We've unboxed it, we've reviewed it, we've rooted it - we've given you in-depth feature
analysis and opinion on every nook and cranny of the Samsung Galaxy S III. And now that
it's finally seeing its state-side launch on five U.S. carriers, it's time to do it
again. This is Michael Fisher, This is Pocketnow, and (Motion-capture - HOLD PHONE UP) this
... is the video review of the Sprint Samsung Galaxy S III. As I wrote in my full review,
which you can read at Pocketnow.com, I started my mobile phone life eleven years ago with
a Samsung on Sprint, so it's only right I should kick off my first review of the summer
with a Samsung on Sprint. Normally, when there's a high-profile device launch across multiple
carriers, we get to walk you through what elements of this specific model make it unique
among all the rest. Not this year. Samsung has enough brand power with the Galaxy brand
to have kept the models almost completely identical across all five of its launch partners
in the US. That means the same positives: an attractive, pebble-like design with almost
no straight lines, display glass that curves down into the body of the phone, an extremely
pocket-friendly slimness and light weight. There's also the big bright LED notification
light up top, invisible when off, which I love, and the backlit menu and back keys down
here. Like Brandon, I found the back key's placement to the right of the home key to
be unintuitive. UNlike Brandon, though, I kind of like how the light diffuses through
the casing on the marble white version here. In the dark, the notification light illuminates
the whole bezel, making the phone almost glow in the dark. Some will find it cheap-looking,
but I love it. Being identical to its international cousin, though, also means the same negatives
are here as well: a fake-looking brushed-aluminum plastic bezel with a visible seam running
down the middle, and materials that while they aren't actually cheap - it's polycarbonate
under a hyperglaze coating - still feel cheap at times. The device feels smooth and comfortable
in the hand, but it picks up fingerprints and skin oils very readily, and it doesn't
handle drops terribly well - (get int'l phone) that plastic bezel already has a pretty sizable
pit in it on my international version here. Also, we've posted a few pieces at Pocketnow
about when a smartphone can be too light; for me, the Galaxy S3 is definitely one of
them. To my hands, it just feels lower-quality than similar devices in its class, like the
HTC One X. As always, though, your mileage may vary: about half of the friends and family
I allowed to handle this device agreed with me, but others thought it felt fine. This
is maybe the most subjective area when it comes to phone opinions, so you'll want to
handle the device in a retail store, ideally free of a tether, to see how you like it before
buying one. Popping off the battery cover, we can catch one of the only visible distinctions
between the International and Sprint versions of the device; the Sprint version doesn't
have a removable SIM. That won't matter much to people who don't swap phones often, but
for you swap junkies, that may make a difference. Just like with visual appearance, specs on
the Sprint Galaxy S III are similar to its international cousin, with a 4.8" Super AMOLED
screen and 1.9MP camera here up front, and 8MP backside illuminated camera with flash
on back. Under the hood, though, is where the differences come up. The Sprint Galaxy
S III gets rid of the quad-core Exynos processor in favor of a dual-core Qualcomm S4 running
at 1.5GHz. That may sound like a downgrade, but the S4 is built on the superior Krait
architecture using a 28nm process. There's more on this in our comparison videos and
the full review, but the bottom line is that performance doesn't suffer much at all. That's
also thanks in part to the extra gig of RAM Samsung added to the US models. And of course,
using the Qualcomm CPU meant Samsung could build in support for LTE, which will be a
lot more relevant one Sprint starts lighting up its first LTE markets later this month.
That's LTE only in the 1900MHz band, though, so building penetration may not be as good
as Verizon's 700MHz offerings. Only time will tell. For software, the Galaxy S III is running
the same setup as its international version: a TouchWiz 5.0 "Nature UX" skin on top of
Android 4.0.4. That means the same relatively lightweight, customized experience as the
international version, with nice additions to the UX like the toggle bar in the notification
drawer, which Sprint has tweaked a little in their version, along with the improvements
Google brought to the table with Ice Cream Sandwich. As for the "Nature UX" elements,
well, I've said before that the analogy seems forced, and I haven't changed my mind after
about a month of exposure to the skin. I don't really need to hear the sounds of a water
droplet every time I press fast-forward in the music widget, and it got old very quickly.
Fortunately, that's easy to change. Also easy to change, though you wouldn't know it right
away, is the app launcher. By default, instead of listing all apps alphabetically like stock
ICS, it lists the out-of-box apps first alphabetically, followed by the apps you've installed chronologically.
It's not the most ideal situation. It's good that you can change this with a tap of the
menu button. Overall, I found the device to run quite smoothly, even on intensive tasks
like downloading large files while browsing large web pages. Pop-Up Play works as well
as it did on the international version, too. I share many of the same thoughts as Brandon
does in his review o f the international version - TouchWiz isn't at its best in the Email
app or with the keyboard, which is just a disaster in its English implementation. The
keyboard looks like the stock ICS version, but it's not: autocorrect is very very aggressive,
and it's impossible to go back and modify a part of a word - the software assumes you're
making a new word regardless of whether you're in the middle of another one or not. It will
probably do fine for occasional texters, but that's not really the target market of the
Galaxy S III. If it bugs you, you'll want to download a keyboard that's more to your
liking. Again, thanks to the nature of Android, that's very easy to do. It's anybody's guess
when Samsung will bring Jelly Bean to the Galaxy S III, but the extra gig of ram in
the US version was meant to future-proof the device for just that reason. In any event,
the software experience is better than good enough as it is. Just like on the international
version, the camera performs excellently, though I wish HDR were a standard setting,
as pictures taken in that mode tended to be far superior to their non-HDR counterparts.
Samsung's Panorama mode is slightly easier to use than on the Galaxy Nexus, but still
takes a very steady hand. Burst mode came in handy a few times, and video was crisp
and smooth, with great audio. Using stabilization ended to make the video more jumpy in my tests
though - you'll want to experiment with your own preferences. I tested the Galaxy S III
between Boston, eastern Long Island, and New York City, and my results were generally favorable.
As I mentioned before, Sprint hasn't yet rolled out LTE, so all of my testing was done on
its 3G EvDO network. And you know, I was surprised at the quality. Voice calls were just fine,
with good strong and clear audio. Callers said I sounded fine. As usual, speakerphone
use was a little tinny, but acceptable. Data rates were pretty good, too, and I was surprised
at how well data-intensive applications worked. Spotify, Pandora, and Netflix in particular
did very well even though I had such a limited-bandwidth connection. It was only the image-intensive
apps like Instagram that stuttered. Did I miss LTE? Absolutely. But it wasn't as painful
an experience on 3G as I thought. That's in well-covered areas, mind you. When I went
out to the boonies, or when I was in a venue like Yankee stadium with 40,000 other people,
performance was obviously worse. The phone also tended to run very hot in these situations
- noticeably hotter than the international one. None of that's unexpected, but it's worth
noting. When it's getting hot hunting for service or fighting a high noise floor in
a crowded stadium, the Galaxy S III will run out of juice quickly, like any other smartphone.
But in normal conditions, if you live in a well-covered area and you use smart power
management techniques like we've covered in our earlier videos, the Sprint Galaxy S III
should last you longer than a lot of Android-powered phones. Some of that is due to fancy features
like Smart Stay, and some of it is thanks to the beefy 2100mAh battery. IN any case,
if you're a power user, you'll still want to carry around a spare battery or a battery
pack ... but the average user should be able to squeeze a day out of this device, at least
until LTE comes around. There's a lot I didn't cover in this video review, but that's not
because it wasn't worth it; it's that we've covered all of it in our other reviews and
dedicated feature pieces. Even so, we have even more coverage coming down the pike. That's
because this phone is packed with features. So that's what I like: I've never handled
a phone with this many innovations packed into one casing. Sure, a lot of them are gimmicky,
and not all of them work perfectly, but many of them are very useful, and a lot of them
will turn heads. Also, the basic and advanced features required of modern smartphones are
all handled so well by the GS3 ... it's really an incredible performer. The new TouchWiz
is so light and so improved over its previous iterations that I like it better than the
new HTC Sense, which I liked a lot on the HTC One X. I love the camera on this phone,
which is the best one I've used on an Android smartphone - and it blows my Galaxy Nexus
camera out of the water. I like that I can get through a day on one battery charge if
I'm smart about it. I like that if I don't know what a feature does, there's probably
a tutorial there to tell me about it. And even though it's PenTile, I love the big,
bright, saturated display. I don't like the hyperglaze coating, the plastic bezel masquerading
as metal, and the unintuitive way some of the UI works. I don't like the dripping-water
sound effects, and I don't like how hot the device gets when it's under a heavy processing
load. And I don't like some of the bloat Sprint has added, in particular its very annoying
loss-of-data message that pops up every time I'm on the subway and I lose coverage. Would
any of that stop me if I were on Sprint and shopping for a top-of-the-line smartphone?
Heck no. This thing is amazing. If you're in the market for a smartphone, don't mind
3G data speeds for the time being, and want to be on one of the few carriers left in S
III deserves your top consideration. For my money, the only reasonable competition in
its class is the Evo 4G LTE ... and despite all the criticisms I have about the Galaxy's
design, I think it's a better design, visually, than the Evo. The lighter weight of the new
TouchWiz compared to the somewhat heavy Sense is also a point in the Galaxy S III's favor,
as is the absolute avalanche of new and exciting features. As of this week, the Galaxy S III
is available in all Sprint sales channels. On my scoreboard, the Sprint Galaxy S III
gets a 4 out of 5. Be sure to read my full review on Pocketnow.com, as well as Brandon's
full review of the international Galaxy S III if you haven't seen it already. We've
got reviews coming for all US variants of the Galaxy S III so stay tuned for those - follow
us on twitter and Pocketnowtweets, follow me on twitter at Captain2Phones, and If you
liked the video, give us a thumbs-up, and feel free to comment on the post at Pocketnow.com
if you'd like to join the discussion. Otherwise, stay tuned for more, and thanks for watching!