The Samsung Galaxy S3 is the Ferrari of Android phones, with a gorgeous 4.8-inch 720p resolution display, an impossibly slim and light casing and a quad-core engine that goes like stink. This super-premium phone is very expensive, and the more you push it, the quicker it guzzles battery juice. It's certainly not a phone for everyone, but expect it to give the iPhone a good run for its money.
Good
- Android Ice Cream Sandwich
- Gorgeous 4.8-inch 720p screen
- Slick lightweight design
- Quad-core processor
- Slot for microSD card
Screen
The S3's display measures 4.8 inches on the diagonal which, as noted above, makes it one of the biggest smart phones currently available. Some S2 owners are going to be unhappy about this increase in size -- since the S2's 4.3 inches is already plenty generous. Some would argue it had a perfect amount of pixels for a phone. But while you might find your knuckles bending in new and exotic ways, the benefit is that this whopping display will make your photos and video look stupendous.
With a 1,280x720-pixel resolution, the S3 will do justice to your high-definition footage, as well as leaving icons and text looking impressively sharp. This is an HD Super AMOLED screen, which is the same display tech used on the Nexus and Note, both of which are a real treat for the eyes.
AMOLED screens offer eye-searing colours and very deep blacks. But as with previous Samsung gear, if you're a fan of more demure, natural colour reproduction, then you might find this panel a little garish compared to the iPhone 4S.
There's one minor downside -- the S3's panel is missing the 'Plus' suffix that you'll find on the Galaxy S2's Super AMOLED Plus display. That means that the S3's screen is likely using a PenTile display, which has one fewer sub-pixel per pixel than the S2's panel.
Screen enthusiasts may be disappointed by this news, but I suspect most people will never notice the difference. All things considered this is a mighty fine display. It's truly glorious to eyeball and has a very impressive viewing angle. At times, as you tilt the phone away from you, the screen almost looks unreal -- as if it's been printed on the surface of the phone. Stonking stuff.
The 4.8-inch 720p-resolution display is looking gorgeous.
The S3's pixel density per inch is not actually the sharpest in smart phone town -- at 306ppi it's not quite as high-res as the Sony Xperia S (342ppi), or the HTC One X (312ppi), but this is really splitting hairs. Most people won't notice any difference in clarity and it's entirely possible to read text on a full website such as the BBC News home page when fully zoomed out.
Both Apple's iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S pack in more pixels (326ppi apiece) than the S3 does but arguably the two iOS devices need sharper resolutions, since their screens are a lot smaller (3.5 inches).
One area where the S3's screen did not knock my socks off is under direct sunlight. This is hardly surprising given that loads of smart phones struggle to outdo the sun's rays. However, the S3's display really struggles to make itself seen, with content ghostly and indistinct and a reflective blue sheen masking what's on the screen.
Too much sun is not a huge problem for Brits, but if you do need to use your mobile outdoors a lot then there are phones designed with outdoor viewing in mind.
Performance and battery life
The S3 sports a beefy quad-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz, which means it's more than capable of chomping through high-resolution video and graphically demanding games. As you'd expect, performance feels super-slick, with none of the sluggishness or lag that so often dogs Android phones.
A question hangs over whether quad-core processors are really needed, and you'll be hard pushed to find apps in the Google Play shop that stress the S3's processor to its limits. But what you do get is peace of mind, knowing that the S3 has a good chance of handling any demanding apps that crop up in the future. A more powerful processor also means the S3 is less likely to be left out in the cold when the next version of Android is rolled out.
With the broad display real estate, high-resolution and powerful processor, it's no surprise the S3 excels at web browsing. Websites not only look glorious on the S3's display but are typically very quick to load and render, and a real joy to swipe, pinch and flick around.
The S3 scored 1,498.9ms on the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark test, which evaluates a browser's speed -- beating the iPhone 4S's score of 2,181.6ms by a considerable margin, and more than halving the Samsung Galaxy S2's 3,445.3ms. Lower is better in this test as it's a measure of time taken.
Bad
- TouchWiz interface can be confusing
- Premium pr
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