Samsung Galaxy S3 India launch and review

In India the phone should be in stores by May 31 2012. You can book it before launch on Samsung’s India website http://bit.ly/JpyciG for just Rs 2000 and get a Bluetooth free! It is expected to sell for 32000 plus.  

Galaxy S3 Specifications –

4.8-inch 16M-color Super AMOLED+ HD capacitive screen of 720 x 1280 pixels

Quad-band GSM and quad-band 3G support

21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support

Corning Gorilla Glass 2 screen

1.4 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU, Mali-400MP GPU, Exynos 4 Quad chipset, 1GB of RAM

8 MP wide-angle lens autofocus camera with LED flash, face, smile and blink detection

1080p HD video recording at 30fps

Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g, n

GPS with A-GPS connectivity; GLONASS support, Digital compass

16/32/64GB internal storage, microSD slot

Accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor

Standard 3.5 mm audio jack

microUSB port with USB host and TV-out (1080p) support, MHL, charging

Stereo Bluetooth v4.0

FM radio with RDS

Super slim at only 8.6mm

1.9 MP secondary video-call camera

Full Flash for the web browser

NFC support

Document editor

File manager comes preinstalled

Extremely rich video and audio codec support

Impressively large 2100 mAh battery

Samsung brings the Samsung Galaxy S3 with the tag line which is somewhat true looking at the phone - 'inspired by nature – it sees, listens, responds, and allows you to share the greatest moments'. There are going to be two colors - 'Marble White' and 'Pebble Blue'.

The HyperGlaze coating on the plastic with elegant rounded edges - only the too finicky would complain about the looks. The sturdy S3 runs Android 4.0.4 or the Ice Cream Sandwich with a big battery, but is still relatively slim. Samsung is promising intelligent power management than before. The battery is 2100mAh, bigger than 1650 of course as in the previous model, therefore runs longer. Yet the phone is only 133g considering the size and power it packs.

It has the dimensions of 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm, with a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD screen that packs 16M colors and 306 ppi pixel density making it really beautiful. The large screen is stunning, the home button is wider and the smooth performance makes it even better. The Menu button doubles up as Google search and if the home key is tapped twice the voice control turns on, while the Home button doubles up as the task switcher. 

The display settings menu offers four excellent modes offering lively color schemes – dynamic, standard, natural and movie. The HD PenTile screen of the Galaxy S3 is sharper than the S2. The viewing angles are wide and you would end up ignoring some color loss at the extremes as the icons and text remain almost perfectly clear. There should be no problems in using this phone in the sunlight.

The left side of the phone has the volume rocker while on the right there is a usual power key. The top has the 3.5mm audio jack and one of the mics. The microUSB port at the bottom is meant for data connections and charging both. The same port also has HD TV-out connectivity feature. The main mic is next to the TV-out enabled microUSB port. At the back is the 8 megapixel fullHD-capable camera beside an LED flash and the loudspeaker grille. The microSIM and the microSD card slots are beneath the battery.

Touchwiz launcher has been re-worked to make swiping around easier. There is less clutter on the screen even with more widgets to play with. The dock at the bottom of the display now holds five favorite items, which is more than the last time. Internet, mail, phone and messaging and apps menu all are rather easy to reach. To be honest, an entire paragraph can be dedicated to the lock screen alone. But to give you an idea the lock screen is now more interactive and produces a slight water ripple and its sound when touched.

Samsung has come out with an innovative eye-tracker called Smart Stay. It tracks your eyes to brighten the screen when looking at the display, and dims it when you're eyes away from the phone. 

Another reworked but interesting idea Samsung brought is the S Voice – voice-activated control that gives you access to the camera, calls, text, the alarms, weather, calendar and music and works even when the music is playing. Samsung claims 'natural language processing' as the reason why the phone will be more accurate in hearing what you say.

You’ll find Smart Alert in the new phone. It will vibrate the moment you pick it up in combination with the notification light to let you know about a missed call or SMS.

S3 carries another new item called Pop Up Play. It allows you to watch video while performing other tasks by pressing an icon in the corner of the video. There isn’t really a use for it except perhaps during video-conferencing. The screen shines with quality contrast ratios and appropriate color reproduction to give you a good experience. Navigating up and down the timeline to move through a video can be fun. By the way, the codec support has been increased to let any file format work for playing videos.

There's not much update in the music player when it comes to the interface. Like its predecessor, this one also has the ability to jump songs and get into playlists from the notifications bar and through the lock screen. On the other hand, the integration of searching for places to stream the music has improved. 

AllShare Cast is there with an added feature i.e. remote access, giving you the ability to stream content to (send) and receive from other devices. In this new phone you can remotely send content from the phone to a TV and receive from a computer in your home network.

Another cool newbie is the ability to send the screen of your Galaxy S3 exactly the way it looks on the phone on a larger display. Samsung claims that this way you can use your phone as a game controller, turning the S3 into a console.

In terms of storage Samsung Galaxy S III will be available in 16, 32 and 64 GB versions and a fourth one that can go up to 64GB through a microSD card. Additionally, you will also get a 50GB Dropbox storage as well! There's also SugarSync storage, meant for certain countries only.

S3's contact and messaging management features are more or less the same as S2’s. You can link a person's Facebook and Google+ account to the phonebook entry. Social Tag has the ability to remember faces, and it automatically tags the person in photos you take plus gives you the option to post them to that person’s Facebook page too.

The new Raise To Call feature lets you call the sender of the message while it is open by only putting the phone to your ear! The messaging keyboard seems to be more accurate on the larger screen so a little better than before. The auto-correct feature is still present; needing some customization if words are mistyped.

Over Wi-Fi, the browser loading speeds are noticeably better. The words look sharp and pictures and Flash videos come up faster. And being an Android 4.0.4 it enables you to turn desktop mode on and off to see different versions of the web. Not to forget, Wi-Fi can be used to directly transfer movies, photos, and music or office files.

The Galaxy S3 camera has 8MP and is capable of taking excellent pictures. Samsung claims to enable excellent low-light pics before the model is ready for release. The bright flash and a backside illuminated sensor, make it quick and crisp when clicking pictures – about three photos manually per second, or six per second in the burst mode! The face recognition mode enables you to zoom in on anything. Face Zoom makes sure that person is in the focus with only two taps. Its Best Shot feature is good at noticing a missing smile or closed eyes in a picture and can easily choose the best out of all photos. Some of the camera’s other functions are High Dynamic Range (HDR), Panorama, Smile Shot, Beauty Mode and so on. There is a decent 1.9MP camera in the front that can also get 720p video recording.

A slideshow, called Face Slideshow, of your pictures on a larger screen is also interestingly done, showing the whole photo first and then popping each face in the photo one by one. If you have set up groups in your contacts book, and when the S3 recognizes each person in it, it will automatically sort pics into the correct lot. 

Talking about the Hubs - Reader Hub for magazines and newspapers and the Social Hub to unify social networking accounts and email could be changed or missing in the new model. 

Samsung’s Video Hub, in partnership with movie makers, would be available for movies on the go. Play Movies from Google is also pre-installed. The Music Hub with paid-for music is going to be there too. Not to forget that the audio quality is superb. 

Gamer Hub could be really popular with game enthusiasts, as S3 has brought in some top games that show the worth of quad core graphical power and HD screen. Samsung is trying for 65% enhancement over previous GPU capability. 

In terms of older pre-installed applications S3 carries the likes of S Suggests and S Memo. Powerful S Beam is also there allowing you to send content between phones over NFC. All Share PLay enables wireless transfer to all other connected devices. However, Wi-Fi might be needed to transfer heavy files.

Not only you’ll able to send links or map directions to others, you can also hold two phones together, wait for the beep, tap the screen and can send content like a complete photo library at 300Mbps.

The phone box would contain all the basic accessories, required for the day to day use of the smartphone - The microUSB data cable, the wall-mount charger and a single-piece headset. There's no separate microSD card supplied which is useless considering the space in the phone. There's no TV-out adapter either or any other extra value accessories. 

To conclude the specifications of Galaxy S3 can make it a leader in its segment. A quad core 1.4 GHz Exynos CPU, 4.8-inch 16M-color Super AMOLED+ HD capacitive screen of 720 x 1280 pixel, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, 64GB internal memory, eye tracking are just some of the many features. Nevertheless, you might come across some not-so-good operating problems which I am sure you can easily ignore compared to fantastic capabilities of this phone.