SAMSUNG GALAXY S3 REVIEW

        Lets face it- Android is the OS of the moment as far as smartphones are concerned. All major manufacturers such as HTC, SAMSUNG, LG, SONY, etc understand this and that is why they invest time and money to build a smartphone based on android which is capable of at least making them a contender for the best manufacturer in the market. As far as Samsung is concerned, its the Galaxy series of smartphones that do the job for them. Samsung's fortunes changed with the success of the original Samsung Galaxy and they reached new heights of glory with the record- breaking sales of Samsung Galaxy S II. Naturally consumers anticipated a worthy successor to the S II. Samsung gave their all to create the perfect successor and now the consumers can finally welcome the Samsung Galaxy S III. A phone for Humans as Samsung say- S III has lot to live up to. Is it worth the buzz and hype? Is it the a successor to S II. Read on to find out.

LOOKS AND DIMENSIONS: Undoubtedly, S III bears quite a few resemblances to its predecessors and in more than a few ways is different from them too. In case of looks, S3 is quite different from the S2. Instead of those edgy corners, it bears nice curvy corners. With the 4.8" display the phone might sound to be a gigantic but doesn't feels so when you take it in your hands. Apart from the change in the body design, nothing much has changed. You still find the home button, camera lens, speaker grills and the capacitive navigation keys which are mandatory in every ICS phone are all there at the very same place.
     With the increased size and increase in Battery size, it was necessary for Samsung to use quite a few old tricks of theirs to keep the weight down to the minimum. The hard work seems to have paid off with S3 weighing only 135 grams( just 17 gram more than s2). S III being 8.66 mm thick is also marginally fatter than the S2. The built quality, overall feels quite good even though Samsung gave S3 the age-old plastic finish with paper-thin rear cover. I guess you can take this as a bargain since S3 offers a brilliant display and array of features( As I said, built quality feels good enough).

Display:  The real delight which S3 offers is the brilliant 4.8-inch AMOLED display. Its not just big but its also better than S2. Since the release of Galaxy Nexus, Samsung was criticized for their display and unconventional faith in the AMOLED displays which they have but they have proven everyone wrong. Six months of hard-work has resulted in a well lit, bright, sharp, crisp and also much more realistic display with a healthy pixel density of 306ppi. It might not beat I-phone 4S or even HTC ONE X, but still Samsung has accomplished quite a lot. The extra inches S3 provides is a boon while browsing the internet or watching a HD movie. With the brilliant screen, these become much more enjoyable experiences. For those who want to make sure their phones are sturdy need not worry since the display is made up of reliable GORILLA GLASS.

      While the display is largely appreciable, the usual problem of AMOLED displays is even present here- the PenTile effect. If you hold the phone too close to your face( which you won't generally do because of the large screen size) you will notice that the text look quite fuzzier. For an amid e-book reader, this can be a noticeable problem but after playing for a few hours you will generally stop regretting it since the brilliant resolution and huge screen size rescue the S3 easily. Yet, a drawback is a drawback.


CAMERA: It was quite a disappointment when Samsung revealed that S3 would have a 8MP camera against the speculations of 12MP. But to a great surprise, the Camera is outstanding in terms of performance. The quad-core equinox processor brings a huge advantage to S3-raw power which is also noticeable when it comes to taking snaps. With the burst mode, S3's snapper takes 6 shots in the space of a second. S3 lives up to the promise of zero shutter lag when you take a single shot. The press and hold method of taking Images is a great feature which gives S3 a slight edge to the likes of HTC ONE X. All that power and everything wouldn't have matter if the image quality would have been poor but S3 amazes even here. There isn't much of progress from the image quality on S II but still its better and impressive.
         While taking high resolution images, smartphones are generally known for compressing them heavily( since normally such a file weighs about 3MB, yes really!) which seriously hurts image quality. This is not the case with S3. With options to adjust compression levels, You have control on deciding whether to compress the images or not and even to what level you want them to compress. This might not seem too handy a feature but trust me, it might just prevent you from getting frustrated with poor images.
          By taking a few snaps, it becomes clear that colors look much more realistic and images seem much more sharper than they did on S II. The HDR mode enables you to take good images in low light. While they seem admirable, low light images on S3 are not best in the business with ONE X surpassing it here.( Thanks to maximum aperture of f/2.6 compared to f/2.0 of   ONE X where lower is better).
             Video recording is again impressive with good audio as well as visual quality experienced while recording at 1080p resolution. It was also good to see that unlike certain smartphones which do not cancel background noise while recording videos, S III does so with extreme perfectness. Videos record at a healthy rate of 2.2 MB/s while recording at 1080 p resolution but what plays spoil sport is the lack of slow motion effect. Take the good things along with a few bad ones as they say.

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY LIFE: The Quad core equinox chip which powers the S III is remarkably fast. Whether you browse heavy flash websites or play HD videos or play graphic intensive games or multitask with 4-5 apps running in the background, you won't notice any lag.( Once again, No lag!). Now to break the praising spree of S3, multitasking on S3 might very well be a pain. The reason for this is that unlike other ICS smartphones there is no dedicated multitasking button here which leaves you with the only option of pressing and holding the main home key for a second for the purpose. Also, the TouchWiz UI  might make you feel as if you have a Android 2.3 phone in your hand. The UI is useful without doubts but as always ruins Google's hard work which they put in ICS( I know you might be thinking of rooting the phone already to get rid of it but first give TouchWiz UI a try, you might like it)
          As far as battery life is concerned, with moderate usage expect a day and a few more hours of play time. Even with heavy usage patterns, you easily get through a day( When you are on 4G networks, on 3G networks, this increases further). S3 is far superior to other smartphones of this category in reducing battery drain thanks to the equinox chip. You can play videos for about 9 hours which is fabulous at such a resolution and display size. to make things simpler, Equinox chip is a boon for users who crave for improved performance and better battery life( yes I can feel the satisfaction of aggrieved Android users)


TouchWiz SPECIAL OFFERINGS: So what does the UI brings to the phone? What's the features that separates Samsung from others? Here is a list-

Free 50 GB Dropbox storage: You would soon want your data backed up somewhere or would want to safely keep your data somewhere while increasing the free space on your phone. Dropbox would then be handy.
 
SMART STAY: The screen won't get dimmed or the phone won't go to sleep as long as you are looking at the the phone's display.


SOCIAL TAG: Take a snap of you friend and the phone would ask you to name that person. If you provide the name of the person, the phone would recognize that person from then on automatically and would link their Social networking accounts so that you can easily share the images with your friends.

FACE UNLOCK: A pure ANDROID ICS feature that enables you to unlock the phone with the help of face recognition. It might not be entirely safe but its fun.

POP-UP VIDEO PLAYER: SO you are watching a video and suddenly want to message someone. Now you will have to pause the video,right? No. Pop-up video player make it possible to view the video even while multitasking. But Alas! The video plays in a very small window which makes this feature more of a novelty than a useful one.

WRAP-UP: Samsung Galaxy S3 is a worthy successor to S2 and currently the best Android Smartphone money can buy. With an array of useful features and a few flaws, it is a perfect bargain. You might want to criticize it for a few things but the phone just wins your heart time and again Though the phone is a bit costly, its worth a buy.