Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon minimun from pocket now calm and this is our full review of the Samsung Galaxy s3 there's a lot that we really love about this phone there's also a lot that annoys us and in this video we're going to tell you about everything so let's get to it we are testing the 16 gigabyte white international version of the galaxy s3 which happens to have the proper bands to access 18 T's 3G network in the u.s. in terms of design the galaxy s3 bears little resemblance to its predecessor the galaxy s ii samsung went for a much larger 4.8 inch display which dominates the front of the device it's got one of the thinnest bezels we've ever seen on a phone lending even more attention to the 1280 by 720 Super AMOLED pentile display more on the display later here at the top we have a chrome earpiece which is flanked by the proximity and light sensors plus the 2 megapixel front-facing camera up here there's also the ever useful notification light which glows blue if you have a new message or amber if you're charging the device below the screen you'll find a rounded rectangular button which acts as the home button you can also use it to launch s voice with a double tap or to bring up the task manager with a tap and a hold on the right of the menu button you'll find the back button and then you will wonder why the back button isn't on the left which would seem more intuitive our best guess is that since the back button is used much more often than the Menu button Samsung wanted to place it with an easy reach for those that hold the phone with their right hand and it's easy to get used to on the left is the Menu button an interesting addition since Android 4.0 encourages OEMs to phase out the menu button in favor of in-app menus the developers should include in their apps having a legacy menu button is helpful though when running programs not optimized for Android 4.0 it's a better alternative to what HTC has done with the One X by placing a menu button on screen and by doing so taking up precious pixels like the Samsung Focus 2 backlight illumination of the buttons is kind of muddy and low-quality looking as you can see here just kind of a small issue the front of the device is covered with a single sheet of glass which is slightly rounded towards the edges in a very subtle way which might help to avoid the accumulation of Pocket lint this piece of glass is lined with an attractive silver border when you're looking straight at it thanks to the trim that begins on the side of the device while the curvature of the trim on the side would imply that the galaxy s3 is curved like the Nexus S or Galaxy Nexus that is not the case it's flat looking over to the back we see the 8 megapixel camera LED flash and speaker we can pop off the back battery cover easily it's flimsy but that really doesn't matter it's thin to keep the device thin behind it we can see the large 2100 milliamp hour battery the micro SIM slot and the microSD expansion Bay the galaxy s3 has a nice in hand feel thanks to rounded corners and edges unfortunately though the super slick coating means that the phone becomes very slippery should your hands become even the least bit sweaty while you're using it you'll want to get a case with the galaxy s3 with a texture to it so that it feels more secure in the hand in terms of size the galaxy s3 is a similar footprint to the HTC One X and is a bit thinner actually because of this it slides easily into the pocket and feels comfortable in the hand obviously it's a lot bigger than the galaxy s2 which only had a 4.3 inch display so that's something to keep in mind let's talk specs the galaxy s3 is running an Exynos 1.4 gigahertz quad-core CPU with 1 gig of ram we're seriously starting to question the merits of having a quad-core processor as they seem no better than dual-core processors in day-to-day usage more on performance in a bit other specs include bluetooth 4.0 NFC FM radio gyroscope and the other goodies you'd expect in a phone of this calibre the camera on the back takes photos at 8 megapixels it can record 1080p video at 30 frames per second now let's talk about software the galaxy s3 is running Samsung's latest Android interface TouchWiz 4 which sits on top of Android 4.0 point 4 Samsung is calling TouchWiz 4 nature UX because they say it's inspired by nature what this means in practice is that sounds and wallpapers all have kind of a nature theme it's really just a theme for example to unlock the screen you splash your finger around through a pool of water unlock the display we found the nature theme to be a bit gimmicky and it really didn't provide any sort of improved experience it's not really a selling point it just adds a little bit to the experience but nothing really out of the ordinary as with previous versions of TouchWiz you can specify how many home screens you want out-of-the-box Samsung provides a large handful of widgets all which can be found in the ICS style launcher what's frustrating about the TouchWiz 4 launcher is that it doesn't allow you to make folders like you can in stock Ice Cream Sandwich meaning you can't drag one icon into another to create a folder instead you have to press the Menu button add a folder and then add icons to the folder it's cumbersome and Samsung should have left Ice Cream Sandwich the way it is in this respect the launcher looks very much like stock Ice Cream Sandwich but it adds some enhancements like the ability to hide certain apps and organize apps by various parameters in typical Samsung style the notification shade has added functionality from here you can toggle various system radios enter system settings or interact with notifications like stock ICS you can swipe off individual notifications beyond the home screen TouchWiz extends deep into the operating system affecting nearly every stock application which is both good and it is bad in terms of the good the calendar has added functionality that reminds us of what is found on the Samsung Galaxy Note also in terms of the good the browser has the Handy pinch to show tabs function which makes it easy to switch between various web pages though of course many will get a third-party browser that fits their needs just the right way and more on web browsing performance in a minute then there are places where TouchWiz just doesn't belong chief among them is in the email app where Samsung employs an ugly combination of black and blue to make a really ugly design then Samsung has placed the action buttons for email on the top of the screen often necessitating the use of a second hand due to the tallness of the device HTC has it right with the One X where the action buttons in the email application are at the bottom of the screen where your thumb is likely to be another niggling issue is that there's no option to turn off the delete confirmation dialog you have to confirm every time that you want to delete a message and there's no way to turn it off what's worse is when you delete a message there's an awkward delay which was a flaw found on the Galaxy s2 it takes several seconds sometimes to delete an email that's kind of crazy while we're an email let's compose a new message and talk about the keyboard options Samsung has tweaked the stock ICS keyboard but not for the better a combination of not good enough touch sensitivity an overzealous autocorrect makes the galaxy s3s keyboard a headache to use you can use swipe like keyboard tracing but using this feature may text input even more cumbersome perhaps this and some of the other issues could be remedied in a software update but as of now the galaxy s3 really needs a third-party input method perhaps something like Swift key because the keyboard is just not good enough out of the box the Galaxy s3 is a nod flag when you're in an app and you want to go back to the home screen it turns out that this is a result of the system waiting for a second press of the home button to activate s voice fortunately if you turn off the double tap function by going into s voice settings you can fix this issue but it's not very obvious let's talk about s voice which is Samsung's copy of Siri we tend to wonder if Samsung would have bothered to include s voice of Siri didn't exist nevertheless it's there an S voice works much like Siri although it's a bit less accurate we found it most handy for setting reminders alarms and new calendar appointments but using it for things like calling people or checking the weather seems to take more time when compared to launching an app manually and just doing it yourself the Galaxy s3 is a quad core Exynos CPU our expectations were sky high for the performance of this phone because its predecessor which backed a dual core Exynos CPU is still to this day one of the fastest phones on the planet with that said we were a bit disappointed with the performance of the galaxy s3 we found the galaxy s3 to be on par with the Galaxy S 2 in terms of day-to-day performance and only in a few cases a bit faster launching apps for example is superfast seldom with any lag also super fast is browsing the web let's jump into the web browser and load PocketNow page load times are good and even better is how effortlessly the Galaxy s3 gets the page loaded into memory allowing for navigation that is devoid of white spaces which can be typical of lesser performing phones gaming performance was good too but not amazing for example while playing GTA 3 we experienced some noticeable lag playing Shadowgun which is actually a Tegra 3 optimized game it wasn't as impressive as the 1x for that reason but in Google Play there are no apps that can specifically take advantage of the quad core Exynos protector 3 devices like the One X there are plenty of optimized titles that really show off the processor in terms of network performance we tested the International Galaxy s3 on AT&T and experienced pretty typical results of about 2 to 4 megabits per second down and 1 to 2 megabits per second up the actual AT&T version of this phone due out in June will have better network performance and support for LTE where available the galaxy s3 does particularly well over Wi-Fi providing speeds almost as fast as a wired connection which is really really impressive faster than any other phone on Wi-Fi call quality on the galaxy s3 was way above average thanks to a combination of noise cancellation achieved with a secondary microphone and improved sound quality on the handset itself provided by an equaliser called sounded crisper and more clear than any smart phone we've ever tested the display is a familiar Super AMOLED panel at full 720p resolution similar to the Galaxy Nexus it has a pentile sub pixel configuration which means that sub pixels are shared between pixels this means that text and certain graphics are noticeably grainy for example take a look at this text from the New York Times app text isn't nearly as sharp is found on the One X which has much better RGB sub pixel matrix another downside to the display and this can be fixed with software is that the auto brightness is far too dim and adjustments to the brightness are not smooth because of this issue we left the brightness at immanuel 50% beyond these issues the screen on the Galaxy S 3 exhibits fantastic contrast and deep color saturation which we've come to expect from Samsung's AMOLED displays now on to camera quality the galaxy s3 takes photos almost as good as the iPhone RS photos came out well saturated low-light performance was above-average and super fast shutter speeds were much appreciated 1080p video recording was also above average in terms of overall quality thanks to smooth frame rates fast white balance adjustment and crisp audio now let's go through some test notes the Galaxy s3 has a lot of little features that are unique in the industry for example smart stay which actually can negatively impact battery life when turned on and if it is activated a lot we'll check to see if you're still looking at the phone when you reach the end of your screen timeout interval which by default is set at 15 or 30 seconds well it's a bit creepy to think that the phone is looking at you to look for eyeballs it actually does work and it's a it's an interesting feature another great feature is that you get 50 gigabytes of Dropbox cloud storage for two years that's better than the 25 gigs that you get with the HTC One X but of course with all of this cloud storage after the two years if you're using all that space you're gonna have to start paying for it so it's a little bit annoying in that respect in terms of battery life the galaxy s3 is above average with moderate use you'll get through a bit more than one day with heavy use you'll make it through a full day but barely overall we found the galaxy s3 battery performance to be almost as good as the One X which has very good battery life for a phone of its type so here's what we like and don't like about the galaxy s3 we like that the galaxy s3 looks different than any other smartphone that's super thin bezel and handsome silver accent we like that the photo quality is good enough to keep up with the iPhone 4s and we like that the performance is second to none at this moment in time it's a very fast phone even though it didn't blow us away we also like that the battery life is above average we don't like that the phone feels slippery in hand we don't like that TouchWiz 4 provides a poor email and keyboard experience and then it does away with easy folder creation paradigm brought forth an Android 4.0 finally we didn't like the performance didn't exceed or even meet our expectations for Samsung's flagship for 2012 in terms of pricing and availability you can buy the galaxy s3 unlocked now from clove co uk for 416 British pounds which about 650 US dollars for the 16 gigabyte model it comes in marble white or pebble blue the galaxy s3 will be available on all US carriers for around $200 for the 16 gigabyte version with a new two-year contract look for that in June overall a lot of our annoyances can and will be fixed with a software update whether it's from Samsung or from the developer community at the end of the day those looking at the galaxy s3 will also be considering the HTC One X which do we recommend if you're looking for the best out of box software experience with solid performance the HTC One X can't be beat but if you're looking for the most impressive hardware with great future potential if you're willing to root your device and install faster third-party ROM the galaxy s3 is a no brainer we give the galaxy s3 a four out of five keep an eye on pocketnow.com for the full review where we'll have more remarks about the galaxy s3 and if you like this video please give us a thumbs up as always thanks for watching and that's it for now you