Engadget's Samsung Galaxy S III review

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/25/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-review/

by SandB0x • 14 years ago

34 57 14 years ago

spot• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Does anyone else find this extremely fucking creepy?

morsch2• 14 years 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.

randallsquared• 14 years 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.

rsheridan62• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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-...

jtreminio• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

ZeroGravitas2• 14 years 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.

latch2• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Sounds like you've got a faulty handset - my first reaction to non-functional GPS would be to take the phone back?

ippa2• 14 years 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.

latch2• 14 years ago

Samsung made official statements that they were aware of possible issues and looking at possibilities of fixing it. To the best of my knowledge, their attempts never succeeded. It was not a specific handset problem...it was a problem with the phone in general, and I just assumed they'd fix it.

ippa2• 14 years ago

Amen to this. I also got the first Samsung Galaxy when it was hyped on engadget and other techblogs, especially for the amoled screen. The screen was always pretty good I guess. But aside from that, no more Samsung. GPS has always been ultra-slow, if working at all. The home button started glitching after 1-2 years. Micro-lag. The crap that is KIES. Kind of cheap plastic build. Each android update I hoped for things to get better, but they never did.

I'll probably never trust Samsung with my smartphone-money again. Might just test out Windows Phone just to get the ungodly build quality of a Nokia :).

dublinclontarf• 14 years ago

I got an unlocked S1 in China...about a year ago, my first smartphone (my previous phone being a Nokia which disappointed me soo much, I've always been a Nokia user, not anymore).

GPS didn't really work, but then GPS wasn't accurate in China anyway.

I now use my S1 as a wireless access point with an all you can eat data connection living in the UK. I do all my working (from my kitchen table) using this.

It's not perfect but by god it's a workhorse of a smartphone, and if I have the money would get an S3. As long as Samsung keep making phones like this I'll keep buying them, it's the smartphone nokia.

k_bx• 14 years ago

+1, but with HTC Desire. It's small amount of memory, stupid non-fixed bugs in HTC apps that cannot be removed -- I hate those small things. Really.

theone• 14 years ago

I also had Galaxy S for a brief period of time (until I switched to iPhone 4).

Similar experience though:

- GPS didn't worked, those who say it works should first see iPhones' GPS performance.

- The biggest problem which I feel is the update process. As soon as they release a new version, they leave older one like a bastard child.

- Even when they release its update why can't that be global. Why some countries gets a preferencial treatment.

I am not gonna buy or recommend samsung ever again.

viraptor2• 14 years ago

Keep in mind that you're comparing old Galaxy S to a fairly new iPhone 4. S2 gets gps lock in <1s with assist and <5s without wifi assist (I guess gsm helps anyway to some extent).

I mean, it's fair to say Galaxy S was pretty bad, but I don't get the "not gonna buy or recommend samsung ever again". Why not "iPhone 1 has no apps or 3G or ..., I'm not gonna buy or recommend iPhone ever again"? Products improve in newer releases, there's no reason to drop the whole line because version 1 was bad.

toemetoch• 14 years ago

S galaxy I here, too. Had the same issues you had, but these turned out to be software, not hardware. CyanogenMod is definitely not the best distro for this device, ran into GPS problems due to a config file that needed manual changing. Micro-lag: same thing. Now on Darky Rom and it runs without issues.

GFischer• 14 years ago

I have a Galaxy Ace and a Nokia N86.

I dislike the phone experience (and awful battery life) on the Ace, and I use my Nokia as my phone, but the assisted GPS on the Ace works extremely well and quite fast (a LOT faster than the Nokia which also has GPS).

My Nokia can't compete on the internet and apps experience, though (probably the Windows Phones will... too bad Nokia won't do Android, I'd buy Nokia over Samsung).

EnderMB• 14 years ago

I also owned an original Galaxy. It was by far the worst phone I ever owned, and I vowed to never own another Samsung phone again.

True to form, when the Galaxy Nexus came out I bought that. It's definitely streets ahead of the original device and I have faith that this one will receive updates during my contract.

However, that first Galaxy phone will always be in the back of my mind, and I truly believe that the first Galaxy would have turned a lot of initial Android users over to the iPhone.

wslh• 14 years ago

Same experience. I had the first iPhone and I was happy when it was upgraded by Apple very often and with new features. I depended only on Apple. Now I wait for the Android 4 upgrade for Movistar! Movistar depends on Samsung and Samsung depends on Google. Ah! and we need to wait because Movistar is branding the UI. For Android 3 they even removed the browser icon! if you want to launch the browser you need to go to the search page first.

btw I am not an Apple fan.

dguaraglia• 14 years ago

Before my Galaxy S2 I owned (for about 3 weeks) a Samsung Infuse. My experience was pretty much what you describe: terrible GPS, 0 updates (that's mostly an AT&T issue though), slow as molasses...

But the S2 is head and shoulders over it. Fastest phone I've ever used (yes, even faster than the iPhone 4S), the GPS precision was the best of all the devices we own at the company (we develop a product that requires GPS so we keep tabs on that), and the new version of TouchWiz is as good as anything else. Still, I'd love to have it updated to ICS at some point (and AT&T has promised they'd do it), but all in all it's a great Android phone.

bookwormAT• 14 years ago

The original Galaxy S is indeed not a very good device. It was great for hackers, but otherwise you got a bad experience.

The Galaxy S2 was the first device where Samsung really delivered.

morsch2• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Given that current digital cameras can do this on the camera processor, it seems plausible that it's done on the phone.

runeks2• 14 years 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.

gonehome2• 14 years 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?

viraptor2• 14 years 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.

darklajid• 14 years ago

One easy reason: A bad excuse to take ages for 'porting' new versions of Android.

andybak2• 14 years 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.

ericb• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

e40• 14 years ago

This is the deciding factor for me. I won't do a non-Nexus device again. I'm currently on Verizon, and the jury is still out on whether I actually have a Nexus in name only, or not. We'll see. It's more than 5 months since I got my device and still no 4.0.4 update (4.0.2 came out on launch day and it has bugs). Next time, I might go GSM w/T-Mobile (if they're still around in 1.5 years) so I can get a true Nexus device that is updated directly from Google's servers.

huggyface3• 14 years ago

No to both? -- Do not buy.

Good for you.

Why is it so difficult for hardware manufacturers to refrain from putting their poor attempts to improve stock android on their devices

In the <Android 2.3 era those skins were critical in making the operating system usable. I would argue that they still offer huge value for an average consumer.

There is a world of hundreds of millions of smartphone users who are not like the people who visit HN. Who appreciate when they have a camera and information on the lockscreen, a quick selector in the drag down, and on and on. Little things added first in skins, improving the Android experience. That isn't me or you, but good god the boring "stock Android or GTFO" comments need to stop. They are ignorant and detached from reality.

gonehome2• 14 years ago

I would argue that the skins hurt the average consumer far more than they help them.

They delay updates (sometimes permanently) they caused noticeable performance issues - especially early on. The changes made to apps (with HTC's sense in mind) ruined a lot of the design of the default applications and made it hard to use different android devices.

While the giant glossy widgets and laggy animations may have impressed some, the overall damage caused wasn't merely bad for the power users - but everyone. What made this issue worse was that until the Nexus line it was essentially impossible just to run stock android on a modern phone.

Cyanogen is cool, but in practice it has it's share of problems (gps not working, radio issues, having to unlock, root and flash the phone).

chj• 14 years ago

I'll be lured by the dropbox deal.

bobsy• 14 years 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.

huggyface3• 14 years 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.

rsheridan62• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

mrich2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

runeks2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

mrich2• 14 years ago

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

sasoon• 14 years 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...

gbaygon• 14 years ago

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

ZeroGravitas2• 14 years 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.

Engadget's Samsung Galaxy S III review

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