Bored with your iPhone? Samsung thinks it has the device for you. The Korean company has been nipping at Apple’s heels with an aggressive marketing campaign that has helped make its Galaxy smartphone one of the most popular alternatives to the iPhone. The rivalry has reached new heights, as the two companies have recently engaged in a court battle, each accusing the other of ripping off one another’s designs.
But the Galaxy S III, Samsung’s latest and greatest smartphone, doesn’t look much like an iPhone clone. And the new handset, which hit stores in Taiwan last month, appears to be winning hearts. The company says 10 million units have been sold globally within the first two months of its release.
I spent a week using the S III, and it’s easy to see the appeal of Samsung’s new handset, even though its features are somewhat over-hyped.
Photo courtesy of Samsung
The S III’s biggest selling point is size. It offers significantly more viewing space than the iPhone, with a loud and proud 4.8-inch touchscreen. And coupled with a crystal sharp resolution that’s practically as good as the iPhone’s “retina” screen, the S III feels like a breath of fresh air, especially if you like to read or watch videos on your smartphone. The picture quality is simply excellent.
Then there’s speed. The S III is zippity fast, thanks to top-notch hardware — a 1.4 GHZ quad core processor and 1 gigabyte of RAM — as well as solid software, the latest version of Google’s Android, nicknamed “Ice Cream Sandwich.” Apps open and run swiftly, making my iPhone 4 seem sluggish by comparison.
DESIGNED FOR HUMANS?
Photo courtesy of Samsung
These traits make the S III one of the more attractive smartphones out there, and a tempting switch for some iPhone owners. But it’s far from perfect. I was constantly frustrated by the “back” button, which Samsung has placed at the lower right side of the phone. The back button, which isn’t actually a button but a touch-sensitive area below the screen, is way too easy to press by accident.
For me, this amounts to a glaring design flaw in the S III. I lost count of how many times I was suddenly flung out of whatever app I was using because my finger would unintentionally brush the back button while handling the phone. This was especially annoying when surfing the Web or using the camera, and I felt like half my time spent using the device consisted of constantly pressing the home button and swiping my way back to my original app. To this end, the S III does not live up to the first half of its slogan “Designed for humans, inspired by nature.”
When it comes to bells and whistles, the S III has plenty of software features that make a smartphone sound really smart. Don’t get swept away by Samsung’s promotional videos and advertising, though. Many of these functions are nice in theory, but not quite practical.
S-Voice, Samsung’s answer to Apple’s Siri, is one example. The voice-recognition function works well on certain tasks, such as setting the alarm clock or dictating text messages in English (the service is not available yet in Mandarin). But often, S-Voice was hit or miss. Whenever I asked it to call my contacts, it recognized some names but not others. I never knew what to expect when telling it to open apps: S-Voice responded quickly and correctly when I said “open Dropbox” but sputtered and did nothing when I commanded it to “Open Maps.” On the whole, the technology is still rough around the edges when it comes to S-Voice (as is the case with Siri). In reality, S-Voice was fun to play around with occasionally, but I didn’t use it very much.
Direct Call is something I would have used a lot, if it had worked like it was supposed to. Direct Call is a motion-sensing function that automatically calls a contact when you have their information on your screen. Say you get a text message from a friend, and you want to respond by calling them. In theory, all you have to do is lift the phone to your ear, and the S III automatically dials the person’s number, no extra taps required. Great idea, but fickle in practice — Direct Call only worked sporadically for me.
Some will also appreciate Buddy Photo Share, which is designed to make sharing photos a few steps faster. You can train the S III to recognize faces using the built-in camera. The first time you take a shot of someone, you can type in the subject’s name. Afterward, every time you take a snapshot of that person, an option will appear to let you send the photo right away via email or text message. It’s a great feature, but too many taps are required to make it work: You have to go into the camera settings, scroll down and select Buddy Photo Share to set the camera in face recognition mode. Plus, you have to do this every time you open the camera — you can’t leave Buddy Photo Share on by default.
Smart Stay is one feature that actually works pretty well. It uses the front-facing camera to keep track of your eyes, so the screen dims when you look away to save power and brightens when your gaze returns. Strangely, Samsung doesn’t have this function activated by default — you have to go into Settings and turn it on.
IT’S THE SIMPLE THINGS …
At the end of the day, it was the simple things that I appreciated most on the S III. Quick Mute lets you turn off the ringer on an incoming call simply by covering the front screen with your palm or flipping the phone face down. The same motions can also pause any music or videos that are playing.
The S III’s lock screen is handy in that it offers direct access to certain apps. You can go directly into the camera, the phone or text messaging apps, by simply swiping your finger onto the app icons. And the lock screen offers some eye-candy double as meditative entertainment: touch the screen while locked, and it responds like water in a pond, creating visual ripples.
I also liked how the S III’s camera loads quickly, having long suffered the slow loading time of my iPhone 4’s camera. Though I could do without the endless menu items, the S III’s 8-megapixel camera does the job in capturing that decisive moment as it happens. In good lighting conditions, the photo quality is not bad, and in fact, good enough for a newspaper — we used the S III to take photos for a restaurant review (see page 14 of the July 14, 2012, edition of the Taipei Times).
A larger screen on a smartphone is generally a boon for typing, which is the case on the S III. Samsung offers Taiwanese users well-designed keyboard layouts for the S III, which include zhuyin fuhao (注音符號, commonly known as bopomofo) input for traditional Chinese. A Hanyu Pinyin option is available, but only for simplified characters (If you’re a Hanyu Pinyin/traditional Chinese typist, download Google’s free IME).
Road warriors will appreciate that the S III has an easily removable battery, which does pretty well on a single charge. I averaged between a day to a day and a half between charges, with WiFi and 3G on the whole time, and several hours of Web surfing, a handful of phone calls, a dozen snapshots and videos taken as part of my routine.
When it comes to style and looks, the S III delivers with a sleek, curved polycarbonate shell, which is available in white or blue. The S III feels comfortable in the hand, despite the super-sized screen, and its ultra-thin 8.6 mm deep profile (the iPhone is 9.3mm deep) makes it very pocketable. However, I still prefer the look and feel of the Samsung/Google co-branded Galaxy Nexus, which is a tad bit smaller with its 4.65-inch screen.
So does the S III outdo the iPhone? Only if a larger screen is the most important thing for you, and if you can get used to the ill-placed back button. Software-wise, Ice Cream Sandwich is Android’s best version yet, but Apple’s iOS still holds an edge overall when it comes to user-friendliness and a tightly-knit software/hardware package.
The S III’s may be the smartphone with the biggest buzz right now — but that won’t last long, as Apple is expected to announce a new iPhone next month. And don’t be surprised if it has a bigger screen.
Without a phone plan, the Samsung Galaxy S III retails for NT$20,900 for the 16-gigabyte model and NT$22,900 for the 32-gigabyte model.
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