[Detailed!] Samsung Galaxy S3 Review

Samsung Galaxy S3 has been launched on 3/5. It is the newest phone from Samsung. It is the successor to the previous version Galaxy S2. After its competitors have launched the high-end smartphone, such as HTC One X, Sony Xperia S, LG Optimism 4X. Its competitors have already using a Quad-Core Processor like HTC One X, which is using NVIDIA Tegra 3, perform extremely well in heavy loading tasks. We can ensure that a Quad-Core Processor will provide more than sufficient processing power to the smartphone, and to let it run extremely smooth. For android system, in micck's opinion, it is better to have at least dual-core processor to power the device, it is the minimum requirement to have a good user experiences on Android OS (at least not lagging all of the time). Back to our main topic, the Samsung Galaxy S3, it has several improvement when comparing to its previous version.

Specification:

• 1.4GHz quad-core processor


• 16 / 32GB Internal storage memory


• SD Card slot to expand memory to 64 GB


• 4.8″ Super AMOLED display


• 8 megapixel camera


• 1080p video recording at 60fps


• 2100 mAh battery


• NFC Chip


• Ice Cream Sandwich OS – 4.0.4 version

This review included the following parts:

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  Part 1: Design and I/O

  
  


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  Part 2: User Interface and Software

  
  


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  Part 3: Display, Performance and Benchmarks

  
  


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  Part 4: Camera, Media, Messaging, and Call

  
  


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  Part 5: Micck's Opinion and Conclusion

  
  

1. Design

[caption id="attachment_399" align="aligncenter" width="593"] ▲ Slick Design, 8.6mm, slightly thicker than Galaxy S2[/caption]

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has an all new design. The phone is round-shaped, and it has three buttons below the screen(traditional of Samsung's smartphones), one real button, two virtual button on two sides. Samsung Galaxy S3 also uses a curved mon design, which lets you the phone fits the edge of your face when you are in call.

2. I/O

Top View

[caption id="attachment_337" align="aligncenter" width="593"] ▲ headphone jack is in the top position.[/caption]

Side View (left)

[caption id="attachment_341" align="aligncenter" width="411"] ▲The left side, leaving only the volume keys, pay attention to the body and the back cover of the fit at the curve sketched.[/caption]

Side View (right)

[caption id="attachment_342" align="aligncenter" width="550"] ▲The only button on the right is the power button.[/caption]

Bottom View

[caption id="attachment_339" align="aligncenter" width="593"] ▲Micro-USB connector[/caption]

Next page: User Interface and Software

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3. User Interface and Software

Samsung Galaxy S3 runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with TouchWiz (the interface redesign done by Samsung). Android 4.0 lets the phone to do Face-unlock, improved notification center and easier multitasking. It includes all the features what Ice Cream Sandwich has included. The TouchWiz interface and some new software built-in allows Samsung Galaxy S3 to have some cool features.

a) Smart Stay

Because of the Quad-Core Processor has been using much more battery, Samsung has come out with a new feature that do eye-tracking, this feature is called Smart Stay. This feature allows you to save your battery, extend your battery life by dim the display while you are not looking at the phone and bright the display while you are looking at the phone. It is done by using eye-tracking.

b) Direct Call

Direct Call allows you to rise your phone to talk, it uses the sensor in the phone and when you lift the phone to your ear, it can dial your friend automatically while you are messaging. It could help a lot and save the work if you want to dial your friend while doing messaging.

c) Smart Alert

Smart alert helps you know missed calls or messages. This feature will make the phone vibrate whenever you have some missed calls or messages.

d) Social Tag

It tags your friend in the photo and show you their current SNS status.

e) S Voice

Do you ever want Siri in your Android phone? If you do, S Voice serves the same purpose. It is the feature that do voice recognition. You will be able to say "Hi Buddy" or "Hi Galaxy" to wake the thing up and activate the voice control, then you can do anything like asking the weather, setting alarm, play music etc. with S Voice. It is just like Siri. In micck's opinion, S Voice is here because of Apple introduce Siri, and Samsung mimics Siri to create a similar service that serves the same purpose to join the competition. I can say Samsung plagiarise Apple again... (Dare Samsung still declare a copyright war with Apple ..=.=")

f) S Beam

S Beam is the same functionality to android beam. S Beam is a sharing tools, it shares your content while your Galaxy S3 touch with another Galaxy S3. You can transfer your pictures, music, videos, internet content, etc. to your friends by using S Beam.

g) Buddy Photo Share

After you took a picture, you can share it with everyone instantly with Buddy Photo Share feature. It shares the photo instantly by using the face reorganization technology. It recognizes your friends faces, and you can share photos with them instantly with the "pop-up" sending method.

h) AllShare Cast

This feature is like AirPlay in iOS. (Samsung mimic it again..) AllShare Cast let you to play games, share your photos, videos on a big screen, your HDTV without connecting a cable.

i) AllShare Play

Again.. This feature is like iCloud in iOS. All Share Play let you access your documents and multimedia files when you work somewhere else. Also, it also lets you to share your files with everyone. This is a similar feature to iCloud.

j) Pop up play

Do you sometimes want to watch video and chat with your friends at the same time? If yes, Pop up play feature really suites you. Pop up play lets you to do two things at one, watch HD videos as you email or text or browsing through the web. It will pop up a little video window if you enabled that feature, and you can move the window everywhere you like and you can do things as usual with the video window open.

k) Best Photo

When it is enabled, while you take a photo, it will automatically takes a burst of 8 to make a continuous scene and you can choose the best one.

Next Page: Display, Performance and Benchmarks

4. Performance

The Galaxy S3 uses a Quad-Core processor called Exynos 4, it is up to 50% faster than the previous version Exynos 3. Exynos 4 increase the cpu performance but also graphic performance. GPU that is supposedly 65 percent faster than the companion Mali 400 graphics chip on the Galaxy S II. Samsung had made a video to introduce their newest CPU that uses in Galaxy S3, in the video, they demo and made the comparison between the two generation cpu, showing their new processor had dramatically improve the cpu and graphic processing power. We can see there are many improvement in Exynos 4, including .... It is really fast, it is the fastest phone in the market ever. Android 4.0 user experience in this phone is very smooth, because the new processor give sufficient power to the phone to run many programs at one time efficiently.

5. Benchmarks

There are some popular benchmark test of the galaxy s3 already. The following are some benchmark of the Galaxy S3

Quadrant benchmark

[caption id="attachment_382" align="aligncenter" width="593"] ▲Quadrant benchmark, Galaxy S3 scores 5241[/caption]

Antutu benchmark

[caption id="attachment_383" align="aligncenter" width="593"] ▲Antutu benchmark, Galaxy S3 scores 11871[/caption]

Vellamo

[caption id="attachment_384" align="aligncenter" width="280"] ▲Vellamo benchmark, Galaxy S3 scores 2071[/caption]

Nenamark 1

[caption id="attachment_385" align="aligncenter" width="498"] ▲Nenamark 1, Galaxy S3 scores 59.9fps[/caption]

Nenamark 2

[caption id="attachment_386" align="aligncenter" width="498"] ▲Nenamark 2, Galaxy S3 scores 58.7fps[/caption]

From the benchmark above, Galaxy S3 is proved has an extremely high performance, and it is the highest performance smartphone in the market. Galaxy S3 scores 5241 in Quadrant benchmark, which is in the same level with HTC One X with NVIDIA Tegra 3. Galaxy S3 scores 11871 in Antutu benchmark, which is a thousand points better than HTC One X. The strong graphic processing power is showed by Nenamark 1&2, Galaxy S3 scores 59.9fps and 58.7fps in the two test respectively, showing it can keep fluent, great image rendering in the 4.8-inch Super AMOLED Display.

6. Display

The Samsung Galaxy S3 uses 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD (1280x720) display. Is this a bad news? Because the lack of a "Plus" in that name means it's PenTile, which means that pixelation is still visible although it is 306 ppi density, due to PenTile is the sharing of sub-pixels. The good news is that the resolution is still really good, and the display should be fine to show deep images' detail.  It is nice to see that the panel is cocooned in Gorilla Glass 2, besting its relative's fortified face, and it can also offered great viewing angles.

Next Page: Camera, Media, Messaging, and Call

7. Camera

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has front facing camera and the camera at the back. The camera at the front is a 1.2MP camera, which can shoot up to 720p videos, it is great for face-chatting usage. On the other side, the camera at the back is a 8MP camera, people will be a bit disappointed to this because they always want a big step change in a sequel.

In fact, it is not necessary to have a 12MP sensor like Sony Xperia S, as the S3 can brings a much more intuitive experience and it is more than capable at taking snaps compared to the Galaxy S2. Samsung said they can take excellent low-light snaps from the S3. It also comes with a bright LED flashlight. With the flashlight and quick snaps, the photos came out crisply and clearly. The camera can take three photos manually per second by just pressing the camera button on the screen or 20 photos in a row (6 photos per second) in the burst mode.

We have introduced the software feature "Best Shot". Best Shot uses the feature of "burst mode" and it can shot pictures continuously in a short time. In micck's opinion, it is useful when it is noticed no smile or closed eyes were present in the taken picture, user can easily chose the best photo in the 20 photos that automatically shot by the phone, and correct the wrongly shot photo easily. So, it can avoid taken bad picture when pressing the shot button in wrong timing.

The facial recognition function of the phone allows you to zoom in on any person's face without taking much time. A double tap into the person can make it to be the focus of the photo.

The software contains the whole range of functionality for the camera: panorama, Smile Shot, Beauty Mode, High Dynamic Range (HDR) and much more features built-in to the phone were great and let it to be easy to use.

8. Music

Although this is not the main selling point of the Galaxy S3, it also keeps some great music features in the Galaxy S3. The music interface has changed a little bit, it puts the equalizer button on the bottom left corner to let people press that button easily. Press that button, you can choose SoundAlive and it provided different equalizer and special audio effects, but some required earphone plugged in to enable. The music player also supports changing playback speed and "music timer".

9. Video playback

The video player originally built into the phone is obviously taking an important role on the Galaxy S3, and Samsung has increased the support of codec to make more video formats can be played using the original video player. It brings good experience, the screen has a great quality contrast ratios and decent color reproduction by software optimization.

The navigation inside the video play is also user-friendly, just sliding the timeline back and forth for adjusting the video period, it is sensitive, thanks to the powerful CPU inside.

As we have introduced the Pop up Play feature in the Galaxy S3, it just simply allows you to watch video while perform other tasks at the same time.

The video playback performance in overall in the Galaxy S3 is great, it is fast and easy to control.

10. Call and Messaging

For messaging and contact management experiences, it is almost same to the Galaxy S2, but that isn't bad. For example, you can still link the contact of a person to their Facebook and Google+ account to the phone book entry, it does make it more organized.

Samsung haven't update the messaging keyboard, but the accuracy on hitting the keys on that large screen seemed to be great and better than S2. However, the general problem of auto-correct was still exists, that means the words will correct into another but you do not want it to correct in this way. The feature may be useful if you are those bad typing accuracy user.

Messaging and calls experiences in the Galaxy S3 is great, it does not changed much from the previous version, but it does do the right work.

Next Page: Micck's Opinion and Conclusion

11. Micck's opinion

In Micck's opinion, it can be a great phone to some user but also can be a bad phone for some user.

Galaxy S3 has a slick and lightweight design, it feels very lightweight with the 4.8-inch screen. It also uses rounded-edge design, which looks like the rounded-edge design used in the Galaxy Nexus. The design may not be attractive enough and it does not have any sparks improvement in their design. Although it is a lightweight design, there isn't any breakthrough.

The 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD 720p display is gorgeous and enormous, it creates a pixel density of 306ppi, it should be great enough for most users. However, for the user that look for a high-end display phone that provides a high quality of display and great contrast of image, the phone may not be the best. Because the phone uses Super AMOLED HD display but without using the AMOLED HD Plus display, means that it uses PenTile type display, and it is sharing of sub-pixel, that makes pixelation still visible in that phone, causes the phone not being the perfect.

The Quad-Core processor and 1GB of ram surely power the phone to be the fastest phone in the market, its graphic performance is impressive, people who love high performance phones may consider this one. With the smart user interface and the powerful Android 4.0 operating system, the phone shows the system and functionality advantages to its competitor. With those functionalities, it can enhance the user experience while using the phone to do multiple tasks. However, in micck's opinion, some features in the phone are not new, they are "innovated" from iOS, and create some features like S Voice(Siri), AllShare Cast (Airplay), AllShare play (iCloud), they are redirected from iOS, Samsung transfers those services to S3 and serves the same purpose but the different is this is running with Android. I'm not totally object the act of Samsung, because those features may improve the user experiences (consumer) on using this phone, and finally the winner is the consumer.

Technology can improve only if everyone creating something better and better. Competition makes things become greater and greater. There is no right or wrong of creating something similar, but the main concern is they must let consumer knows how that kind of feature improves the user experience on the phone in a whole.

12. Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy S3 doesn't meet much of the consumer expectations, consumer is wanting a smartphone that is creative and innovative, of course with enough hardware power. To look backward to the Galaxy S2, it can get a great success because it has a slick design and the gorgeous screen used in the phone. Although Galaxy S3 doesn't broke the objective up, it doesn't has an innovative and special slick design. It also has a drawback that using a Super AMOLED HD display but not using the Super AMOLED HD Plus display. Upgrading each individual component from Galaxy S2 to Galaxy S3 does not seems to be the most creative approach, but its top performance will keep the S3 at the front of the Android line.

On the other hand, Samsung's TouchWiz user interface is providing some extra features to the phone. However, it may be frustrating to some of the user, and the pre-loaded bloatware apps will be a concern to some of the user. It had been a disadvantages in the Galaxy S2, but it looks like will be happened to Galaxy S3 as well. This maybe just a minor software concerns to some user. In overall, the phone performance, features, video playback are great, and these leading features will help Galaxy S3 shaping up to be the one of the most important gadget in this year.

What do you think of Galaxy S3? Good or Bad? Comment Below!

Micck's Rating: