Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi everyone. Well, what a 10 months it's been for the Samsung Galaxy S3.
It's proven itself to be
pretty much the hottest selling device of the year.
It certainly shipped more units than any other smartphone I think to date
over thirty million units
and
it's proved to be a very hardy device.
Yes we had a couple of problems with firmwares
for instance the Samsung Exynos memory bug which allowed people
to gain root access
you can look at that as a bonus win,
and then there was that whole sudden death bug but one thing that we found with Samsung
is they were very quick to get these problems ironed out
and more importantly
they kept the community
informed as to what was going on and how quickly they would get things fixed.
It's not quite like the Apple way of doing things which is you know, it's only a problem when
100,000 people seem to complain on forums
unless of course the press pick up on it.
We certainly would prefer if Samsung would hurry up and release the binary source
for their Exynos chips. That would make life a lot better
for developers and for the general consumers because then if we're using
third-party ROMs etcetera we can optimise better
and you know, wink wink, nudge nudge, Samsung may take notice of some of those optimisations
and incorporate them into
full releases, it's not unheard of.
But, you know, when we consider the Galaxy S3 we see it's been on the market now for
10 months or so
when you look at the price performance ratio of the S3 versus some of the
newer handsets that have come out since,
the S3 is still the best handset on the market.
Fair enough it doesn't have the 1080p screen
might not have 2gig of RAM
but when you look at the cost of those devices
that do have those features on there you're paying quite a bit more right now.
You can pick up a Galaxy S3 second hand on eBay
for about £200
or alternatively brand new. You can pick one up for about £250-£280, that
makes it a very economical phone
given the power of the device.
So far
the S3 has not been a slouch.
Normally after a couple of months we might expect the Galaxy S3 or other
smartphones to start slowing down
but what we found with the S3 is Samsung have actually been making it faster.
I will always remember the first patch they released for the Galaxy S3
just after launch which
added at least another 15% responsive speed to the system
from touchless
to playing games, the thing got faster and that's a remarkable thing for a
manufacturer to be able to do, to say actually
we're going to make this thing faster
the longer it's on the market by optimizing by improving by learning from
the things they didn't quite get so right.
We've also had Samsung releasing new software updates incorporating features
from the Galaxy Note 2 and their other phones into the S3, that's fairly unheard of
from a phone manufacturer point of view where normally the features a phone
launches with on day one
are pretty much the features you're going to have when you finally throw the thing in the bin.
Samsung have taken their devices seriously and realize that an iterative
approach, an agile approach
to getting their software out of the door means that
just because the Samsung Galaxy S3 didn't have a feature launch like multi
windows support
doesn't preclude it from getting it six months down the line
when the software's ready and tested and working on the Galaxy Note 3.
By doing it that way they didn't launch features too early that would hobble the phone or
cause a poor user experience.
They waited they improved them they got them working beautifully on the Galaxy Note 2
and then they ported them across to the S3.
I mean, regardless the developer community would have done that for them anyway, and we did
but by the same token it's nice to have Samsung doing it officially.
I mean, from a PR point of view it's great
for them
but also it just gives you a bit of confidence that you're buying a device that's actually
going to stay up to date.
And if the rumours are true
that when the Galaxy S4 launches we should after a month or so see some of
those features back ported to the Note 2 and
Galaxy S3 again that's fantastic news
certainly shows that Samsung are taking their entire ecosystem
seriously
not just their latest and greatest products. So from a retrospective point of
view when we look at how Samsung
comparing them to the other manufacturers
they've had a phenomenal year.
Not only have they sold more devices than anybody else
they've managed to
keep those devices relevant and up-to-date, they fixed issues quickly and
easily
and generally all in all we still have a phone today that we can recommend as
worth buying.
Even with the next generation phone about to hit the market.
So if you've got the Galaxy S3
if you're thinking of buying the Galaxy S3 but are on the fence for the S4
have a look at the features and just decide.
Is the price to performance ratio
really worth the extra money?
Now we'll be bringing you a full review of the Galaxy S4
at the end of next week most likely
and we'll be comparing the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4 and putting them head to head in a
shootout
along with the Galaxy Note 2 and some other devices.
I expect to be impressed, I expect to be impressed with the Galaxy S4 software I
expect to be impressed with the way the hardware has evolved
but I don't believe
at this stage that I'll be saying the Galaxy S3 is no longer the phone you want to buy
if you're price conscious.
I think personally that the price performance ratio on the S3 where it will sit against the S4 and
against other phones coming onto the market will still make it an absolute winner for the
majority of consumers.
So I hope you liked this Galaxy S3 retrospective. We've covered a few of the
more
salient points regarding the S3. Do let us know in the comments what you
thought of the S3 this year
and what you're looking for as well from the Galaxy S4. All the best.