Samsung Electronics unveiled a new top-of-the-range Galaxy smartphone in London updating the most direct rival to Apple's iPhone with a larger touch screen and more powerful processor.The new Galaxy SIII model will have a 4.8 inch touch screen, 8 megapixel camera and will use the latest version of Google's Android (Ice Cream Sandwich).
First impressions can be dangerous, and in the case of the Samsung Galaxy S III the saying proved to be especially so. In fact, when the curtain lifted, and the Galaxy S III was there in blue and white for all to see, we weren't that impressed. Nobody was expecting miracles but the user-interface in particular looked a bit samey.
There werren't many surprises either. We'd been sent multiple images of its 4.8-inch Super Amoled HD screen, which turns out has a resolution of 720x1280 pixels. That means a magnificent ppi of 306, and a display that most certainly looks very bright and detailed.
The 1.4GHz quad core processor had been officially announced beforehand, and we'd surmised it would have 1GB of RAM. Android Ice Cream Sandwich with TouchWiz over the top was almost a certainty, as that's what its predecessor had.
The Galaxy S III's 8-megapixel camera seemed excellent, even in the dimly lit area we tested the device. Each shot is taken incredibly quickly and it can rally off lots of photos in quick succession. Even better, it will pick the image it thinks is best - though, how well that works we can't yet say.
Quality wise, the detail was excellent and there's little messing around. Bar the lack of a dedicated button for taking pictures, we were impressed. Only when we didn't keep steady did blurring become an issue.
Another nice detail is auto-detect for faces, which allows you to more easily share you photos and 'tag' them. Happy snappy types will definitely like the S III's photographic capabilities. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to try out the video but we get the feeling it would've impressed.
Rounding off the features that stood out most is S Beam. This is effectively Android Beam with Samsung's branding, which means you can touch two devices to easily share content. It's a feature we loved in the ill-fated WebOS operating system and so we hope S Beam is as useful.
Conclusion
We're a little confused, to be honest - feeling somewhere between the disappointment we got from the iPhone 4S unveiling and impressed.
Samsung has clearly listened to feedback, as the interface and functionality really has logical features in mind, and also just about every video format is now support, which we rather liked, but the device felt incredibly cheap and TouchWiz, even with its nature/watery new look, is still relatively clunky. Android Ice Cream Sandwich is a big improvement over Gingerbread but we still found ourselves trying to work out where things were - and we use Android a lot.
We also feel like the HTC One X and One S are seemingly not that far behind in terms of performance, and they've been out for a little while.
Still, the S III is still a big step up over its predecessor: It's faster, bigger, cleverer and most definitely an upgrade over the excellent S2. We just hope its 2,100mAh battery can keep up with its quad core processor and the 4.8-inch display, or else consumers who want dependability and style may look elsewhere.