In a glittering launch event last week, we saw the official announcement of the Galaxy S3 after months of rumour and speculation. Let’s have a look at what was announced, and how the S3 compares to its nearest rivals from Android and beyond.
We’ll start off by having a look at the hardware that powers the Galaxy S3. The first thing you’ll notice is the massive 4.8″ display — cheekily just 0.1″ bigger than its nearest Android competitor, the HTC One X. The Super AMOLED screen runs at HD resolution (1280 x 720), but still uses the Pentile sub-pixel arrangement that was criticized in the Galaxy Nexus. The front of the phone has a 1.9 megapixel camera and the back includes an 8 megapixel shooter with LED flash and 1080p video recording.
Inside, things get better. There’s a powerful quad-core chipset of Samsung’s own design, the Exynos 4412. It runs at 1.4 GHz and is backed with 1 GB of RAM and 16, 32 or 64 GB of internal storage. This can be augmented with up to 32 GB of micro SD storage, too. There’s also a massive 2100 mAh battery (also removable) which can be charged wirelessly with an official Samsung Galaxy S3 charger.
All of this is stuffed into a massively thin 8.6 mm chassis available in nature-inspired colours: Marble White or Pebble Blue. The general shape of the device is reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and is notably more curved than its predecessors – possibly to avoid patent infringement claims from Apple.
A big part of the appeal of the Galaxy S III comes from its unique software. Unlike HTC, who chose mostly stylistic additions to Ice Cream Sandwich on the One X, Samsung has provided one of the biggest enhancements found on an Android smartphone, with a custom nature-inspired theme as well as a load of custom functionality.
One of the most interesting additions is called Smart Stay, which makes sure the screen never turns off while you’re looking at it by monitoring your eyes with the front-facing camera.
S Voice is another useful addition, which is essentially an Android version of Apple’s Siri – but a lot more polished than previous Android interpretations of the app, and the first to be baked into the phone to the same level that Siri is with iOS.
Finally, Pop Up Play is an enhancement I can definitely see myself using a lot. It’s pretty simple – Picture-in-Picture multi-tasking that allows you to place a video window on top of any other application, so you can watch YouTube and surf the web at the same time – very very cool.
Another way Samsung is attempting to differentiate the S3 is with some rather cool i9300 accessories. In addition to the wireless charging dock described earlier, there’s also a DNLA wireless media sharing dongle that plugs into HDTVs, monitors and projectors. There’s even a custom Galaxy S3 stylus that should give Galaxy Note level functionality to the phone – not a bad haul.
Ultimately, it’s impossible to predict how well the Galaxy S3 will do. While its specifications and software look great, we don’t know how well they’ll actually work in hands of consumers. Expect a much closer look at this hot handset when it launches at the end of the month.