Gadgetory

greetings a droid enthusiasts this is clayton with android authority calm today going to bring you a head-to-head comparison of the brand spankin new samsung galaxy s3 vs. the OG samsung galaxy nexus now i have the unlocked version the international version of the samsung galaxy s3 then I've got the cdma verizon version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus so before we dig too deep into these two phones we'll just go over some of their specs the galaxy s3 being a little newer is going to come out on top in this area but I will just go through it for the heck of it so to start off the Galaxy Nexus has a four point six five inch Super AMOLED display and the resolution on that is 720 x 1280 p and the galaxy s3 has a four point eight inch Super AMOLED display also with a resolution of 720 x 1280 now we do have a difference the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has 316 pixels per inch so you get a nice clear image and you get a clear image on the samsung galaxy s3 as well but it's only three hundred and six pixels per inch so there's about 10 pixels per inch more on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus but the samsung galaxy s3 is made out of corning gorilla glass now the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has one gigabyte of RAM and so does the galaxy s3 but the Galaxy Nexus is running a dual-core 1.2 gigahertz cortex a9 processor the TI OMAP chipset and the gs3 has a quad-core 1.4 gigahertz cortex a9 with designers chipset now I've got a case on both of these phones but I'll just pop them off so we can get a good look at what these look like in all their glory there and a low battery on this thing is let us take this out and take the Galaxy Nexus out of its case so as you can see here these are our two phones they're just about as thick as each other at the top of the Galaxy Nexus at least then the bottom of the Galaxy Nexus gets a little bulbous because I am running a extended battery get into that in a minute anyways this is our top view on the galaxy s through we have our phone jack on top we've got that on the bottom of our galaxy nexus and our micro USB port is on the bottom for both our volume rockers on the same side we've got the up and down of course and so is our power button but the Galaxy Nexus has our three pin dock connector right there anyways if you see we'll turn this up like this if you can catch that the Galaxy Nexus does have a curved glass screen so it's not the corning gorilla glass but it is curved it's really nice a sexy look there anyways on the back of the Galaxy Nexus we've got a 5 megapixel rear facing camera with a maximum resolution of 2,500 92 by 1944 pixels and then on the back of the samsung galaxy s3 we've got an 8 megapixel rear facing camera with a maximum resolution of 30 264 pixels by 20 448 now they both record in 1080p and they both have LED flash the front-facing camera on the galaxy s3 is a 1.9 megapixel capable of 720p video capture excuse me and the Galaxy Nexus is a 1.3 megapixel also capable 720p within these two phones we've got a 1750 million battery in the Galaxy Nexus i am going to be extended with the original battery seven hundred and seventeen hundred and 50 milliamps and the samsung galaxy s3 is a 20 100 million battery so if we're running the stock battery configurations on each phone the galaxy s3 will beat out the Samsung Galaxy Nexus okay so both of these devices are running the Android 40 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system the Galaxy Nexus is pure vanilla Android it's the pure AOSP Android Open Source Project build there's no carrier overlay there is no manufacturer overlay but the galaxy s3 has the TouchWiz overlay by Samsung so it is unlock both of these phones as you can see here the icons and the soft keys are in a little bit of different place on each the soft keys are all available on screen for the Galaxy Nexus and then we have our physical home button as well as our capacitive menu and back buttons now on the Galaxy Nexus we can open on Reese apps by pressing the recents button and of course swipe to remove and then we do the same just by pressing the home button and holding on the galaxy s3 but with the TouchWiz overlay we get to access the task manager and also we can just choose to remove all clear our memory that way now being that these devices are each the Android 40 operating system the only difference is in the user interface are going to be due to the galaxy s3 running touch with so from the home screen will just go through some of the basic software features of each of these devices we've got our status bar drop down notification bar here and on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus I do have it rooted so there are some external toggles extra you know aftermarket stuff and on the galaxy s3 we have our TouchWiz themed toggles and whatnot but on each device we can easily access the settings by simply pressing the two settings menus within the menu we have our noticeable differences in touch wiz with the colorful icons over here as compared to the grey and blue usual user interface of the android 40 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system we have our Wi-Fi options are bluetooth we do have data usage on both of course basically exact same thing and we can go down i have my rom control because this is a rooted device the galaxy s3 has rooted as well but i don't have a custom rom running right now we've got our sound display storage options now one thing I do like about the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is that you can change the devices brightness simply by pulling down the status bar here and you can just control it like that now with the samsung galaxy s3 I have a complaint that there is no master brightness control we can go to our brightness here and change it like that but if we were to go to a web page we would have to change the brightness right here through brightness and colors so I'm changing the brightness on the main screen of the device or through the settings menu does not change the master brightness of the device don't I saw just go through some of the rest of this stuff we have our power saving feature on the samsung galaxy s3 that we're lacking on Galaxy Nexus we can view our battery statistics how long they've lasted and whatnot what's been using the battery basic features of the Android for dot 0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system we have our developer options on both which allows us to select 2d hardware acceleration whatnot if we go to the about device we're seeing that we run Android for dot 0 dot 4 on each of them okay so we'll just open the camera on each of these devices unable to use flash but anyways we'll just go and we'll see which one can actually take a photo faster the Galaxy Nexus was originally marketed to have zero shutter lag which it holds true to that see all those are pictures I'm taking right now and I take them just about as fast both extremely fast now if we go to our settings on the Galaxy Nexus we have our scene settings we've got our white balance um options there and then we can set it manually right here and we have our flash mode but that's basically all we have besides the picture size and whatnot we have a lot more options on the samsung galaxy s3 such as like self-portrait we have our single shot shooting mode we can also put that into HDR burst shot panorama which was one of the features on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus ever exposure value we can choose whether or not we want auto focus macro or face detection we have our this is actually another way to access those options we have our front facing cameras of course on both and then during video recording on both of these devices we can take pictures simultaneously so from the video recorder and we are recording the video on the Galaxy Nexus we simply tap the screen taking a picture and then we simply tap the picture icon on the galaxy s3 anyways that was the camera you guys the Galaxy Nexus has pretty nice pictures for 5 megapixels but the galaxy s3 has better quality with its eight million pixels okay so we'll just do a browser comparison now both of these basically have the same browsing features but the TouchWiz overlay on the samsung galaxy s3 does make a slight difference anyways we're on Google with both of these and when we pull down we can access our URL bar as well as our bookmarks and our tabs now I'm the Samsung Galaxy Nexus we have our options and our menu right here and I also have the soft key for it so we bring those up we have the option to refresh bookmark saved to bookmarks across the desktop site basically all the same stuff over here because if we have some brightness controls we can access our downloads so we can print and create our new windows and bookmarks from here anyways when we open up our tabs on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus we can just add like that click our tabs utility and they come up in this fashion sort of like the recent apps and then on the samsung galaxy s3 we add them and they're in a page utility kind of like how they are on the HTC sense now anyways we scroll through like this Samsung Galaxy Nexus we go up and down and to remove a tab we can simply swipe it to the left on the galaxy s3 we must press the little minus button there anyways they're basically the exact same you know they each have the labs under the developmental settings is that labs and I'm here we have our labs and we can use our quick controls on each go back to our webpage and now on each we can bring our thumb in access the new tab our tab manager new window bookmarks and menu same with on the galaxy s3 same thing so the browser is basically the exact same guys you're not really going to get that much varied in browsers unless you're running an extreme overlay now the TouchWiz is not that extreme basically keeps true to the android open source project browser now anyways just some final thoughts on these two phones of course being the vanilla Google flagship device the Galaxy Nexus does have massive developer support and a lot of the features of the galaxy s3 have in fact been ported over to the Galaxy Nexus already can check out our video on the gs3 add-on pack for Galaxy Nexus and of course you can overclock the Galaxy Nexus to a stable 1.4 gigahertz and that brings it to the same speed as the galaxy s3 the galaxy s3 is quad-core and you can also overclock this I have in fact been able to get it stable e up to eighteen hundred megahertz 1.8 giga hertz you can see i do that right now and i can scroll all the way through there's our 14 megahertz i'll just set it at 1500 megahertz okay so another thing to keep in mind guys is that the Galaxy Nexus is available in the gsm unlocked version it's also available for sprint and verizon in the US and that's going to be the case for the samsung galaxy s3 but we'll probably see a dual-core variant in those models but this is the gsm unlocked version the gs3 is a better phone spec wise but they're both very very good phones are very capable they'll outperform a lot of users needs and we're both just really nice they've got pretty similar specs except for the galaxy s3 has a better processor and the galaxy s3 is newer but both of these phones are hits they're great devices their Android so I would check one of them out pick one up you guys they both work fine so stay tuned android authority calm for more comparison videos and everything else android