The Samsung Galaxy S III: AndroidNZ goes hands-on, brings you our thoughts and exclusive details

One can almost sense the near-palpable nervousness of the
One X capturing this shot... I think it came over all Mr Blurrycam
because it was shaking with fear (or maybe that was my excitement)

Something great happened to me today; I got the rather unexpected joy of being able to play with the Samsung Galaxy S III. The pieces fell together quite unexpectedly yesterday, when a nameless benefactor temporarily came into possession of an S3, and was kind enough to give it up for a couple of hours today (I don't think I could have been so generous, I would have been more in the "from my cold dead hands" camp I think).

Anyways, what follows is an account of my brief two hour experience with the S3, and some of my thoughts and early impressions. I unearthed a few things that nobody else has covered in relation to the S3, so I hope you'll enjoy it (you didn't think exFAT support was all I had for you, did ya?).

Catch you after the break.

First impressions, design

The S3 foot print is nearly indistinguishable to the One X

Ah, what to say about the much maligned design of the Galaxy S3? For one thing, I don't think it's as bad as what people have made out. Most of the negativity surrounding it seems to me to be the inevitable fallout of unrealistic expectations. It's not going to win any beauty contests, and suffers in comparison to it's nearest Android competitor the HTC One X, but neither is it frankly ugly.

Actually seeing it in person really brought home to me that the Pebble Blue colour is fairly subtle. In person it looked more like a very slightly amethyst tinged grey. Certainly nothing like the overblown purple colours you may have seen online, most of which came from the launch event where Samsung's better judgement about lighting colours seems to have lapsed causing accentuation of the tint.

It felt fine in the hand too, nice and slim, but unlike the it's predecessor the S2 it is uniformly slim and with much better ergonomics courtesy of curved edges. The "hyperglazed" plastic didn't inspire the same confidence as the One X's polycarbonate unibody, unfortunately feeling slightly cheap and attracting finger prints aplenty, but it didn't detract too much from the whole. I expect like the Galaxy S2 that while the choice of build materials may be poor, the build quality will probably be just fine.

I didn't really have many complaints in terms of the hardware buttons, of which there are precious few. The power button is on the right hand side, commensurate with Samsung's design ethos for a few years now, and in my opinion a much better place than the top of a device this large. The volume rocker is on the "right" side of the device, that side being the correct place for a volume rocker (the One X volume rocker bothers me no end with the accidental button pushes). I do have to say that I couldn't get on very well with the home button, although I can't discount that there may just be a wee learning curve involved in getting used to it. Its narrowness and placement very near the bottom of the device, both ramifications of the near bezel-less design I am sure, made it difficult to hit easily with the thumb and it's slight convex bulge seemed to hinder it's tactile feel rather than assist it. 

If I were to precis my first impression, it would be to say something like this: it wasn't so much "wow" as it was a sigh of Oh-that's-actually-pretty-decent relief.

I guess you could precis my first impression: it 

wasn't so much "wow" as it was a sigh of 

Oh-that's-actually-pretty-decent relief.

A stack o'phones. The picture doesn't really show up
the slimness of the S3 in comparison to the others -
not a difference you'll miss with if you handle them

The screen

Like the design of the S3, the screen has drawn it's share of criticism, in large part because Samsung elected to use a pentile sub-pixel arrangement, rather than a true stripe matrix such as we saw in the Galaxy S2. But is it really that bad? For myself I feel quite comfortable saying the S3 screen is truly, truly, excellent. That's not to say it's without faults by any means, only that I don't think the hoopla over it's pentile matrix deserves anywhere near the level of attention its had to date. Let's be real here, at ~306PPI you're rarely if ever going to appreciate the drawbacks of pentile in normal use.

That characteristic AMOLED blue tinge is apparent

Let's talk about the screen in a little more detail though.

All the usual faults in AMOLED screens appear to be apparent in the S3 - the colour temperature seems inconsistent across handsets if I compare to some other pictures at XDA, you can see in my own picture that the S3 has the same blue tinge and inaccurate whites exhibited by the Note (they seem even more pronounced in the S3, but I'm fairly sure that's only because it's maximum brightness is less than the Notes), and I'm sure we'll see some visible blemishes in greyscales too as we have done with every other AMOLED handset to date. None of these bother me particularly, overall the AMOLED screens still look fantastic, and it's really only when you have them side-by-side with other handsets that their faults become more obvious.  

All the usual AMOLED benefits are also apparent too - contrast is infinite, colours pop, the blacks are impeccable, and the viewing angles are still best in class. I couldn't be entirely sure, because the stock colour scheme in TouchWiz is a lot more muted in this iteration than I'm accustomed too, but I think the S3s colour reproduction is a tad better than the Notes. Colours don't have quite the same exaggerated contrasty pop, possibly this is related to Samsung utilising a smaller red subpixel in the SAMOLED HD screen here than they did in either the Note or Nexus. LCD screens are quickly making up ground though, for instance in the photo below you can that there isn't much in the viewing angles contest at all (worth pointing out that this contest is a bit irrelevant past a certain point that both technologies have already passed, since nobody actually uses their phones at such acute angles). Regretably the sun wasn't showing itself this afternoon, so I couldn't assess the relative sunlight usability of the displays I had at my disposal.

HTC's SLCD-2 shows remarkable progress over it's predecessors 

The big question facing the S3 screen is whether Samsung's 2012 flagship has the best display available, as their 2011 flagships did? I have to be frank: I don't think it does. I know GSMArena opined that it was the best they'd seen, and that they rated it over the SLCD-2 panel in the HTC One X, but I respectfully have to disagree. The S3 has better blacks and contrast, and a meaningless advantage in viewing angles, whereas in my eyes the One X outguns it with better colour reproduction, especially for whites, better sharpness, and better brightness - all in the context of contrast and blacks that are "good enough". Overall my feeling that the One X display is the best ever made for a mobile remains unchanged, although the S3 is very close and I'd grant that it's better suited to video and gaming than the One X panel.

Overall my feeling that the One X display is the best ever made for a mobile remains unchanged

Brief notes on performance

A few people wanted to know about
how much free RAM is available in
the S3; feast your eyes. I'd have hoped
for more to be honest, but lets see how
it performs before grabbing our
pitchforks eh?

I refrained from installing benchmark software on the S3 while I had it - time was too short and that information is readily available elsewhere (Anandtech being the best place to find technically-oriented information of that kind). All I wanted to say here was that the S3 seems to have taken smoothness of operation to another level. In my brief time with it everything was immaculate, in fact so much so that I found it smoother even than the iPhone 4S I currently have in my possession (contrary to what many would have you belief there are micro lags, stutters, and even occasional brief slow downs on the iPhone). Whether that impression will hold over sustained use I can't say, but for now all I can say is I was extremely impressed. 

Problems?

Only a few of overt negatives arose from my fleeting moments with the Galaxy S3.

The first is that Samsung haven't seen fit to include a USB Mass Memory mode in the S3, instead only having MTP available as a PC connection protocol. While this is standard in ICS, I am going to complain about it anyway, since they have added the facility for this in the official ICS release for the Galaxy Note and it's a real boon.

The second I noted is that Samsung have changed the mount location for the external SD card, which means most apps will be unable to make use of that memory until their developers update them. This caused me a few difficulties, for example being unable to benchmark the card in the phone, but also meaning I had to open video via a file manager to check out the S3s playback chops (immaculate, as I've come to expect). 

The AndroidNZ report card, how did our 'secrets revealed' predictions go?

'Cold' GPS lockspeed was impressive,
particularly since I didn't have a SIM
in the S3 to avail myself of A-GPS

exFAT - confirmed

So, exFAT support is present and working beautifully, and as expected 64GB micro SDXC cards are working fine. If you want more specifics, including some fine-print information on this, I covered it in more detail here.

WiiMotes - confirmed

I can also confirm that WiiMotes work over bluetooth on the stock Samsung ROM. Using Wiimote Controller from the Play Store I was able to simultaneously pair up a regular WiiMote and my Datel Retro Wireless controller. A brief session of Mario Kart 64 via N64oid confirmed they work individually, although when we attempted a two player game there were a few wrinkles that will need ironing out (the regular WiiMote's D-Pad seemed to have issues, and the second player was unable to steer his kart). I tried to troubleshoot the problem briefly without success, but I expect this will not be insurmountable and will likely involve finding the appropriate key mapping configuration in WiiMote Controller. Once I have my own S3 I'll crack this one for you guys and post up a guide.

Expanded USB OTG support - confirmed

It was with interest that I noted some expanded USB OTG functionality in the recent official Galaxy Note ICS update. I speculated that these would be carried over to the S3 also, and I can report that I was not wrong (for those who are counting that makes me three for three so far). Obviously I didn't have enough time to really run the S3 through it's paces, but I can confirm that PS3 controllers work perfectly over USB OTG as they do on the Note's latest stock firmware. On a less positive note I can also confirm that XboX 360 wired controllers and Logitech F310 wired controllers do not work.

The one thing that really, really, surprised me was what happened when I plugged in a portable 500GB HDD: it worked! 

The one thing that really, really, surprised me was what happened when I plugged in a portable 500GB HDD: it worked! All my files were visible, and I watched a brief segment of a 720p video for good measure.    While that is very impressive I do have to wonder how deleterious the effects of such use would be for battery life. Could you even watch a full movie with the phone powering the HDD? Whatever the case may be, it certainly makes the AllShare Cast accessory that much more tempting...

The AllShare Cast, with a portable drive and the S3 you have one
heck of a portable HD media rig [Image via Engadgetmobile]

...and what about those USB audio drivers?

Anyone with a passing familiarity with me will know this was one of the questions I most wanted an answer to. You see Supercurio was able to ascertain that USB audio drivers are present on the S3, only there was no way for him to know whether they work out of the box.

Sadly it seems they do not. 

It seems my E17 is destined for monogamy
with my Archos G9 tablet, at least for now

To my great disappointment there was no audio output on connecting my FiiO E17 USB DAC and headphone amplifier. I guess we'll just have to keep waiting for some enterprising developer to make use of those orphaned drivers that are just sitting there on the S3...

While I'm talking about matters audio, I know a lot of people are waiting on some news about the sound quality of the Galaxy S III, wondering if Samsung's implementation of the onboard Wolfson DAC up to standard.

If you were hoping that I could provide some reassurance there, I'm afraid I cannot. Now before you get all panicked by that statement let me clarify: I am not saying the sound quality was bad, it's just that I listened for only a few minutes via my Sennheiser HD25-1 IIs, and that in no way constitutes enough time to really make any meaningful comments about the sound quality (well OK, I can say with certainty that it's not awful).

Rest assured, when I get my very own S3 to spend time with in less than two weeks I will put it through hours of testing, with A/B listening comparisons with two recognised leaders in the world of phone audio - a Voodoo'd Galaxy S and an iPhone 4S.

Conclusion

We've reached the end. I've got no more insights or exclusive information to provide you folks, like all of you I'm just waiting until the S3 gets its retail release to get my very own one. For now, let me just say that the S3 looks every bit the pinnacle of Android handsets that it's specs sheet would have you believe it is. No doubt regular use will reveal a few warts and flies in the ointment that two hours couldn't uncover, the sorts of faults only real-users are likely to uncover - the sort that AndroidNZ will tell you about where others might not!