4 ms·

All I can say about this launch is that I can't believe how underwhelming the coverage was. TechCrunch wrote two short posts about the launch event and didn't l

by dkrich 14y ago

All I can say about this launch is that I can't believe how underwhelming the coverage was. TechCrunch wrote two short posts about the launch event and didn't laud or criticize the S3. In fact the only opinionated piece I saw at all was one explaining why Android isn't "actually" winning in the battle against iOS. This phone is in many ways a better device than the iPhone 4S. While Apple's accomplishments in mobile have been incredible, the fact that Samsung has closed the gap and in many ways surpassed the iPhone is extremely impressive. I don't think Apple is going to get much more mileage out of the "3.5 inches is the right size for a phone and the current iPhone form factor is the perfect design" argument. When you look at the 4S and then the S3 and then the 4S again, it feels like you are going back a generation. Now I have no doubt that Apple will impress with the iPhone 5, but I don't think that is coming until the October timeframe, so in the meantime, Samsung has jumped ahead of Apple in innovation. I can't wait to see what comes out of these two companies over the next several years. My point is not to criticize Apple, but rather that I would like to see a more open approach to Apple competitors. Samsung is for real and is developing devices that are at least as good as Apple in many ways and they deserve equal consideration, and that is good for everybody.

nextparadigms 14y ago
I think a lot of people were underwhelmed by the design. They've been iterating on pretty much the same design for years. It might make some sense if it was an iconic amazing design to begin with, but it never was. I also don't like the fact that Samsung seems to be going ever heavier with Touchwiz, instead of the opposite direction like HTC with Sense 4. At this point they are basically fighting Google's improvements, and just replacing them with their own. I think that's the wrong direction for them to take. It's one thing to have the Apple and Microsoft communities against you, but it's quite another if the Android community turns against you for screwing with Android too much. I don't like Samsung's direction, and I think they will feel it in revenues by the end of the year if they keep this up with other flagship devices. The Pentile screen was a real downer, too. I couldn't believe it myself that they actually used Pentile. That was probably the most shocking and disappointing thing for people expecting better hardware from Samsung. One thing I like about the Galaxy S3 - perhaps the only thing - is the processor. It's probably the best on the market right now in both CPU and GPU performance (the only one that beats the iPhone 4S in GPU right now). It seems to have crazy fast browsing. I saw Engadget loading their own website on it, and it was like instant. The benchmarks seem to confirm a significant increase in browser peformance compared to everyone else in the Browsermark test: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5810/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-performance-preview http://www.anandtech.com/show/5810/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-perf... This only makes me more excited for the upcoming Exynos 5250 chip with a totally new CPU (Cortex A15) and a totally new GPU and architecture (Mali T604). I'm hoping this chip will come out in both the next Nexus phone and in the Galaxy Note 2.
- taligent 14y ago
  I have to agree with the adding more and more layers on top of Android. It is ridiculous and will do nothing but increase the delay between updates which is already unacceptably poor. Android really needs to sort this UI layer mess out.
- eco 14y ago
  Does a pentile layout matter on a "retina display"? The pixels shouldn't be discernible at these resolutions. When the Galaxy Nexus came out there was a lot of confusion and argument about whether it was pentile or not. If you can't tell by looking at it it's kind of a moot point.
  - ajross 14y ago
    Amen. The "retina" nonsense has to stop. Apple ended up with an extrarodinarily high resolution for their screen because of design constraints, not aesthetic appeal. They had to match the physical size of the existing phones with an integral increase in pixel count (so as to not break the existing pixel-aligned artwork in deployed apps). Except for those rare individuals who can focus at 4 inches, there's no visual value in a 330dpi screen vs. the 280+ pitches we're seeing elsewhere.
  - esolyt 14y ago
    By retina display, I assume you mean displays with high PPI. Yes, it is still noticeable. Not everyone notices it of course, but people who notice it (like me) define it as "grainy" or having a "green tint".
- buster 14y ago
  I really never got it. I had a Nexus One for one and a half years and now a Galaxy Nexus since launch. The pentile display never bothered me, i never knew there was a difference until i came across those articles, stating how bad Pentile looks. Bullshit, really. It doesn't matter _in real life_. I guess the criticsm only comes from people scared by those i-hold-a-microscope-on-the-display "tests". I very rarely use a microscope on my mobile.
taligent 14y ago
Because it is just another Android device and with so many released during the year there is a bit of a "meh" factor to it. Also Engadget covered it with at least 20 posts. So not sure what you were expecting ?
- dkrich 14y ago
  When you compare any non-iPhone launch with an Apple launch there is a very detectable difference. TechCrunch live-blogs the whole damned thing. Pundits congratulate Apple for being so freaking badass. Then an MG Siegler post emerges that vaguely describes how Apple is now, seriously, for real, taking over the entire mobile market and no competitor really matters. Apple re-releases the same form factor the've had for a year and a half with an HD camera and the world climbs up their asshole. Samsung releases a phone with an updated OS and an entire host of new features including cordless charger and auto-dimming, and it's crickets. I'm just saying that a lot of the "meh" factor lives only in your mind. Perception is reality. Apple has a cool factor so anything they release is assumed to be superior. Their competitors are viewed as stodgy, clueless copycats incapable of an original idea. That was true for a while, but not anymore. Ultimately sales are what matter, and I think that the gap is going to narrow more and more between Samsung and Apple in the smartphone space. There are a lot of hardware companies that can be accused of mismanagement and an utter lack of innovation. Samsung is not one of them.
  - taligent 14y ago
    See when you talk nonsense like that it just makes you sound like a bitter fanboy. - The reason people cover Apple is because they release one phone per year at one big event. Which sells in vast quantities, often has unique features and most importantly generates lots of user clicks i.e. revenue. That is why it gets coverage. - There were other differences between iPhone 4S and 4 e.g. single->dual CPU, single->dual HSPDA, GSM+CDMA in one phone, much better GPU, single to dual antenna, Siri as well as the camera. - There isn't anything particularly new in Samsung 3 that hasn't been seen elsewhere. Cordless charger was pioneered by Palm and auto-dimming has been on iPhone for ages. Again if there was some stand out feature it would probably get more attention. Overall if Samsung wants to be like Apple then they need to stop releasing a million phones and release one per year at one big event. And then support it.
hej 14y ago
It seems even many of those who really love Android are extremely underwhelmed by this phone. It’s just another boring Android phone, there are tons of those. There is nothing exceptional or special about it. There is only one iPhone every year. You might say it’s not fair, but that different strategy is paying off for Apple. (Hey, and there was lots of coverage. I saw it everywhere, no matter the medium. From The Verge to a German weekly news magazine. That’s not so much less than what the iPhone gets, in fact it might even be about equal. Is that your persecution complex flaring up?)
- dkrich 14y ago
  It's not really a different strategy though. There is only one Galaxy every year, and I don't see anything that an iPhone can do that this phone can't. Some people love the iPhone and that is fine- to each his own. I just refuse to believe that the love affair is based on anything other than marketing. > (Hey, and there was lots of coverage. I saw it everywhere, no matter the medium. From The Verge to a German weekly news magazine. That’s not so much less than what the iPhone gets, in fact it might even be about equal. Is that your persecution complex flaring up?) Really? You did? Hmm, if my memory serves me, I remember seeing CNBC and CNN covering the last iPhone launch all day like it was the Presidential inauguration. Worldwide television vs. niche tech blogs. Yep, you're right, that is about the same. I retract my statement.
  - taligent 14y ago
    This really isn't hard to understand. One SAMSUNG phone per year.
    - ricardobeat 14y ago
      Still wrong - one revision of this specific model per year, they still launch a dozen other similar devices.
  - rikf 14y ago
    > Some people love the iPhone and that is fine- to each his own. I just refuse to believe that the love affair is based on anything other than marketing. I would argue that the iPhone and indeed most Apple products embody a "Quality without a name" as originally described by Christopher Alexander in a "A timeless way of building" http://www.munnecke.com/islands/qwan.htm http://www.munnecke.com/islands/qwan.htm . Very few other companies are able to achieve this. I believe that it is for this reason that people develop a greater emotional attachment to Apple products then the products of companies like Samsung. For example Apple products generally feel great to hold and touch while the same cant be said of Samsung's products.
Geee 14y ago
There's nothing innovative in S3 or Samsung. Samsung is definitely just a manufacturing company, not someone who assumes the responsibility to craft the future for better. It doesn't take much innovation to stuff a sloppily designed and built device with the latests of components.
jsnell 14y ago
It's a really uninteresting phone from a hardware viewpoint (not that anyone should have been expecting anything exciting). It's a tiny incremental improvement over the Galaxy Nexus (more cores, slightly better camera, slightly larger battery, etc). It's not at all clear it's an improvement over the HTC One X. So what's there for people to get excited over? All of the new crapware Samsung are piling on?
reactor 14y ago
> Samsung is for real and is developing devices that are at least as good as Apple in many ways and they deserve equal consideration, iPhone/iPad's Processor, Display and few other parts are made by Samsung at the moment. So yes, they make 'stuffs' at least as good Apple.
- maxharris 14y ago
  Yes, but a phone is more than just a bag of loose parts. Treating it that way neglects some very important aspects, including software, physical design, the catalog of third-party applications available, etc. Samsung is way behind Apple in many of those aspects.
baddox 14y ago
Some people (unless I'm the only one) simply cannot tolerate using an Android regularly due to UI performance. It seems like every 6 months they're doubling the raw benchmark performance of these Android devices, and releasing some stunning hardware, but when you open an entirely native ListView (like a settings page) on a flagship Android device it simply does not scroll smoothly. Arbitrary web pages scroll more smoothly on an iPhone 4 than native ListViews on a flagship Android device (the speediest Android devices I've used extensively are the Galaxy SII and Galaxy Nexus). I am always tempted to feel pretentious about my preference in this regard (likewise, with my inability to use a PC with noticeable mouse acceleration). So many people either cannot notice the UI performance differences or don't think it's a deal breaker (I've even heard people says the best Android devices perform better than the iPhone), but I can't shake it.

by dkrich 14y ago

nextparadigms 14y ago

I think a lot of people were underwhelmed by the design. They've been iterating on pretty much the same design for years. It might make some sense if it was an iconic amazing design to begin with, but it never was. I also don't like the fact that Samsung seems to be going ever heavier with Touchwiz, instead of the opposite direction like HTC with Sense 4. At this point they are basically fighting Google's improvements, and just replacing them with their own. I think that's the wrong direction for them to take. It's one thing to have the Apple and Microsoft communities against you, but it's quite another if the Android community turns against you for screwing with Android too much. I don't like Samsung's direction, and I think they will feel it in revenues by the end of the year if they keep this up with other flagship devices. The Pentile screen was a real downer, too. I couldn't believe it myself that they actually used Pentile. That was probably the most shocking and disappointing thing for people expecting better hardware from Samsung. One thing I like about the Galaxy S3 - perhaps the only thing - is the processor. It's probably the best on the market right now in both CPU and GPU performance (the only one that beats the iPhone 4S in GPU right now). It seems to have crazy fast browsing. I saw Engadget loading their own website on it, and it was like instant. The benchmarks seem to confirm a significant increase in browser peformance compared to everyone else in the Browsermark test: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5810/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-performance-preview http://www.anandtech.com/show/5810/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-perf... This only makes me more excited for the upcoming Exynos 5250 chip with a totally new CPU (Cortex A15) and a totally new GPU and architecture (Mali T604). I'm hoping this chip will come out in both the next Nexus phone and in the Galaxy Note 2.

taligent 14y ago
I have to agree with the adding more and more layers on top of Android. It is ridiculous and will do nothing but increase the delay between updates which is already unacceptably poor. Android really needs to sort this UI layer mess out.
eco 14y ago
Does a pentile layout matter on a "retina display"? The pixels shouldn't be discernible at these resolutions. When the Galaxy Nexus came out there was a lot of confusion and argument about whether it was pentile or not. If you can't tell by looking at it it's kind of a moot point.
- ajross 14y ago
  Amen. The "retina" nonsense has to stop. Apple ended up with an extrarodinarily high resolution for their screen because of design constraints, not aesthetic appeal. They had to match the physical size of the existing phones with an integral increase in pixel count (so as to not break the existing pixel-aligned artwork in deployed apps). Except for those rare individuals who can focus at 4 inches, there's no visual value in a 330dpi screen vs. the 280+ pitches we're seeing elsewhere.
- esolyt 14y ago
  By retina display, I assume you mean displays with high PPI. Yes, it is still noticeable. Not everyone notices it of course, but people who notice it (like me) define it as "grainy" or having a "green tint".
buster 14y ago
I really never got it. I had a Nexus One for one and a half years and now a Galaxy Nexus since launch. The pentile display never bothered me, i never knew there was a difference until i came across those articles, stating how bad Pentile looks. Bullshit, really. It doesn't matter _in real life_. I guess the criticsm only comes from people scared by those i-hold-a-microscope-on-the-display "tests". I very rarely use a microscope on my mobile.

taligent 14y ago

Because it is just another Android device and with so many released during the year there is a bit of a "meh" factor to it. Also Engadget covered it with at least 20 posts. So not sure what you were expecting ?

dkrich 14y ago
When you compare any non-iPhone launch with an Apple launch there is a very detectable difference. TechCrunch live-blogs the whole damned thing. Pundits congratulate Apple for being so freaking badass. Then an MG Siegler post emerges that vaguely describes how Apple is now, seriously, for real, taking over the entire mobile market and no competitor really matters. Apple re-releases the same form factor the've had for a year and a half with an HD camera and the world climbs up their asshole. Samsung releases a phone with an updated OS and an entire host of new features including cordless charger and auto-dimming, and it's crickets. I'm just saying that a lot of the "meh" factor lives only in your mind. Perception is reality. Apple has a cool factor so anything they release is assumed to be superior. Their competitors are viewed as stodgy, clueless copycats incapable of an original idea. That was true for a while, but not anymore. Ultimately sales are what matter, and I think that the gap is going to narrow more and more between Samsung and Apple in the smartphone space. There are a lot of hardware companies that can be accused of mismanagement and an utter lack of innovation. Samsung is not one of them.
- taligent 14y ago
  See when you talk nonsense like that it just makes you sound like a bitter fanboy. - The reason people cover Apple is because they release one phone per year at one big event. Which sells in vast quantities, often has unique features and most importantly generates lots of user clicks i.e. revenue. That is why it gets coverage. - There were other differences between iPhone 4S and 4 e.g. single->dual CPU, single->dual HSPDA, GSM+CDMA in one phone, much better GPU, single to dual antenna, Siri as well as the camera. - There isn't anything particularly new in Samsung 3 that hasn't been seen elsewhere. Cordless charger was pioneered by Palm and auto-dimming has been on iPhone for ages. Again if there was some stand out feature it would probably get more attention. Overall if Samsung wants to be like Apple then they need to stop releasing a million phones and release one per year at one big event. And then support it.

hej 14y ago

It seems even many of those who really love Android are extremely underwhelmed by this phone. It’s just another boring Android phone, there are tons of those. There is nothing exceptional or special about it. There is only one iPhone every year. You might say it’s not fair, but that different strategy is paying off for Apple. (Hey, and there was lots of coverage. I saw it everywhere, no matter the medium. From The Verge to a German weekly news magazine. That’s not so much less than what the iPhone gets, in fact it might even be about equal. Is that your persecution complex flaring up?)

dkrich 14y ago
It's not really a different strategy though. There is only one Galaxy every year, and I don't see anything that an iPhone can do that this phone can't. Some people love the iPhone and that is fine- to each his own. I just refuse to believe that the love affair is based on anything other than marketing. > (Hey, and there was lots of coverage. I saw it everywhere, no matter the medium. From The Verge to a German weekly news magazine. That’s not so much less than what the iPhone gets, in fact it might even be about equal. Is that your persecution complex flaring up?) Really? You did? Hmm, if my memory serves me, I remember seeing CNBC and CNN covering the last iPhone launch all day like it was the Presidential inauguration. Worldwide television vs. niche tech blogs. Yep, you're right, that is about the same. I retract my statement.
- taligent 14y ago
  This really isn't hard to understand. One SAMSUNG phone per year.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    Still wrong - one revision of this specific model per year, they still launch a dozen other similar devices.
- rikf 14y ago
  > Some people love the iPhone and that is fine- to each his own. I just refuse to believe that the love affair is based on anything other than marketing. I would argue that the iPhone and indeed most Apple products embody a "Quality without a name" as originally described by Christopher Alexander in a "A timeless way of building" http://www.munnecke.com/islands/qwan.htm http://www.munnecke.com/islands/qwan.htm . Very few other companies are able to achieve this. I believe that it is for this reason that people develop a greater emotional attachment to Apple products then the products of companies like Samsung. For example Apple products generally feel great to hold and touch while the same cant be said of Samsung's products.

Geee 14y ago

There's nothing innovative in S3 or Samsung. Samsung is definitely just a manufacturing company, not someone who assumes the responsibility to craft the future for better. It doesn't take much innovation to stuff a sloppily designed and built device with the latests of components.

jsnell 14y ago

It's a really uninteresting phone from a hardware viewpoint (not that anyone should have been expecting anything exciting). It's a tiny incremental improvement over the Galaxy Nexus (more cores, slightly better camera, slightly larger battery, etc). It's not at all clear it's an improvement over the HTC One X. So what's there for people to get excited over? All of the new crapware Samsung are piling on?

reactor 14y ago

> Samsung is for real and is developing devices that are at least as good as Apple in many ways and they deserve equal consideration, iPhone/iPad's Processor, Display and few other parts are made by Samsung at the moment. So yes, they make 'stuffs' at least as good Apple.

maxharris 14y ago
Yes, but a phone is more than just a bag of loose parts. Treating it that way neglects some very important aspects, including software, physical design, the catalog of third-party applications available, etc. Samsung is way behind Apple in many of those aspects.

baddox 14y ago

Some people (unless I'm the only one) simply cannot tolerate using an Android regularly due to UI performance. It seems like every 6 months they're doubling the raw benchmark performance of these Android devices, and releasing some stunning hardware, but when you open an entirely native ListView (like a settings page) on a flagship Android device it simply does not scroll smoothly. Arbitrary web pages scroll more smoothly on an iPhone 4 than native ListViews on a flagship Android device (the speediest Android devices I've used extensively are the Galaxy SII and Galaxy Nexus). I am always tempted to feel pretentious about my preference in this regard (likewise, with my inability to use a PC with noticeable mouse acceleration). So many people either cannot notice the UI performance differences or don't think it's a deal breaker (I've even heard people says the best Android devices perform better than the iPhone), but I can't shake it.