Samsung Galaxy S III Review - AT&T and T-Mobile USA Variants
by Brian Klug on June 20, 2012 12:01 AM ESTIt seems like just a short while ago that I played with my first Galaxy S device, a Captivate, and later was handed the T-Mobile Galaxy S 4G at MWC. Samsung has come an incredibly long way since those first devices, and built out the Galaxy S branding to a point where it has real recognition and traction internationally and in the US. In addition, the big pieces of the puzzle have now been largely solved - consistent naming, specs, and appearance for each device carrying the SGS3 name. Once those are squared way, getting the phone to resonate with normal consumers becomes a much easier prospect, and Samsung gets that. In fact, I’m told that the SGS3 will get the biggest marketing push in Samsung’s history.
Beyond all of that stuff are the phones themselves. While the rounded shape and polycarbonate construction for SGS3 isn't the unibody ceramic that found its way onto everyone’s wish list, in retrospect such things were a bit too lofty to expect in much volume this soon. It’s no surprise to me that there’s an obvious parallel between reactions to the SGS3 and iPhone 4S. They’re both now the predominant brands in the smartphone space, with similar following. I made the case at one point that having that kind of reaction is actually telling for the Galaxy S following.
As I’ve mentioned before, the device and form factor has grown on me considerably. I still wish the back was textured, instead of being the slick plastic that it is, and I still think that HTC has won the industrial design category this time. That said, there’s nothing overtly wrong with the phone. I hate idioms, but beauty really is in the eye of the beholder here, and while SGS3 isn’t a supermodel, it isn’t bad to look at either. You have to look at what else you gain with this type of design versus the competition - a big notification LED, real microSD card slot, removable battery, and easily accessible microSIM port. In addition, the large battery door grants you the opportunity to use extended batteries with an aftermarket battery door. These are things you lose if you move to some of the other space age form factors that might look and feel better, but ultimately aren’t expandable or customizable at all. It is just another tradeoff.
In the USA, the competition is primarily shipping phones based on the same SoC, and the result is the same level of UI snappiness and performance between the SGS3 USA and the One X (AT&T), EVO 4G LTE, and One S. Ultimately what will drive people to prefer one over the other will be the features around the edges, like camera, display, onboard storage, and expandability. The SGS3 takes some of the best video around, the largest display in its category, feels as smooth as the competition, and has expandable storage. Unfortunately where it does seem to lag behind is in the ever important in-hand feel, still camera capture (which has improved, but HTC's One camera comes out just ahead in low light), and HD SAMOLED with PenTile is still a divisive thing for some enthusiasts, in spite of how hard it is to notice on devices like SGS3. Overall I'm very positive about SGS3's prospects, however. There’s no doubt in my mind that SGS3 will be just as successful as its predecessors, if not more so.
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dijimoto - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
I just realized it was in the title ICS version 4.0.4, ugh...EJ257 - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
So does it use both GPS & GLONASS simultaneously? Or can you set a default and it'll switch over to the other system whenever signal from one of them gets to be too weak?Death666Angel - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
I enjoyed it a lot. I like the fact that 1080p video isn't cropped anymore. My cropped SGS2 1080p doesn't look that good and I use 720p as a result.The screen looks good too and mostly I think the SGS3 looks pretty good. But for me, it's not enough to make the upgrade from my SGS2. I just bought a nice chinese tablet (Cube U30GT if anyone wonders) which will keep me happy for some time to come. I won't upgrade this generation. WVGA resolution, SAMOLED+, Mali GPU and good custom ROM support are all enough for me, for now. Maybe next year Intel will bring something new or Android 5/6 will change things. But right now, my SGS2 does everything I need it to do.
Maybe I didn't notice it, but I didn't see any references to bootloader/custom ROMs. For me, whether or not a phone is easily rooted, hacked etc. is an important part of my purchase decision. Maybe you can include a short discussion of that in the future? If you did mention it, I apologize. :-)
chiza69 - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
I usually love your reviews Brian as they are often unique and give a different perspective compared to other tech sites. However, one thing that frustrates me, and is consistent in all your reviews is the performance category.All you do in this category is run benchmarks. Yes, benchmarks are always fun, but both the iPhone and most Windows Phones have proven that benchmarks do not make a system run smoothly. I mean look at the latest android phone, the Galaxy S3, with it's quadcore processor and top of the line GPU. Yes it is fast in benchmarks, but honestly it still cannot make Android as smooth as iOS.
All I would like to see is that you add a video of typical performance on the phone, especially with the browser.
name99 - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
"Clearly there is 380 MB absorbed for both preallocated GPU memory, and possibly DRM / baseband, and after that subtraction the only way to get dual channel (2x32b) LPDDR2 is to make the jump to two 1 GB LPDDR2 devices."I don't get this. Why can't you have a 1GiB and a 512MiB package? Are ARM memory controllers less sophisticated than Intel ones and unable to handle such a config? After all this sort of config is standard on Windows --- 3GiB back in the day when that was all Windows could handle, now 6GiB on your mid-range laptops that are too cheap to spring for 8GiB.
antony22 - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
well been waiting for some reviews of the GS3 I was going to get this or the EVO 4G lte on sprint but after a read the whole article I think I made my choice nowI cant believe that Samsung chose not to use the on board Wi-Fi and went with another chip when the on board is 28 nm while the BCM4334 is 45nm
when i was reading the battery life test I thought hmm that is odd that the HTC EVO has better life on wi- fi than the GS3 even when they use the same SOC now everything makes sense and also the GS3 is slower too on wi-fi
SanX - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
Brian,In the section about display pixel angular dimensions (0.933 arcmin) you have used word "pixel" while it is actually just the green subpixel angular size. BUT THAT IS WRONG! The largest problem is the red subpixels angular distance (and contrary to laws of physics much less blue). This gives dirty feel of solid colors of red part of spectrum and jagg of lines. THAT IS EXACTLY the main problem of the pentile displays. And that's red and blue distance TWO time larger the green one and of course IS visible very well - just place the screen of LG Nitro nearby.
Another problem is your 12 inch distance. Formally and practically the the optimal distance for reading is usually 10 inch (25 cm). This is also why in magnification of lens in physics 25cm is used. I typically take phone even closer - to 9". You barely stand pentile screens in this case.
We always forget, but ideally for proper scaling of small fonts, because we have digital, not analog screens, it's not a one pixel angular size must be unresolved by our eyes but around TWO stacked ones. That gives 600ppi requirement. Only after that we will not see visible difference (jumps) in line thickness when scale fonts.
Belard - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
So... with these current "smart" phones... do anyone of them have good enough speakers to actually wake a person up?That would be a NICE little added benchmark. How loud can the phone get.
I'm about to retire my SGS1... its speakerphone mode has always been garbage (being that it faced away from you) and the alarm itself has been pathetic. So bad, that I still us a 4 year old Sony dumb phone as wakeup alarm. Even when this stupid phone "rings", I miss half the calls because the speaker and its vibration are weak.
How about this... make phones that actually FEEL good in the hand, not some danty tablet-size thingy that you can barely hold onto with your finger tips that doesn't FIT in a pocket. Sure, its fine for those who wear a purse and it seems some guys are wearing purses or bags... that's fine.
But many of us guys put the phones in OUR pockets where there is money, wallets, keys and whatever.
The SGS1 was already too damn big to comfortly fit into a pocket... the S3 and now bigger S3 should just make it much worse.
Eridanus - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
SD card slot? So they screwed up only customers of their Nexus crap?apoorvnaik - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
As seen in your post, you say that a T-Mobile SGS3 will work on AT&T's network also but the specs on the T-Mobile's page say something else.Here's the link to the T-Mobile page
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/Phones/cell-phone-det...
I'm looking forward to buy this phone and just wanted to make sure that it could be used worldwide.