Samsung Galaxy S III Review - AT&T and T-Mobile USA Variants
by Brian Klug on June 20, 2012 12:01 AM ESTThe SGS3 with MSM8960 also captures 1080p30 video, just like the Exynos 4412 based international SGS3. I captured videos at 1080p, 720p, and with image stabilization turned on at the usual test location, and like normal uploaded a copy of the video to YouTube, and our servers for you to download without the transcode.
The USA SGS3s encode video at an even higher bitrate than the SGS2. It’s 17.0 Mbps H.264 high profile CABAC with 1 reference frame. For comparison, SGS2 was 15 Mbps high profile SGS2 was actually 17.0 Mbps as well. Audio is 128 kbps 48 kHz stereo AAC. The 720p video encode paramaters are a bit lower, at 12.0 Mbps H.264 baseline, with the same audio settings.
Last time around, SGS2 was among the best, if not the best, for video encode. The SGS3 is likewise using the best encode settings I’ve seen thus far at 17 Mbps high profile. Best of all, the SGS3 doesn’t drop any frames from what I can tell, as the end FPS in MediaInfo was exactly 30, and watching the videos I don’t see anything dropped. It’s curious to me too that this is being done (as far as I know) on the MSM8960 when partners like HTC are still using 10 Mbps baseline on their highest end products and dropping frames.
The other things worth mentioning about video encode is that the 1080p mode without anti shake now uses the full field of view of the sensor in the horizontal direction. This is a big improvement over the center crop modes I see a lot. If you turn anti shake on, you do appear to lose some pixels around the edges (which is expected, probably 16 or so in x and y). Unfortunately, the EIS mode appears to be severely glitched, producing very shuddery video which jumps around as EIS works. I’d keep this turned off until it gets fixed.
Left - still shooting mode (16:9 6 MP), Right - video capture (1080p) with same Field of View
Inside the video capture UI everything is pretty much the same as the still image capture UI. What’s worth mentioning is that like the One X, SGS3 has a capture button which enables you to save full size 1080p frames while capturing video. My favorite new feature is suble - after tapping to focus once while video recording, you’ll get a box with AF in brackets.
Tapping on this stops CAF (continuous auto focus) from running, effectively giving you an AF lock. This is super useful as I often read many complaints about the breathing effect that CAF adds to video capture while it runs - hold this down and it won’t run until you release it - a very useful feature if you’re serious.
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apoorvnaik - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
http://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-4448This link says that the phone supports Band I, V, II and AWS.
Does that mean it is a pentaband ?
I'm totally confused by looking at so many different specs. :(
Mnalley95 - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
I am currently deciding between the one x and the sgs3, and the two most important factors to me are the battery life and the RAM differences. Nearly every other site has the one x with pretty awfu battery life in their tests, usually with the galaxy nearly doubling the results, but on all of your tests the one x appears fantastic, which is great. All I want is to be able to use my phone at least 12 hours with moderate to heavy use on LTE, so the differing battery results on different sites concerns me. Is there any explanation for this, anyone? Also, the RAM difference could be big in future OS updates, does anyone agree? Which device would be the most future proof? The sgs3 is also easier to hack and will probably have a larger community behind it, which is important. I think I personally like the one X better overall, but if the galaxy beats it in the categories I mentioned I would definitely be happy with it instead. Anyone that cares to share their opinions and answer my questions would be appreciated.Eridanus - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
It's a good thing the S3 has an SD card reader, unlike the Nexus.(Am I going to get censured again?)
ItsaRaid - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
Brian, both reviews were awesome- how do you cut through the chase and garbage.? Which is the better of the 2? Lets throw away all the crazy stuff, preferences, UI's bells and whistles. I HAVE A Nightmare with a Atrix2 and AT&T. I don't want to duplicate it.Wifi connectivity, receive signal functionality, browser use....lag, forced closes, move up or down on a page, my A2 will freeze and won't flick IP or down on a page. It took over a.Monte to load Annand tech on this phone! Audio output is critical to me, I have a sensory hearing deficit. How does the amount of volume compare to the Atrix2. That's all the good the A2 has...lots of volume and a bright crisp display.
I hope you will respond to this.
Thank you!
Narcopolypse - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
The reason S Voice responds so much like Siri is because they both query Worlfram Alpha (an independent system owned by neither company) for their answers. SRI (the company that made Siri) just added in a fake conversation system (20 year old tech) to tell you lame jokes and act like a back talking bitc# when it can't find an answer for you. None of this is new. And yes, Apple has already sued over it and tried to have sales of the GS3 banned in the US.steven75 - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Or it could be that S Voice is pretty much a complete clone of Siri from the interface to the functionality. Voice control isn't new, but the complete cloning should be obvious to even the most egregious Android/Samsung fanboy.If we can't agree on that, then we'll probably disagree on other things such as whether 2+2=4.
iCrunch - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
Oh come on, I've read multiple reviews and they are 100% consistent in concluding that Samsung's S-Voice doesn't come anywhere close to being as good or accurate or whatever as Apple's Siri. Is my troll/BS detector set to too sensitive or am I picking up some actual trolling here?uhuznaa - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Some people seem to think that this needs just voice recognition and a web service to turn to. In fact the real problem here is actually making sense out of what the user said and this is not just a technical problem.I have no idea where Samsung got/bought/licensed the AI here, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the SRI stuff Apple got its hands on were better.
ProPhotoman - Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - link
I bought a GS3, and the total ram is only 1.6GB .I checked two more in the store, and they are the same. Why is Samsung publishing it as 2gb?cmdrdredd - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
A portion is reserved for system usage.