Gadgetory

one is a seven-month veteran of the mobile market still the newest google device to bear the Nexus name the other is the newest in the most successful line of Android phones the world has ever seen they already share shelf space and stores around the world so let's see what's different in the same what's good and bad about the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the samsung galaxy s3 I'm Michael Fisher this is a pocket now let's check it out just a disclaimer here our longtime viewers might realize this but our newcomers might not I reside in the United States and I use verizon wireless as my daily carrier so the Galaxy Nexus I'm using for comparison is the verizon wireless LTE version not the gsm version of the galaxy nexus where it differs from the gsm version i will call out but for our purposes it's going to serve as our galaxy nexus equivalent the galaxy s3 is a white 16 gigabyte version international unlocked and i'm using it on AT&T so in terms of hardware these devices are separated by about seven or eight months with the original Galaxy Nexus launching in november of last year and the galaxy s3 launching just a few weeks ago in late May visually that's not immediately apparent coming from the same manufacturer Samsung these devices obviously share a common design language but there are some important distinctions right off the bat the first thing you'll notice in handling both devices is thickness the galaxy s3 at eight point six millimeters is only marginally slimmer than the Galaxy Nexus 8.9 four millimeters but it's a significant drop from the nine point four seven millimeters of the LTE version even more with the extended battery in place the galaxy s3 also incorporates a larger display at 4.8 inches diagonal versus four point six five inches on the Galaxy Nexus and puts more of that display to use by including a home key and capacitive buttons at the bottom rather than using screen real estate for android soft keys moving around to the back a few items have been rearranged by they're all here the speakerphone speakerphone removable battery cover and camera with flash 5 megapixels and the older Galaxy Nexus and 8 megapixels on the galaxy s3 as for weight these videos always teach me more about the Galaxy Nexus LTE version than anything else while the standard Galaxy Nexus is only two grams heavier 135 grams vs. 133 on the samsung galaxy s3 the LTE variant weighs in at a much heavier 150 grams making the sgs3 feel positively toy-like by comparison maybe it's just that I've become used to the heft of the LTE Nexus but the galaxy s3 feels somewhat chintzy to me it doesn't get any help from the cheap feeling plastic on the back which displays fingerprints and skin oil pretty clearly even on my white version here compared to the textured back on the Galaxy Nexus the fake brushed metal on the sides wouldn't be so bad if Samsung had managed to hide the seam joining the two halves together overall about the only thing i like better about the sgs3 sk singh is the glass covering the display which curves down into the phone casing in a manner similar to that of the HTC One X in every other respect the Galaxy Nexus feels better in the hand to me considering I'm already pretty lukewarm on the design of the Nexus that doesn't say much for the build on the sgs3 Samsung still needs to step it up in this department let's not judge a book by it's cover though let's dive in and see what kind of software is running on each of these devices ok now both of these phones are running Android for dode for ice cream sandwich but my daily driver being a nexus branded device is running stock ICS whereas the sgs3 is running Samsung's TouchWiz skin on top that makes for a decidedly different user experience where stock androids holo theme is somewhat stark with just a hint of electro techno blue highlights and a minimalistic overall feel TouchWiz is more bombastic it's more of showy TouchWiz phones are kind of like the guy in the club wearing all the gold bracelets or something whatever you kids are into these days like with any skin there are a lot of specialized widgets and customizations some more useful than others my favorite so far is the utility shortcut Samsung is built into the notification drawer allowing you to toggle Wi-Fi and GPS ringer and screen rotation and so on now I have a similar widget on my Nexus home screen but having it constantly there in the notification drawer is very consistent and I like it and Samsung hasn't taken a step back everywhere as I covered in my editorial following the galaxy s3 announcement the galaxy s3 is packed with new features like s voice pop up play smart stay and so forth you'll have to wait for our full review and in-depth pieces coming soon for coverage on all those but whether you find them useful or not you're not going to find them out of the box on the Galaxy Nexus it's something to consider as for general feature comparisons I'm not seeing terribly striking differences in everyday usage responsiveness is almost a tie which is saying quite a lot for samsung considering how heavy the touch which layer has felt before of course the quad-core exynos in the sgs3 is in another class entirely than the dual-core TI OMAP in the galaxy nexus for those of you looking for some benchmarks here's what I got some of you might not want to take my word on the subjective feel of how these devices handle and things of that sort you want cold hard numbers I get that that's cool for me I don't care if a calendar opens up a half second faster on one phone as opposed to another but I'm not everybody and a lot of people do care about that kind of stuff we're all different it's beautiful thing let's do some speed racing okay so we like to start fresh with speed tests so it makes sense to do the boot comparison first let's fire these up one two three Sam some very quick to load that boot animation there and there's the stock ICS dancing rainbow debris field whatever you want to call it samsung keeps are pretty low key and it's already fired up that is a very very quick boot time we unlock the screen we already have the widgets loaded the live wallpaper comes on up and we are ready to use the device well before the Galaxy Nexus is even out of the gate internet connectivity is there we have HSPA see if we can fire up Wi-Fi here and there's our Wi-Fi connectivity so now finally the Galaxy Nexus has caught up really seeing the speed there of the guts of the samsung galaxy s3 compared to its older sibling we were up and ready to use the galaxy s3 well before the Nexus had even woken up and we still don't have internet connectivity here on the Galaxy Nexus as widgets load very clear winner on the galaxy s3 here now wichita r part of the power of android so i don't find myself hopping into as many apps as I once did but let's go ahead and jump into the calendar app on each phone and get a good sense of how each one will load the stuff here we go three two one alright pretty comparable obviously the winner on the galaxy s3 there but neither one displayed enough flag for me to be bothered by it there's the calendar come on back to the home screen here now it is possible to get the galaxy s3 to jump back to the home screen a lot faster we're going to discuss that a little bit more when we discuss s voice or maybe in the main review but you can disable s voice and the HOME key will jump you back to home a lot faster on the gs3 how about the camera we always want to be able to jump right into the viewfinder as quickly as possible so let's see how quickly we can load the camera on each three two one BAM once again very very very comparable load times I didn't even see a sizeable difference one of the problems with reviewing phones when they're on the desk here is you can't even kind of like the tone the viewfinders loaded so let's see if we can do that real quickly better then give it one more shot for science one two three all right galaxy s3 be the ghost and exits just by a bit but once again no appreciable lag on each you're going to be able to take your shots pretty quickly on each one how about a third party app now normally I'd say Facebook but he'll take a whole minute for that laggy mess to load so why don't we try Flipboard Flipboard is available on the sgs3 and in beta form on other Android devices right now we'll try and load it one two three yea once again so close that it's not really going to matter all that much to most people let's try a little web browsing i'm going to use google chrome on both of these devices to load nasa.gov which is a fairly typical US government website with a good balance of text and images and we're ready to go in three two one there's a mobile site once again we'll hop on down go to the full site link one two three Wow and by an even larger margin this time the galaxy s3 beating the Galaxy Nexus soundly loading that page let's go for a little bit of gaming I'm not into stealing cars or slaying dragons really so we're going to go with the flight simulator f-18 carrier landing in three two one very very comparable load times on these two games audio on each fired up alright you have a clearer picture obviously on the galaxy s3 bring down the volume a little bit and kill the volume on the Galaxy Nexus and we'll just do a little bit of flying around see what the responsiveness is like yeah the plan will work fine for me let's go landing landing on the carrier I tried this out a little bit before shooting this video this is obviously not the most demanding game graphically speaking but it's not exactly a text adventure either great frame rates nothing to complain about their very very similar to the experience on the Galaxy Nexus the notice the load time is much longer on the Galaxy Nexus to get into the mission here probably once again owing to that stronger processing power on the gs3 somewhat dimmer display on the Galaxy Nexus as well but performance is comparable between these two devices enough of that stuff the cameras between these devices have been roughly on par in my experience despite the megapixel difference and the video resolution I took a few stills inside in the fair lighting conditions and here they are some shots are better than others with the sgs3 shooter coming out on top and sharpness of focus sometimes but otherwise the still shot performance indoors is comparable I also shot a quick video comparison check it out we'll be doing more in-depth evaluations of the galaxy s3's cameras soon but in the interim I feel like calling out the fact that testing the camera has brought my attention more toward the display then the camera itself the display has been one of the low points of ownership of the galaxy nexus for me everything's washed out whites are dingy and grey and no amount of backlight seems to be able to overcome the general pallor that surrounds the screen about the best thing I can say about it is that the blacks are deep by contrast the panel on the sgs3 while it's still super amoled and it's still pentile offers much cleaner whites of far less greenish yellow tone overall and much much better saturation everything about it is crisper and cleaner Samsung has provided multiple available settings in a menu section called screen mode which appears to let you select varying levels of saturation now I know most people say that AMOLED delivers too much saturation in any case call me tacky but I can never get enough color so I keep it amped up to dynamic in this setting and I love the results so which one's better well it depends on your use case as always obviously if you're looking for the hottest of the newest the galaxy s3 is the way to go if you're looking for a proven design with stock ICS and timely Android updates at less you have an LTE version it's the Nexus we're going to have lots more on the sgs3 in the coming days and weeks so stay tuned to pocketnow.com in the meantime drop me a comment on the post at pocketnow.com if you've got something to say give us a thumbs up here on youtube if you like the video and thanks for watching we'll see you next time you