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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shaolin95 - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
As much as I loved my Captivate and thought the GS2 was a nice upgrade , the GS3 is a let down (the USA version that is).Say what you want about the dual core being close to the quad but I can score higher Browsermark with my Galaxy Note international (@1.6ghz) than the GS3 USA version. And the real killer is the older GPU.
I am going to wait for Note 2...likely international version as well if they keep messing things up.
BioHazardous - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
It seems like it fails to impress in almost all tests, particularly battery life and WiFi performance. I wish the article was a little more critical of its shortcomings. The battery life is even less impressive when you consider it has a larger battery than the HTC One X.The only thing it really seems to have going for it vs the HTC One X is the microSD slot and removable battery.
When will the test results be added to the Bench?
IKeelU - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
...for HTC. The SGS3 looks like a fantastic phone, but the benchmarks, camera, and battery tests all show one or more "One" variants slightly besting the SGS3.Both companies have done a great job, but I think my money will go towards HTC this time around. Specifically the One S. Thanks to its lower (but still great) resolution it's really killing those games benchmarks.
Mbonus - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
I am very surprised that the SGIII was lagging in almost every benchmark to the HTC variants. My speculation is that Touchwiz must be incredibly invasive over the current version of Sense.One thing that needs to be tested is the multitasking. The HTC units have been reported to be very aggressive with killing background apps and some have speculated that this is how they are saving battery. It would be interesting to see how GSIII is handling multitasking.
redeemer777 - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
Why are you so suprised? Both have the same chipsets which mean HTC has imposed better optimizations. This is Android guys root your phone, if you're not happy.Mbonus - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
I'm most surprised in the battery department because of the physically larger battery of the SGS3.Impulses - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
People shouldn't have to root their devices to fix some of the silly memory tweaks HTC did, and yes, their memory optimizations are currently too aggressive.Impulses - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
I doubt dumping apps off memory to make more breathing room for Sense or whatever would help much with idle battery, it's not like you stop powering the memory either way.metafor - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
One thing to keep in mind is that Samsung likely spends a lot more time tuning their software stack for their Exynos processors than they do for others. Whereas HTC pretty much starts out with Qualcomm chips.That being said, considering they are launching all of their US GS3's based on the S4, I'm surprised it didn't get their ultra-fast browser that we saw in the international GS3 preview.
patycake57 - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
I,too, would appreciate knowing about the multitasking and how it compares with the One X. I bought the HOX (ATT) based on excellent reviews from many sites including this one, and have become more and more frustrated with the poor multitasking. Depending on your apps and pattern of usage, this may not bother you, but I cannot recommend the HOX to most that read AT (e.g. power users).I would very much like to see a first rate technical site like AT address multitasking, because for some, it can really alter the user experience beyond the technical specs/testing. Also, I think changes like this should be clearly disclosed by phone manufacturers, because if I would have known about this, I would not have purchased the HOX and waited for the SG3 or next Nexus phone. At this time, I'm not aware of a non-root fix, and HTC has not acknowledged it as a bug.