Gadgetory

Samsung's Galaxy s3 is one of the most successful Android smartphones ever with over 40 million units sold how does the new BlackBerry stack up against the Samsung heavyweight let's find out I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is blackberry z10 vs. samsung galaxy s3 some caveats real quick our galaxy s3 here is the version for Verizon Wireless so it's packin a different set of guts than the international version also the Galaxy S series runs Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz scan atop Android so this comparison only applies to Samsung build Android devices most specifically of course the galaxy s3 now just like yesterday's Lumia 920 comparison we're going to compare these devices in terms of hardware software ecosystem and camera if you missed yesterday's video avoid missing future ones subscribe and follow us in the links in the description down below jumping right into hardware we'll go ahead and get specs out of the way first so get out your notepads and your calculators our American galaxy s3 here is packing the dual-core Qualcomm s4 running at 1.5 gigahertz and backed up by 2 gigs of ram but most global versions use the quad core Exynos processor and a single gig of ram those differences aside the galaxy s3 comes with either 16 32 or 64 gigs of on-board storage expandable up to an additional 64 gigs using microSD expansion the situation on the z10 is a little simpler the version blackberry has announced are unlocked variant here sports a 1.5 gigahertz dual-core processor backed up by 2 gigs of RAM and 16 gigs of on-board storage that's also expandable via microSD up to an additional 64 gigs of storage and there's LTE onboard here as well with the exception of onboard storage then these two units are fairly well matched but there are some rather visible differences to start with the 2100 milliamp power pack on the galaxy s3 is significantly larger than the 1800 milliamp hour battery on the blackberry fortunately both are removable for quick swapping the displays are fundamentally different as well the galaxy s3 is 4.8 inch Super AMOLED panel Dwarfs the blackberries of 4.2 inch LCD and it delivers more saturate colors and deeper blacks the blackberries screen though offers higher pixel density a higher resolution overall and depending on your own personal hardware build it's more manageable with one hand it's not shielded by Gorilla Glass due to its so-called touch on lens display technology but it is sunk ever so slightly below the bezel hopefully that will provide some protection against drops that leads us into build quality where the difference in design is striking these are both thin light smartphones separated only by a half millimeter in thickness and four grams in weight but they feel completely different in the hand the galaxy s3 with its slick smooth plastics and wide radius corners feels and looks like the pebble Samsung intended but compromises in the design like this fake brushed metal border give it a cheap appearance from some angles the blackberry by contrast is a study in straight lines aggressive right angles and hard unyielding plastics the soft touch back cover is stippled and easy to grip the buttons are machined stainless steel and this device as a whole feels solid much more so than its Samsung contemporary the blackberry features the same NFC capability as the s3 and sadly the same lack of wireless charging support out of the box but it does include a dedicated HDMI out port in lieu of requiring an adapter BlackBerry's new OS is rather unlike anything on the market and that definitely includes Android 4.1.1 running underneath the TouchWiz nature UX by now we're all familiar with androids interface paradigm the app drawer the notification shade and most visibly the multiple home screens full of rearranged will short cuts icons and widgets the Android OS is the most customizable major mobile platform on the market even right out of the box you can pretty much arrange your home screens any way you want that's not the case on BlackBerry 10 which locks you into the new blackberry way of doing things there is the familiar app drawer off to the right but the home screen is dominated by a collection of currently running apps shown in minimized boxes called active frames these can act like widgets if the developer has built that functionality in which is cool if not they just appear as static snapshots of applications which is less cool apps can be opened or closed right from this view similar to androids built-in multitasking ribbon but the difference with bb10 is that the task manager isn't hidden in a separate area it's at the heart of the experience in lieu of androids notification shade is the BlackBerry hub which lives off to the left side of the active frames and aggregates all notifications into a single view third-party apps like gtalk also make use of the hub after they're installed so you have one big unified inbox it's also true of androids notification shade and so is the ability to peek at messages while not leaving the app you're currently in but the devices do it differently you swipe down from the top bezel on Android while you swipe up from the bottom bezel and then to the right for more detail on bb10 the shortcut toggles that Samsung has put into its notification shade aren't in the hub on blackberry instead they're available by swiping down from the top on the z10 that top swipe isn't confined to the home screen either executing it in an app usually calls up the apps menu or settings and swiping left or right serves the function of a back key on the buttonless blackberry experience swiping up from the bottom always returns you to the home screen and it also unlocks the device if you don't want to use the power standby key up top and of course there's the gesture based keyboard which allows you to flick words up into your document right from under your thumb sure you can download any keyboard you want on an Android device but blackberry really developed something special with its text input on the z10 over all the platform's heavily gesture-based interface method takes longer to get used to but after a while it feels more fluid than using the galaxy s3s back and menu keys and big clunky physical home button unfortunately that fluidity comes at a cost in the form of stability whenever you have a brand new OS fighting against an entrenched competitor on its fourth major revision you're going to see a reliability trade-off and that's the case with blackberry 10 a good example is that of the browser which supports flash and does OK in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark at 16 80 milliseconds but which still stutters and drag during page loads more than the galaxy s3s stock browser bb10 is still a very young OS and it still has its share of bugs that Android has had plenty of time to eliminate we dinged blackberry for its app selection relative to Windows Phone and yesterday's review so you can imagine how this portion of the comparison will go in short Android has over 10 times the number of available apps in the Google Play Store as blackberry does in its app world and Google also offers much more multimedia content the Google Play Store is a mature thriving market that any new smartphone contender would be hard-pressed to compete with and of course blackberry is nowhere near it that said blackberry did come strong out of the gate announcing relationships with big-name app vendors and managing to woo developers into building or porting over 70,000 apps for the platform at launch yeah many are knock-offs and there are significant holes massive gaps really so if you're someone who relies on a solid third-party app ecosystem it'll be a long time before bb10 catches up with your needs but BlackBerry has shown that it's not going to settle for a stagnant app and content store so it is definitely worth keeping an eye on an ecosystem isn't just about apps though and if you're a Google user nine times out of ten you're still going to want to stick with an Android product blackberry will interface just fine with your email calendar and contact but Google has innovated and integrated so much on the Android side with apps like Google now that you're really missing out on a lot of the Google experience by carrying any other device even after months and months on the market the galaxy s3 still packs one of the better smartphone cameras out there it delivers good results with appropriate color balance and contrast and even does fairly well in low light and rather challenging shooting environments thanks to an elaborate suite of settings and options in the viewfinder software it does tend to err on the warm side though and Samsung is not the only one who knows how to be clever in terms of camera software as blackberry proved when it built in its face detection and time travel element kind of a mix of samsung's best photo and best face features it's still a fairly bare-bones interface though the pictures does eat and generates bar also not that great compared to the sgs3 it tends to err on the cool side and it's too aggressive with auto exposure and white balance it loses a lot of detail on textures and its capture area isn't as wide in terms of 8 megapixel smartphone shooters the z10 isn't bad per se but we definitely prefer the SGS 3s camera at our side if we were going to take a lot of photos watch for our BlackBerry z10 video sample coming soon while blackberry the company is part of the old guard blackberry the smartphone specifically the z10 is the new kid on a block full of very seasoned players if you're ok with that and the bugs that come along with it and you favor an excellent unified messaging experience and the corporate security features blackberry was built to excel at the z10 will suit you fine while delivering a fresh new user experience to boot if customization and stability is more your bag with a rich ecosystem and the tightest Google integration available not to mention a very good camera and a solid software package overall the galaxy s3 running Android 4.1 will probably be the better fit it's going to do it for this one folks hope you enjoyed the video if you did throw us a like here on YouTube follow us in the links of the description down below stay tuned for our full BlackBerry z10 review coming in the following days and thanks for watching we'll see you next time