To start you can’t help but notice the screen size and quality, armored with 4.8inch Super AMOLED HD w/ 1280 x 720 resolution, the S III came to play. The Galaxy S III display offers a beautiful quality HD colors and richness. With more screen space it allows the Pop-Up Play feature, similar to picture in picture, to be a great experience as well as browsing the web, and watching videos all in gorgeous HD. The display also greatly compliments the camera and the quality of your pictures. Still got love for the Super AMOLED screens.
Under the hood is the 1.5GHz dual-core S4 processor last seen in the One X plus 2GB of RAM. This allows for better processing of your pictures, no lag as you are multi-tasking, just better performance for the device. You won’t even notice its not a quad-core chip inside. There are many new trinkets under the hood of the Galaxy S III so naturally the processor needs to be the backbone. When you have a sharing device, like this, that can be used to share Powerpoint presentations, movies, music, and photos using AllShare, you need to prepare with speed and battery life. Samsung has this in the bag.
The 2100 mAh battery is well equipped for a days work. You should have no problems keeping this monster charged for 8 to 9 hours with heavy usage. There are also some cool ways to preserve battery life like Power saving mode which turns off power-hungry services.
The optics used in the GSIII yields great results maintaining the same high expectations you would expect from Samsung. Bet you didn’t know that it is using the exact same 8MP Sony camera sensor found within the iPhone 4S. On the front of the S III, a 1.9 MP camera that also records in HD. Now you can video chat with quality picture and higher resolution.
- Share Shot– Camera Settings are going next level with share shot. No longer will you forget to send a friend a picture that has been taken. Share shot does what it says, as soon as you snap the picture it instantly shares the picture with your friend or multiple friends, on the same wi-fi network.
- Buddy Shot– Buddy Shot does the same thing as share shot, but with face recognition software. The twist is it sends the pictures taken to all the recognizable faces, previously stored in your S III, to those buddies on the same network. The pictures are sent almost as instantly as the picture is taken.
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| Sepia with flash @ night. |
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| Cartoon Mode |
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| Sepia with Daylight |
Unfortunately this technology is currently only built for the Samsung Galaxy III. I am sure we can expect to see it in future devices if Samsung decides to share their greatness.
They have taken out some of the effects but you can find most of the common effects in any of the photo apps on the Play Store.
Samsung made sure to pay close attention to its TouchWiz skin as they beefed it up to make it more useful but less intrusive at the same time. They have done well with new intuitive features to help day to day tasking easier, simpler, and more natural.
- S Voice – Voice interaction is starting off here on the S III very slow but I am sure it will build up speed with help from it’s user. It has not truly been perfected and it is a learning device so it will continuously learn. Right now it is in its youth. It does not perform as well as expected. There are too many phrases that it just doesn’t understand. I need to see S Voice when it is better, don’t expect this to be your reason to pick up the S III.
- S Beam – Allows you to use the share options, just as Google has done with Android Beam, with just touching 2 phones back to back. Samsung went a step further by allowing you to make the connection but then utilizing Wi-Fi direct to keep the connection once the phones are separated. No more prolonged siamese action with the phones. Also Samsung and S Beam allows more than just contacts. You can share all file types including multiple pictures, Powerpoint presentations, documents, as well as videos (one at a time for videos) up to 1GB, in less than a couple of minutes. (Samsung showed off the S Beam using it for drink, dessert and menu orders. Very useful idea.)
- Pop-Up Play – Very idealistic concept that is executed well. I was truly impressed that I can continue watching my video and knock out a text message or continue to search the web and all this while there was no lag or stutter. The video did not skip a beat and and it was so sharp. You are also able to move the video window around on the screen, think picture in picture (PIP) mobile. FYI it allows one video at a time to play but you can still view thumbnails of other videos.
- Gesture Technology – Here is where I became greatly appreciative of the Galaxy’s talents. Where else can you go from texting, and then just lifting the phone to your ear and calling the person you were just texting with? How about your phone knowing that you are still looking at the screen? Gestures are not limited to just voice commands, they include actions, body detections and your other senses and Samsung has encompassed that in the S III. This is done using the gyroscope, proximity, sensors as well as the microphone on the device. I know this sounds bad, but I like the ability to mute a call or all sounds quickly by turning the phone face down. The Shake gesture works in just about all aspects of the phone, email, and even Twitter, just shake and you have refreshed the page. You can easily navigate to the top of any page by double tapping the top of the phone. This device is truly an extension of you.
- Security – You are now given multiple levels of security, for those that need it. You can now unlock your phone, with a swipe, motion of the phone, your face, patterns, pins, and passwords. Also when you sign up to you’re Samsung account you have remote access to help track your phone from any web enabled computer, ring your phone even when it has been put to silence or vibrate, as well as resetting the phone, through this remote access, for extra security. Great for the enterprise crowd.
Samsung knew they had to put their best foot forward with the Galaxy S III as HTC unveiled the fanfare One X and Apple launching the iPhone 5 in a few short months. Honestly S Voice will not bring joy to many that were expecting a Siri-esque interaction. There are still areas of The new Galaxy offers the usual plastic build Samsung regularly constructs its devices out of but made sure to give a lightweight feel to it. With all the new UI customizations it definitely takes a little time to set up but with all the neat and cool tricks, it will make your life a little easier. I really think the Samsung TecTiles are cool and a more useful way to use NFC for a more common use. This phone is definitely for more forward thinking folks. It may not beat the One X in hardware, but the new Galaxy definitely outdoes the competition on the software side of things. Nothing wrong with the Android silver medal.
To Buy Or Not To Buy
