Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III review

Final Words & Conclusion

Samsung released a little beast with the Galaxy S III, it has monstrous features and specs and really works fantastically. Somehow I doubt though that the release will have the same impact as the initial Galaxy S II release -- the phone is a good step forwards, but is just that. So if you are coming from the S2 you need to wonder wether or not an upgrade is something you need as we doubt the validity of such a choice a tidbit. I mean quad cores is great and all but the S2 is already 80% of what the S3 really is. Yep -- quad cores are sexy -- of course but, the reality remains that you'll only notice that here and there. That said, I do have to say that smart phones are tough products to test objectively as they really are touch and feel devices. We however can say though that the S3 is superb (perhaps I may use the word exquisite here) in many ways. Obviously the quad-core processor is a perfect companion for the S3, it offers close to leading performance, good and fast graphics versus a battery lifetime that is respectable thanks to the new 2100mA battery. The combined Android 4.0 ICS seems to be the perfect companion for this product.

Small note; I understand that the S3 in Canada is different, there it carries a LTE tag and it seems it has a dual-core processor instead of a quad-core. The ram in that device is increased to 2 GB though. So if you live in these regions and notice LTE, check that out to see what is going on.

Right, battery lifetime, with normal usage you can certainly expect a good day, maybe day and a half of lifetime out of it depending on your usage. If you merely check email and a little news, I wouldn't be surprised to see you reach two days. Then again, I don't expect you to drop 600 USD/EUR on a product and then only check email. So one day of usage is roughly what you may expect.

Let's recap the most fundamental functions of the phone. Overall the S3 I find to be an intriguing and impressive device with a very decent camera as well. This one is now is featured with a zero shutter lag along with less than a second shot-to-shot time. The S3 is built with a 4.8 inch Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen display with touch-sensitive controls that carries a whopping 16M colors at a display resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels.

I don't think I mentioned this in the review already, but the display is protected with Gorilla Glass 2 which is an alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass engineered specifically to be thin, light and damage-resistant. The Galaxy S3 runs on Android OS, v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich Operating System comes with an Exynos 4212 Quad Chipset with Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU Processor. The S3 has been equipped with multiple sensors like accelerometer, gyro, RGB sensor, proximity, compass and barometer. The combination of the hardware and ICS is a perfect fit. The phone is functional, easy to use and downright fast.

If you need a little more storage space then you can use the card slot supporting microSD up to 64 GB and has an internal memory storage of 16/32/64 GB storage along with 1 GB RAM.

The device offers GPRS Class 12 (4+1/3+2/2+3/1+4 slots), 32-48 kbps, EDGE Class 12 along with a speed of HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps and offers the connectivity features as Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP, EDR, NFC supports, microUSB v2.0 (MHL) and USB On-the-go.

Features wise that is the major nitty gritty and really, you can't be anything short of impressed. The screen is gorgeous (perhaps not the brightest in sunlight though), there are dual cameras with the front camera at 8Mpixels (3264 x 2448), support for large SD storage...

One of the features that I have not explained just yet is S-Voice, the reason behind is that you really need to see it instead of reading about it. S-Voice is Samsung's latest attempt at a voice recognition application specifically released (and included) for the S3:

Once the software is running you activate it by saying "Hi Galaxy", you can then ask a question or send commands to the phone with your voice. Now it's not perfect but it is pretty darn good. Check out the video for yourself and observe this all new personal assistant.

Overall it was a privilege to have tested the Galaxy S3, it is just a very impressive product really. Fast, great screen, deep functionality and pretty decent battery lifetime if you take the performance of this little beast in account. Admittedly, I come from an aged Sony Xperia X10 so the difference was certainly huge for me.

One caveat would be pricing though, the 16GB model sells roughly 100 EUR above the competition here in the Netherlands, and that boils down to a steep 600 EUR for the product as tested today. Whether or not you find that acceptable for a smart phone is up to you to decide. Perhaps you'll stumble into a nice carrier plan with a good discount deal. We do know that once you own the S3 you might fall a little in love with it.

So whether or not a smart phone is worth that kind of money I'll gladly leave to you to decide. Hardware, specs and feature wise though, the S3 is locked and loaded with everything you could wish for. Combine that with clever software and that razor-sharp and color rich display and yes, you will be a little in heaven if mobile gadgetry is your thing.

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