After reading through the fanboy infested “reviews” of the new Samsung Galaxy S3, I am sad to say I came away slightly unimpressed! No doubt they will sell a huge amount of units and there are some nice things about the new phone, and right now it is the best one out there… But… After looking over the specs and what not I have to conclude it is not much better than the HTC One X, and considering that was announced in February I would have thought Samsung would have pulled out all of the stops to produce a killer phone that would leave HTC eating dust. Not so! Sure, it has a better battery and I think given some of HTC’s problems with battery life, that could lure a few jaded HTC users. Otherwise, apart from a few “apps”, the two phones are pretty much similar. The way the new Galaxy has a constant auto detection of a users face to wake up could eat away at the battery so I am still not convinced on which one is better battery wise. The quad core CPU’s at the heart of the new Samsung and the HTC could be about the same. Granted the HTC might look more powerful on paper as it is a 1.5 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex A9 (in other words a nice little beastie) and the Samsung is powered by a 1.4 GHz quad-core that has been tested to be faster than the one in the HTC One X, but I would like to see this tested more and “in the wild” so to speak.. Though I would guess that both are pretty similar in actual performance and the real test is how the phones act under normal usage with their respective Android skins (Sense and TouchWiz). One thing that I don’t like about Samsung is that they seem to be going down the route of Premiumisation, in that they are charging consumers extra for their products. As an example, on O2 with a 24 month contract (On and On tariff), a HTC One X comes in at £36 per month. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is £36 per month with a £99 one off fee and the iphone 4S is £36 per months with a one off fee of £99… So, basically I get as good a phone with a HTC but without the premium price tag. Now, I am a happy HTC user from the Desire I got in 2010, but I also thought that the Samsung Galaxy S2 was a brilliant phone last year and considered buying one outright. Not this time though.. I refuse to pay a premium for products, which is why I avoid Apple’s line-up. Seems Samsung are going the same way.
I expected more. It was like a Steve Jobs launch but without his personality. I was waiting for a "wow" moment with the specs but it never came.
My Galaxy SII will be seeing me alright for the next few years, I reckon. So, I don't see the need to covet something which won't be much use for me, as the one I have now is more than ample for my needs.
Yeah, I expected a lot more too. I really thought the Galaxy S3 would have blown away the competition, which it failed to do. It was basically a minimal upgrade from the current crop of high end Android phones.. As for your Galaxy S2 Dom, that thing is still a nice bit of kit and will do you well for a good few years Just as my Desire has done me well for almost 2 years now (apart from dying and needing repairing)..
