New Samsung Galaxy S III From T-Mobile

New Samsung Galaxy S III From T-Mobile

Samsung Galaxy S III, Giant, daring mega-phones are the brand new smartphone trend, and the spectacular Samsung Galaxy S III ($279. ninety nine with contract) is T-Mobile's first providing.  With its four. 8-inch HD display and state-of-the-art sharing and media features, the Galaxy S III makes an incredible window onto T-Mobile's quick 4G web.  Its total efficiency and high quality make the Galaxy S III our new Editors' alternative for touch-screen smartphones on T-Mobile. here's more about Samsung Galaxy S III.

Editors' Note: The Samsung Galaxy S III fashions on all 4 main carriers are extraordinarily similar, so we're sharing quite a bit of fabric between our varied evaluations.  That said, we're testing every system separately, so learn the evaluation on your provider of alternative.

Samsung Galaxy S III bodily Design

All of the brand new Galaxy S III fashions look the same, besides for the provider emblem on the again panel.  every is offepink in darkish blue or white (AT&T additionally has a pink choice coming this summer), and they're a few of the largest telephones we've ever dealt with.  At 5. four by 2. eight by 0. 3four inches (HWD) and four. 7 ounces, the GS3 is bigger than the HTC One S ($199, four. 5 stars), though it's nonetheless noticeably smaller and lighter than the Samsung Galaxy notice phone/tablet hybrid ($299, three stars).   That said, that is not a cellphone for people with small fingers.

I'm not a fan of big telephones.  however I've given up on panning them as a result of each time I recommend these handsets are too big, I get pummeled by feedback from folks who adore them.  big telephones are the factor.  I settle for it.

The GS3's all-plastic physique feels just rather much less high-end than the anodized grey aluminum of the HTC One S, however the telephone is solidly built, and gentleweight regardless of its dimension.  The entrance of the cellphone is dominated by the four. 8-inch, 1280-by-720-pixel tremendous AMOLED HD display.  Yes, it's PenTile, which may generally look barely pixelated.  But, no, you most likely won't discover.  beneath the screen, there's a bodily house button, in addition to light-up again and Multitasking buttons that begin out invisible, so that you need to memorize the place they are or change a setting to maintain them illuminated.  The 8-megapixel digital camera is on the again panel, which, because of its reflective finish, doubles as a pocket mirror.

The default automated Brightness setting makes the display too dim.  Kill it and pump up the brightness and it's fine, even open air.

not like the competing HTC One S, the S III has a detachable 2100mAh battery.  Taking off the again cowl additionally reveals the microSD card slot, which helps playing cards as much as 64GB.

Samsung Galaxy S III name high quality and Internet

If you're  in speaking in your smartphone, purchase the Galaxy S III.  Its superior name high quality options make an actual distinction.  Default name high quality is sweet.  quantity is on the excessive finish of average, with no distortion from loud inputs, and the speakerphone is loud sufficient to make use of outdoor.  The microphone does a great job of cancelling background noise.  Bluetooth headsets work positive with Samsung's "S-Voice" voice dialing system, and the telephone helps T-Mobile's seamless Wi-Fi calling system.

however as with so many issues here, name high quality will get richer for those who burrow down into the GS3's settings screens.  A quantity increase howeverton throws the telephone right into a super-loud, quasi-speakertelephone mode for noisy areas, however that's simply the beginning.  There's additionally an choice to set customized name EQ: The cellphone performs you a sequence of quiet excessive and low tones and also you inform it which of them you may hear, after which it EQ's names accordingly.  that is fairly radical stuff.  I choose my calls sharp, with extra high-end, for instance, and the GS3 presents that.  This all makes the GS3 the perfect voice telephone on T-Mobile.

For data, the GS3 hits T-Mobile's HSPA+ forty two network, which may generally match AT&T's and Verizon's LTE on obtain speeds.  It hits world HSPA+ and Wi-Fi on each the two. fourGHz and 5GHz bands, and Bluetooth four. 0 and NFC are additionally on board.  T-Mobile nonetheless blocks Google Wallet, however Samsung discovered its personal makes use of for NFC, which I'll get to under.

Battery life is a significant power right here.  We received 10 hours, forty seven minutes of discuss time, which is impressive, and, for the reason that battery is removable, you may additionally carry a spare for further juice, one thing you may't do with the HTC One S.

Samsung Galaxy S III software program and Performance

The Galaxy S III runs Android four. 0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" with an entire lot of unique Samsung extensions.  efficiency was wonderful in my checks.  The Qualcomm S4 chip working at 1. 5GHz is the quickest one we've seen in smartphones so far, and it's ready to tackle any app problem you throw at it, together with video games on the HD display.  Our benchmark checks proved this, though they had been inside the margin of error in comparison with the One S.  each telephones are very quick.

unique new options embody S-Beam, the power to switch information by tapping two telecellphones collectively and utilizing a mix of NFC and Wi-Fi Direct; S-Voice, Samsung's reply to Apple's Siri; and TecTiles, NFC-enabled accent tags that may change the settings in your cellphone.  you furthermore mght get heaps of sharing and tagging choices inside the camera, corresponding to mechanically tagging your friends' faces, and the flexibility for a number of GS3s inside a number of ft of every different to mechanically share all of their photographs.

a lot of those options work well, however they're virtually all buried.  The interface is one thing of a scavenger hunt.  Take sensible Stay, a neat new function which detects your face and retains the display from going black whereas you're trying at it.  i like it.  however it's not on by default, and the one manner to show it on is by going to the show space below Settings.  S-Beam is equally buried, below the wi-fi menu.

Samsung helpfully pops up numerous screens telling you about numerous cool gestures you may use, like elevating the cellphone to your face to robotinamey name somebody you're texting.  however it's loads of data to absorb, and loads of gestures that you've by no means used earlier than.  Tright here's a pointy studying curve right here.

examine this with HTC, which has been working to cut back distinctive UI parts.  HTC's current Sense four interface focuses on a couple of new options and makes them integral: enhanced sound, a quicker camera, and stable social networking integration.  Samsung gives lots extra, however it prices you lots extra psychological vitality to determine all of it out.

I'll additionally name out two minor disappointments.  The display rotated unexpectedly extra typically that I'd like.  Also, S-Voice isn't as seamless or as full as Siri.  It's a nice voice-dialing system, together with over Bluetooth, however I stored vocally stepping on its prompts when making an attempt to ask it extra difficult queries.

past that, there's the standard raft of bloatware from each Samsung and T-Mobile: I rely 21 pre-installed apps, with much extra unique apps you may obtain via a particular pre-loaded Samsung app pack.  past that, there are the 400,000-plus apps within the Google Play retailer.

Samsung Galaxy S III Multimedia

The 16GB Galaxy S III we examined has 12GB of accessible reminiscence and performs all of the same old music and video formats, together with MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, MPEG-4, H. 264, DivX, Xvid, and WMV recordsdata at resolutions as much as 1080p.  T-Mobile additionally affords a 32GB model for $329. 99, however given how cheap MicroSD playing cards are, I can't see springing for the higher-priced mannequin.

Samsung has personalized each the music and video gamers.  They aren't as handsome as HTC's, however they're purposeful.  alongside with the everyday music navigation, there's a frill referred to as Music Square, which grades your whole music on a scale from "calm" to "exciting" and "passionate" to "joyful," creating customized playlists by temper.  There's additionally an epic quantity of EQ presets, which change the sound in effective, if gimmicky methods.

The picture/video gallery integrates Google and fb albums, and allows you to kind your movies as an inventory or with thumbnails.  The flagship function right here is Pop-Up Play, which might float a video playback window over different apps; i discovered it to be pretty ineffective.  Netflix and YouTube each look good and run on HSPA+ forty two with out any seen buffering.  The cellphone additionally comes with a free 30-day trial of T-Mobile's streaming television service (otherwise $12. ninety nine per month), with a number of dozen big-name stay and on demand channels.

if you happen to want to play your video on an HDTV, you would like to make use of Samsung's AllShare system, which like most different wi-fi video techniques not often works as a result of your property community doesn't have the bandwidth, or a new-style 11-pin MHL adapter.  Our outdated MHL adapters didn't work.

The 8-megapixel digital camera takes good-looking, saturated images which are sharp with little noise, a minimum of in first rate mild.  In our low-light test, the shutter velocity dropped to 1/40 second, which can trigger some softness should you don't have a gentle hand.  That's nonetheless higher than many cameraphones.  The 1-megapixel entrance digicam additionally confirmed strong low-light efficiency.  The video mode captures 1080p movies at 30 frames per second indoors and out with the principle digital camera.

There are a ton of gimmicky digital camera modes.  HDR is significantly slower than on the HTC One S, and confirmed an inclination to create "ghost" photos after i attempted it.  Smile detection works well, and Share Shot helps you to routinely stream images to different GS3s within the realm.  Buddy Photo-Share tags faces with names based mostly on the pictures of their social-networking profiles.  these final two are buried within the digital camera settings and whereas cool, you're not going to come across them simply.

Conclusions

On T-Mobile, each the Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One S are top-notch, state-of-the-art telephones.  Personally, I want the One S for its extra manageable size, decrease price, and steel physique.  however our Editors' selection goes to the GS3 for its higher-resolution screen, higher voice dialing, MicroSD card support, and detachable battery.  Ultimately, you're most likely going to make the choice right here based mostly extra on worth and kind issue than on any specific function.

If these telephones don't attraction to you, maintain out just a few months, as a result of two essential issues are taking place to T-Mobile quickly.  The service will probably be a launch accomplice for Microsoft's home windows telephone eight this fall, a strong OS which is simpler to make use of and fewer twiddly than Android.  And T-Mobile's "refarming" of radio spectrum will make the provider extra suitable with Apple's iPhone, if you're trying for a a lot smaller handset which nonetheless has heaps of apps.

Here's some pictures of Samsung Galaxy S III.

Posted in: T-Mobile