This review is from: Samsung Galaxy S III 4G Android Phone, Blue 16GB (Sprint) (Wireless Phone)
Got my phone the first day it came out. I upgraded to a smartphone so I was not too sure if I would be able to figure it out but this phone was not too hard. First thing is that it is so light and thin I was afraid of dropping it and was not comfortable holding it until I put a case and screen protector on it, but after I did so it was great. The case added just enough grip to make it easy to hold on to. The on/off button is placed in such a way that if you squeeze it, you end up also squeezing the volume button on the other side, so I ended up pushing it while holding in one hand with the other hand, not always convenient. The big screen is wonderful (I upgraded just for this, as I am older with bad eyesight) and everything is large enough that it can be seen without reading glasses for those of us with poor eyesite. All the most frequently used items are right there when you start and you can customize all your screens if need be. Making and answering calls is extremely easy and the dialing screen has large buttons and easy to access controls. Also the buttons are labeled with what they are, such as end call for those of of who get confused by icons so we don’t end up hanging up when trying to push speakerphone. Same for texting. The speaker is clear and loud enough so that if your hearing is starting to go you can still understand people. If you are in the car you can easily bring up the voice assist with just a quick tap and instruct the phone what to do, either make a call or to send a text (in this case you would dictate the message). Appointments and reminders can be made the same way. I love that on the very front it has voice assist search for google, something I use all the time (locating a type of store, reviews of products, etc). Apps are easy to download and very quick. This phone with 4G service is as quick and responsive when accessing the internet as my home computer. I am a news junkie and I am able to see all the websites I would normally visit and easily read them without feeling like I cannot see what I would normally be able to see. The large screen means limited scrolling and easy viewing. I did not try the navigation apps included but downloaded one called Waze which works better than my onstar navigation included in my car. This phone has easy access to WiFi so if you want to conserve your data usage it is easy enough to use that instead. The notification bar is informative but the phone also has a small light that flashes so that when your screen is not on you can see that there is something that needs your attention. Battery usage is okay, I would make sure that you charge it every evening if you are a heavy internet access person. It takes a couple of hours or so to fully charge directly from an outlet, longer if charging from usb port. Taking pictures and video is a snap and the quality is wonderful. There are a lot of other features that I have not had a need for (such as sharing files). Overall I am very pleased with this phone.
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This review is from: Samsung Galaxy S III 4G Android Phone, Blue 16GB (Sprint) (Wireless Phone)
well guys dont listen to the hater applefanboy below i mean seriously why are you comparing to and iphone crap all you did was talk about siri plz next time talk about the phone not one feature
Pros State-of-the-art everything. Advanced call-quality features. Cons Plasticky body. Really, this lack of clarity on Sprint’s LTE rollout is getting ridiculous. Bottom Line The Samsung Galaxy S III is a top-of-the-line Android smartphone just waiting for Sprint to turn on its new LTE network.
The new flagship smartphone from the world’s number-one mobile phone company, Samsung’s Galaxy S III ($199.99 with contract) is literally a huge achievement. If you love big phones with lots of options, the GS3 will deliver state-of-the-art performance with bonus sharing and media features that you’re likely to continue discovering a year from now. Sprint subscribers now have two solid choices: The Galaxy S III ties with the HTC EVO 4G LTE ($199, 4 stars) as our Editors’ Choice for touch-screen smartphones on Sprint.
Editors’ Note: The Samsung Galaxy S III models on all four major carriers are extremely similar, so we’re sharing a lot of material between our various reviews. That said, we’re testing each device separately, so read the review for your carrier of choice.
Physical Design All of the new Galaxy S III models look the same, except for the carrier logo on the back panel. Each is available in dark blue or white (AT&T also has a red option coming this summer), and they’re some of the biggest phones we’ve ever handled. At 5.4 by 2.8 by 0.34 inches (HWD) and 4.7 ounces, the GS3 is slightly bigger than the already-large HTC One X ($199, 4.5 stars), although it’s still noticeably smaller and lighter than the Samsung Galaxy Note phone/tablet hybrid ($299, 3 stars). That said, this is not a phone for folks with small hands.
View SlideshowSee all (5) slides
More I’m not a fan of the huge phone. But I’ve given up on panning them because every time I suggest these handsets are too big, I get pummeled by comments from people who adore them. Huge phones are the thing. I accept it.
The all-plastic body feels a little less high-end than the exotic materials of the HTC One series, but the phone is solidly built, and light despite its size. The front of the phone is dominated by the 4.8-inch, 1280-by-720-pixel Super AMOLED HD screen. Yes, it’s PenTile, which can sometimes look slightly pixelated. But, no, you probably won’t notice. Below the screen, there’s a physical Home button, as well as light-up Back and Multitasking buttons that start out invisible, so you have to memorize where they are or change a setting to keep them illuminated. The 8-megapixel camera is on the back panel, which, thanks to its reflective finish, doubles as a pocket mirror.
The default Automatic Brightness setting makes the screen too dim. Kill it and pump up the brightness and it’s fine, even outdoors. It’s not as bright as the One X’s Super LCD 2 display, but it’s fine.
Unlike the competing HTC One X, the S III has a removable 2100mAh battery. Taking off the back cover also reveals the microSD card slot, which supports cards up to 64GB.
loading… Call Quality and Internet Are you willing for Sprint to pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today? The EVO 4G LTE promises spectacular call quality with HD Voice…sometime in 2013, once Sprint gets the network running. But the GS3 lets you tweak your call quality now.
Default call quality is good. Volume is on the high end of average, with no distortion from loud inputs. The speakerphone isn’t quite loud enough to use outdoors, but it’s fine for the car or a boardroom. The microphone does a good job of cancelling background noise. Bluetooth headsets work fine with Samsung’s S-Voice voice dialing system.
But as with so many things here, call quality gets richer if you burrow down into the GS3′s menus. A Volume Boost button throws the phone into a super-loud, quasi-speakerphone mode for noisy areas, but that’s just the start. Deep within the settings, there’s an option to set custom call EQ. The phone plays you a sequence of quiet high and low tones and you tell it which ones you can hear, and then it EQ’s calls accordingly. This is pretty radical stuff. I prefer my calls sharp, with more high-end, and the GS3 delivers.
On data though, the Sprint GS3 is crippled. All new Sprint phones are. Although the phones support speedy LTE, Sprint has steadfastly refused to give us a rollout timetable for its new LTE network, leaving its high-end smartphones on the slowest 3G network in America. We tested Sprint LTE, and it’s competitive with AT&T and Verizon, but none of this matters a whit if Sprint won’t tell us when anyone is getting it.
This is why Sprint’s Galaxy S III is getting a slightly lower rating than the other major…
This review is from: Samsung Galaxy S III 4G Android Phone, Blue 16GB (Sprint) (Wireless Phone)
The GS3′s sexy specs and glossy good looks (particularly in pebble blue) won me over. On launch day, I swapped my beloved Droid Razr Maxx, for the Samsung Galaxy S3. Prior to the Maxx, I briefly owned the Verizon version of the GNexus (which I can’t recommend at all). Before I get into the nitty gritty details, with pro’s, con’s and comparisons, at the time of this review, this is the phone you have been waiting for–the phone that will make you use that upgrade or cause you to sign a ridiculous contract with Verizon. After spending ten minutes with the phone, it’s an obvious step up from the Razr Maxx and Galaxy Nexus–the former top tier Android phones on Big Red’s network.
Performance
As much as I loved my Razr Maxx (and its marathon 2-3 solid days of battery life), after spending a few minutes with the GS3, the performance leap is very noticeable. The GS3 is silky smooth, with no lagginess at all. Apps (particulary heavy duty games like GTA III) launch quickly and are game play is flawless. I know many of you aren’t going to play anything requiring more than the occasional fling of a few angry birds, but the GS3′s ability to handle hardcore mobile games with ease is a sure fire indicator that it will be able to run 99.9% of the apps out there in two years. In other words, this phone has the chops to allow you to make it through your contract without starting a countdown for your next upgrade.
How about some real world examples of the GS3′s muscle? The Qualcomm S4 chipset with an industry leading 2gb of Ram can cut through 1080p video files like butter. Surprisingly, it was able to play back a 23.5 mbps AVCHD file using hardware decoding decoding!!! I was even able to take play back the file with the video in screen, while I did a couple of google searches. The average $400 laptop would have a tough time handling that!
The GS3 doesn’t disappoint on the audio side either. While HTC touts its Beats Audio Technology, that’s nothing more than a brand name equilizer setting with limited value– unless you’re spend $100 or more on a beats headphones (which I personally don’t care for). Sammy, on the other hand, dropped in two Wolfson digital to analog converters, which allows the GS3 to pump out lossless high bit rate music with ease. Using a pair of Etyotic HF3 IEM earphones, sound quality was crisp and clean for music playback. Even lossy tracks streaming from Amazon Cloud sounded surprisingly full. Much more so than on some other phones that I own. In terms of music playback, the GS3 is every bit the equal of the iPhone and possibly a little better.
The Screen
The’s GS3′s 4.8″, 720p HD screen is a stunner! The Super AMOLED panel provides rich color saturation and outstanding contrast. The panel used to make the screen is beautifully fabricated. the slight curve in the design makes it a pleasure to touch. Text is crisp and I see no issue with this most recent implementation of pentile technology. The fuzziness from Galaxy S, GNexus and Fascinate is a thing of the past. Watching videos on the GS3 is a treat.
All is, however, not perfect with the GSIII’s screen. While the contrast and color saturation are strong points for the phone, if you like natural color tones, the pumped up saturation levels may bother you. Personally, I would dial back the saturation level if I could. The GS2 had a settings menu that allowed users to tweak brightness, contrast, tint and saturation. For reasons I don’t understand, that great feature was some how left behind on this next gen phone, which is a real pity.
While saturation is a matter of taste, the real issue with the screen though is brightness. Even cranked to 100%, the screen still seems to be a few nits behind the curve. I would love to be able to dial up to 120%. The maximum brightness is noticeably less bright than the screen on the Maxx (which Motorola sourced from Sammy). So, what gives? I am not sure, but my best guess is that in the interest of improving battery life and to compensate for the size of the screen (and the power that size screen will suck), Sammy choose to put a software restriction that limits the ability of users to pump of the brightness. Hopefully, this can be cured by a future firmware update.
While the brightness could use a boost, this deficiency is further amplified by awful auto-brightness implementation. When auto-brightness is turned on, the phone makes sudden and drastic adjustments in brightness even in a consistently well lit setting. It seems as if the software has only 3 settings for brightness when it is set to auto–low, medium and high (which isn’t that high to begin with). The phone will drop from high to low suddenly, leaving the screen unreadably dark. Until Sammy sends out a software update to fix the problem, I have disabled the auto-brightness feature.
Authors bio is coming up shortly. 
Good phone for older people,
Got my phone the first day it came out. I upgraded to a smartphone so I was not too sure if I would be able to figure it out but this phone was not too hard. First thing is that it is so light and thin I was afraid of dropping it and was not comfortable holding it until I put a case and screen protector on it, but after I did so it was great. The case added just enough grip to make it easy to hold on to. The on/off button is placed in such a way that if you squeeze it, you end up also squeezing the volume button on the other side, so I ended up pushing it while holding in one hand with the other hand, not always convenient. The big screen is wonderful (I upgraded just for this, as I am older with bad eyesight) and everything is large enough that it can be seen without reading glasses for those of us with poor eyesite. All the most frequently used items are right there when you start and you can customize all your screens if need be. Making and answering calls is extremely easy and the dialing screen has large buttons and easy to access controls. Also the buttons are labeled with what they are, such as end call for those of of who get confused by icons so we don’t end up hanging up when trying to push speakerphone. Same for texting. The speaker is clear and loud enough so that if your hearing is starting to go you can still understand people. If you are in the car you can easily bring up the voice assist with just a quick tap and instruct the phone what to do, either make a call or to send a text (in this case you would dictate the message). Appointments and reminders can be made the same way. I love that on the very front it has voice assist search for google, something I use all the time (locating a type of store, reviews of products, etc). Apps are easy to download and very quick. This phone with 4G service is as quick and responsive when accessing the internet as my home computer. I am a news junkie and I am able to see all the websites I would normally visit and easily read them without feeling like I cannot see what I would normally be able to see. The large screen means limited scrolling and easy viewing. I did not try the navigation apps included but downloaded one called Waze which works better than my onstar navigation included in my car. This phone has easy access to WiFi so if you want to conserve your data usage it is easy enough to use that instead. The notification bar is informative but the phone also has a small light that flashes so that when your screen is not on you can see that there is something that needs your attention. Battery usage is okay, I would make sure that you charge it every evening if you are a heavy internet access person. It takes a couple of hours or so to fully charge directly from an outlet, longer if charging from usb port. Taking pictures and video is a snap and the quality is wonderful. There are a lot of other features that I have not had a need for (such as sharing files). Overall I am very pleased with this phone.
Was this review helpful to you?
|exellent phone fastest,
well guys dont listen to the hater applefanboy below i mean seriously why are you comparing to and iphone crap all you did was talk about siri plz next time talk about the phone not one feature
Pros
State-of-the-art everything. Advanced call-quality features.
Cons
Plasticky body. Really, this lack of clarity on Sprint’s LTE rollout is getting ridiculous.
Bottom Line
The Samsung Galaxy S III is a top-of-the-line Android smartphone just waiting for Sprint to turn on its new LTE network.
The new flagship smartphone from the world’s number-one mobile phone company, Samsung’s Galaxy S III ($199.99 with contract) is literally a huge achievement. If you love big phones with lots of options, the GS3 will deliver state-of-the-art performance with bonus sharing and media features that you’re likely to continue discovering a year from now. Sprint subscribers now have two solid choices: The Galaxy S III ties with the HTC EVO 4G LTE ($199, 4 stars) as our Editors’ Choice for touch-screen smartphones on Sprint.
Editors’ Note: The Samsung Galaxy S III models on all four major carriers are extremely similar, so we’re sharing a lot of material between our various reviews. That said, we’re testing each device separately, so read the review for your carrier of choice.
Physical Design
All of the new Galaxy S III models look the same, except for the carrier logo on the back panel. Each is available in dark blue or white (AT&T also has a red option coming this summer), and they’re some of the biggest phones we’ve ever handled. At 5.4 by 2.8 by 0.34 inches (HWD) and 4.7 ounces, the GS3 is slightly bigger than the already-large HTC One X ($199, 4.5 stars), although it’s still noticeably smaller and lighter than the Samsung Galaxy Note phone/tablet hybrid ($299, 3 stars). That said, this is not a phone for folks with small hands.
View SlideshowSee all (5) slides
More
I’m not a fan of the huge phone. But I’ve given up on panning them because every time I suggest these handsets are too big, I get pummeled by comments from people who adore them. Huge phones are the thing. I accept it.
The all-plastic body feels a little less high-end than the exotic materials of the HTC One series, but the phone is solidly built, and light despite its size. The front of the phone is dominated by the 4.8-inch, 1280-by-720-pixel Super AMOLED HD screen. Yes, it’s PenTile, which can sometimes look slightly pixelated. But, no, you probably won’t notice. Below the screen, there’s a physical Home button, as well as light-up Back and Multitasking buttons that start out invisible, so you have to memorize where they are or change a setting to keep them illuminated. The 8-megapixel camera is on the back panel, which, thanks to its reflective finish, doubles as a pocket mirror.
The default Automatic Brightness setting makes the screen too dim. Kill it and pump up the brightness and it’s fine, even outdoors. It’s not as bright as the One X’s Super LCD 2 display, but it’s fine.
Unlike the competing HTC One X, the S III has a removable 2100mAh battery. Taking off the back cover also reveals the microSD card slot, which supports cards up to 64GB.
loading…
Call Quality and Internet
Are you willing for Sprint to pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today? The EVO 4G LTE promises spectacular call quality with HD Voice…sometime in 2013, once Sprint gets the network running. But the GS3 lets you tweak your call quality now.
Default call quality is good. Volume is on the high end of average, with no distortion from loud inputs. The speakerphone isn’t quite loud enough to use outdoors, but it’s fine for the car or a boardroom. The microphone does a good job of cancelling background noise. Bluetooth headsets work fine with Samsung’s S-Voice voice dialing system.
But as with so many things here, call quality gets richer if you burrow down into the GS3′s menus. A Volume Boost button throws the phone into a super-loud, quasi-speakerphone mode for noisy areas, but that’s just the start. Deep within the settings, there’s an option to set custom call EQ. The phone plays you a sequence of quiet high and low tones and you tell it which ones you can hear, and then it EQ’s calls accordingly. This is pretty radical stuff. I prefer my calls sharp, with more high-end, and the GS3 delivers.
On data though, the Sprint GS3 is crippled. All new Sprint phones are. Although the phones support speedy LTE, Sprint has steadfastly refused to give us a rollout timetable for its new LTE network, leaving its high-end smartphones on the slowest 3G network in America. We tested Sprint LTE, and it’s competitive with AT&T and Verizon, but none of this matters a whit if Sprint won’t tell us when anyone is getting it.
This is why Sprint’s Galaxy S III is getting a slightly lower rating than the other major…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|Great Phone, but Not Perfect!,
The GS3′s sexy specs and glossy good looks (particularly in pebble blue) won me over. On launch day, I swapped my beloved Droid Razr Maxx, for the Samsung Galaxy S3. Prior to the Maxx, I briefly owned the Verizon version of the GNexus (which I can’t recommend at all). Before I get into the nitty gritty details, with pro’s, con’s and comparisons, at the time of this review, this is the phone you have been waiting for–the phone that will make you use that upgrade or cause you to sign a ridiculous contract with Verizon. After spending ten minutes with the phone, it’s an obvious step up from the Razr Maxx and Galaxy Nexus–the former top tier Android phones on Big Red’s network.
Performance
As much as I loved my Razr Maxx (and its marathon 2-3 solid days of battery life), after spending a few minutes with the GS3, the performance leap is very noticeable. The GS3 is silky smooth, with no lagginess at all. Apps (particulary heavy duty games like GTA III) launch quickly and are game play is flawless. I know many of you aren’t going to play anything requiring more than the occasional fling of a few angry birds, but the GS3′s ability to handle hardcore mobile games with ease is a sure fire indicator that it will be able to run 99.9% of the apps out there in two years. In other words, this phone has the chops to allow you to make it through your contract without starting a countdown for your next upgrade.
How about some real world examples of the GS3′s muscle? The Qualcomm S4 chipset with an industry leading 2gb of Ram can cut through 1080p video files like butter. Surprisingly, it was able to play back a 23.5 mbps AVCHD file using hardware decoding decoding!!! I was even able to take play back the file with the video in screen, while I did a couple of google searches. The average $400 laptop would have a tough time handling that!
The GS3 doesn’t disappoint on the audio side either. While HTC touts its Beats Audio Technology, that’s nothing more than a brand name equilizer setting with limited value– unless you’re spend $100 or more on a beats headphones (which I personally don’t care for). Sammy, on the other hand, dropped in two Wolfson digital to analog converters, which allows the GS3 to pump out lossless high bit rate music with ease. Using a pair of Etyotic HF3 IEM earphones, sound quality was crisp and clean for music playback. Even lossy tracks streaming from Amazon Cloud sounded surprisingly full. Much more so than on some other phones that I own. In terms of music playback, the GS3 is every bit the equal of the iPhone and possibly a little better.
The Screen
The’s GS3′s 4.8″, 720p HD screen is a stunner! The Super AMOLED panel provides rich color saturation and outstanding contrast. The panel used to make the screen is beautifully fabricated. the slight curve in the design makes it a pleasure to touch. Text is crisp and I see no issue with this most recent implementation of pentile technology. The fuzziness from Galaxy S, GNexus and Fascinate is a thing of the past. Watching videos on the GS3 is a treat.
All is, however, not perfect with the GSIII’s screen. While the contrast and color saturation are strong points for the phone, if you like natural color tones, the pumped up saturation levels may bother you. Personally, I would dial back the saturation level if I could. The GS2 had a settings menu that allowed users to tweak brightness, contrast, tint and saturation. For reasons I don’t understand, that great feature was some how left behind on this next gen phone, which is a real pity.
While saturation is a matter of taste, the real issue with the screen though is brightness. Even cranked to 100%, the screen still seems to be a few nits behind the curve. I would love to be able to dial up to 120%. The maximum brightness is noticeably less bright than the screen on the Maxx (which Motorola sourced from Sammy). So, what gives? I am not sure, but my best guess is that in the interest of improving battery life and to compensate for the size of the screen (and the power that size screen will suck), Sammy choose to put a software restriction that limits the ability of users to pump of the brightness. Hopefully, this can be cured by a future firmware update.
While the brightness could use a boost, this deficiency is further amplified by awful auto-brightness implementation. When auto-brightness is turned on, the phone makes sudden and drastic adjustments in brightness even in a consistently well lit setting. It seems as if the software has only 3 settings for brightness when it is set to auto–low, medium and high (which isn’t that high to begin with). The phone will drop from high to low suddenly, leaving the screen unreadably dark. Until Sammy sends out a software update to fix the problem, I have disabled the auto-brightness feature.
Software Implementation…
Read more
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