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Samsung Galaxy S3 review

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Verdict:

Now with 4G support, Samsung's Galaxy S3 just keeps getting better. The Ultimate Android smartphone

Review Date: 29 Nov 2012

Price when reviewed: £500

Best monthly deal: From £29.00 a month (Handset FREE)

Buy it now for: £326
(see more store prices)

Supplier: http://www.play.com

Reviewed By: Chris Finnamore

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

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The Galaxy S3 LTE has the same chassis as the S3, which means it's a big phone, but we can’t see how it could have been much smaller and still cram in the 4.8in screen. There's only a couple of millimetres of space either side of the screen, and around a centimetre of plastic on the top and bottom to house the front-facing camera and home button. The handset is also just 9mm thick, but, while its slim body is comfortable to hold, we weren't so sure about the all-gloss-plastic back.

The Galaxy S III screen's high resolution makes it simple to browse web pages in full desktop mode, with little need for zooming and scrolling left to right; if you have this phone, there's not really much need to have a tablet as well.

Despite Samsung's great efforts, this is still a big smartphone

There's one problem with a handset this big - it's very hard to use one-handed. With one hand holding an umbrella, it’s a real stretch to reach the app tray icon and the home button, and we never felt particularly confident about not dropping the phone. This is the only problem we had with the phone's size; the handset's slimness means it still fits fine in jeans pockets.

In contrast to the iPhone 5 and Nokia 920, which have IPS LCD displays, the Galaxy S3 has an AMOLED screen. It's a PenTile screen with just two rather than three coloured sub-pixels per pixel, but there's none of the colour cast we sometimes see with PenTile displays, such as the slight green/yellow tint on the Motorola RAZR MAXX. We found it very hard to find fault with the Galaxy S3's screen; if you look really closely the text isn’t quite as sharp as on the iPhone 4S's and iPhone 5's displays, but it's really splitting hairs.

Samsung claims the Galaxy S III is "designed for humans", and to this end the handset has several different motion controls that are meant to make it particularly intuitive to use. Whenever you launch an app for which a motion control is available a help screen pops up telling you about it and asking whether you want to enable the feature. All the motion controls are grouped together in Settings, so you can tweak them later.

Some of the gesture settings on offer

We had varying degrees of success with the gesture controls. You can turn the phone over to mute a call, and when you pick it back up the Smart alert feature will make the phone vibrate to let you know that you have a missed event such as a missed call or an unread text message. You can double-tap the top of the phone to go to the top of a list, such as your contacts, but we couldn't get the tilt-to-zoom function on web pages and the gallery to work at all. One feature we did like was that if a contact is on your screen or you're in the middle of writing a text message to that contact, bringing the phone up to your ear will automatically call that person.

Thanks to Smart Stay the BBC homepage won't fade to black while you're reading it

A particularly interesting addition is Smart Stay, which is meant to use the front-facing camera to stop the screen turning itself off when you're looking at it - great for reading text-heavy webpages. However, we found it sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. The phone also has Samsung's S Voice control, which is meant to perform functions such as sending people messages or dialling them, Siri-style. We were able to make the phone open Google Navigation with "Navigate to Guildford", call Dave with "Call Dave", but trying to dictate a message was pretty hopeless, leading to garbled rubbish every time.

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Pay Monthly

Model & Tariff	Mins & Texts	Handset cost	Contract length	Monthly cost	Available from
Samsung Galaxy S3 Vodafone + Mobile Internet (1GB)	Unlimited free minutes Unlimited free texts	£0.00	24 months	£29.00	More info
Samsung Galaxy S3 Dolphin + 100MB	200 free minutes Unlimited free texts	£0.00	24 months	£20.50	More info
Samsung Galaxy S3 O2 + 1GB	Unlimited free minutes Unlimited free texts	£0.00	24 months	£27.00	More info
Samsung Galaxy S3 O2 + 750MB	600 free minutes Unlimited free texts	£0.00	24 months	£22.00	More info
Samsung Galaxy S3 T-Mobile Internet (250MB)	600 free minutes Unlimited free texts	£0.00	24 months	£26.00	More info

See all Samsung Galaxy S3 deals

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User comments

Too big to be a 'phone'

As great as this device is, if it's not comfortable to use in one hand for the majority of users, then it is not a phone, it's a tablet with phone functionality.

For me personally, i'll be sticking with the SG2 until they start making reasonably sized smart phones again.

I've just upgraded to the extended battery for the SG2 which is only 100mAh less than the SG3 battery but lasts longer due to the smaller screen size.

And despite having 2 less cores, the SG2 is still fast enough for all my daily smart phone needs (it never stopped being fast enough).

I hope Samsaung release another 4'3 inch model next year as anything over this screen size is too big for me.

By darkflamex on 11 Jun 2012

Stupid size for a phone

We don't need phones that are this big, it's just getting ridiculous. I guarantee that the instructions tell you to take this out of your pocket when you sit down... why should having your phone in your pocket be a risk? How long before these things come with a free backpack, to carry them in?

By LeeC22 on 11 Jun 2012

not too big

It is not too big. The s3 fits in my pocket fine. The slim design makes it easy slip in a pocket and only slightly bigger than s2.

By paulf on 11 Jun 2012

Samsung S3 crashes

I just bought S3 two weeks before and it continuously crashing. Whenever I open some application(camera, mail, etc) it crashed and came to home screen.. Sometimes even click on apps crash and goto home screen.. RAM is immediately increasing to the maximum even if i clear.. Don't know whats wrong.. I reset to factory settings and still I found RAM takes the maximum memory. Also heat problem..

By dare2live on 23 Jun 2012

Samsung S3 crashes

By dare2live on 23 Jun 2012

Samsung GS3

Samsung Galaxy S3 is the best mobile and mobile is awesome about the design and size...i observed that My Deals247.com is fantastic in terms of choosing the product because they will offer more deals and less price

By preethi on 27 Jun 2012

Samsung Galaxy s3 i like the most....I ordered on My Deals247.com which is the best personalized eCommerce site.

By Joseph441 on 28 Jun 2012

Samsung Galaxy s3 the best

The samsung galaxy s3, i think is the best android smartphone in the world and the best launch this year in 2012. I have read so many reviews about 1 hand use, but for me, i have no problems. I have no problem what so ever picking up the phone and calling, texting and doing other things on it. So i disagree and think samsung are the best smartphone company and i am very happy woth the new samsung galaxy s3 i bought one because i love it, rock on samsung and keep doing what your doing.

By samsungcool on 25 Nov 2012