DExUS

There is no reason to introduce the flag ship of Samsung here, everyone knows what’s packed in and all other parameters.

What they did not tell ya is how it feels.

Now I was determined to buy the SGS3 mainly for the reason I had SGS1 , and I do love the phone. It did deliver superb service over the 2 years of use.

So this will be something like Samsung Galaxy S1 vs Samsung Galaxy S3 review.

I didn’t like S2 because it was not so round as S1 was so I didn’t upgrade year back, but S3 looks exactly like over-sized and squashed S1 🙂 .

Look at it, here they are side by side.

On the first look they look very similar and that only the S3 is a bit taller. And you will be about right. That’s almost exactly how it feels in the hand. Tall a little bit more wide however it is more slim than the old S1 was and boy that was some slim phone 2 years ago.

Ok, from the standpoint of ergonomics, they are both almost the same. They both have power/lock screen button on the same side, however S3 has it a bit smaller thistime but it feels right. Volume buttons are also a bit smaller but nothing serious, it’s just fine.

The presence of physical home button in the midle of the bottom part is also a bit smaller, and sometimes hard to press if you got use to the big button of S1 but I am sure that this is not anything bad. however there is much space left between screen and the button I have no idea why the home button is so small.

The most notable change is the place of charging / usb port. It’s at the bottom.

I hated the position from the first time I had to use the charger. The S1 was pretty easy usable with the cable sticking from the top, but now when the cable is at the bottom it get’s in the way and its annoying. This change was probably done only due to use of docks and car phone holders. However still it is nothing that can break the deal.

The screen is superb, there is not much more to say. Crystal clear and sharp, it can be set to be very bright and in this setting it can be also used under direct sunlight, I saw almost nothing at S1’s screen however at S3 I was able to use the phone even under direct sunlight. Sure, browsing is almost out of the question if you did not zoom in all the pages, however if I needed to make a call it was just fine and easy.

Next up is the TouchWiz4 interface that is on top of Android 4.0.4. For me, previous TouchWiz user, it was very easy with no problems, they added few minimal features but it’s the same good old GUI we samsung users know and love.

Now Samsung did pack in some fine software features, let’s begin with the S Voice what is a thing kind of competing against Siri, but under my opinion it’s not usable at all. Also the commands to unlock the phone and say something can be done only if you did press unlock key and you are at unlock screen.

The phone does not listen the whole time as it was shown on some demos, however it’s my first day so I might done something wrong here….

The search and speech recognition was normal, just like on any other phone using similar apps, nothing special. Samsung did put some effort in to user friendliness, they made their own calendar, well just upgraded the stock android calendar to be much more user friendly and I love it. Also on the user friendly note, you can call someone if they just text ya and you just pickup the phone, scroll lists with tapping on top of the device, moving of icons by tilting the phone and many more little things like that. For some it might sound like something stupid, but only one day of use did convince me to leave the feature ON and use it.

From the features that almost nobody mentioned I must talk about Barometer, which is just another sensor that checks atmospheric pressure and it can extrapolate on the weather forecast using info if the pressure is rising or dropping, pretty neat.

Also the FLASH LED diode on the back , is super bright, it performs very well in absolute dark scenarios. Take a look by your self. (picrure was only re-sized).

The camera can shoot in burst mode, and it can take up to 3-4 frames per second. The video has also some digital stabilization feature , however the output is a bit deformed by the digital stabilization which is not an issue because you can find that in every camera or phone using digital stabilization. This feature can be turned off and on , default is OFF.

The photo and video quality is not what I had expected from 8Mpx camera however it’s OK as it’s just a phone. But probably needs more settings before using it not just outof the box shooting 🙂

Sample photo 1  Sample photo 2  Sample photo 3

To view Full HD video sample just click here : FullHD Video sample

Quality of the front speaker is fine, and I think it feels identical to S1. The back speaker used for ringing is louder, not much but at least +10% than the one on S1.

Video Playback is fine, the internal memory was much more faster than on the S1 so even HD videos were smooth without issues.

Now the battery life.

The phone was charged in the morning, I took it in to work, where few of my colleagues palyed with it for a while , we ran few benchmarks, I recieved 3 SMS messages, made 8 phone calls where all of them took 30-60 seconds max , downloaded 3 games from market (4-30 mb), took 7 photos  (3 with flash) and 3 videos, the whole time I got WIFI enabled ! and that’s about it.

It was 11h 21min 39s of run-time and the status was 53%.  I am sure that Galaxy S3 can make it up to 24 hours with moderate use from my side. So again looks fine but not great.

This phone is excellent, as previous samsung galaxy s user I must say this is the best phone of choice for any previous samsung user. There is a beastly 4 core CPU inside and excellent graphic card, it will deliver excellent browsing experience and gaming experience, that am I sure of.

The only real downside is the cost of the unit and the fact that I need to purchase a whole new belt holder cause it does not fit in to the old one 🙂

[UPDATE]

The next day without wifi enabled, and again moderate use, I got 24h and there was still 50% of battery life left.