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"This really is the ferrari of mobile phones"
4.0 starson by chris_konczPros: Screen looks unreal, fits comfortably into my hand and pocket, can do anything a tablet can. I love the free apps and the free videos and mp3s i can easily download and play back on android. I enjoy the customization and complete control over ICS.
Cons: Guzzles juice under heavy use and can get quite warm when its processor is stretched. Too little ram, it needs 2gb to run properly. I often have to manually clear the ram to be able to play hd games without stutter.Screen too dim for outdoors.
Summary: I love this phone and would certainly recommend it over the Iphone 4s and HTC one X due to its large replaceable battery and SD card slot. Its size is perfect for me, if anything the screen could be even bigger, but then I am a big man myself, girls probably won't like the size of this phone that much. Under normal useage it will last the day and after the inevitable battery failure you can buy a heavy-duty one to replace it, not something you can do on most other phones. The plastic design is actually a plus for me, it should be very durable and age well, plus its futureproofing ensures it should be easy to sell in 2 years' time. The biggest disappointment for me was s-voice, after the hype it turned out to be absolute rubbish and samsung's speech servers are sub-par, much worse than apple's.Also, under duress the back heats up a bit, though not uncomfortably, and the lack of text-resizing on the stock browser is irritating. Also, battery life is not as stellar as advertised, for instance HD video streaming on full brightness will drain the battery in about 3-4 hrs.After a few weeks battery durability has already gone down,I need to charge more often and it doesn't last as long. I will definitely have to buy a replacement battery in a few months, which BTW removes the NFC chip from the equation.
Overall, this is a brilliant technological achievement from samsung, but I wish they spent some more time testing and fine-tuning the device, some features seem haphazard and it shows they wanted to get this phone out asap, to steal a march on iphone.
Whether I would recommend it as a buy, depends on you, I don't think an Iphone user is going to ditch the upcoming Iphone 5 in favour of this one, but as far as android devices go, this is the best one out there currently. The reason it doesn't quite beat even the older iphone 4s is mostly due to its operating system. Google play is still no match for the istore and android fragmentation is a serious issue. Also, ICS has poor ram management and you have to manually tinker with the settings to make ram heavy apps run properly, and you have to do this each time before you use them. No wonder the US and Japanese versions get 2 gigs of ram, I think the dual core cpu and 2 gb ram will make the phone better than the international version. tests show the snapdragon version runs more smoothly and manages the battery better, so shame on samsung for rushing out the international version before testing it properly. Still, that is a minor niggle and otherwise I adore my S3.
- 7 replies to this review
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Can you tell me what you mean by " I will definitely have to buy a replacement battery in a few months, which BTW removes the NFC chip from the equation"? I purchased a replacement battery as a backup from Amazon, not Sprint. Is there something special in the Sprint batteries that you are referring to? I'm not a tecky, so sorry if this post is a little "non-tech". haha
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How long have you had it? Id totally disagree - the Ferrari doesnt take long to start breaking. More of a LADA
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Sir, there is 2 gb of RAM on this phone. the United States version has a dual core instead of a quad core, but doubles up the RAM.
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Here is PART 2 of my reply:
At first, I felt hard done by because we were given "only" the dual-core processor, whereas y'all (sorry...had to say it) received the truly spine-tingling quad-core. Now, provided I understood you as well as I thought I did, we "only" get the dual-core, BUT we get 2GB of RAM, whereas England gets 1GB.
So...that's the trade-off!
I have to say that I consider that compromise worthwhile. We lose a little bit of ALMIGHTY processing power, in return for a truly fantastic and more-than-sufficient amount of memory, while our battery life should be quite a bit better when feeding but two hungry mouths, erm...cores, instead of four.
Long story short: I'll be at my local Vodafone/Verizon store this Thursday morning to purchase THREE of these blue 32GB beauties. Thank you for clarifying the RAM/Core tradeoff!
Cheers! -
For some unknown reason, cnet is deciding that 1600 characters is MORE than 15,000; therefore, I have to break my reply into two parts. Here's part 1:
Excellent review! I noticed rather early on that you were posting from across the pond. Being married to a girl from London (Clapham South) will raise one's awareness to terms like "rubbish", as well usage of proper English and an actual acquaintance with proper spelling and punctuation. As a Texan who has a love of such pedantic idiosyncrasies, I'm only too aware of the APPALLING tip that we "Yanks" have often made of our Mother Tongue; therefore, I learned long ago to skip to the next review when the title of a post reads something like: "DAM DIS PHOEN IS DEFINATLY WAT U WANT"...
Anyway, aside from giving the appearance of being a run-of-the-mill sycophant, I want to thank you for clearing up an issue I've had with reconciling why each continent had its own version, and which one was "better".
(Part 2 to follow) -
I normally don't reply to reviews, unless I have questions. But, I have to knock this one. Your information is off... It specs at 2GB of RAM out of the box. Please see the below link from Samsung's web site for the manufacturer specs for the SGSIII.
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SGH-T999MBATMB-specs
Besides that, great review, and I completely intend on picking one up in the next two or so weeks... And then hopefully tossing CM9 on it (which should fix some, if not all, of that lag you speak of; no more Samsung/Tmobile bloat). Though I do plan on checking out that Svoice thing first. -
The phone sounds great, but are we going to have to same problems I'm having with the Samsung 4-G that for some reason they can't fix, but they continue offering this phone that in talking with some of the Techs seems defective and they can't fix it, and they don't want to replace it with a different phone!
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