Samsung Galaxy S3 Full In-Depth Review

S3 Official Launch           

Back in 2012, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is probably the MOST WANTED smartphone. This flagship phone is still among one of the most popular series in Samsung. So let's jump straight into the review. The S3 ships in many different variety of colours. We have marble white, pebble blue, amber brown, sapphire black, garnet red and titanium grey but the marble white and pebble blue were probably more known than the others because Samsung includes only both of these colours as their marketing products. Samsung made all of the carrier versions identical which means phone accessories will work on all of S3 products. 

             The phone runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwhich with the latest TouchWiz version back in year 2012. Inside of this phone, we have 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 Dual Core Processor and a monstrous 2GB of RAM along side with its huge 2100 Lithium Ion battery. It features an expandable micro SD up to 64GB and a Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, a 720 x 1280 pixels,306 ppi pixel density which is a lot for a screen resolution. All of these packaged  in a phone that is just 8.6 mm thin. 

           The biggest feature would be the Super AMOLED High Definition display.The screen and display I have to say that it is crystal clear and very responsive. Even tough I'm not a fan of TouchWiz but I have to admit that the UI (User Interface) is fluid and smooth. The experience of swiping left to right and scrolling feels that you have a sense of context. The animation of the phone is spot on, probably with higher frame rates than any other Android phones. Anyhow, currently I am using the Stock Android UI (KitKat Launcher) in my S3 phone but nevertheless TouchWiz will be the most comfortable UI for most people. However, there are a few Samsung installed applications which just floods the menu application and most of these are in my hidden application folder because they are rarely used.

              I love the Toggle Notification tray where you pull down the notification from the top and have access to all of daily basis features such as Wifi, Data, GPS and Power Saving.  It is very useful for me in daily use of the phone, definitely one of my favourite. There are tons of features that Samsung had installed in this device, we have

-S-Voice natural language commands and dictation

- Smart Stay eye tracking
- Dropbox (50 GB cloud storage)
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- TV-out (via MHL A/V link)
- SNS integration
- MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263 player
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player
- Organizer
- Image/video editor
- Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF)
- - Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input (Swype)

              

              In spite all of these features, I have to say that most of them are pretty ineffective. Smart Stay are inconsistent from time to time. Even when I’m looking at the screen browsing the Web, the camera still fail to detect that I am looking at the phone and it just auto lock automatically. And S-Voice, is pretty much useless. It definitely needs a lot, and I mean a lot of work to do if Samsung wants to have a top notch voice recognition software like the Google Now or Siri. Apart from that, it has an amazing 8 megapixel camera, 3264 x 2448 pixels, sharp autofocus, and LED flash. It takes 1080p videos too. If you are going on a vacation, just dump your camera because the S3 camera will be more than enough for beautiful and clear pictures.

 

                   

                  Moving on to the 2100 mAh battery, it is the best in any 4.7 inches android devices. From gaming to everyday use of the phone, the battery life is more than enough and satisfying. I can get a staggering 12 hour of battery out of this phone with mild use throughout the day. The design is pretty subjective, while some people love it and others hate it. Personally I would prefer a leather-ish back cover of the S3 and not the current plastic back cover as the phone tend to slip out of my grip when my hand is sweaty. The phone is thin and fits well onto your palm. In addition, the phone does have some lagging issues during heavy use or gaming. The battery drain during standby mode is something Samsung should work on as it took up a large 11% of battery drain during a 8 hour of standby mode.

            This phone is the one to grap for people who prefer a better battery life, fast UI and clear screen.