Samsung Galaxy S III: Hands-On Test Wows

Samsung Galaxy S III

You're going to want this phone.

Samsung now considers the Galaxy S III its flagship phone, and rightfully so. I've been testing the smartphone during the past few days, and it is one of the most impressive smartphones I've ever used. It's just the right size and then some, and the hardware is tip-top. Samsung packs in more features--many around sharing content--than ever before. The phone runs Google's latest version of Android--version 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, along with Samsung's own TouchWhiz user interface.

The Galaxy S III and HTC's One will do furious battle in the coming months, giving Android even more momentum ahead of whatever Apple has up its sleeves.

Samsung expects the Galaxy S III to be a huge seller, and the carriers--AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular--have all been taking pre-orders, but Samsung is not sharing those figures just yet. Only Sprint and T-Mobile have announced availability: June 21. Pricing varies by carrier, but generally the 16-GB version runs $199 (with data plan) and you'll pay about $250 for the 32-GB version. Samsung officials said there will be only one version of the Galaxy S III, rather than a variety of models made specifically for each carrier.

[ Take a look at Samsung's new feature-rich smartphone. See Samsung Galaxy S III Visual Tour: Android Superphone. ]

Just in case you haven't read much about the Samsung Galaxy S III, it uses a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED, 1280 x 720 display. (HTC's One S has a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen, with 960 x 540 resolution; the One X, available from AT&T, has a 4.7-inch Super LCD screen with 1280 x 720 resolution.)

I kept looking at the Galaxy S III alongside the puny iPhone 4S and laughing; as much as I like the iPhone, it's suddenly too small. Thing is, despite its size, the Galaxy S III is really light (133 grams, or 4.7 oz), and super thin at 8.6 mm, with rounded, beveled edges, a tapered back, and solid Gorilla glass display. It's extremely comfortable to hold and there's really no wasted space. (The Samsung Galaxy S III, for those keeping score, or counting pixels, packs in 306 pixels per inch; the Apple iPhone 4S Retina display has 326.)

The Galaxy S III is powered by Qualcomm's dual core 1.5-GHz Snapdragon S4 processor (the international version has Samsung's own quad-core processor (Exynos), but that doesn't support LTE 4G networks in the United States. Samsung said that in its own benchmarking the difference between its dual-core and quad-core phones is practically negligible, and points out that the Qualcomm S4 chip uses the Krait architecture, which is more advanced; Samsung's Exynos has more cores, Samsung added, but they are based on an older ARM Cortex-A9 design.

The same holds true for HTC's One, by the way (the international version of the HTC One X uses Nvidia's Tegra 3, a quad-core processor that doesn't yet support LTE 4G networks).

The Galaxy S III has an 8-megapixel rear-facing HD camera and a 1.9-MP front-facing camera. (And Samsung's typical physical home button, which I happen to find handy.)

In addition to running on HSPA+ and LTE networks, the phone packs in Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC. Its 11-pin MHL port supports HDMI and microUSB, and its microSD slot can take up to 64-GB cards. The S III has a 2100 mAh battery (removable), and the company claims seven hours of constant use--in my limited experience, that's just about right.

Galaxy S III Content Sharing Options

Behind the Samsung Galaxy S III hardware sits the most promiscuous sharing capabilities found in a modern smartphone. It uses Android Beam (over NFC), but also its own Samsung S Beam and Wi-Fi Direct, which is essentially Wi-Fi peer-to-peer content sharing (no access point needed).

There are a host of other sharing options, including group photo sharing and groupcasts of phone content. If anything, the array of choices is a bit overwhelming; and with so many specialized and proprietary sharing extensions, these new offerings assume a bit of an insular Samsung world.

Philip Berne, marketing manager for Samsung Mobile, said that S Beam actually uses NFC to establish a connection, but uses Wi-Fi Direct to transfer data. That means phones can be further apart (Samsung said they've done tests at 100 yards using Wi-Fi Direct), and transfers should be faster using S Beam. Berne said that S Beam works with files up to 1 GB, and isn't limited to sending Web URLs, contacts, and maps (like Android Beam). S Beam can send photos, video, and "legally sharable music files," in addition to Web content and links to Android apps.

Setup is straightforward, but buried under the "more" option of wireless settings. Turning on NFC lets you enable Android Beam and S Beam. Wi-Fi Direct is a separate option. Wi-Fi Direct will drain battery life, but the Galaxy S III prompts you to shut it off if it hasn't been used for five minutes. In fact, when you want to transfer data, the phone will prompt you to enable Wi-Fi Direct, so you can simply leave it off as a default.

Note: Android Beam is part of Android Ice Cream Sandwich; Wi-Fi Direct is an industry standard; S Beam works only on Galaxy S III devices. Berne said the following about S Beam: "As a flagship feature, we expect it will be available on future high-end Samsung Android devices, but we have made no official announcements or plans yet."

In my testing, each of these options worked well. Within an application (the Android photo gallery, the Web browser, the music player, Google Maps), I brought together two Galaxy S III devices, the running service/app minimized, inviting me to tap to beam, and away the data went. In the case of a photo, the Gallery app on the receiving phone showed a gallery of shared photos (called SBeamShare) along with my other photos. Websites magically appeared from one device to the other. So did maps from Google Maps. Only my music wouldn't transfer--these were iTunes songs I downloaded from a Mac onto one of the Galaxy S III phones and Google Play songs.

Beaming requires the receiving phone to have its screen unlocked; this is an obvious security measure.

Wi-Fi Direct was easy enough to use as well. It finds other Wi-Fi Direct devices, requests an invitation to share with those devices, and then sends the data.

Samsung also created Share Shot, which offers the ability to create a predefined group of Galaxy S III users who can automatically share photos with each other. The idea here is to allow for something like a shared photo album at a sporting event, party, or concert (using Wi-Fi Direct means, of course, that you must be in the same place at the same time).

Share Shot gets set up within the camera app, via a simple setting. It then directs you to turn on Wi-Fi Direct, pick people to share with, and then all pictures end up in your Photo Gallery--those you send are in a ShareShot album, those you receive are in a Recv album. In my testing they showed up instantly.

One concern I have is around control. I don't know if you have any photo happy friends, but you could find yourself with a fairly full album, eating away at your storage--or just starting to become annoying or inappropriate. It would simply be nice to enable a feature that either limits the number of photos, or lets you review and reject some if you want. You can, of course, just exit the sharing situation.

The Galaxy S III includes AllShare Play (AllShare was available in previous Samsung devices), an application that lets you share content, like video, with a variety of devices--namely Samsung Smart TVs, DLNA-capable devices (TVs, Blu-ray players), and tablets and PCs running AllShare Play. You can use this to access content remotely as well (from a PC running AllShare Play). I only tested this between smartphones, but it's fairly simple. From within an audio or video player, AllShare goes out and discovers receiving devices. The main difference with the new AllShare is that it is contextual, so you can start it directly from the application rather than the settings menu.

Samsung also includes Group Cast with the Galaxy S III--the ability to create a private group for content sharing in real time. Group Cast a document, create a PIN, and then other users on the same Wi-Fi network can see the same content. The content is stored in memory on each device (in fact the host can leave and rejoin). I tested this with a variety of documents--PDFs, PowerPoints, and screenshots from the photo gallery, and for the most part it worked fine. However, I'm still not clear on what applications are supported--for instance, I couldn't Group Cast from either the Google Play or the Samsung video player; Berne said it doesn't yet support videos. I had trouble sharing music, even though Group Cast seemed to be available to do so.

Samsung's Berne said that Group Cast is for smaller groups, and that Samsung has had 17 participants in a Group Cast, but that's probably pushing its limits. There are other apps, like Cisco's WebEx and Fuze Meeting, that let participants share documents in real time--and those offer videoconference capabilities as well. Berne noted that Samsung is looking to expand Group Cast's capabilities for the future, but did not specify how or when.

Galaxy S III Camera Options

I've been trapped in enough poorly lit settings to know that a smartphone camera is never going to really replace the real thing for quality photography, even for us mere amateurs. For nights on the town, sharing photos among friends and family, and sharing on social and social photo sites, however, smartphone cameras are handy at worst--and extravagantly savvy at best. The Samsung Galaxy S III falls into the latter category.

Autofocus, auto white balance, a little image stabilization, duel LED flash, high dynamic range (HDR), panoramic shots, lenses capable of capturing a scene in higher resolution, ambient scene adjustment options, "HD" video capture, exposure adjustments--these are all part of the high-end, modern-day smartphone camera, and some devices are doing it better than others.

I can't pretend to be a smartphone camera buff. I'm sure Carl Zeiss optics are spectacular; I'm sure the HTC One's camera capabilities are incredible -- they sound like it; I'm sure Nokia's PureView 808 41-MP smartphone (coming soon to the U.S., as rumors tell it) is going to blow our socks off (I've seen what it can do--I'm sockless; barefoot even). I am also sure there's even more amazing technology on the way, like Apple's swappable camera lenses, according to a rumor reported by Apple Insider last week.

But for those of us with simple needs, the Galaxy S III is pretty darn photo-fantastic. In addition to all of the above, it has the ability to go into burst mode, where it can take up to 20 pictures at a rate of three per second (the HTC One also has burst mode). When you apply the "best shot" option (here it takes up to eight photos in a burst), it makes a selection suggestion for you, using various quality judgments (focus and light, for instance). It also has a feature where you can snap a picture, and it only takes that picture when your subject smiles. And this worked like a champ for me and my smile-resistant subject.

The Galaxy S III camera also has a feature called Buddy Photo Share. Tag a photo using your contact list, and from then on, the Galaxy S III will automatically tag any photo with that person, using the phone's facial recognition. You can also use this to add people to your contact list (with photo). And naturally you can easily share your photos with your contacts--via any information you have on those people in your contact app.

Other great additions: you can shift your focus in the picture, or even lock into a focus; you can shoot in macro mode (especially good for close-ups); you can take 6-MP still shots while shooting video (the HTC One can also do this); and you can customize your camera menus by creating feature shortcuts (like using macro mode).

Honestly, all of this made my iPhone 4S camera look like a child's toy.

Galaxy S III Voice Commands

Goodness this is a fun phone. There's hardly enough space to go into everything it can do, so here are some of the other highlights I found especially enticing:

1. Pop Up Play: Smartphones multitask. They have for quite a while, but that means something different from platform to platform. Sometimes apps suspend when they are abandoned for another app. Sometimes data feeds an app in real time via widgets (Android) or Live Tiles (Windows Phone 7). Notifications arrive, often in some form of notification center or pop-up message (iOS). Phones are just too small (even this one) to see two applications at once. But Samsung's Pop Up Player manages to get around that. It creates a small, movable window within which the video continues to play, allowing you to perform other tasks (open an app, browse the Web). However, this only works with the Samsung video player app, not with Google Play, or any other Android app like Netflix or Hulu Plus. A shame, that.

2. Tec Tiles: Tec Tiles is Samsung's way to start making use of NFC, cost-effectively. Tec Tiles are NFC-enabled stickers, which you can program (using the simple Tec Tiles app), for a variety of tasks. For instance, I created a Tec Tile to launch the phone's movie app; you can use Tec Tiles to launch any app on the phone. I set up a Tec Tile to turn on the phone's alarm clock, but you can also program a Tec Tile to change many phone settings--for example, to put the phone in car mode, or to turn off Wi-Fi, or whatever.

Samsung says that Tec Tiles are great for repetitive tasks. You can program them to make a phone call (say to a number you call frequently) while driving, open your browser to your favorite website, find a location on a map, send a text message, check in on Foursquare, "Like" something on Facebook, or even update your Facebook or Twitter status. There's also an option to program a connection on LinkedIn.

I tried many of these options and Tec Tiles worked extremely well. It will get interesting when Samsung gives developers access to Tec Tiles.

3. S Voice: Seems like Samsung has a little Siri envy. It has included S Voice, which lets you give voice commands to your phone, in addition to providing speech-to-text dictation capabilities.

4. Motion: The Samsung Galaxy S III makes ample use of its accelerometer, employing motion techniques as a way to navigate and interact with the phone. Honestly I can't say I would use all of these features, but some people will find them helpful and they are certainly useful shortcuts.

One example is Direct Call. Lift the phone to your ear while having a conversation via text message, or directly from within the contact application and the phone dials the other party. You're supposed to be able to tilt the phone to scroll lists (contacts, emails), but I couldn't get this to work. I was able to tilt to zoom photos in the gallery, but I couldn't get this feature to work in the browser.

You can also shake the phone to get updates--say to refresh your email inbox or find Bluetooth devices.

Set the phone face down and it mutes incoming calls and alerts and pauses music. (I do wish it would just continue to play after I picked up the phone--I had to hit "play" again.) You can also mute or pause by placing your palm over the phone--and this worked well for me.

5. Power Savings and Smart Stay: Samsung includes some really nice features for managing battery life. For example, you can turn on power-saving mode, and then dive into limiting the CPU, the power-hungry Super AMOLED screen, and even turning off haptic feedback. More interesting: You can see how much power each of your running apps is consuming. Very smart.

Speaking of which, the Galaxy S III now includes Smart Stay, which actually counteracts some of the battery saving techniques by keeping the device from dimming or locking when it detects (via the camera) that you are interacting with the phone.

6. Customizable Call Rejection Notices: One other feature I found helpful (and which Apple also just announced will be available in iOS 6) is customizable call rejection notices. When there's an incoming call, you can send the caller a message saying--well, virtually anything, from the defaults ("I'm driving" or "I'm in a meeting") to customized messages ("I'm much too important to take your call").

There's much more.

Samsung provides its TouchWiz interface on top of Android. That means you can customize and re-arrange your screens and menus, create folders to group applications, resize widgets, create shortcuts, and so on. Ice Cream Sandwich includes many great new features. (I especially like the facial recognition to unlock the phone; by the way, you can use Samsung's S Voice to do the same.)

The mobile OS battle between Apple iOS (especially given the iOS 6 features on the way) and Windows Phone 7 is on.