6 ms·

Engadget's Samsung Galaxy S III review

34 points by SandB0x 14y ago

spot 14y ago
cool feature: "Smart stay. The screen refuses to timeout when you're looking at it, based on face recognition via the front-facing camera. There's nothing worse than a screen that switches off just as you're starting to make sense of the content it's showing you, and this feature nips that problem in the bud."
- windsurfer 14y ago
  Does anyone else find this extremely fucking creepy?
  - morsch 14y ago
    Creepy? No, why? I wonder about the battery draw of constantly running the front camera and doing face recognition, but if that's not an issue I don't see any downside. I wish my own phone did it. Even if it uses some power, it might be a net improvement for some people who would set their screen timeout to very long durations otherwise. I'm sure that is even more of an issue for a device with such a humongous screen -- it'll take you twice as long to read an entire screen of information.
    - estel 14y ago
      Apparently it doesn't run the camera constantly: it wakes up to take a single shot immediately before the screen turns off.
  - randallsquared 14y ago
    Not at all; it sounds awesome. On my SII, I either have to constantly adjust the timeout manually or tap the screen every 50 seconds or so while browsing or playing a game that requires thinking. Either is really annoying.
  - rsheridan6 14y ago
    I'm not sure about this, but I think it recognizes a face, not your face, so I don't see anything creepy about it.
lucian1900 14y ago
> sorry about the reflections, it's a really bright day This is offtopic, but I really wish phone makers would put more effort into making screens that are usable outdoors. Even in gloomy England using my phone outside is a challenge. There are few efforts to improve this (Pixel Qi, Mirasol), and they aren't getting into smartphones.
- MikeW 14y ago
  Under the same conditions, the SIII came out bottom of the outdoor test here: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/45801/which-smartphone-best-screen-in-sun http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/45801/which-smartphone-best-...
  - jtreminio 14y ago
    Thanks for this link. I was seriously considering purchasing this phone until I saw the comparison shots. My first "Smartphone" was the LG Incite, running Windows 5.5 (I think?). It was absolutely unusable outdoors, at all. I can't overstate how awful trying to do anything outdoors with that phone was. Since then I've sworn I would not purchase another phone that was anywhere as bad in this regard. Unfortunately it's pretty obvious the SIII is even worse than the SII, which I had. I'm really glad now that I've jumped to the iPhone 4S after being a devoted Android fan for 3 years.
- __alexs 14y ago
  The N900 had a not especially fancy transflective display that resulted in a very washed out but entirely usable interface in bright sunlight. I suspect that OLED simply can't compete with transflective LCD for daylight readability.
- seabee 14y ago
  Honestly I never had a problem reading my Desire HD (plain LCD display) outdoors in noon sunshine, although it did need full brightness which isn't great for battery life.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  Pentile RGBW seems to be the most implemented tech for this problem, but most of the other tech improvments also help like reducing the number of layers in the screen so things are generally improving.
latch 14y ago
I don't like replacing my gadgets all the time. My first, and only, smartphone is an original Galaxy. I hate it. I especially hated it when I got it, now I just...endure it. However, when it dies, I'm definitely not buying a Samsung product, and probably not buying Android. I cannot scream the word "brand" loud enough. There's so much choice available, that when your customers feel ripped off, they'll go elsewhere. GPS has never worked. Updates were very slow to be available. Using their official tool my phone bricked when an update finally was available. Until I put cyanogenmod on it, it stuttered and apps crashed. Even when it was still relatively new, there were apps that it couldn't run (Lionheart). My carrier put a porn-buying app on it (yes, I hold Samsung and Google at least partially responsible for that). Brand, brand, brand, brand, brand. The fact that, 2 years later, I still get upset when I see the words "Samsung" or "Galaxy S", tell you something about consumer behavior...it isn't just me...US car manufacturers went through it too.
- jvc26 14y ago
  Sounds like you've got a faulty handset - my first reaction to non-functional GPS would be to take the phone back?
  - ippa 14y ago
    Right. When I first tested it.. it kind of worked. It was probably slow then too, but I didn't have much to compare with at the time. As I started using it more regularly later on it became more clear it was slow and that sometimes it didn't work at all. There was tons of talk about this on various forums... there was some fixes released and I always assumed this would get fixed in an later update. But time and updates went by and it never got good. Then it was too late to return the phone. If they even would have accepted a "sometimes very slow GPS" as a return-argument in the first place.
    - andybak 14y ago
      I agree. I still feel bitter about the GPS and I swore to 'punish' Samsung by boycotting them in future. However - when I broke my phone, the Galaxy S II was by far the most suitable phone for me short of switching to iOS which I didn't want to do for a few different reasons. 'Punishing' Samsung was less than rational and so I took a chance on them again. And I've been extremely happy with it. It's way way better than the Galaxy S and I have no real complaints about it. So - Samsung screwed me on the GPS last time. I'll have to let them off - or rather - stop anthropomorphising a large corporation in ways that don't really make much sense...
morsch 14y ago
Social tag. When you first take a photo of someone, the phone asks you to name them. From then on, it does all the hard work of recognizing that person again in future snaps, and linking up their social networking profiles so that you can share your photos faster. Is that done on-device, or using a remote service? I wish reviews would make this distinction. And I wish developers would put back some of the processing (another example: speech analysis) on to the devices themselves, now that they've got CPUs that put my netbook's to shame. I guess there's still the issue of draining your battery by actually tapping into those vast computing resources.
- pja 14y ago
  Given that current digital cameras can do this on the camera processor, it seems plausible that it's done on the phone.
- runeks 14y ago
  > I wish developers would put back some of the processing (another example: speech analysis) on to the devices themselves, now that they've got CPUs that put my netbook's to shame. I guess there's still the issue of draining your battery by actually tapping into those vast computing resources. I really think battery capacity is the reason this isn't happening. Battery capacity is really lagging behind everything else. Seems like every new phone that comes out is faster than ever, and runs out of power faster than ever.
fossuser 14y ago
Is it a Nexus line device? Is it running stock Android? No to both? -- Do not buy. Why is it so difficult for hardware manufacturers to refrain from putting their poor attempts to improve stock android on their devices. Do they not realize they'd actually be able to more effectively differentiate themselves if they just left it stock?
- ericb 14y ago
  > Is it a Nexus line device? Is it running stock Android? Why not install stock Android yourself on any unlocked device you like? That way you have your choice of many hardware options.
  - kbuck 14y ago
    It's unfortunately not that easy. Many phones require proprietary drivers and tweaking to get working. For a while, Cyanogen on my phone (Samsung Vibrant) didn't have the ability to dial 911 due to missing software. I still don't have GPS support.
- viraptor 14y ago
  There are modifications and modifications. Some of them are almost useless (Samsung hubs, their own store, etc.), while others are pretty good actually (UI). I know many people don't like it, but I actually prefer their UI to the stock Android one. I haven't actually heard anyone saying why exactly they don't like the Samsung version though.
  - andybak 14y ago
    Yeah. I've switching from stock Android to Touchwiz versions and Touchwiz really isn't that bad. Better in some ways. You can always use a ICS-style launcher such as Nova or Apex.
  - darklajid 14y ago
    One easy reason: A bad excuse to take ages for 'porting' new versions of Android.
chj 14y ago
I'll be lured by the dropbox deal.
bobsy 14y ago
My Android phone is coming up to being 2 years old. I look at this and I see no reason to upgrade. Yes its more powerful, has a better camera and has a few neat features like Smart Stay but does this warrant ditching my old phone? No. With the current state of handset development I would say I only need to upgrade when the app store stops supporting my phone. It seems to me like the Smart Phone Market is already hitting a plateau. It's like the desktop computer market. If you buy a computer today, unless you MUST play all future games on Ultra graphics it will probably last you just fine for 5+ years.
- huggyface 14y ago
  It seems to me like the Smart Phone Market is already hitting a plateau. Having gone through a number of devices over the years, I couldn't disagree more. Screens have gotten tremendously better, performance has improved by leaps and bounds, and connectivity has exploded. Even the touchscreen sensor on a current phone is a world better than a two year old device (well if we're speaking about non-iPhone. Apple had a pretty good sensor two years ago). I'd say your lack of inclination to upgrade says more about you than devices. Not as an insult, but you just don't rely upon it as a principal device like many. Mine because essentially a portable computer and I am very excited about each new iteration.
  - rsheridan6 14y ago
    What you say was true a year ago, but the limitations of the human eye won't allow much improvement over the 300+ ppi screens that have been available for a year or so. If something is coming along to replace 4G, I haven't heard about it, and 4G has also been available for a year or so. I have an HTC Rezound, top tier at the time of it's release about 6 months ago, and it was significantly improved over the Motorola Atrix it replaced, which was also top tier at the time of its release about 6 months previously. I haven't played with newer phones since then, but nothing I have read indicates that they've improved very much since the last batch of releases in December, and I don't think the human eye is capable of perceiving much more pixel density than we already have. Screens have gotten so much better that there's no point in improving them. With 300+ PPI screens having been available for a year or so, the only real improvement possible would be to make them 3D or usable outdoors, which does not seem to be progressing very quickly. I have an HTC Rezound, which was a top tier phone when I bought it 6 months ago, and the display is leaps ahead of my Motorola Atrix, which was a top tier phone when I bought it last April (something like ~340 PPI compared to ~275 PPI). That kind of improvement will never be possible again, because the human eye couldn't perceive it. So, yeah, I think we have reached a plateau, though certainly not 2 years ago.
moron 14y ago
I was surprised to see they're still using the goofy PenTile display stuff. The device is the display, you can't skimp on that.
- mrich 14y ago
  Apple advertises their retina display with "you can't see any pixels". The S3 nearly has the same ppi (306 vs. 320), yet people complain about how they are somehow able to distinguish the subpixels? Something does not add up here.
  - ropiku 14y ago
    You're not comparing the same pixels, one is a true pixel out of 3 subpixels, one is out of 2 subpixels. Thus higher subpixel density. You could see the colour difference.
- epaik 14y ago
  Why are people assuming PenTile is a bad thing? Is there something I'm missing? I assumed there was a method to their madness. Isn't Samsung still the same company that makes Apple's retina displays? From what I've read so far, the PenTile technology is used to achieve a brighter screen at lower power consumption with a minuscule loss of precision.
  - runeks 14y ago
    > Isn't Samsung still the same company that makes Apple's retina displays? LG makes displays for the iPhone and older iPads. The "retina" display for the new iPad is produced by Samsung.
- DisplayGeek 14y ago
  One isn't skimping when one can't reach a given resolution any other way. Seriously, PenTile gives you the ability to reach higher effective (as measured) resolution for a given number of subpixels. Simply stated, for a given number of subpixels, it is ALWAYS better to use PenTile. Full Disclosure: I'm the CEO of Nouvoyance, the company that develops PenTile.
nicholassmith 14y ago
Skipping over the majority of it, I'm surprised they compared the camera to an iPhone 4. Surely at this stage the most apt comparison would be to the 4S? I'm out of the loop on Android devices but I thought the Galaxy S series was as top of the line as you could get?
6ren 14y ago
It doesn't compare performance or battery life with an iPhone. But getting both 1.4GHz quad-core performance and long battery life in 135 grams (mainly due to process shrink) is very impressive and bodes well for the future.
mrich 14y ago
Would buy, if I didn't love my S II so much :)
sasoon 14y ago
New mobile phones are getting ridiculously big. Today, iPhone 4S looks like small phone. This is a cool, actual size comparison of iPhone, Galaxy III and Note (almost as big as tablet :-)): http://www.sizeall.com/compare/Apple-iPhone-4S-Ruler-cm-inch-Samsung-Galaxy-Note-N7000-Samsung-I9300-Galaxy-S-IIIh/168 http://www.sizeall.com/compare/Apple-iPhone-4S-Ruler-cm-inch...
gbaygon 14y ago
For a phone in the premium segment they should not be using pentile display.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  An AMOLED RGBG pentile display with x pixels may not be as good as a similar non-pentile AMOLED display with the same number of logical pixels but it's better than a non-pentile display of y pixels. (I will graciously let you choose your own values for x/y, as it may vary by person though I'd suggest 2x = 3y as a starting point). Dismissing it out of hand, particularly when basically every camera sensor, and every encoded video and jpeg does similar things with color, just seems odd to me. It's an engineering trade-off with lots of in-and-outs for each specific decision, not an unholy or unclean technology that contaminates everything it touches.

34 points by SandB0x 14y ago

spot 14y ago

cool feature: "Smart stay. The screen refuses to timeout when you're looking at it, based on face recognition via the front-facing camera. There's nothing worse than a screen that switches off just as you're starting to make sense of the content it's showing you, and this feature nips that problem in the bud."

windsurfer 14y ago
Does anyone else find this extremely fucking creepy?
- morsch 14y ago
  Creepy? No, why? I wonder about the battery draw of constantly running the front camera and doing face recognition, but if that's not an issue I don't see any downside. I wish my own phone did it. Even if it uses some power, it might be a net improvement for some people who would set their screen timeout to very long durations otherwise. I'm sure that is even more of an issue for a device with such a humongous screen -- it'll take you twice as long to read an entire screen of information.
  - estel 14y ago
    Apparently it doesn't run the camera constantly: it wakes up to take a single shot immediately before the screen turns off.
- randallsquared 14y ago
  Not at all; it sounds awesome. On my SII, I either have to constantly adjust the timeout manually or tap the screen every 50 seconds or so while browsing or playing a game that requires thinking. Either is really annoying.
- rsheridan6 14y ago
  I'm not sure about this, but I think it recognizes a face, not your face, so I don't see anything creepy about it.

lucian1900 14y ago

> sorry about the reflections, it's a really bright day This is offtopic, but I really wish phone makers would put more effort into making screens that are usable outdoors. Even in gloomy England using my phone outside is a challenge. There are few efforts to improve this (Pixel Qi, Mirasol), and they aren't getting into smartphones.

MikeW 14y ago
Under the same conditions, the SIII came out bottom of the outdoor test here: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/45801/which-smartphone-best-screen-in-sun http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/45801/which-smartphone-best-...
- jtreminio 14y ago
  Thanks for this link. I was seriously considering purchasing this phone until I saw the comparison shots. My first "Smartphone" was the LG Incite, running Windows 5.5 (I think?). It was absolutely unusable outdoors, at all. I can't overstate how awful trying to do anything outdoors with that phone was. Since then I've sworn I would not purchase another phone that was anywhere as bad in this regard. Unfortunately it's pretty obvious the SIII is even worse than the SII, which I had. I'm really glad now that I've jumped to the iPhone 4S after being a devoted Android fan for 3 years.
__alexs 14y ago
The N900 had a not especially fancy transflective display that resulted in a very washed out but entirely usable interface in bright sunlight. I suspect that OLED simply can't compete with transflective LCD for daylight readability.
seabee 14y ago
Honestly I never had a problem reading my Desire HD (plain LCD display) outdoors in noon sunshine, although it did need full brightness which isn't great for battery life.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
Pentile RGBW seems to be the most implemented tech for this problem, but most of the other tech improvments also help like reducing the number of layers in the screen so things are generally improving.

latch 14y ago

I don't like replacing my gadgets all the time. My first, and only, smartphone is an original Galaxy. I hate it. I especially hated it when I got it, now I just...endure it. However, when it dies, I'm definitely not buying a Samsung product, and probably not buying Android. I cannot scream the word "brand" loud enough. There's so much choice available, that when your customers feel ripped off, they'll go elsewhere. GPS has never worked. Updates were very slow to be available. Using their official tool my phone bricked when an update finally was available. Until I put cyanogenmod on it, it stuttered and apps crashed. Even when it was still relatively new, there were apps that it couldn't run (Lionheart). My carrier put a porn-buying app on it (yes, I hold Samsung and Google at least partially responsible for that). Brand, brand, brand, brand, brand. The fact that, 2 years later, I still get upset when I see the words "Samsung" or "Galaxy S", tell you something about consumer behavior...it isn't just me...US car manufacturers went through it too.

jvc26 14y ago
Sounds like you've got a faulty handset - my first reaction to non-functional GPS would be to take the phone back?
- ippa 14y ago
  Right. When I first tested it.. it kind of worked. It was probably slow then too, but I didn't have much to compare with at the time. As I started using it more regularly later on it became more clear it was slow and that sometimes it didn't work at all. There was tons of talk about this on various forums... there was some fixes released and I always assumed this would get fixed in an later update. But time and updates went by and it never got good. Then it was too late to return the phone. If they even would have accepted a "sometimes very slow GPS" as a return-argument in the first place.
  - andybak 14y ago
    I agree. I still feel bitter about the GPS and I swore to 'punish' Samsung by boycotting them in future. However - when I broke my phone, the Galaxy S II was by far the most suitable phone for me short of switching to iOS which I didn't want to do for a few different reasons. 'Punishing' Samsung was less than rational and so I took a chance on them again. And I've been extremely happy with it. It's way way better than the Galaxy S and I have no real complaints about it. So - Samsung screwed me on the GPS last time. I'll have to let them off - or rather - stop anthropomorphising a large corporation in ways that don't really make much sense...

morsch 14y ago

Social tag. When you first take a photo of someone, the phone asks you to name them. From then on, it does all the hard work of recognizing that person again in future snaps, and linking up their social networking profiles so that you can share your photos faster. Is that done on-device, or using a remote service? I wish reviews would make this distinction. And I wish developers would put back some of the processing (another example: speech analysis) on to the devices themselves, now that they've got CPUs that put my netbook's to shame. I guess there's still the issue of draining your battery by actually tapping into those vast computing resources.

pja 14y ago
Given that current digital cameras can do this on the camera processor, it seems plausible that it's done on the phone.
runeks 14y ago
> I wish developers would put back some of the processing (another example: speech analysis) on to the devices themselves, now that they've got CPUs that put my netbook's to shame. I guess there's still the issue of draining your battery by actually tapping into those vast computing resources. I really think battery capacity is the reason this isn't happening. Battery capacity is really lagging behind everything else. Seems like every new phone that comes out is faster than ever, and runs out of power faster than ever.

fossuser 14y ago

Is it a Nexus line device? Is it running stock Android? No to both? -- Do not buy. Why is it so difficult for hardware manufacturers to refrain from putting their poor attempts to improve stock android on their devices. Do they not realize they'd actually be able to more effectively differentiate themselves if they just left it stock?

ericb 14y ago
> Is it a Nexus line device? Is it running stock Android? Why not install stock Android yourself on any unlocked device you like? That way you have your choice of many hardware options.
- kbuck 14y ago
  It's unfortunately not that easy. Many phones require proprietary drivers and tweaking to get working. For a while, Cyanogen on my phone (Samsung Vibrant) didn't have the ability to dial 911 due to missing software. I still don't have GPS support.
viraptor 14y ago
There are modifications and modifications. Some of them are almost useless (Samsung hubs, their own store, etc.), while others are pretty good actually (UI). I know many people don't like it, but I actually prefer their UI to the stock Android one. I haven't actually heard anyone saying why exactly they don't like the Samsung version though.
- andybak 14y ago
  Yeah. I've switching from stock Android to Touchwiz versions and Touchwiz really isn't that bad. Better in some ways. You can always use a ICS-style launcher such as Nova or Apex.
- darklajid 14y ago
  One easy reason: A bad excuse to take ages for 'porting' new versions of Android.

chj 14y ago

I'll be lured by the dropbox deal.

bobsy 14y ago

My Android phone is coming up to being 2 years old. I look at this and I see no reason to upgrade. Yes its more powerful, has a better camera and has a few neat features like Smart Stay but does this warrant ditching my old phone? No. With the current state of handset development I would say I only need to upgrade when the app store stops supporting my phone. It seems to me like the Smart Phone Market is already hitting a plateau. It's like the desktop computer market. If you buy a computer today, unless you MUST play all future games on Ultra graphics it will probably last you just fine for 5+ years.

huggyface 14y ago
It seems to me like the Smart Phone Market is already hitting a plateau. Having gone through a number of devices over the years, I couldn't disagree more. Screens have gotten tremendously better, performance has improved by leaps and bounds, and connectivity has exploded. Even the touchscreen sensor on a current phone is a world better than a two year old device (well if we're speaking about non-iPhone. Apple had a pretty good sensor two years ago). I'd say your lack of inclination to upgrade says more about you than devices. Not as an insult, but you just don't rely upon it as a principal device like many. Mine because essentially a portable computer and I am very excited about each new iteration.
- rsheridan6 14y ago
  What you say was true a year ago, but the limitations of the human eye won't allow much improvement over the 300+ ppi screens that have been available for a year or so. If something is coming along to replace 4G, I haven't heard about it, and 4G has also been available for a year or so. I have an HTC Rezound, top tier at the time of it's release about 6 months ago, and it was significantly improved over the Motorola Atrix it replaced, which was also top tier at the time of its release about 6 months previously. I haven't played with newer phones since then, but nothing I have read indicates that they've improved very much since the last batch of releases in December, and I don't think the human eye is capable of perceiving much more pixel density than we already have. Screens have gotten so much better that there's no point in improving them. With 300+ PPI screens having been available for a year or so, the only real improvement possible would be to make them 3D or usable outdoors, which does not seem to be progressing very quickly. I have an HTC Rezound, which was a top tier phone when I bought it 6 months ago, and the display is leaps ahead of my Motorola Atrix, which was a top tier phone when I bought it last April (something like ~340 PPI compared to ~275 PPI). That kind of improvement will never be possible again, because the human eye couldn't perceive it. So, yeah, I think we have reached a plateau, though certainly not 2 years ago.

moron 14y ago

I was surprised to see they're still using the goofy PenTile display stuff. The device is the display, you can't skimp on that.

mrich 14y ago
Apple advertises their retina display with "you can't see any pixels". The S3 nearly has the same ppi (306 vs. 320), yet people complain about how they are somehow able to distinguish the subpixels? Something does not add up here.
- ropiku 14y ago
  You're not comparing the same pixels, one is a true pixel out of 3 subpixels, one is out of 2 subpixels. Thus higher subpixel density. You could see the colour difference.
epaik 14y ago
Why are people assuming PenTile is a bad thing? Is there something I'm missing? I assumed there was a method to their madness. Isn't Samsung still the same company that makes Apple's retina displays? From what I've read so far, the PenTile technology is used to achieve a brighter screen at lower power consumption with a minuscule loss of precision.
- runeks 14y ago
  > Isn't Samsung still the same company that makes Apple's retina displays? LG makes displays for the iPhone and older iPads. The "retina" display for the new iPad is produced by Samsung.
DisplayGeek 14y ago
One isn't skimping when one can't reach a given resolution any other way. Seriously, PenTile gives you the ability to reach higher effective (as measured) resolution for a given number of subpixels. Simply stated, for a given number of subpixels, it is ALWAYS better to use PenTile. Full Disclosure: I'm the CEO of Nouvoyance, the company that develops PenTile.

nicholassmith 14y ago

Skipping over the majority of it, I'm surprised they compared the camera to an iPhone 4. Surely at this stage the most apt comparison would be to the 4S? I'm out of the loop on Android devices but I thought the Galaxy S series was as top of the line as you could get?

6ren 14y ago

It doesn't compare performance or battery life with an iPhone. But getting both 1.4GHz quad-core performance and long battery life in 135 grams (mainly due to process shrink) is very impressive and bodes well for the future.

mrich 14y ago

Would buy, if I didn't love my S II so much :)

sasoon 14y ago

New mobile phones are getting ridiculously big. Today, iPhone 4S looks like small phone. This is a cool, actual size comparison of iPhone, Galaxy III and Note (almost as big as tablet :-)): http://www.sizeall.com/compare/Apple-iPhone-4S-Ruler-cm-inch-Samsung-Galaxy-Note-N7000-Samsung-I9300-Galaxy-S-IIIh/168 http://www.sizeall.com/compare/Apple-iPhone-4S-Ruler-cm-inch...

gbaygon 14y ago

For a phone in the premium segment they should not be using pentile display.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago
An AMOLED RGBG pentile display with x pixels may not be as good as a similar non-pentile AMOLED display with the same number of logical pixels but it's better than a non-pentile display of y pixels. (I will graciously let you choose your own values for x/y, as it may vary by person though I'd suggest 2x = 3y as a starting point). Dismissing it out of hand, particularly when basically every camera sensor, and every encoded video and jpeg does similar things with color, just seems odd to me. It's an engineering trade-off with lots of in-and-outs for each specific decision, not an unholy or unclean technology that contaminates everything it touches.