Galaxy S3 FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions
Are you a planning to get a Galaxy S3 or currently own one? Do you have any questions about it? Here’s Sydney CBD Repair Team answering those queries.
What does Samsung’s Galaxy S III look like?
According to Samsung, the Galaxy S III is “inspired by water, wind, leaves, and pebbles.” It’s also “designed for humans” to “mimic the warmth and beauty of nature.”
The Galaxy S III is a 5.4 x 2.8 inch phone with a hefty 4.8-inch display. It may be large, but it’s thin, measuring in at just 0.34 inches in depth; it also has a thin bezel that helps keep the device from feeling too bulky. It’s light, too, weighing 4.7 ounces. The HTC One X, for comparison, weighs 4.6 ounces, while the U.S. version of the Galaxy Nexus and the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx both weigh 5.1 ounces.
The Galaxy S III features a contoured design that’s reminiscent of the Galaxy Nexus. Like the Nexus, it also has plastic casing — no HTC One-esque metal material here — but this device features a new finish, available in either “Pebble Blue” or “Marble White” design.
How about the hardware?
Samsung is staying curiously quiet about the specifics of the Galaxy S III’s processor, but the general consensus is that the phone uses a new 1.4GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos chip. That aside, it packs 1GB of RAM and has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with zero shutter lag and flash along with a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera with HD recording capabilities. It has a 2100 mAh battery and boasts support for NFC and Bluetooth 4.0.
What kind of display tech is in S3?
The Galaxy S III has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display with 1280 x 720 resolution. That’s pretty darn similar to what we have on the Galaxy Nexus, which rocks a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED display with 1280 x 720 resolution.
Most likely; that’s what the lack of a “Plus” in the display type name tends to indicate. Like with the Galaxy Nexus, though, the resolution is high enough that the quality should still be quite good by most standards. If you’re a display aficionado and are concerned, you might check out this analysis to see how the phone’s pixels look up close and personal.
What’s the Galaxy S III storage?
The Galaxy S III will be available with either 16GB or 32GB of internal space at launch. Samsung says a 64GB option will also be available at some point.
What about external storage?
The Galaxy S III has a microSD card slot that supports up to 64GB of external storage. That’s an interesting change from the current trend, which has veered away from external storage in an attempt to shave off millimeters from device profiles.
Does the Galaxy S III have any cloud storage included?
Samsung is bundling in a two-year 50GB Dropbox subscription with all Galaxy S III purchases. If you want to keep the subscription beyond those two years, of course, you’ll have to pay 10 bucks a month or $100 a year; otherwise, you’d be defaulted back down to Dropbox’s free 2GB level.
Is the Galaxy S III’s battery removable?
It is! Unlike many recent high-end Android phones, the Galaxy S III has a user-removable battery, so you can easily swap it out if you wish.
What about Galaxy S III accessories?
Samsung’s got quite a few things planned for this phone. The company talked about a wireless charger for the phone as well as a flip-cover for the screen, a desktop dock, car dock, battery charging stand, HDMI adaptor, and “S Pebble” music-playing companion.
How does the Galaxy S III handle the basic Android buttons?
While Google is moving toward a button-free approach with Ice Cream Sandwich — in which phones have no physical navigation buttons and those functions appear on the screen instead — Samsung is sticking with a hardware-based button setup with its Galaxy S III device. The phone has three buttons: a physical home button in the center and capacitive menu and back buttons on either side.
The home button functions as the multitasking tool, as it has in pre-ICS releases; you long-press it to bring up the system app-switching menu. That’s a contrast to Google’s vision for ICS, in which commands are less hidden and a dedicated multitasking button performs that same function.
The inclusion of a menu button strikes me as particularly strange, as the menu function itself is a legacy command Google is working to phase out of Android applications. In apps that have been updated to Android 4.0 design standards, commands all appear on-screen — even those for overflow menus — which makes the presence of a physical menu button seem like an odd and ultimately redundant choice.
Does the Galaxy S III run Ice Cream Sandwich?
Sure does — though not in any stock, Google experience sort of way. Samsung’s Galaxy S III ships with a heavily customized version of Android 4.0 that is unmistakably a TouchWiz-flavored version of Ice Cream Sandwich.
In addition to its familiar interface modifications — which, depending on your perspective, are either gorgeous or godawful — Samsung has added several interesting new features into the Android platform with its Galaxy S III phone.
