It wasn’t long ago that I got nerd chills from the speculative specifications of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S3. I think that was mostly due to the micro arc oxidation video that someone had linked to when it was speculated that the case would be some form of ceramic. The specifications were also none too shabby either although I was curious as to how Samsung was going to squeeze in such a massive display yet still keep the trim and taught design philosophy that has been a signature of the Galaxy series. After a torrent of leaks, rabid speculation and uncertainty about the actual announcement date Samsung has finally announced the Galaxy S3 at the Mobile Unpacked event in London.
I’ll have to be honest at first glance I wasn’t really thrilled with the design of the new Galaxy S3. I mean it’s not exactly ugly, the minimalistic front panel is in essence the same as nearly all its predecessors, but the softer, more rounded edges are a step away from the much sharper corners of its predecessor. The glossy back plate is also something I’m not entirely in love with either as the textured back of the S2 is something I’ve come to appreciate after using it for an extended period of time. Apart from those two complaints though I’ve got a feeling it will be a very nice handset to use, being only slightly thicker than the S2 (8.6mm vs 8.49mm) with another half an inch of screen size that boasts a much higher resolution.
Spec wise the Galaxy S3 is a pretty large jump up from the S2 in nearly every aspect. The dual core 1.2GHz Exynos processor has been replaced with a quad core 1.4GHz giving the S3 an incredible amount of computing power. The graphics card stays the same in name only as whilst Samsung isn’t releasing anything official on it yet some early benchmarks show that its easily beating out its predecessor by a wide margin and even takes the top spot in a number of tests. The most noticeable improvement though is of course the giant Super AMOLED screen that’s 4.8 inches across and is packing a resolution of 1280 x 720 (720p). Strangely though the RAM and cameras both remain the same as the predecessor so I’m guessing both of them classified as good enough and weren’t in need of any physical improvements.
Whilst the hardware is impressive it’s quite obvious that it was not the major focus of Samsung’s announcement; that honor belongs to the software.
The Galaxy S3 comes loaded with Android 4.0.4 that’s been modified with Samsung’s usual TouchWiz interface. Now I was a fan of that in the beginning, it definitely eased my transition into the Android world coming from an iPhone, but the stock ICS experience is very good so Samsung has their work cut out for them when it comes to improving on that. From what I’ve seen so far they’ve deviated heavily from the stock interface I assume mostly to enable the additional features they’ve integrated but I’ll guess I should wait and see them for myself before I pass judgement on them.
From a usability perspective Samsung has added in a few features that will make the phone much more user friendly. “Smart Stay” will recognize when you’re looking at the phone and adjust the brightness accordingly. This is similar to the auto-dimming feature on other phones but this goes a step further by looking for your face so it knows when you’ve put the phone down. Samsung has also duplicated Apple’s Siri in what they’re calling “S Voice” but has gone deeper with the platform integration, enabling you to do things like say “snooze” to delay an alarm. Finally “Smart Alert” (everything of theirs is smart apparently) will recognize when you’ve missed a call and have picked up the phone since, vibrating and putting the alerts front and center.
Samsung is also trying to make sharing between S3’s and other devices easier through their S Beam app which builds on the Android Beam present in ICS. In essence its a high speed data transfer program that works between Galaxy S3 handsets, utilizing both WiFi and NFC to get some pretty decent speeds (5MB/s from what Samsung tells us). Their AllShare Cast and AllShare Play features are also quite interesting allowing S3 owners to share video simultaneously between them or even wirelessly transmit their screen (usually a game) to say the lounge room TV. Whether those two features will prove useful however is something I’m not entirely sure about, but it is a rather novel little feature to include with the new handset.
Is this handset enough to tempt current S2 owners to pony up for the latest handset? Hard to say, I’m still only 9 months into owning mine and whilst I do have a serious amount of nerd lust for the specs of the S3 I’m not 100% sold on it yet. The heavy focus on the software is probably what is making me hesitant as whilst I found TouchWiz to be great for an iPhone user coming across to Android land I’ve since fallen in love with the stock ICS experience. I have no doubt that the people over xda-developers will eventually make a ROM that contains the best of both worlds so I can have my cake and eat it too but then again I’m not your typical Samsung user. In that regard then I think that the S3 will have more than enough to tempt current owners across, and I’m probably just talking tough right now in order to keep up some blog cred 😉
