Samsung Galaxy S3 (GTi9300)

[Anibal P]

Hopefully late August early September I will have the Pebble Blue model. Are the Zenis Docks available in the USA?

Ebay has it:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SAMSUNG-GALAXY-S3-S-3-III-GT-I9300-BLACK-WHITE-DESKTOP-DOCK-CHARGER-MOUNT-CRADLE-/130707558490?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item1e6ec7105a#ht_11330wt_893

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

This phone is so much better in daily usage over the S2. Because it's so fast and so smooth at everything, my usage habits just feel like they're cruising past at light speed. That and the extra screen estate makes for such a good user experience.

The Rock case is also simply brilliant. The way it feels in the hand is unlike any other case from any other brand. It really does feel like a natural extension to the phone as opposed to a phone with a case on it.

Anyone who doesn't have it should find someone who does and have a good old feel! I also like the fact that it doesn't attract any finger marks or smudges of any kind unlike virtually all other hard/TPU/gel cases.

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

So today has been the first day at work with my phone and a first indication of what to expect in terms of battery consumption when solely relying on 3G/HSDPA for the entire working day. I don't connect to WiFi at present there because our connection is being upgraded in a few months and as it stands it's too slow and shared so often poor.

I can confirm the S3 gets a stronger signal than the S2 does on 3 for me at work, it's 2 bars extra. Download speed is 4-5Mbit compared to the 2-3 the S2 was pulling from my desk.

On the S2, by the time I got home the battery would be down to 20-30% with around 2 hours screen on time, more % with lower screen on time though.

With the S3 though it's much much better, just got it down to 1% now and took screenshots:

I've also taken note of how long it takes to charge, seems not very long at all...

01% @ 23:12

11% @ 23:32

22% @ 23:49

31% @ 00:03

41% @ 00:17

51% @ 00:32

Total time to 50% charged: 1hr 26mins

That was observed charging using the official mains charger via the Zenis dock. rather fast charging for a 2100mAh battery.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Thanks for the battery life stuff. Looking pretty good there i'd say :)

[Steven P. Administrators]

Posted to main, sorry for the delay!

[Debus42]

Have to say I far prefer the look of the pebble blue than the white one. I'd end up getting the white one covered in god knows what.

As much as I'd love to have this phone I'm currently stuck with my Galaxy S because my contract doesn't end until next year, not that I can afford the contract prices they're asking for anyway. Looks like a beautiful piece of kit though.

[Nightwind Hawk]

The phone looks great but what really turns me off is the fact that it's S-AMOLED... All of the phones I see with this type of screen just look blue with colors that are way too bright (plastic-looking) to me. Do you find this the same or improved on the S3??

[korupt_one]

like I've said its a pretty nice phone, Samsung has done a pretty good job. A nice review.

BUT

as we know and for people that know about single core, dual core and now quad core, Android does a very bad job when even trying to use dual core and it barely utilizing the 2nd core, unless there is an OS that can utilize more than a single core properly then I don't see the point to these dual and quad core android phones, I wish people would see that its just a marketing stunt so far. The Android OS has to be scrapped and rewritten to make it perform well on these phones soon. When Windows 8 OS is released that does fully utilize more than one core you will see that Android has been just an excuse of an OS that has led you to believe you have all this power and distract you with customization. It will be interesting later this year to see this phone with the same internal specs running WP8 and compare it to the Android version.

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

The phone looks great but what really turns me off is the fact that it's S-AMOLED... All of the phones I see with this type of screen just look blue with colors that are way too bright (plastic-looking) to me. Do you find this the same or improved on the S3??

Having owned the S2 for a year and having had 2 in the household and other family memebers also owning the S2, the S3 screen has been tweaked so is less vibrant than the S2 (and Lumia handsets, and teh HTC One S). It's much more pleasing and colours do appear more natural and close to what you see.

It's still more vibrant than an IPS-LCD (expected) but the pinch of vibrancy on the S-AMOLED HD screen is a welcome one.

Here's a photo I shot with the S3 camera then placed on the scene itself to photograph again with my dslr:

The camera really is impressive,. I used teh HDR mode for that shot to ensure that shadows and highlights were'nt off.

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

This official Samsung car mount works on multiple phones, not just the S3 unlike the S2 car mount I had which only worked on the S2 and only when not using a case which was a double whammy of a negative for that mount.

Have Samsung learnt the error of their ways and improved this new mount? Let's find out...

This kit comes in 3 parts, the S2 mount comes in 2:

The ball joint clips into this socket while the screw tightens the fit:

Unfortunately Samsung didn't leave room for arm adjustment so the number of ways to point the mount is very limited again, just like the S2 mount, you need to have it quite high up on the windscreen to get decent movement of the head:

Ultimately it still suffers one of the main flaws I found on the S2 dock, lack of adjustment and being aimed at windscreen mounting only as opposed to dashboard discs (see pic below). It's less advanced than the S2 mount because it doesn't have a socket the phone sits into to activate car mode, but if it did it wouldn't work on other phones whereas this one will work on almost any phone that's of compatible width as both side arms retract in and out.

So it's just a car mount that's tough and sturdy in motion, it doesn't vibrate and the suction is very strong but for what it costs I'd much rather recommend the Nokia CR-115 with a bit of DIY to the stock arm padding (remove them and replace with thinner pads) to work on phones as wide as an S3 because you get better movement and a slimmer profile for easier storage. It also costs less than ?10 depending on where you shop. I also think it's by far the nicest looking mounts out there and because it's a genuine brand made one, it's good quality too.

Nokia CR-115:

--

Update:

The modding has started early :p I was looking at the ball joint and then at the ball joint on the Exomount car holder and realised they looked the same size....

The Exomount isn't exactly cheap either though so not an ideal solution, there may be mounts out there that use ball joints that are cheap though!

[+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹]

One thing that has ****ed me off with the S3 is that you cannot move apps to SD anymore, which has been available since 2.x of Android. It works perfectly on my Xoom on ICS so its not an ICS issue, it's purely the S3 as has been confirmed on many android community threads, wish I had looked for this beforehand as the 16GB is not enough and I was used to moving games etc to SD which can no longer be done :(

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

One thing that has ****ed me off with the S3 is that you cannot move apps to SD anymore, which has been available since 2.x of Android. It works perfectly on my Xoom on ICS so its not an ICS issue, it's purely the S3 as has been confirmed on many android community threads, wish I had looked for this beforehand as the 16GB is not enough and I was used to moving games etc to SD which can no longer be done :(

Hmm? 16GB is more than enough for games/navigational map data etc. Everything els eis stored on the SD card, you're not forgetting that the S3 supports 64GB SD cards right? Probably even larger cards when they come out too.

[Hardcore Til I Die]

Hmm? 16GB is more than enough for games/navigational map data etc. Everything els eis stored on the SD card, you're not forgetting that the S3 supports 64GB SD cards right? Probably even larger cards when they come out too.

Not for hardcore gamers, when some of the latest games are 3GB in size!

Samsung is blaming Google and vice versa for not being able to move apps to the SD card, so I'm not hopeful for a fix any time soon... although it doesn't bother me in the slightest, not even using half of my 16GB storage.

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

I don't know why you'd leave games installed that are long done with though. I can't see how you can consume all that storage on the same phone! Before you reach the limit you'd be on a new handset by then surely. That and in future updates devs will be able to store game data on the sd card anyway as some already do right now.

[Hardcore Til I Die]

I don't know why you'd leave games installed that are long done with though. I can't see how you can consume all that storage on the same phone! Before you reach the limit you'd be on a new handset by then surely. That and in future updates devs will be able to store game data on the sd card anyway as some already do right now.

I've seen lots of people talking about switching to another phone because of this very issue so it's obviously a problem for some.

One of the major selling points for the S3 is that it continues to support MicroSD cards when other top Android phones don't. It would be better if it had apps2sd support.

[+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹]

The problem is, if you purchase a move for example, or some music via the store, it is stored on the internal SD, with the app2sd you were able to move it to the external SD (even though its not an app) but now you can't. This also eats a lot of space :( It's now like an iDrone, in that you have to delete stuff in order to make room for new stuff :(

The app2sd feature is part of android OS and Samsung have disabled it, even the devs for the app2sd app on marketplace have said its samsungs fault as they disabled it within their build of the OS, so there seems to be nothing we can do :( Sadly it is a sort of deal breaker for me, as I also use a lot of books, and now the way the external is configured I have to put them on the internal SD which takes up another 7GB as the reader apps cannot see them on the external, due to the fact they require write access for some reason :(

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

If the limitations on Apps2SD is really such a deal breaker then why not just root and work around it using Titanium Backup which allows the move of apps and data to external SD card?

Sorry but I still don't buy it as a major deal breaking problem because here in this thread is the only place I've read about it being a problem. Everywhere else people have worked around it if they've ever encountered it.

It may be an issue for some but the benefits of the S3 put it above any other phone, chief of which is exFAT support so you're no longer bound by the max 4GB limit for files, which means no more need to split large movies into <4GB chunks for watching when connected to a HDTV or whatever.

[Nightwind Hawk]

Yeah, if you check out some Android forums I'm sure they have ways of moving it... there's always a way for everything :shifty:

[+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹]

Titanium Backup only backs up the apk files etc, they are still installed to the internal memory, you cannot force the install/move of that resource to external SD by using Titanium backup. The clue is in the name, backup ...

There is no way around it thus far, I have been on numerous forums regarding this and all are saying the same it's down to samsung and their build of the OS and you cannot circumvent it. The general concensusis that they (samsung) did it to force people to buy the higher memory capacity devices, which are in short supply, sadly making them worse than apple and the idrone :(

Dont get me wrong, I wholeheartedly prefer the SGS over an idrone, but this issue is HUGE and needs addressing.

[Roger H. Veteran]

I guess gotta wait till CM9 comes out for it (nightly already there :D). That way you can just move whatever you like just like I do now on the SGS2.

[Matrix XII]

Thanks for your review! I used to have a SGS1 and have been using an iPhone 4 since January '10.

I'm trying to decide whether to get the SGS3 or wait for the iPhone 5.

So hard to decide, the S3 looks sexy!

[Anibal P]

Thanks for your review! I used to have a SGS1 and have been using an iPhone 4 since January '10.

I'm trying to decide whether to get the SGS3 or wait for the iPhone 5.

So hard to decide, the S3 looks sexy!

I went from an SGS Vibrant to the SGS3, and I'm VERY happy with it so far, it's a huge improvement, even better than my Mom's 4s, by both our standards, I'll be 100% happy with it once I get a 32-64gb SD card in it, that and I'm still searching for a thin case for mine

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

UPDATE: 2012.08.09

Last night the 4th LED on the powerbank stopped working, it's just the LED itself, it charges to max and so on, just the LED doesn't light up. I imagine there's probably a bad batch issue in manufacturing and have notified mobilefun about this and in turn they're notifying buyers/suppliers of the issue.

--

I received a new accessory today, well I actually received it some weeks ago but the first one was faulty, this one just came back in stock :)

It's the Power Bank sold by MobileFun, I don't know who manufactures it but it's high quality in build, if it had a Samsung logo on the back then it could otherwise be an official product. It does come in white too :)

How does it work?

Initially I thought it would daisy chain alongside the built in battery and give 4400mAh of power but having now fully tested it, it acts like a normal power source (seen as a USB source by the phone as it outputs at 500mA).

The idea is that you would have the bank charged up beforehand and switch the bank on when your phone's battery is low and it will begin charging. Technically you could leave it switched on at all times so as soon as the phone battery drops, it charges back up immediately again but the bottom row light lights on the bank remain active while it is on, I imagine this will drain some of the battery in the bank too so best off using it once the phone's battery gets low.

The bank can also be switched on and off at any time while attached to the phone. The LED on the bank flashes while charging the phone and the number of active LEDs decreases as the charge from the bank transfers to the phone:

Does it add bulk?

Yes! It's 15.5mm thick so adds some bulk to the S3. It's not unacceptably bulky though and you could use it as a full time case as well as it allows full use of all ports on the phone and has a convenient kickstand. It weighs 81 grams.

How useful is it really? It's quite expensive afterall...

It is quite pricey but for many people it's a small price to pay to be able to get power to the phone when a standard power source is not available and you're running low on battery juice.

Extra Pictures

[Jimmy0]

Very nice contraption there... do they make a similar thing for the S2 by any chance? Could be interested in getting one if so...

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

It seems they do!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2200mAh-External-Battery-Power-Bank-Sliding-Case-for-Samsung-Galaxy-SII-S2-I9100-/140780083226?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item20c725981a