Samsung Galaxy S III Indepth Review

1. Introduction2. Design Exploration and Display3. Samsung TouchWiz Nature UX4. Samsung Exclusives, Other Applications5. Stock Browser, TouchWiz Keyboard6. Wireless Connectivity7. Multimedia Playback8. Hardware Information and Benchmarks9. Camera Quality10. Battery Life and Heat11. Closing Thoughts12. View All Pages

Samsung has stolen the Android show in recent years with their Galaxy series and each iteration of its S line has taken the Korean brand ever closer to Apple-like levels of anticipation, excitement and sales figures. With the Galaxy S III, Samsung hopes to continue, and even exceed, their own expectations of their latest flagship device.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is the direct successor to the Galaxy S II, a phone that has sold over 20 million units to date, so from the start it has high goals to live up to. A look at the most basic of specification sheets will reveal that the Galaxy S III has a bigger and better display and a faster processor over its predecessor.

More importantly is perhaps the Galaxy’s main rival, the HTC One X, which we recently reviewed and will be mentioned periodically throughout this review.

Key specifications:

• 4.8 inch Super AMOLED HD 1280×720 display
• Protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 2
• Samsung Exynos 4412 chipset
• 1.4 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 processor
• ARM Mali400 MP4 CPU
• 1 GB of RAM
• 16, 32 or 64 GB of internal storage
• MicroSD slot supporting 64 GB cards
• 8 MP rear camera with 1080p video recording
• 1.9 MP front facing webcam
• Quad band HSPA+ (850/900/1900/2100)
• WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 4.0 LE
• NFC, Wi-Fi Direct and S Beam
• 2100 mAh, 7.98 Wh Li-ion battery
• Weighs 133 grams
• A mere 8.6mm thick
• Full dimensions are 137 x 71 x 8.6 mm
• Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich with Samsung’s TouchWiz Nature UX

The Samsung Galaxy S III has your typical candy bar form factor that has been so popular for the last five years. An obvious difference from feature phones of times long ago is the noticeable size difference.

The Galaxy is right at the verge of being just too large for comfortable one handed usage; an extra millimetre anywhere would likely put it over the edge.

The curved rear corners mean that it sits very nicely in hand and is rather ergonomic; a welcome improvement over the One X. Contrary, the One X has the better looking design – although the point is up to the eye of the beholder.

I admit that the Galaxy looks cheap and rather dull in pictures but feels solid and looks nice but unassuming in the flesh. This is coming from someone that hated the look of it (in pictures) when it was unveiled in London.

The front of the smartphone is dominated by the 4.8 inch display (more to come), the home button that is iconic to the Samsung Galaxy S series and its surrounding menu and back capacitive buttons.

I wasn’t too sure about the physical home button at first but a few weeks later it’s a welcome addition. The home button also doubles as wake button.

Someone at Samsung has done their research and put the back button on the right hand side, although the inclusion of the legacy menu (long press for search) key is questionable. However, this does mean that the three dot on-screen menu button never appears like it does so often on the HTC One X (although an upcoming update will help rectify this) so in the end it’s a fair trade-off.

This also means there is no room for a dedicated multitasking button which results in an extended one second period holding the home button before the multitasking overlay appears. The buttons themselves light up to become visible and illuminate the surrounding frosted white plastic in the dark – which I think is extremely cool.

Above the display is the RGB notification LED which can be set to alert you to notifications in many different colours. Some Samsung branding sits below the speaker while on the right are some light and proximity sensors and the 1.9 MP front facing camera.

Surrounding the thin bezel is the beginning of a silver faux-metallic rim that continues to the back of the phone, only to be interrupted by the battery cover.

It is curved down the left and right edges of the phone in the form of a wave and this is perhaps where Samsung “designed for humans, inspired by nature” motto originates from.

The right edge is home to the power button – a welcome sight where phones are forever getting taller. It allows you to wake and sleep the phone without having to modify your grip.

On the left edge is a rather small volume rocker (at least compared to HTC phones I have used in the past) and is sufficiently located far enough down the phone as to not get in the way in landscape orientation.

The top edge is home to the 3.5mm headphone jack, secondary microphone and the slot allowing you to remove the battery cover. Down the bottom is where the Micro USB slot is, it is also capable of other neat functions such as MHL mirroring and USB On-The-Go.

The primary microphone is also located here.

The rear of the phone is home to the LED flash, the 8 MP camera and loud speaker spread in a neat row. The camera lens is actually slightly exposed but shouldn’t result in any scratches. The speaker could have been located in a better place as I found it to be easily muffled whilst playing games or using it in its landscape orientation.

The rear cover is a glossy white finish and it can get a bit greasy after a few days of use. In order to get that feeling of security back, a quick wipe with something as simple as a cotton shirt is all it takes.

Peeling off the rear cover unveils the 7.98 Wh Li-ion battery, MicroSD and Micro SIM slots. As witnessed on the Galaxy Note, the rear cover is fairly flexible.

Bundled in with the battery is the NFC chip so this is something to be aware of if you go hunting for unofficial extended batteries.

The internal storage can be boosted by a MicroSD card up to 64GB in size. Access to the SIM slot is blocked by the battery so quick switching of SIM cards is not a possibility.

The Display

The 4.8 inch Super AMOLED HD display has a 1280 x 720 resolution. The lack of a “Plus” in the display type means that the infamous Pentile matrix is present. However, in reality there are more annoying things to complain about on the phone.

Small text in browsers is still easily readable, though non-Pentile displays like the one on the HTC One X have slightly clearer and sharper text.

The AMOLED also means that blacks are pure blacks, giving it an infinite contrast ratio. The boost to sharpness and clarity this contrast boost gives makes up for the Pentile matrix 90% of the time. It is not the brightest display out there but still remains fairly visible outside.

The display also has a faint blue hue to it which for the most part isn’t noticed without a comparison device. Viewing angles are again strong, but can’t quite match the Super LCD 2 display of the One X – something that should never be used as a pro for the One X.

As is standard with Super AMOLED displays colours by default are oversaturated. Fortunately for those who prefer more natural colours Samsung includes four colour modes; dynamic, standard, natural and movie that respectively decrease colour saturation. Personally, I prefer the standard mode no matter what I may be doing on the phone.

Furthermore, Samsung’s settings for auto brightness seem a bit on the low side but not overly so – it’s all in the quest for extended battery life.

At the end of the day the Galaxy S III’s display is very impressive. It’s not quite on the level of the One X but unless you have both phones you will likely never notice the slight difference.

Samsung has combined the latest version of Android, 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, with a much needed overhaul of its own user interface. They are terming this skin “TouchWiz Nature UX”.

The user experience of TouchWiz is largely positive. It is by far the smoothest Android user interface I have encountered in a long time and for once is truly iOS smooth. Looking past raw performance, the interface reminds me a bit of Windows in the fact that menus and customisation options run deep.

The ‘nature’ branding begins with the lockscreen, dragging your finger across the screen will cause waves to ripple across the screen. This function can be disabled in the settings and you’ll be presented with a more traditional stock Android 4.0 look, but why would you want to get rid of it?

You can also add up to four application shortcuts at the base of the lockscreen. As is expected of newer Androids the ability to access the notification area from the lockscreen is present.

Other additions to the lockscreen include an interactive stock and news ticker, weather widget, dual clock for roaming and an owner’s information string. There is also a gesture ability to launch the camera from the lockscreen by holding the display and rotating the phone. It works just fine, but it feels slightly awkward with such a large phone.

Personally, I prefer having the camera linked to one of the lockscreen shortcuts.

Security wise there is the standard PIN, password, pattern and face unlock options but what Samsung has added is another gesture based option called motion. This works just fine but like the camera gesture, it feels a bit awkward. Since I’m not a security fanatic the default swipe to unlock function was active the majority of the time.

On to the homescreens now, you can have up to seven or as few as one. Limitless scrolling is present which is a nice touch, however the wallpaper remains static. There is room for four shortcuts or folders across the bottom, alongside the application drawer link which is located in the right corner.

Pinch zooming outwards reveals all of the homescreens. From here you can change the default or main homescreen or rearrange the order of them.

The notification area on TouchWiz is one of the most functional I have witnessed in a while. It includes quick toggles for a massive array of functions, ten if I have to be precise. In case you forget what carrier you’re on that information is included as well as the date and a link to the settings menu.

Below that are all of your notifications that can be cleared at once using the provided shortcut or by swiping them to the left or right.

What makes it truly awesome is the fact that the notification area is accessible in fullscreen applications. Ever wondered what that notification ringtone was related to but didn’t want to exit your game? No worries – just drag down on the bezel and the notification preview area will appear, dragging down on that will reveal the entire notification area.

The homescreen wallpaper follows you to the application drawer; a welcome feature compared to the bland grey background I’m used to on HTC’s phones of late.

You can sort applications by an alphabetical 4×5 grid, personalised grid or alphabetical list. I personally preferred the alphabetic grid layout just because I don’t like the randomness or unneeded lengthiness of the others.

Up top are separate tabs for widgets and downloaded applications. Somewhat annoyingly the applications here are sorted from oldest to newest.

Hitting the menu key brings up the ability to head to Google’s Play Store, mass uninstall applications and hide applications. This last option is still useful even under Android 4.0 as Samsung has prevented some applications from being disabled.

Multitasking works just like you would expect on the Galaxy S III – for the most part very nicely, Samsung is not as aggressive with their memory management as other phones. The multitasking overlay is 90% identical to stock Android 4.0. You can either tap windows to switch to that application or swipe them to the left or right to clear them.

With the necessary introduction to TouchWiz now over we can now get into some of the bundled applications Samsung has included; a list that includes S Voice, S Memo and S Planner.

S Voice

I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of apps where you try to strike up a conversation with your phone. With S Voice you can do all sorts of neat and to be honest things that would probably be completed faster if you used hands over voice.

It is able to open applications just fine – at least ones that are baked into Android and other popular ones such as Facebook or Twitter. Asking S Voice to open an application such as Riptide GP, Google Reader, Chrome Beta or Astro File Manager results in pure user frustration.

Calendar appointments made through S Voice is buggy. It asks for the time and gets the reply “midday” but thinks I’m saying “good day” or something relatively unrelated and this then becomes the appointment title.

There is a customisable wake up command that can launch Siri from the lockscreen (swipe to unlock security only). There are four further customisable slots that allow you to do some rather basic operations such as unlocking the phone, checking for missed calls and opening the camera. It works well in practice and is perhaps the most interesting thing about S Voice but Samsung warns that it “may drain your battery”.

You are able to make calls and send texts in addition to all of this, but it further raises the question, why? It’s slower (in most usage cases) and struggles to recognise my voice clearly roughly half of the time. Of course, those people who have US accents are more likely to have success.

There is the option to launch S Voice with a double tab of the home button but this then causes the responsiveness of returning to the homescreen to slow noticeably, so this little function has been disabled since day three of my ownership. I just find S Voice (and Siri and all other voice assistants for that matter) little more than a gimmick …. well until a truly impressive one comes along.

S Memo

S Memo is more than advanced than your standard note taking application but is not truly taken advantage of without the additional C Pen accessory. Features like adding pictures, handwriting recognition (works alright) and modifiable pen settings are all present. Multiple pages can be created that turns a single memo into a stack.

You can also attach audio recordings and if you don’t fellow peers accessing your top secret notes users can lock it and secure it with a pin. Once you’re done creating random sketches out of boredom or creating a masterpiece you can export it to the gallery or as a PDF.

S Memo is a nice touch but I didn’t find myself using it at all in a real life usage scenario.

S Planner

If you’re looking for the stock Google Calendar application, don’t bother. Samsung has replaced it with their own S Planner calendar application. Users are able to pinch zoom in and out, going from a year view to a day view. For the most part it is your standard calendar application but there are a few things that set it apart.

Quick add is a very simple and painless to add tasks in little time. It works well for instructions like “Finish review Sunday 10am” but doesn’t appear to work for something a bit more complex such as “Finish review 1/7 10am to 1pm”. It still works but it ends up with the title “Finish review 10am to 1pm” and makes the event last the entire day. It’s not a major issue but it would be nice if it worked fully.

S Planner can also double as a to-do list with tasks. They integrate into the base calendar and there there is also a dedicated task tab for them.

Smart Stay

Smart Stay is where the front camera keeps an eye on you and if it doesn’t see you looking at the display it will sleep the display in the hope of prolonging battery life. Obviously it won’t work in the dark but I have had it enabled for a couple weeks and it does come in useful. I haven’t noticed any additional battery drain as a result of it being enabled either.

Gestures

Samsung is pushing their gesture and motion based software additions hard with the Galaxy S III but if you ask me most of them are rather pointless. For example there are the “tilt to zoom” and “pan to move icon” motion gestures. One allows you to zoom in or out of the screen while browsing the web or images while the latter allows users to move icons around the homescreen by tilting the device.

Both of which are inherently pointless while also being frustrating to use.

The only gestures of any real interest are direct call and tap to top. When in a text messaging conversation or contact card bringing the phone to your face will automatically call them. Tap to top works by double tapping the top of the phone while in a list and it will return you to the top.

One final motion gesture to note is swiping your palm across the display to take a screenshot, however screenshots can be taken just as easily by combing the power and home buttons.

Other Applications

Apart from the three main applications on the previous page there is also a small collection that can be downloaded. Some of them include a barometer reader, application monitor and KiesCast which is a podcast application.

We can’t ignore the list of Samsung-provided software that won’t be covered in the review so here we go:

• AllShare Play – media sharing application
• ChatON – Samsung’s chat client
• Flipboard – A popular news reader that was exclusive to the Galaxy S III until last week
• Game Hub – Game store
• More Services – Directs you to download Samsung applications not installed by default
• My Files – Basic yet effective file manager
• S Suggest – Samsung wants to suggest applications to users
• Samsung Apps – Samsung’s app store

Fortunately the list of pointless applications is rather small, however four of them could be merged into one application without complaints from anyone. The best thing to come out this list is an integrated file manager and a free copy of Real Racing 2.

Internet Browser

The browser Samsung has included with the S III is quite easily the best browsing experience I have ever had on a smartphone. If it had a larger display I would quite happily draw comparisons with a low-end but relatively decent notebook.

Samsung includes all their usual goodies such as RSS feed notification, tabbed browsing, incognito mode, reading mode, save for offline use pages and desktop mode. However, there is one fairly important feature missing: text reflow. Some users have speculated that this is how Samsung has achieved the impressive browser performance.

I didn’t notice the lack of text reflow bothering me at all, and if it happens to annoy you, just increase the text size in the accessibility options and you’re good to go.

Samsung has always included a Super AMOLED panel in their Galaxy S line-up and the grandson of the original is no different. Due to the makeup of AMOLED panels it requires no energy to generate a black image, while white images drain the battery the most. This is why Samsung has included a brightness and colouring tweaks menu. From here you can change the brightness and browser power savings based on display.

There are four levels; default and three more. Each extra level decreases the white level and gives the display more of a grey-blue tint.

The actual performance (and I’m not even talking about the benchmarks mentioned later on) is impressive. I have tried to slow down the browser however possible but the greatest amount of stutter I can recall were little more than small stutters. I was able to load a 1080p YouTube video and let it play while randomly flick-scrolling around the tab at full speed.

That should make it obvious was more standard usage is like, if it isn’t, you can flick up and down pages and pinch zoom in and out with only the smallest hints of redrawing going on.

Page loading was just as good as Chrome and that speed is quick. Over a decent network connection I will be surprised if I ever hear of anyone complaining about page loading speeds.

The TouchWiz Keyboard

Samsung has decided to only bundle its own TouchWiz keyboard where the stock Android 4.0 keyboard would have been a very welcome addition.

The keyboard tries to think ahead of the actual user by predicting and typing the word (rather than merely suggesting it) which makes true touch typing rather painful. Type in “Hel” and “Help” shows up in the text input area, even when you intend to type “Hello”. I tried to adapt to it for a couple weeks and was no closer to get used to it by the end of that time.

If you disable prediction entirely (I found no way to only disable Samsung guessing random words) then it gets better – if you can live without prediction. There is no middle ground where most users want to be. I try to keep my phones as stock as possible while reviewing them but for once I could not resist switching to Swiftkey 3 – a keyboard that can actually learn predictions without additional user input.

Samsung does manage to do something right though, the keyboard is relatively compact in terms of vertical space consumed which makes typing on the 4.8 inch display with one hand rather easy. Also included is a neat clipboard gallery and handwriting recognition isn’t that bad either.

I said it in the HTC One X review and I’ll say it again, Android OEMs should just license proper keyboards such as Swiftkey, and if they want, skin them to match their own interface.

Cellular Connectivity

The international edition of the Samsung Galaxy S III has quad band support for GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) and HSPA+ (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz) cellular connectivity. The result is that it is able to work on the vast majority of mobile networks around the world. If you want a LTE version then you’ll have to look at carriers in your region that currently support LTE 4G. Cellular speeds are theoretically capped at 21 Mb/s down and 5.76 Mb/s up.

In testing we found speeds to be slightly better than the HTC One X, even though reception quality wasn’t quite matched. In speedtests we were again capped at roughly 4 Mb/s and 1.8 Mb/s up so this is definitely to do with our area and carrier. Chances are your results will be different.

Call Quality

The Samsung Galaxy S III’s call speaker is on the louder side of average. While it may be loud, call quality didn’t overly amaze us but that isn’t to say it’s bad. Voices were easily understandable but they weren’t overly clean. We had no complaints from people on the other end of the line.

Wi-Fi

The Galaxy S III supports dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n networks and on the whole we were impressed with performance. It was able to max our 15 Mb/s down and 1.2 Mb/s up connection with ease while offering pings equivalent to my desktop connected over Ethernet.

Wi-Fi Hotspots are supported and while I haven’t had the chance to test this extensively but we found it to work just fine. Wi-Fi Direct is present but for whatever reason have not been able to get it to work, an issue that is much more likely to do with me rather than the phone.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 4.0 LE with A2DP (audio streaming) and EDR (faster data transfers) works fine – although as is typical of Bluetooth is rather slow. A 3.6 MB .mp3 file took just over a minute to transfer.

I was able to easily pair the Galaxy S III with my Bluetooth mouse but it is rather pointless as every button is a tap to the phone. Although I am sure there is an application that I am not aware of that can rectify this.

NFC and S Beam

NFC is supported like most new Android devices and this means Android Beam is present to quickly share (some) information and files across devices. Obviously this works well but Samsung has gone a step further with S Beam. S Beam combines NFC (for initial pairing) and Wi-Fi Direct to transfer data between selected devices, a list that is currently confined to the Galaxy S III.

So I went and found someone with an S III to test it out; with no success. Why it didn’t work I’m not entirely sure, perhaps it was something to do with our settings or the files we were trying to transfer.

Video Playback

The Samsung Galaxy S III’s video player handled most files I had on hand with relative ease and I didn’t notice any slowdowns. A list of working files included high definition .mkv and .mp4 files, however it would not play a 1080p H.264 .mov file or a 40 Mb/s .mkv file. If you have a lot of high quality files you’re better off using something like MX Player instead.

A neat addition to the software is the live previews that can be seen under the thumbnail view or under the chapter preview option within a video. Users can also find their desired video through the folder schemes of the phone’s storage.

In addition to this, Samsung has what they call pop-up play. While playing a video normally with one tap of a button the video reduces in size and overlays whatever is on the screen behind it. You can move it around as you please but cannot change its size. Android runs completely normally behind this but I see limited usage possibilities of this. Perhaps if they allowed its size to be modified and added pause/play buttons it would be useful.

Music Application

Samsung’s bundled music application has a music square function that can scan the music library and sort applications into different categories. Sliding over different parts of the square will result in different songs being selecting depending upon excitement, passion, joyful and calming ratings. I thought this was pretty cool and found it to be rather accurate.

Users are able to swipe the album art to skip through songs. Folder view is also supported for those people like me who refuse to rely solely upon file tags. Streaming music from nearby devices worked well but all songs are thrown into one endless list rather than being categorised.

Audio Quality

The Galaxy S III has a Wolfson DAC which results in better audio quality without the need for gimmicky audio equalisers like Beats Audio. Personally, I could barely notice the premium audio experience on the S III when compared to the One X, but admittedly I am no audiophile.

Every audio engineer you meet will probably tell you that if you want the best audio experience then you should buy the Galaxy S III, however most people are not going to notice the difference.

Furthermore, the external speaker is about the same quality as the HTC One X’s but is considerably louder. However, it is much easier to muffle on the Galaxy.

Hardware Information

The Samsung Galaxy S III has the Exynos 4412 (also known as the Exynos 4 Quad) chipset inside that includes a 1.4 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 ARM processor that is blistering fast and the just as impressive ARM Mali-400 MP4 GPU. This is actually the same GPU that was seen in the Galaxy S II last year but it has received a massive clock speed boost.

The chipset itself is manufactured on a 32nm HKMG process and Samsung claims that this results in 40% less power drain compared to their 45nm process.

There is a full gigabyte of LPDDR2 memory under the hood but thanks to the Mali GPU requiring some for its own processing users are offered 780 MB of RAM for their multitasking needs.

The S III either comes with 16 GB or 32 GB of internal storage (a 64 GB model is coming later) and in addition to this is a MicroSD slot supporting SDXC cards up to 64 GB in size. Instead of the traditional 2 GB for applications, and 10 GB for everything else method, Samsung has merged all internal storage into one large partition. In the case of my 16 GB unit this means 11.35 GB of user accessible storage.

Hardware Performance

Well what we witness here comes as no real surprise to me. The Exynos 4412 chip is the fastest we have seen pass through our doors and this is reflected in every single benchmark at our disposal.

We have realised we are starting to get vsync limited in GLBenchmark (also Nenamark2) so we have also included offscreen results.

For the most part, the Samsung Galaxy S III is roughly 10% faster than the Tegra 3 powered HTC One X. However the Galaxy takes noticeable leads in GLBenchmark and many of the browser-based tests, even going as far as more than doubling our previous best score in Peacekeeper.

Camera Application

The camera application has not really been updated at all as part of the TouchWiz Nature UX interface since our last encounter with TouchWiz but the camera software is still full of functionality.

The four icons on the left hand side can be changed to various different settings that are otherwise found in the settings menu.

Settings of interest include outdoor visibility which makes the display more visible in daylight by oversaturating certain colours, auto contrast and anti-shake.

Over to the left is toggle to switch between photo and video capture, camera button and a link to the gallery.

Included are quite a few scene modes that appear to do little more than change exposure, ISO and white balance settings. There are many different shooting modes, a list the includes single, burst, HDR, smile, beauty, panorama, cartoon, share shot and buddy photo share. Of this list beauty, share shot and buddy photo share seem rather pointless.

Burst mode takes 20 images in quick succession (about 4 seconds) and saves them all to your gallery without allowing you to sort through them first. You can enable best photo which burst captures 8 images and then selects what it thinks to be the best photo.

The 8 MP sensor produces images that are into JPEG files 2 to 4 MB in size. 1080p video capture is saved as MP4 with a data rate of roughly 17,500 kbps and audio bit rate or 130 kbps. The 1.9 MP front facing camera can capture 720p video and 1.9 MP (1:1 ratio) photos.

If anti-shake is disabled then you can capture 6 MP (rear camera) or 720p (front camera) images while recording video.

Camera and Video Samples

Standard Samples

100% Crops



HDR

Panoroma

Video Samples
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiVabt95Ao4&list=PLA82B2C78BAB4723C&index=1&feature=plpp_video'] [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyriRjc1Adk&list=PLA82B2C78BAB4723C&index=2&feature=plpp_video']

I am very impressed by the Galaxy S III’s camera and while things like burst mode and the auto face tag features personally don’t appeal to me massively they’re nice to have. As far as photo and video capture goes, it is very nice coming from a smartphone.

It should be said that the camera in the S III is ever so slightly better than the One X, although both have impressive cameras.

Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy S III has a removable 2100 mAh battery that lasts for 7.98 watt hours. This battery is only significantly outnumbered by Samsung’s Galaxy Note and is a step ahead of the 1800 mAh battery in the HTC One X.

I found battery life to be impressive and would easily last me through an entire day with sustained usage. It could stretch to two days of use with approximately 2 hours of screen time daily.

I tallied up my battery results from a few weeks of using the Galaxy S III and the results are as follows. It was on for an average of just over 19 hours between charges, during which the screen was used for 2h 45m on average and at the end of each charge roughly 35% was left over.

As a point of reference usage would include 30 mins of music playback, 50 mins of video, 15 mins of gaming with the rest of the screen time taken up largely by checking email, RSS feeds and browsing the internet. While at home it was connected to my Wi-Fi network and outside of that mobile data was enabled with auto-syncing of many accounts.

I believe that other users can produce even better statistics than this with only a few basic tweaks that anyone is able to set up. Comparatively, this is leaps and bounds ahead of what I experienced with the HTC One X.

Heat

Heat issues were basically non-existent during my entire time with the Galaxy S III. The only times I noticed it heating up was while playing graphics intensive games and the rear of the device warmed to touch. Unlike the HTC One X this heat did not spread to the display or start to concern me in anyway.

The Samsung Galaxy S III has been my daily device for the last month and after the initial hype I still remain very impressed by what is easily the android smartphone on the market.

The 133g mass does not feel heavy at all and the shell fits extremely well into the palm of the hand. It could be said that its design doesn’t look that impressive and I can relate to the statement. It certainly isn’t the most beautiful phone available but there is no reason to avoid the Galaxy S III based solely based on the appearance.

The 4.8 inch Super AMOLED HD display is a class leading product. The infinite contrast works wonders for image quality and I certainly welcome the the saturated colours. Overall, the display is amazing and it will be down to personal preference if you prefer the AMOLED of the Galaxy S III or the Super LCD 2 of the HTC One X.

We were thoroughly impressed by the TouchWiz Nature UX, it is very smooth and not feature impaired. That said, it is not the prettiest looking user interface, and some stock applications appear to be a bit ‘mix ’n’ match'.

In regards to performance, the Exynos 4412 chipset with the quad-core processor (running at 1.4 GHz) takes the crown in all eleven of our benchmarks. If you want pure raw performance then that’s another reason to purchase the Galaxy S III.

It is also worth pointing out that the camera is very impressive and is perhaps the best implementation we have seen to date on a mobile device.

Other Phones to Consider

Right now the Galaxy only has one true competitor in the form of the HTC One X, which happens to be slightly cheaper. The One X has an arguably better design and has access to perks in some games, thanks to its Tegra 3 chipset.

Software Information

Our review unit was running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich with build number I9300XXALE8 however it just received an update to ALF2 as we were writing up the conclusion. This update apparently increases the amount of idle RAM by about 100 MB which should make the multitasking experience even better.

You can buy the Samsung Galaxy S III including a wealth of accessories direct from Amazon. The 16GB SIM free Marble White version is £437.99 inc vat, and the SIM free Pebble Blue version is £454.95 inc vat.

Pros

• Feels great in hand.
• Is the most future proof phone available today.
• Super AMOLED HD display is very impressive.
• Exynos 4412 processor is the fastest we’ve experienced.
• 16 or 32 GB internal storage plus MicroSD slot.
• Superior browsing experience.
• TouchWiz Nature UX runs very smooth and is much improved over previous versions.
• Only a couple of minor bugs and glitches noticed over a month of use.
• Impressive battery life.

Cons

• Loudspeaker is muffled very easily.
• No dedicated multitasking key.
• Stock keyboard is a pain to use.
• HTC Sense and AOSP could be considered better than TouchWiz.
• S Voice is largely a gimmick.

KitGuru says: If you are currently in the market for a high-end smartphone right now then there is only one phone I can recommend; the Galaxy S III. It is the most complete smartphone package available today – a title it will likely retain until later this year. At the end of the day Samsung reaffirms its dominance of the high-end Android market with the Galaxy S III.

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