Samsung finally announced the Samsung Galaxy S III after a lot of speculations, rumors, unofficial announcement from the press guys, but when the device came in it had a few stunning features that although not everyone would take advantage of, are those which no other phone has every had. Talk about the smart actions which the Galaxy S III does, no other phone from any brand could make a call when the device was taken near to the user’s ear, or holding the screen and rotating the phone to landscape mode never activated the camera. That all can happen only in the Galaxy S III.
Let’s see what all kept the world stunned with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S III. Ok, here are the features which we wanted to focus on, why the Galaxy S III would be a step ahead of other devices:
Reason 1 – The large screen, but extremely thin bezel
The length of 5.4-inch would make someone feel whether the device would fit well into the hands, but the thin bezel given by Samsung did keep the comfort levels to the max. The Galaxy S III is just 0.34-inch thick, and finally, you won’t be seeing a chin at the bottom.
Although we would see complains flowing around that the design is just the little-bit of changes done from the previous versions of Galaxy, we feel that the design is a lot different and the inspiration taken from nature (that’s what Samsung says) is quite well portrayed, with the color variants “Pebble Blue” and “Marble White”.
Reason 2 – Smart Stay with Eye tracking
It stays active with the screen turned on until you are viewing it and the front camera of the Galaxy S III recognizes the same. The response from the phone is in accordance to your activity. This is a trial of something totally new from Samsung and the users would surely notice it, because the eye tracking technology as what the hands-on show, works pretty well and acts accordingly.
Reason 3 – S Voice
This is a voice recognizing system, which would listen to your commands. It isn’t that productive as the Siri in the iPhone 4S, but the lazy users could take advantage of it and make calls, set alarm, check a website, weather status all with their voice commands rather than typing things out. Few other features and functions of the S Voice include the controlling of volume, launching the camera app and even clicking a picture using the camera. When an alarm rings in the morning, you can just say “snooze” and it would shut the alarm and set itself to ring after a few minutes.
Reason 4 – S Beam (NFC, taken to next level)
The smaller files to be shared between the two similar devices would be instant with the two devices in touch, would send files of size around 10-15 MB within a moment. This is the modified version of the current ICS based NFC service but one won’t be very lucky enough to use it, unless both the users who are trying to share the files are the proud owners of the Galaxy S III.
Reason 5 – Allshare Cast
Gone is the time when you had to plug the HDMI cords and connect the phone to the larger screens. The Allshare Cast does the streaming to the largers screens like TV, wirelessly and this broadcasting of content is done through the Wi-Fi connection.
Reason 6 – Best Photo through Burst Shot
Taking the inspiration from the HTC One X (or was this already in their plans but the One X launched earlier), the 8-Megapixel camera of the Samsung Galaxy S III would capture up to 8 shots per second, and a single burst shot can capture up to 20 scenes at once and it would list all those from which you select the best one and the others are gone in an instant. This would work the best when the object is moving and you can’t rely on a single click. We aren’t sure whether we can select one, or the phone itself selects the best shot automatically but if its the latter one, we would be totally disappointed.
Reason 7 – 1.4GHz Exynos Processor, Pop Up Play
The strong 1.4 GHz Exynos processor has been well portrayed in the Pop Up Play feature. The Galaxy S III would play a video on the top or in the front of any app and while you are using the text messaging app or any chat app, the video would run along and you could place it anywhere on the front and resize it as you wish. The video viewing is limited to just the videos that are stored in the phone, but that shouldn’t get you frustrated as you are getting a lot of storage space. One would at least appreciate the fact that there is an option where you aren’t only emailing or texting, and you get to watch a video along with it.
Reason 8 – Direct Call
You are messaging someone, or replying to their text message and feel that its better to call them rather than type it out, you won’t need to go to the Phone app for that, as the Direct Call option would start calling as soon as you lift the phone in front of the face or near the ear. You don’t need to tap on the screen at all, just the lifting of phone would do the job for you.
Reason 9 – Buddy Share
We won’t ask you to totally and trust this feature, but talking about the function of this feature, the Buddy Share would automatically recognize your friends in the photos that you captured using the Galaxy S III camera and then would share these photos with those friends who are tagged and recognized.
Reason 10 – Camera app shortcut – No usage of button
A pretty simple way, but sometimes would also unnecessarily open the camera app. Tap on the screen and hold, and rotate the phone into landscape mode and it would activate the camera app. This is way better than having the camera shortcut app on the home screen, or opening the apps list to start the camera.
Reason 11 – Smart Alerts using Accelerometer
HTC was having such an option already, but Samsung goes big with the other features tagged along. The Smart Alerts uses the built-in accelerometer of the phone and keeps a track of your usage and if you have received any text messages and missed any calls, as soon as you are back and the accelerometer detects your touch or movement, it would make the phone vibrate to let you know of the unread notifications.
Reason 12 – 4G LTE support
Connectivity is no less these days in any smartphone, and to carry along with the trend (unlike the Apple iPhone), the Samsung Galaxy S III comes with the 4G LTE connectivity, and the advantage would be fully taken of in the U.S. and U.K. where the actual 4G networks with the full-speed wireless connectivity are available.
Reason 13 – Flipboard for Android
Only for the Galaxy S3 users – The famous app for the iOS devices, Flipboard, which is a social integration tool is now available in Android, and for those who are planning to have the Galaxy S III in their hands, have an upper edge over the other Android devices because Flipboard is going to be available only for the SIII. This app would surely come into a few selected phones later on, but the early bird advantage is only for the new S III users.
Reason 14 – Super AMOLED is unexpectedly brilliant
The quality of graphics and display shown on the screen of the Galaxy S III suggests that the Super AMOLED display with the 1280×720 pixels is pretty neat and all the hate talk against the display for not being the Super AMOLED Plus or Retina might stop once experienced. The resolution is good enough for the 4.8-inch screen, and if Samsung had tried to bring out the full HD display here in this size of the screen, we might have seen a stage of oversaturation.
Reason 15 – High Storage – expandable to 64 GB
The Samsung Galaxy S III is going to come with the 16 GB and 32 GB storage options, and the company says that the internal memory option of 64 GB too is coming soon. But for those with the lesser storage, would be happy with the option of having 64GB in the end, thanks to the MicroSD external storage option. Apart from that, Samsung has collaborated with Dropbox to give an extra storage on the online servers and this is going to be a whooping 50GB! This doesn’t give you an extra storage option, but so much of storage backed up would keep you out of any worry.
Reason 16 – Removable battery, Good capacity
We would not support the second part of the line already, because we haven’t got any battery tests done but for the given specs except the high-end processor, the 2100 mAh capacity is quite something because we had to settle down with the 1650 mAh of the Galaxy S II. The battery can be removed, unlike the latest high-end devices like the Sony Xperia S, HTC One X, Nokia Lumia 800, HTC One V. It holds a big advantage, especially while you are traveling and have a replacement extra battery.
Reason 17 – The Smart Accessories – Wireless Charge, S Pebble
Samsung never brought out any special accessories, which includes the Wireless Charging, the S Pebble which is the music playing companion exclusively for the Galaxy S III. Wireless charging is something that the 3rd party companies have brought in, and a very few phones are compatible to get the wireless charge, but the Galaxy S III users have got one more reason to boast about. Other accessories include the flip cover, similar to the one for the Galaxy Note, and there is an HDMI port included, for those who would not use the wireless AllShare Cast for broadcasting the content on larger screens.
We are blown away with the features and specifications given by the company, but we can’t say that the Galaxy S 3 would be the best smartphone around right now, because there are quite a few things that we weren’t impressed of. We would be listing them out too, but the “Good” outnumbers the “Bad” in the device.
Here is our Samsung Galaxy S III Hands-On Review Smart Phone :
