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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
107 Comments
View All Comments
Impulses - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
Did the CDMA variants get skipped because Anand usually reviews those (I think?) And he's been traveling or just luck of the draw? Is the review of the EVO LTE and other One variants still coming? Just curious really, I know sometimes battery life results vary wildly between GSM and CDMA versions of the same basic design, throw LTE in there and still-growing networks and it's something worth looking at.alik - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
Visit http://samsunggalaxysiiicellphone.com/ to get best price and deals for Samsung Galaxy S IIITorrijos - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
In a recent article (HTC One X) you plotted a graph of the battery life (time) divided by the battery capacity (Watt-hours), it would be interesting to get it at each review or at least with reviews marking the arrival of a new version of an OS, in order to check whether their energy efficiency is going in the right direction.falc0ne - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
Packed with all the latest technology but in a soap-bar shape. Galaxy SII looks much better.Someone said here shame doesn't have "pentaband support". You don't need that. What you need is that the phone you purchase to support the band of your operator. That's all. More than that, lately people usually purchase the phone straight from the operator
Zoomer - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
That doesn't help if you switch operators often.www.dasinu.ro - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
nice post...http://www.dasinu.rojjj - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
still a very poor selection for battery tests (just web and talk time,what are you testing dumbphones?) ,no storage perf tests,at this point i'm about to give up on hoping you guys can do better.bmgoodman - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
Can you start doing some tests of Bluetooth, both for voice and music? With my Galaxy SII, I've almost quit using my car's integrated hands-free system. Five years in my car using a Sony Ericsson with the handsfree and I almost NEVER had a complaint. Now people are almost always asking me to call back later!BabelHuber - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
I had the same problem regarding Bluetooth. My good old Nokia Symbian phones supported rSAP. Android, iOS and Windows Phone do not.That's why I bought the SGS2, it was the only Android phone supporting rSAP.
In its wisdom, Samsung has removed the rSAP capability with ICS, though.
Fortunately Android is an open system, so I could root it and install an rSAP app.
This was a Sunday afternoon of work, though.
The app is here: http://www.android-rsap.com/installation.html
Angry AtAndroid - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Not Samsung removed it, but that big bully google. It is not supported by android.Complaints going on about this for YEARS. See the google code site.
Issue 4402: rSAP / Sim access bluetooth profile
1829 people starred this issue.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?can...