

Samsung Galaxy S III hands on: fast, thin, and a little bit cheap feeling - Cadsby
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/05/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-hands-on-fast-thin-and-a-little-bit-cheap-feeling.ars

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fpp
For those not in London - they really shelled out some money yesterday for the
presentation (the public parts were also streamed live) - London Metropolitan
Orchestra playing, big stage etc.

A few more things were mentioned there (not included in the linked article):

Eye-movement recognition: It does not lock the phone while you're still
looking at it.

Besides the Siri like voice recognition also something that - by use of motion
detection - e.g. you move the phone towards your ear - initiates a phone call.

A similar to the Blackberry introduced burst-shot feature that lets you select
the best head shot(s) within a series of portrait pictures (recognizes
multiple heads/faces in the picture)

Some more advanced uses via DLNA / AllSharePlay and a new AllShare SDK.

Bluetooth 4.0, USB supports MHL -> can be used as a HDMI port

Flipboard pre-installed, Dropbox integration (free 50GB for 2 years)

optional stylus

They claimed 0.01ms response time for the OLED display (vs 50-70ms for the avg
LCDs I guess)

The S3 will become available first in Europe (UK?) as 3G end of this month
then Asia, as 4G in the U.S. during summer.

~~~
mparlane
0.01? Is the period in the right place?!

~~~
ars
It's an LED. That's how long it takes to switch it from one light level to
another. (It affects things like ghosting.)

It's not the same thing as input lag which measures how long it takes to
render things from a buffer (ideally that's 15ms or less, and no more than
30ms).

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bookwormAT
I find this was a very interesting announcement. Almost the whole presentation
was about software, services and addons.

Samsung did not talk much about the hardware, and not once used the term
"Android" during the whole presentation.

This is how I want smartphone providers to make their android-based devices:
Either use just AOSP and focus on supporting that well (updates), or make a
very unique and improved experience for your customers.

Adding differences "just to be somehow different" will only make your phone
worse. I don't care much about the gesture stuff, but what they do with the
face detection API that came with Android 4 is very interesting.

The idea that the screen will not go black as long as I look at it solves one
of the most annoying problems I have when using computers. E.g. you think for
a few seconds about what you just read on your smartphone, and when you're
back you have to turn on the screen again. So annoying.

There are also a lot of little nice touches to the ui, like this one:

"Pick up the phone when you've got a missed call or text and it will vibrate
gently in your hand in combination with the notification light to let you know
you're a popular bunny."

Or that you can hold the phone to your ear while you're texting someone and it
will call the person you're texting.

Or that you can select a person in the camera and the focus will stay on that
person.

Or that you can burst 10 photos with one shot and then have the phone
automatically recommend the best picture to you. The wireless charger and the
HDMI dongle are also very nice.

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polshaw
To be honest, specs wise, while it doesn't significantly move things forward,
it is pretty much the best, in pretty much every department. It has a massive
removable battery, microSD, quad core, wireless charging and a killer GPU --
all advantages over the Nexus.

BUT.. I think people were really hoping samsung were starting to 'get it'-
design, desirability and UX (yes, like apple). I thought the s2 was too boxy
and now they have gone too far the other way. It's meant to be a flagship
phone, but just doesn't look expensive.

    
    
        To make it feel more "natural", you tap the lock-screen and little 
        ripples appear, and splish-splash noises are heard.
    

This is pretty indicative they don't 'get it'. It's a pointless gimmick- just
because you can, doesn't mean you should. And my god, they are awful at
presentations. Its not rocket science.

This is all especially disappointing considering the Galaxy Nexus coming from
samsung-- a device that has plenty of desirability IMO. All they had to do was
to take this, add a microSD and a slightly bumped specs, and they would have
had a winner. A non-pentile screen would have been welcome, but really, it
isn't a deal breaker for 99%- OLED outweighs it over RGB LCD, imo.

If there is a perverse silver-lining, this is good news for HTC, and perhaps
the android ecosystem in the long-term.. it was seeming like samsung were
becoming too dominant.

~~~
maayank
At some point I really began to cringe with all the "this is all modeled after
nature!!!" talk. It really seems like corporate marketing got hold of the
design in a very bad way.

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rwmj
TouchWiz ... oh dear, an immediate turn off.

I have a Google Nexus S with stock Android 4, and that works perfectly.

I also have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with TouchWiz which I seriously regret.
The interface is terrible, and unless you reboot it every couple of hours it
just grinds to a halt on its own. And there's no CM9 for the Tab yet ...

~~~
daleharvey
Fully agreed, I had the same setup of phones, went from a HTC Desire with
SenseUI to a Nexus S with stock android, to a SGS2 with TouchWiz, the Nexus S
with stock ICS was by far the best. I now use a galaxy nexus with stock ICS,
imo the best phone around, the SGS2 is purely got Boot2Gecko work now

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 felt pretty terrible with Honeycomb + touchwiz, I would be
interested in what a stock android tablet experience feels like, although with
androind tablets the lack of apps was also a pretty big factor in why it felt
terrible compared to an Ipad

~~~
ajray
It seems like we're due for a new Google Flagship Tablet device soon, though I
haven't seen any news to that effect yet.

------
kayoone
The size of these things is getting pretty ridiculous. Has every new version
to be bigger than the previous one ? Where will that end ?

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nodata
Not interested at all. Unless it's a Nexus - reflashed to get updates from
Google - I'm not playing the "waiting for updates" game any more.

~~~
stuartmemo
Why do you have to reflash it to get updates from Google?

~~~
Blara
Because Google only provides updates for certain builds (jakju), other builds
(jakjuxw for example) needs to be tested by carriers in other countries (or
some such) and the last stamp of approval comes from Samsung IIRC. If you
flash the phone with factory build jakju you get updates from google when
they're released otherwise there is 1-1.5 months wait for updates

------
tluyben2
I really like my SII but the toy feeling is obvious next to my Lumia and
iPhone. It's a great phone and of my phones, outside app testing, I use it the
most. However for the cheap plastic feeling the intuition says it should be at
least $300 cheaper. Seems SIII is the same that way, so i'm wondering if only
techies notice this as the SII did so well everywhere.

~~~
bookwormAT
I think this "cheap plastic" meme is completely fabricated by competitors with
heavier and less durable products.

Plastic is more elastic than metal, so if your phone falls on the floor, it
takes some of the shock and significantly reduces the chance that the screen
breaks.

Samsung's "cheap" plastic is also lighter than metal. The Galaxy S2 for
example is much, much larger than the iphone 4s, yet the iphone feels like a
brick in your pocket compared to the Galaxy.

Why do we associate "heavy" with "valuable" all of a sudden? Shouldn't it be
the other way around? After all, a coin is not more valuable than a bank note,
and a heavy bike is not better than a light one, right?

~~~
gnaffle
"Cheap plastic" is not a meme. People have compared build quality as long as
manufactured goods have existed. Many people associate heavy with valuable
because traditionally, making things out of metal cost more and increases
durability. Maybe the use of composites will change this perception.

Does using a glass display instead of a plastic display increase the chance
that the display breaks? Yes. Does it increase weight? Yes. But glass is more
scratch resistant and has a better feel to it, so most people think it's a
worthwhile tradeoff (Samsung seems to agree).

------
jahewson
11 different fonts/sizes on the home screen - oh Android, why?

Edit: 12 if you count the Samsung logo on the phone.

~~~
ajray
If you're counting the Samsung, Google, AccuWeather, and ChatOn logo's, sure.
Without those we're left with a still diverse set, but I think reasonably
varied. If I could make one change it would be to make the clock font match
(style-wise) the rest of the non-logo fonts, probably at a much lighter weight
(ultralight serif).

------
ajray
For me the biggest turn-off is the pentile display. I think for now I'll just
keep the HTC One X.

~~~
teoruiz
Are you actually happy with the HTC One X?

~~~
scopendo
I'm happy with it. Coming from a SE Xperia X10, I was worried I made the wrong
choice simply because of the One X's size. But the display is, to my aging
eyes, fantastic. The camera is very quick to launch and the photos just fine
for me.

Edit: "X10's size" --> "One X's size"

------
wacomt
Samsung finally stopped copying the iPhone following a new design language:
[http://versusio.com/en/samsung-galaxy-s3-64gb-vs-the-body-
sh...](http://versusio.com/en/samsung-galaxy-s3-64gb-vs-the-body-shop-shea-
soap)

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mike-cardwell
I would literally rather have an Android G1 than this phone. It baffles me
that more people don't demand phones with full qwerty keyboards. They're so
much easier and faster and more pleasant to type on than a touch screen. I've
got an HTC Desire Z at the moment. I'll stick with that until a better Android
phone with a qwerty keyboard comes along.

------
msh
Disappointed by the plastic finish. I did not buy the sgs 2 because it felt
cheap and flimsy and this looks to be the same.

~~~
mrich
The S II does not look cheap to me. The plastic backside prevents the phone
from being slippery, which is a big problem with the iPhone. Dropping it on
the ground is also no problem, the plastic is perfect in absorbing that. After
a couple of falls there is still no damage to be seen on my model (it even
fell _into_ water once - it is still working flawlessly)

~~~
msh
My SonyEricsson phone is also plastic, but feels much more well built.

The cheap feel of the plastic was what made me not buy the SGS2.

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afsina
Slipping the word "cheap" to the title? Careful that author is known for his
strong MS bias

~~~
ajray
He doesn't appear to back it well in the article other than as a quality of
the plastic. Reviews are subjective, and as the next Google Flagship device,
the S3 will be getting lots more reviews soon enough. Personally I like the
Verge's Android phone reviews.

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mquander
Is this Engadget? Why is this here? Are there no things to read which are more
interesting than the launch of yet another 10% more efficient iteration on a
five-year-old phone design?

~~~
fpp
there were a couple of rather interesting features introduces - so if you're
doing mobile development it certainly is interesting to know what the Android
leader of the pack is doing or planning to provide for your next development
platform.

------
hackermom
They forgot to mention that it's a little bit too big to feel alright, even as
a smartphone.

~~~
kristianp
Smartphone screens seem to be like cars, each new model has larger than the
previous one.

