Gadgetory

Samsung is hoping for a third Grand Slam and a splash of line of galaxy phones and with the samsung galaxy s3 it nailed it I'm Jessica doll court for cnet taking you on a tour of the samsung galaxy s3 winner of the cnet editors choice awards this phone which comes in this pretty public color ceramic white and later in red for AT&T exclusively is large smooth very thin and packed with hardware and software goodies for the most part the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone hits all the marks of smartphone excellence from the large screen to the fast processor to the 8 megapixel camera not to mention the LTE support and really reasonable price tag the gs3 is big phone but the dimensions make it feel comfortable to hold well most of the time I dig Samsung's phones for feeling overly plasticky in this case I think it really works the material feels like it's been painted on with a thick glossy coating so that it's really smooth to the touch but it isn't slippery and that's good the phones got these more rounded edges here and that helped it fit comfortably into my hand when I hold it the galaxy s3 screen is a four point eight inch Super AMOLED display with an HD resolution it's 1280 by 720 pixels it looks crisp and colorful and bright and it makes an excellent platform for viewing videos photos and web text however even at maximum brightness the screen still looks a little darker and dimmer than other phones at their maximum brightness the US version of the galaxy s3 gets to keep this hardware home button on the bottom which I personally like but not everybody does and that's in addition to the two touch sensitive navigation buttons on either side of the home button so this is Samsung's second phone to feature Android Ice Cream Sandwich and I think it's a really great experience the TouchWiz interface isn't as intrusive as it is on other Samsung phones and it does add the thick layer of extra features that I think really helped take Android to the next level there's the quick access to system shortcuts for example and a ton of new sharing features like s beam s being by the way is hands-down my favorite of the same add ons it takes Google's Android Beam sharing feature one step further by including the ability to share photos videos and other documents in addition to beaming URLs contact information and maps that all came with Android Beam Android Beam by the way works with all android phones with NFC but the extra file sharing on the galaxy s3 is only going to work with other gs3 phones for now now if you're jealous of all your friends who have iphone 4 s's we're talking to siri samsung has a solution they call it s voice and s voice uses some of the same background technology as Siri to do things like find web answers calendar appointments call people and play music can also open apps turn on and off basic settings like Bluetooth and navigate you somewhere it works really well in theory but in real life I ran into multiple problems with it understanding me and doing my bidding hi galaxy set alarm for 7am tomorrow I'm not sure what you mean by for 7am tomorrow Samsung has a lot of fine tuning to do with this one and s voice is unfortunately the phone's biggest failure in my opinion I don't know about you but I wind up taking the majority of my photos with my smartphone camera so you'll be glad to know that the 8 megapixel camera with 1080p HD video recording is more than up to the task there really is zero shutter lag on this phone the photos appear almost the instant you press the shutter button the photos themselves looked really good when I took them on just the plain old vanilla auto settings they were in focus they were bright they were colorful both when viewed on the phone screen and off on another screen like a computer video was also smooth and in focus and the phone did really well outdoors as well as indoors you can also record by the way from the front-facing camera samsung has added a face tagging feature which will also remember an auto tag faces for future photos then it goes a step further if you choose either share shot or buddy photo share modes both of these will send photos that you shoot two friends who are also gs3 owners and that will save you having to email photos or even share them one at a time through s beam there's also a burst mode feature that isn't new to android phones but it is new to samsung handsets it'll take a super quick succession of pictures and if you enable best shot it will even choose the photo it thinks is best out of a series of eight shots the gs3 supports 4G LTE and HSPA+ 21 networks I was able to do things like quickly load graphically heavy webpages and download HD photos nice and fast i also got consistently high speeds on the speedtest.net diagnostic app but of course there were some pockets and sometimes speeds weren't quite as high internal speeds were also impressive on the dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 processor games and videos looked smooth and immersive and there wasn't any delay navigating between apps now if you like what you've seen so far then the galaxy s3 could be your next phone luckily for you it comes to five different US carriers most carriers are going to offer both the 16 gigabyte and 32 gigabyte versions with the 16 gigabyte selling for just two hundred dollars but you should check out my handy dandy chart to see your options believe it or not I've only scratched the surface of all the features hidden within the galaxy s3 so make sure that you read my full review on cnet com for all the details I'm Jessica doll court for cnet with the samsung galaxy s3 you