Samsung Galaxy S3 review

UPDATED - this review has been updated to cover the new 4G LTE version of the Galaxy S3

The Galaxy S3 was unquestionably Samsung's big launch for 2012, and has been our recommended Android smartphone since we reviewed it back in June. The Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE is the updated version, with a new wireless chip to support EE's 4G network, putting it on par with the 4G-enabled iPhone 5.

There are a couple of other tweaks. The phone now has 2GB rather than 1GB RAM, and is available in a smart Titanium finish as well as the standard Galaxy S3 white. It also ships with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box, but as the standard Galaxy S3 has just been updated to Jelly Bean this isn’t a reason to upgrade to the LTE.

We've covered the strengths and weaknesses of 4G in our full EE 4G UK review, but suffice to say that the Galaxy S3 LTE has no problem making the most of the network's speeds. When we first tested 4G, which was a couple of weeks before the network officially launched in the UK, we saw 44.91Mbit/s downloads and 20.94Mbit/s uploads - astonishing speeds that match or even exceed the fastest home broadband connections.

We had to take those speeds with a pinch of salt at the time, as very few other people were using the network at the time so there were little constraints on bandwidth. However, even nearly a month after the launch of the network, we're still seeing astonishing speeds. In our Central London office, the Android Speedtest.net app measured 26Mbit/s downloads and 16Mbit/s uploads. This is twice as fast for downloads as our home ADSL connection, and around 16 times as quick when uploading. The Galaxy S3 LTE showed around the same speeds as Huawei's 4G Ascend P1 in our office, which is what we expected.

4G is astonishingly quick in Central London - faster than most home broadband connections

Web browsing is certainly snappy and pages load just as quickly as when connected to an ADSL line over Wi-Fi. However, your 4G connection is unlikely to replace a broadband connection over Wi-Fi just yet. For a start, as we've already mentioned, EE's 4G data limits are fairly stingy; you'll be fine for normal out-and-about use such as checking emails, using maps and browsing web pages, but you'll quickly eat though your data allowance.

The other problem is app support. We found that BBC iPlayer would automatically set the quality of its TV stream to a low level when connected to the 4G network, even when we changed the streaming quality setting to High in the app's settings. The quality was far better when we were connected to a wireless network, showing iPlayer automatically sets the stream to a lower-quality level when you're on a 3G network rather than Wi-Fi.

Over Wi-Fi video is sharp and clear

The stream is much lower-quality over the mobile network, even though 4G is quicker than our office Wi-Fi connection

The new handset has an identical chipset to the non-4G Galaxy S3, with its quad-core 1.4GHz processor, but has 2GB instead of 1GB RAM. We struggled to see what difference this made to the handset's performance compared to a previous-model Galaxy S3 which we had upgraded to Android 4.1, and the handsets managed an identical 1,771 in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. Occasionally the 2GB handset would open and close apps slightly faster, but the extra RAM seems to make little practical difference in everyday use.

We did find, however, that the new version had slightly worse battery life than the old - we're not sure whether this is due to the new operating system or the chipset, but in our continuous video playback test we saw 9h 19m from the Galaxy S3 LTE, compared to 9h 57m from the Galaxy S3.