a month.
Until then, the S3 gets its rightful place at the throne.
IGN RATING - 9
“Amazing”
Solid construction, gorgeous colors
Incredible performance
Mediocre camera, gimmicky features
We all held our breath, expecting the revolution. In part, it was Samsung’s fault, surrounding their announcement with shallow digs at the competition and promising to set the bar so high we’d have to squint to see it. The S2 is still one of the best phones ever created, how would its successor match up? But as they revealed the pebble-shaped Galaxy S3, I was left in doubt. This can’t be a revolutionary phone - it’s ugly.
While opinions on aesthetics will vary, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is just not a photogenic phone to me. No matter how many official photos I looked through, it always looked a little shiny, a little uninspired. A smudge-magnet with a weird camera and speaker setup that mars its back. Fortunately, looks can be deceiving.
Design
While the phone certainly picks up more smudges than we’d prefer, the pebble-blue color is incredibly striking (white is, well, white). After we’d grown accustomed to the shape, we not only loved the way it looked, but the way it felt.
The pebble shape helps distribute the phone’s weight, and at 133g (or .29 pounds), the phone felt as light or lighter than the HTC One X (130 grams), and loads lighter than the compact iPhone 4S (140 grams).
If we had to describe this phone in a single word: sleek. The feel, the color, even the weird water drop overlay and gushy sound effects all scream of its sleekness.
But even after growing accustomed to it, the Samsung S3 is simply not the prettiest phone on the market. Could Samsung seize the throne through sheer power?
Internals
While the UK received a 1.4GHz quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM, the US version received a 1.5GHz dual-core processor with an extra gig of RAM. While it’s a bit of a bummer to lose the quad-core, the phone pretty much outperformed any phones we’ve tested recently and felt unsurprisingly snappy.
The phone could boot apps as fast as any other phone we've tested, multitask with the best of them (thanks in part to the incredible 2GBs of RAM), and Samsung’s TouchWiz overlay rarely feels bloated or over encumbers Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
This is an incredibly powerful phone.
Camera
But it’s not all great, royal sleekness and our first major complaint is the phone’s humdrum camera. It’s not just that the S3 stuck with an 8MPs years after they released the 8MP S2, but rather that nothing seems to have improved since then. The lens still seems mediocre, and the phone still struggles with low-light. Even the iPhone 4’s camera mops the floor with this phone’s, and that’s a problem.
The camera software is a good deal better than it has been in the past, delightfully stripped of ridiculous or redundant options and, obviously, with the increased power of the phone, pictures can be snapped, saved, and snapped again in fractions of the time it used to take – meaning you’ll get better pictures in the long run.
There’s no dedicated camera button. In fact, there’s not many dedicated hardware buttons at all. Samsung has foregone all hardware buttons except a volume rocker, lock button, and home button in favor of a smooth chassis. The two buttons on either side of the home button are touch capacitive, and disappear into the body when not in use, lighting up only when activated.
Interestingly, the S3 has opted for a back button and a menu button, as opposed to Ice Cream Sandwich’s preferred back and recent app buttons – but this works in the phone’s favor.
Display
Without the hardware buttons, all the focus is on the S3’s 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD at a 1280 x 720 resolution. While the display is bright and crisp, it’s not quite in the same league as the HTC One X’s LCD screen or Apple’s Retina Displays. Further exacerbating our display woes was the S3’s tendency to leave the phone a bit too dark, especially indoors.
But the display is still a good one, and proves that you don't have to have the best display on the market, with the largest viewing angles and pixels per inch to still be a treat to look at. At 4.8" the display might cause the phone to be too large for some, but makes watching movies on your phone a very possible reality - several times we opted to leave our tablet in the bag and simply use the S3.
OS Features
There’s a handful of features that add to the newness of the device, but ultimately feel more like gimmicks than actual fully-developed features. Take, for instance, Direct Call, which allows you to call whomever you’re texting by lifting your ear to call them automatically. None of these anemic features are detrimental to the product, because none fall as flat as S Voice does.
S Voice is Samsung’s answer to Apple’s Siri, and it’s really not much of an answer at all.
While Siri suffers from near-constant hiccups, S Voice still sucks a good deal worse. The difference is Siri is at least covered under the pretense of being in Beta. No such excuse exists for S Voice.
To be honest, I’m not even sure I completely like this talk to your phone fad. When it works it seems novel, and when it doesn't it leaves you feeling embarrassed - not just that you're talking to your phone, but that your phone doesn't even understand you.
The phone froze up a few more times than we were comfortable with and a vast majority of these freezes were during S Voice. Hopefully, like Siri, S Voice will keep improving, but for now it feels more like a “me too” than a meaningful addition.
That might seem like a lot of negativity, but rest assured, none of these half-baked features are directly harmful to the S3 if you just don’t use them. After all, the S3 has more than enough gems in its crown without them.
LTE, Battery Life, and Expandability
The battery on the S3 is another one of its strongpoints. The HTC One X's battery is 1800mAH but notoriously drained by its display, the iPhone 4S's 1430mAH battery holds up well enough, but doesn't have LTE to drain it. We were able to nurse almost 20 hours out of the S3 before its battery bit the dust (including a long standby to replicate sleeping without charging).
While LTE is a notorious battery killer, the Samsung Galaxy S3 faired well even after a day of intermittent internet surfing (which was, like everything on the S3, blazing fast). Even better, the 2100mAH battery is replaceable, so after a year or so of use, you can swap your slightly burned out battery for a little extra juice.
There's also a microSD slot for expandable memory - making the 16GB version a compelling and cheap option. While we've loved increasing our phones' capacities with the countless microSD cards we've acquired through the years, plenty of phones have been ditching this option in favor of unibody designs. The S3 zags where the popular movement looks to be zigging, and we're very glad.
Except for T-Mobile’s weird $279 price tag, all major carriers are offering a 16GB version for $199. That makes it comparable to the HTC One X and iPhone 4S, and well worth the price.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is the full package - it's pretty (of course, not too pretty), it's screaming fast (both online and off), it's expandable, and it's reasonably priced.
If you're a fan of the S2 (and who wouldn't be?), you won't be disappointed by the Galaxy S3. Almost everything is better here - and while it might seem incrementally improved over its predecessor, don't forget its predecessor was the best phone out there for a very long time.
The S3 is easily one of the best phones on the market, and is currently only rivaled by the HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE. While we prefer the EVO’s design, and HTC’s overlay (Sense 4.0) is certainly prettier than TouchWiz, the Samsung Galaxy S3 and TouchWiz beats the competitors at just about every other turn.
Of course, Samsung’s been notoriously bad with software updates, and with Jelly Bean right around the corner, it’s up to Samsung to make sure the S3 feels as fresh as it should in a month.
Until then, the S3 gets its rightful place at the throne.
IGN RATING - 9
“Amazing”
Solid construction, gorgeous colors
Incredible performance
Mediocre camera, gimmicky features
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