TDG: After the big review of the current top smart phones on the market, and after waiting for them all to come out so I could have a hands on play with each of them - I was taken by a sudden whim and got myself the Samsung Galaxy Note.
@Vaul: And I, after careful thought and painful deliberation went for the Galaxy S3.
TDG: So Samsung have done well from us this round! I really don't want to make that a bad word on HTC though - what I think we're both doing here is answering a call of exploration - giving Samsung a try - I'm not at all dissatisfied by my experience with HTC, in fact, they've left a very high bar for Samsung to clear, and I'm sure I'll return to HTC again in the future.
Let's talk about the S3 first though, since I think it's fair to say that will be the more popular of the two.
Ooh, my phone. I would have had very little criticism of the S3 until yesterday, when the cheapness of the build became apparent. A little bit of the chrome paint has chipped off, it's under my snap on case, possibly caused by the case snapping on, but I know it's there. It's kinda irritated me. I was hoping to keep this phone pristine.
I think it may well age fairly quickly in terms of asthetics. Since I was hoping to sell this phone on after I was done with it, this is quite disappointing. :(
TDG: Build quality is a definite stronghold of HTC's. The Desire just felt right. Durable textured body that doesn't feel like it needs a case, well balanced weight, substantial feel - HTC get this right and Samsung could do to take note. I've seen a few posts on HTC's Twitter feed highlighting news reports where a HTC phone did something amazing like taking a bullet for someone.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPSY24d6gz4&feature=youtu.be]
After hearing of that, I gave serious thought to keeping my Desire in my shirt pocket instead of my jeans. On the plus side, you'll survive if someone shoots you in the heart. However, radiation from our mobile phones is probably going to cause a tumour epidemic in our generation given a few decades of continuous exposure, and as much as I value my testicles, after much debate I figured the heart is more important, so I'm keeping the radioactive activity all in my pants.
@Vaul: I don't know how to respond to any of that.
TDG: Plus the IT crowd made this point:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSaQx1jgM-I]
@Vaul: Yep, an important factor to be sure… soooo… the Galaxy S3?
TDG: Yes! Please, do go on. How about battery life? A weakness of just about every smart phone - does the S3 score well?
@Vaul: I was looking at the battery life last night, it was about 13% after 14 hours of usage. Which meant that at about 10pm I was starting to think about putting it on charge. It hadn't had a hugely stressful day, just a regular one, so I think thats a good indication of it's battery life. A full day isn't a bit stretch.I have to confess I don't really use my phone for music, I love my iPod Nano too much, but for the purposes of this review I did try it (it was not just because I totally forgot to take my iPod to work - it's because I'm a committed tech review blogger person), and there is a single irritating scratchy noise that's repeated every minute or so. No, that's not the right way to describe it. It's more a crackle, for like a quarter of a second, if that. It's an artefact I guess. possibly a problem with the way it creates the sound. I have heard it on all plugged in headphones. It's not terrible, but it's there, and it irritates me a little when I do use it. The headphones are way better than the HTC equivalent that were packaged with my last phone (that was the 'pre-HTC with Beats' era though), but not a patch on my Sennheiser CX299's that I use with the ipod.
The key place that I do use the mp3 player habitually, is when I shower! I stick an album on super loud on the speaker and set it down out of range of the water jets. It's loud enough to be heard over the shower noise happily, and that's not something every phone could do.
TDG: On the whole… this isn't a massively positive review. To recap, cheap feel, so-so battery life, and a weird noise in the background for music. So far, it's only doing well in the 'Shower Music System Metric', and I've never ever seen that displayed on a feature card in a phone shop, which tells me it's not considered a key factor to most consumers. And what of the Sfeatures? Do you make Snotes? Talk to Svoice? Swatch Svideos swhile smulittasking? Sbeaming swith sanyone s'yet?
@Vaul: It's true, I have been pretty negative so far, but now we've come to S-Feats, the special Samsung software… I will continue in exactly the same tone.
SVoice isn't something that I talk to. He can regularly determine if I'm swearing at him, and censor it with asterisks, but other than saying " I don't know what you mean by: 'You're a C*** head'" He doesn't usually take my meaning particularly well.
I saw a Siri advert on TV last night halfway through the walking dead and tried to replicate a Siri search on Svoice, he was pretty lousy.
TDG: In fairness, we did a similar test in the office with Siri on a 4S, and it performed almost as badly, so I suspect… ready yourself for gasp mode… the advert is staged.
@Vaul: But I think Siri is at least a shadow of what they pretend it is in the adverts. Svoice, not even that.
TDG: Yeah, I have to agree.
@Vaul: Snotes - meh, not really looked at it, I still use note everything, as it auto backed up all my notes on my sd card on my old phone. There's a million apps already well matured and doing a good job at note taking, and Samsung's own brand version does nothing worth moving for. S-Calender is okay, though I wish it would learn (or allow me to change) my preferences to save stuff automatically to my google calendar rather than the samsung calendar but the interface is nice enough. Not spectacular, but nice enough. The S-video picture in UI feature is... there. To be quite honest, I haven't really found a use for it yet, beyond showing people it's there.
TDG: Perhaps if you commuted by train or something and you were in the habit of watching a series on your way to work - you can now check the headlines at the same time.
@Vaul: I guess. *shrugs*
S-beam, I haven't met anyone with a compatible phone. My flatmate's Samsung Galaxy Nexus won't do it with me so I can't say, but we did 'Android Beam' something, which I've learnt can't do pictures - only links.
TDG: Oh! That's… disappointing. I thought it did pictures and stuff.
@Vaul: That's what S-beam is meant to do, but like I say, haven't been able to try it, and to be honest, the Android beam was all a bit fidley and unimpressive so if that's an indication then don't get your hopes up.
Also, I haven't found anywhere I can use my phone as a magic payment brick but then I don't live in New York so I didn't really expect to.
TDG: Right. So….
@Vaul: So it would appear I pretty much hate my new phone.
Which is not the case at all - I love it! It's fast and peppy. The battery does last all day. The camera is magnificent, in fact, I haven't talked much about that and I should because it's really where the S3 takes the top prize over all other phones. I always fancied myself as an amateur photographer, but carrying a camera around is such a ball-ache. I have, for the first time, uploaded entire albums of photos to facebook. I really enjoy the camera. The pictures look great, and crucially, in good light the picture snap is almost instant.
TDG: Now the HTC OneX is instant right?
@Vaul: Yes - but I've done side by side testing with the OneX and the S3, while perhaps a 5th of a second off being 'instant', is visibly better in every other way. It handles zooming much much better, copes better across different light conditions, and takes a slightly crisper picture. If that's the cost of a fraction of a fraction of a second, it's worth it. It's the same camera as found in the iPhone4S, but faster. The video is good too, been really enjoying being able to record nice quality HD vid.
Having a front facing camera has been great with google hangouts, I know it's not exactly new, but it's new to me!
TDG: Yeah I've enjoyed our Google Hangouts and the video I get from your end is unbelievably good quality really. We've tested Skype recently against G+ Hangouts, and I've tried them both on other Android devices too, as well testing FaceTime from my iPod touch to my friends 4S, and G+ Hangout form the S3 is notably the best. These are all conducted over similar broadband conditions and a number of times across different days - hangouts with your S3 are super clear not only in video quality, but also the sound is spot on. That's where many other devices fail - bad noise cancelation or low mic quality (I'm looking at you Motorola Xoom).
So ok, it's fun, light, bright, and great with cameras. Has it changed your life? Has it transformed the role of your phone?
@Vaul: The Desire was great but was getting too weighed down in its old age and of course, had a much smaller screen - it served me well on the go but where I had a real computer, I would use that instead to do most things. With the S3, I use it out and about, around the house, everywhere. Unless I'm sat with my laptop or at my PC, I use my phone, at least for quick searches and social networking.
TDG: Ok, before we move onto the Note then, how's the leap to ICS? I've had Honeycomb for a while on my tablet so I was quite used to it, but it must have been a more abrupt change to you coming straight form 2.3.
@Vaul: Yeah, it was abrupt. But awesome. I guess thats one of the big reasons. I love it. It's just 2.3 on steroids. Nothing is hard to do or complex, it's all nice and intuitive and sensible and amazing.
TDG: Awesome! So just one more time, cos… I'm still left a little confused by the overall jist here - are we saying the S3 is:
a) fantastic or b) terrible?
@Vaul: It's fantastic. I love it and whole heartily recommend it. I guess I'm saying it's a brilliant phone that really stands at the top all by itself, but that they added a load of crappy gimmicks to decorate the marketing materials with, and they're mostly silly or just not very good. But it doesn't stop it being a great phone.
TDG: Makes sense. Anyone in the UK looking to pick one up, I think I'm right in saying, when you did the maths on this @Vaul, it works out cheaper to buy the phone outright and get a 10/month GiffGaff sim card instead of getting it from a network on a bigger contract?
@Vaul: Much. Usually when you subtract the value of the phone and 10/month from the price of the contract over it's full term, there's a small saving to getting the contract, or slightly better Minutes and Data allowance, but not with the S3. It could have changed by the time people read this but when I bought the phone, the best value contract worked out to be significantly more expensive over all, as well as having a lower data allowance. I would recommend to anyone they sit down and work it out based on current deals and go with GiffGaff if they reach the same verdict as me (and live in the UK!).
Until then, be good!
__
Phil (and @Vaul !)
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