Samsung Galaxy S III. Complete Analysis by Arturogoga
The Galaxy S II was a success. Not only became one of the best-selling smartphones in 2011, but ended up being the favorite in many rankings, including ours . When most phones still suffering from a "lag" that populated Android, Samsung managed to put in those one hundred thirty-and-so many grams, the best components in the industry at that time, to bring us one of the most powerful teams. In fact, despite having a year now (an eternity in the world of smartphones) remains a viable option and, indeed, is still among the fastest.
Following the popularity achieved by the S2, the expectations for their inevitable successor, were enormous. Samsung repeat the success achieved again with the Galaxy S III?
That's what I find out today.
Features
Chipset: Exynos 4212 Quad
CPU: Quad Core 1.4 Ghz / Mali-400MP GPU
RAM: 1GB
Storage: 16 GB / 32 GB (tested version 16)
Display: 4.8 "with 1280 x 720 resolution (720p)
Camera: 8 megapixel rear, 1.9 mpx front. Recording in Full HD (1080p) at 30 frames per second.
The features are really impressive. We have a phone with 4 cores and Mali-400MP GPU, which gives a great team performance, as discussed below.
Samsung has chosen this time for a more curved in front of the rectangle that was the S2. The edges are more rounded, and this curve extends to the rear panel. What is surprising is that there is no black color model. Available colors are white and dark blue.
Thanks to this curved design, the team is extremely comfortable to hold with one or two hands. However, I would like to see Samsung take risks to experiment with other materials. With models like the Motorola Razr we saw a few days, or 800 of Nokia Lumia, plastic which is shaped by the Galaxy S III hurt a bit that aspect "Premium" should have, especially considering the impressive components housed internally -especially the metallic plastic band around, you can see below:
Thanks to this curved design, the team is extremely comfortable to hold with one or two hands. However, I would like to see Samsung take risks to experiment with other materials. With models like the Motorola Razr we saw a few days, or 800 of Nokia Lumia, plastic which is shaped by the Galaxy S III hurt a bit that aspect "Premium" should have, especially considering the impressive components housed internally -especially the metallic plastic band around, you can see below:
The device did not look too bad, thanks to the excellent screen (paragraphs discuss below), is striking at first sight. But after a week of constant use as a primary phone, I would like to see aluminum, for example, instead of mentioning metalized plastic, around the phone.
Despite this, the phone does not feel fragile. The back cover, for example, feels more solid than last year's model. The Galaxy S2, as I noted in the review, like a film, to be broken at any time. This is not the case of S III (and thankfully, the back cover of S2, even after a year of constant use, is still intact)
The team has a power button on the right side, left one volume, a headphone plug at the top. Inside, we have a generous 2100mAh battery, microSD card reader, in addition to the MicroSim slot. Something strange is micro HDMI port dedicated as have some models (the RAZR or the Xperia S, to name a few examples). And I do not mind seeing a dedicated camera button. The S III takes excellent pictures, so it'd be cool to have immediate access (in hardware) to it.
Something they have to try: get yourself a USB Host and USB control conéctenle. The S III USB support is great, I could connect my Xbox controller 360 (via USB) and play with the various emulators available on Android. Have a look at this video to discover all that you can connect to S3 via USB
The screen is excellent. The S III uses a resolution of 1280x720p at 4.8 ", which gives a density of 360 pixels per inch. In Castilian, means that the pixels are "invisible" when using the phone (similar to what happens with the iPhone 4S).
The screen is just great. The extra resolution gives you a level of sharpness and clarity unique to the computer, making videos in HD (in native resolution, ie 1280 × 720, but 1080 can read files without problems) look amazingly well. The phone immediately respond to taps on the screen and looks just great. Definitely one of the best screens I've seen so far.
What I recommend, however, is to disable the automatic brightness. All phones that I tested with Ice Cream Sandwich tend to make drastic changes in brightness level (even when the light change is minimal), which can be annoying. Use it in half brightness, and notice that is sufficient for most situations.
The S III is higher than S2 because we have a screen of 4.8 inches (against 4.3). However, it is inconvenient as the Galaxy Note. That is, it is possible to hold with one hand. Of course, as with most phones 4 inches, reaching the opposite end is extremely difficult, so it's something to consider if you prefer a phone that can be operated entirely with one hand (where models recommend 3.2 to 3.5 inches)
The Galaxy S III camera has excellent quality. And thanks to the overall team performance, we can see some interesting features built into the phone. In the video accompanying the review, surely have seen how "Burst Shot." Here, the S III captures a large amount of images per second, and then we can give you a preview of all to choose the best. It's great for group shots, or when trying to capture something in motion.
We also how "HDR", similar to that found in the iPhone, which allows us to take pictures where the dynamic range of the image is expanded. That is, both dark and light areas, they get more detail.
Another feature I loved about the camera, it comes with a sort of video stabilizer, which worked extremely well. Once activated, our recording area will be "cut", but instead, the phone starts to stabilize the video, eliminating the problem of "shaking hands", agitated or videos that we see on YouTube. The result was much more stable video, and all done directly from the phone without adding image stabilization from the PC.
In short, the camera of S III is among the best I've tasted. It worked excellently by day, and get extra modes, help enough to get better photos. As for video stabilization feature surprised me, it worked extremely well.
Battery:
The 2100mAh battery was almost necessary when we are talking about a 4.8-inch screen and quad-core brings the phone, and I am happy to report that performance is pretty good!
In the picture above, you can see two scenarios: in the left image, may notice a fairly light use, including some calls, web browsing, using Flipboard, review post, with very sporadic use. In total, was 19 hours and the battery is kept at 44%. In the second image on the right, you can see what happens to use strong enough. At that time, I was stremeando music almost all the time, with the screen turned on, surfing the web, and the result was that the battery was almost discharged within 12 hours.
In both cases, I was surprised with the battery, which means that one day of use "regular" is quite feasible for S III. I'm glad that we are seeing higher capacity battery, built into the smartphone, as it is one of my biggest complaints. The S III is among the best performing phone has given me the battery.
Performance
In benchmarks, the S III practically destroyed everything in its path. Yes, including tablets with Tegra 3 as the Asus Transformer Prime.
In tests with Quadrant AnTuTu and there was no device to approach the performance of SIII. The closest? The HTC X. One will not find a single application at the Play Store, which then undergo the S III.
Samsung has done an excellent job selecting the components included in the smartphone. Not only gives us better performance than any other team with Android today, but probably continue to be in force, within a year, as with the S2.
I'd like to see Samsung experimenting with materials other than plastic, but fortunately, we have a back cover (the battery) as fragile as that of S2. Premium for a device like this.
Software
The Galaxy S III comes with Android 4.0.4 as a basis, so that, for now, we are with the latest operating system from Google. But above, Samsung has put its TouchWiz interface, which I find particularly useful. I know we spent some time fighting for an interface "clean" Android, unchanged by the manufacturers, but the truth is that these custom interfaces have improved greatly. Sense UI from HTC, for example, works extremely well in the new equipment. We have the Sharp UX Feel (designed by frog design, which was in charge of Apple's hardware design during the 80s) that really surprised, and we also have this new version of Samsung's TouchWiz, incorporating small but welcome change.
This new version of Touchwiz feels more coherent in general, it shows that Samsung has paid equal attention to software modifications, as the hardware. For example, whenever a pair of headphones connected to the S III not only displayed the typical notification of the connection, but if we see the notification bar, see a list of music applications suggested by the device.
Speaking of the notification bar from the S2, Touchwiz brings a very useful shortcut bar to various system elements. Simply pull the rod from above, and you can activate / deactivate the Wi-Fi, GPS, Audio, Bluetooth, etc.. Now are some more buttons, which you can access by sliding your finger from side to side. A nuisance, however, is always repeats the same animation, there are more icons shown on the right. It would be great to show it, say, ten times, then stop making this animation.
As for specific features, we have:
Voice S
S-Voice is but the voice recognition system Vlingo, with a look suspiciously similar to Apple's Siri. The service works quite well, as you can see in the video included before. Recognizes several commands, and even gives us the ability to send tweets or updates to Facebook. But like Siri, or other voice recognition service, the percentage of times it works as it should, and situations in which we use, are still very limited. It is a "gimmick" that works well and probably entertain us the first few days, but do not see myself using it constantly. At least until they improve the quality of recognition and above all, the processing speed access via voice.
Other characteristics
Stay Smart, on the other hand, I found it quite useful. My phone always leave in 2 minutes, because it is not uncommon for me to stop to read something good weather, and I hate to turn off the screen. The idea is that Stay Smart when you realize you have your eyes open (via the front camera), will force the display to stay on. To test, put the time off in a minute, and worked with the phone as I do always. During the day, I saw that, indeed, the function is activated automatically when I "saw" read, and kept the phone on. Other times, when he left the phone on the table, turned off automatically after one minute.
When Popup Play was announced (the possibility of maintaining a thumbnail of a video screen all the time), the idea sounded good. A sort of "multitasking" as it could be watching a video while checking my mail. In practice, a concept is limited, but practical in some cases. It only works with videos that we send directly to the Samsung player or are hosted on the phone (open mp4 files from the web, for example). I opened a video podcast while going Reddit mp4 and it was a fun experience.
In the field of software, Samsung has done a good job with the modification. Each of the changes (shortcuts in the notification bar, for instance) feel as part of Android. And now Samsung has decided not to fill your phone with your apps from the start. If you want some (such as Air Kies useful, allowing us to pull the phone or sending files via WiFi), you can download from "More Services". The Launcher not I really liked, but luckily is something we can change in seconds (personally, I use the Nova Launcher)
Conclusion
The Galaxy S III is the best Android phone I've tested to date. Samsung has again managed to fit the best available hardware (as shown by the benchmarks), with the latest version of Android, all spiced with some useful extra features to explore in the Software section.
And Android as a platform has never been so ripe as now. Ice Cream Sandwich, as I said in the review of the first phone that brought the Galaxy Nexus , is a major update, it brought improvements in performance and stability, and a greater maturity to the platform. Android feels like a complete platform, and now we have a lot of applications that take advantage (unless, unfortunately, games where IOS has a huge advantage).
Except small complaints over the review, I can confidently say that until now, the Galaxy S III is, for me, the best phone on the market today. If you were thinking of jumping to Android, perhaps because they come from a feature phone, or even if you are planning to migrate platforms, can not ignore this phone. If you want to support our job please visit our links, we have a lot of offers for you, if not you can also visit our links
