Samsung Galaxy S III hands on: fast, thin, and a little bit cheap feeling

For those not in London - they really shelled out some money yesterday for the presentation (the public parts were also streamed live) - London Metropolitan Orchestra playing, big stage etc.<p>A few more things were mentioned there (not included in the linked article):<p>Eye-movement recognition: It does not lock the phone while you're still looking at it.<p>Besides the Siri like voice recognition also something that - by use of motion detection - e.g. you move the phone towards your ear - initiates a phone call.<p>A similar to the Blackberry introduced burst-shot feature that lets you select the best head shot(s) within a series of portrait pictures (recognizes multiple heads/faces in the picture)<p>Some more advanced uses via DLNA / AllSharePlay and a new AllShare SDK.<p>Bluetooth 4.0, USB supports MHL -&#62; can be used as a HDMI port<p>Flipboard pre-installed, Dropbox integration (free 50GB for 2 years)<p>optional stylus<p>They claimed 0.01ms response time for the OLED display (vs 50-70ms for the avg LCDs I guess)<p>The S3 will become available first in Europe (UK?) as 3G end of this month then Asia, as 4G in the U.S. during summer.

I find this was a very interesting announcement. Almost the whole presentation was about software, services and addons.<p>Samsung did not talk much about the hardware, and not once used the term "Android" during the whole presentation.<p>This is how I want smartphone providers to make their android-based devices: Either use just AOSP and focus on supporting that well (updates), or make a very unique and improved experience for your customers.<p>Adding differences "just to be somehow different" will only make your phone worse. I don't care much about the gesture stuff, but what they do with the face detection API that came with Android 4 is very interesting.<p>The idea that the screen will not go black as long as I look at it solves one of the most annoying problems I have when using computers. E.g. you think for a few seconds about what you just read on your smartphone, and when you're back you have to turn on the screen again. So annoying.<p>There are also a lot of little nice touches to the ui, like this one:<p>"Pick up the phone when you've got a missed call or text and it will vibrate gently in your hand in combination with the notification light to let you know you're a popular bunny."<p>Or that you can hold the phone to your ear while you're texting someone and it will call the person you're texting.<p>Or that you can select a person in the camera and the focus will stay on that person.<p>Or that you can burst 10 photos with one shot and then have the phone automatically recommend the best picture to you. The wireless charger and the HDMI dongle are also very nice.

To be honest, specs wise, while it doesn't significantly move things forward, it is pretty much the best, in pretty much every department. It has a massive removable battery, microSD, quad core, wireless charging and a killer GPU -- all advantages over the Nexus.<p>BUT.. I think people were really hoping samsung were starting to 'get it'- design, desirability and UX (yes, like apple). I thought the s2 was too boxy and now they have gone too far the other way. It's meant to be a flagship phone, but just doesn't look expensive.<p><pre><code> To make it feel more "natural", you tap the lock-screen and little ripples appear, and splish-splash noises are heard. </code></pre> This is pretty indicative they don't 'get it'. It's a pointless gimmick- just because you can, doesn't mean you should. And my god, they are awful at presentations. Its not rocket science.<p>This is all especially disappointing considering the Galaxy Nexus coming from samsung-- a device that has plenty of desirability IMO. All they had to do was to take this, add a microSD and a slightly bumped specs, and they would have had a winner. A non-pentile screen would have been welcome, but really, it isn't a deal breaker for 99%- OLED outweighs it over RGB LCD, imo.<p>If there is a perverse silver-lining, this is good news for HTC, and perhaps the android ecosystem in the long-term.. it was seeming like samsung were becoming too dominant.

TouchWiz ... oh dear, an immediate turn off.<p>I have a Google Nexus S with stock Android 4, and that works perfectly.<p>I also have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with TouchWiz which I seriously regret. The interface is terrible, and unless you reboot it every couple of hours it just grinds to a halt on its own. And there's no CM9 for the Tab yet ...

The size of these things is getting pretty ridiculous. Has every new version to be bigger than the previous one ? Where will that end ?

Not interested at all. Unless it's a Nexus - reflashed to get updates from Google - I'm not playing the "waiting for updates" game any more.

I really like my SII but the toy feeling is obvious next to my Lumia and iPhone. It's a great phone and of my phones, outside app testing, I use it the most. However for the cheap plastic feeling the intuition says it should be at least $300 cheaper. Seems SIII is the same that way, so i'm wondering if only techies notice this as the SII did so well everywhere.

11 different fonts/sizes on the home screen - oh Android, why?<p>Edit: 12 if you count the Samsung logo on the phone.

For me the biggest turn-off is the pentile display. I think for now I'll just keep the HTC One X.

Samsung finally stopped copying the iPhone following a new design language: <a href="http://versusio.com/en/samsung-galaxy-s3-64gb-vs-the-body-shop-shea-soap" rel="nofollow">http://versusio.com/en/samsung-galaxy-s3-64gb-vs-the-body-sh...</a>

I would literally rather have an Android G1 than this phone. It baffles me that more people don't demand phones with full qwerty keyboards. They're so much easier and faster and more pleasant to type on than a touch screen. I've got an HTC Desire Z at the moment. I'll stick with that until a better Android phone with a qwerty keyboard comes along.

Disappointed by the plastic finish. I did not buy the sgs 2 because it felt cheap and flimsy and this looks to be the same.

Slipping the word "cheap" to the title? Careful that author is known for his strong MS bias

Is this Engadget? Why is this here? Are there no things to read which are more interesting than the launch of yet another 10% more efficient iteration on a five-year-old phone design?

They forgot to mention that it's a little bit too big to feel alright, even as a smartphone.