The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been named Phone of the Year at the annual T3 Gadget Awards, beating the likes of the iPhone 4S, the HTC One X and the Nokia Lumia 900. The Samsung Galaxy S3 follows on from the runaway success that was the Samsung Galaxy S2, which won great praise and sold in huge numbers, helping Samsung snag the crown of the biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the world.
So the new Galaxy had a lot to live up to. It had to be fast, powerful and feature-packed. Oh, and it had to look classy. So, how does it fare?
The S3 has gone big on innovation, with lots of new features the speculation hadn’t dreamed of. But the first thing you notice is the size. The S3 has a 4.8in display and it's certainly big. It’s a slim phone from front to back so it’s more manageable than you might think, but even so.
Actually, what helps more in terms of comfort is the gloss finish. It’s like a smooth, flat worry stone that you can roll seamlessly through your fingers.
The Galaxy S III uses the very latest version of Android, 4.0.3. This is far and away the best version of Google’s operating system, with a cleaner look than before.
It's the new features on the Galaxy S3 which really stand out. There’s S Voice, which is a voice recognition service. And Smart Stay, which uses the front-facing camera to periodically check if it can recognize a pair of eyes looking at it and if not, it turns the screen off to save power. There’s also Smart Call, which dials a contact’s number for you by raising the phone to your ear from the contact details screen. Perhaps the most gimmicky of all, Social Tag uses facial recognition to match faces in photographs with the profile photos in your contacts. Samsung takes this one big step further with the inclusion of S Beam which adds WiFi Direct to the wireless transfer connection so you can beam video files quickly between S3s.
Last year, the Galaxy S2’s 8MP camera was above average. Now the competition has caught up and the S3 was rumoured to be getting a 12 megapixel camera, but instead it's got the same snapper as the S2.
Speed is important, especially when you want to do more with your phone, like play high-definition video smoothly. So the on-board quad-core processor really helps.
A second microphone means call quality is good and signal strength was solid and strong. This is the most feature-packed Android phone yet, and one of the most powerful.
If you’re an iPhone user who’s feeling their handset’s a bit puny in comparison, this is the best time to make the switch from iOS to Google – though it’s still nowhere near as intuitive to use.
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Galaxy S3
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