NEW ORLEANS—Samsung's Galaxy S III has a lot going on. It's not just another big smartphone, although it is, indeed, quite a big smartphone. It's full of new software enhancing the Android 4.0 experience, stuff that it takes a little while to check out.
You can see the Galaxy S III's specs in our original announcement story from last week - I'm going to restrict myself to hands-on impressions here.
The Galaxy S III hardware doesn't entirely wow; it's an all-plastic phone in dark blue and glossy white. Samsung clearly spent a lot of attention to the software, though, and the software has a real sense of fun.
Camera, S Beam and S Voice
I was discussing with Engadget's Brad Molen over whether Samsung's many camera options are "useful" or just "clever." I'll side with "useful but buried." The camera is super-fast. It'll take an eight-shot burst and guess the best picture. It'll also take a photo of a friend and attempt to tag her face, based on existing photos. You can then tap on her face to send her the picture of herself. Or you can pair two Galaxy S IIIs so that all the pictures taken with one of them appear on the other.
The problem here is that all of these features are buried three levels deep in the camera app. You have to tap a gear icon, then shooting mode, then sometimes scroll down to get to modes like Buddy Share. Many users might not even be able to find these cool options.
S Voice, on the other hand, is right in front. Powered by Vlingo and Sensory, this is a straight-up Siri competitor. (Yes, Vlingo came before Siri, but Siri is the one everyone knows.) Tap twice on the home button, and ask your phone a question. I got weather results, started the camera, and had the phone respond to a joke, but then the convention center's Wi-Fi network collapsed and the phone couldn't get to the Internet to find restaurants or answer other queries. Fortunately, S Voice has some purely local features: you can use it to change music volume or activate the camera, for instance. It'll even snap a picture when you say "cheese!"
S Beam doesn't have much of an interface at all. If you're looking at a photo or video in the phone's gallery, you can tap two phones together to transfer the file from one to the other. As long as you have NFC and Wi-Fi on, it'll work.
Video, Apps and Lock Screen
I could see myself using S Voice. Samsung's picture-in-picture "pop-up video" mode is more of a gimmick for which I couldn't find uses. It lets you float a video you're watching over another app, like a Web browser or the photo gallery. It's an impressive demo of Samsung's quad-core Exynos processor, but I was having trouble figuring out when I'd use it.
Samsung has other unique apps on here. Samsung's app store has now been joined by S Suggest, a genuinely good-looking, highly curated set of the best picks from Google Play. Digging in, I liked the bold, clear layout; anything that filters the dross out of Play is welcome.
The lock screen is unusually configurable. Remember the Samsung Continuum for Verizon, the phone with a little secondary ticker running along the bottom? You can give the Galaxy S III a news ticker, too. I'm happy with finding more ways to use that 4.8-inch HD screen.
That gets to my biggest personal struggle with the Galaxy S III. It's just too big for me. Long-time readers know I prefer phones I can operate one-handed, and my thumb just couldn't reach across the Galaxy S III's screen. (My current favorite phone is the HTC One S, which has a 4.3-inch screen.) That said, I (sadly) acknowledge I'm wrong about this and will never be right.
"People want the largest possible screen … at the higher end of the market, people are evaluating phones largely on screen size at this point," Samsung spokesman Philip Berne said. That analysis has led Samsung's 5.3-inch, saucer-like Galaxy Note to more than 5 million sales, so I've been outvoted.
Galaxy S III vs. HTC One X
The Galaxy S III's prime competitor is the HTC One X, which sports a 4.7-inch panel. When I held a Galaxy S III and a One X in each hand, the HTC model definitely had the lead on build quality. The Galaxy S III's slick plastic back doesn't say "premium" the way HTC's matte backs do, and HTC's unibody design feels tighter. The Galaxy S III's screen looked brighter, but the One X's Super LCD delivered deeper colors. The HTC's camera protrudes from the back more.
I also like HTC's Sense skin better than Samsung's TouchWiz. HTC's widgets are more elegant, and the company leaves a little bit more of the flavor of Android 4.0 in little things like its screen backgrounds and centered app menu button. TouchWiz doesn't seem to weigh down the Galaxy S III's speed - or maybe the quad-core Exynos processor just has tons of speed to spare - but it doesn't quite match Sense's elegance.
So which U.S. carrier(s) will get this super-phone? Samsung's Philip Berne said with a smile that it's coming to "the fastest LTE and HSPA+ networks" this summer.
For more from CTIA, check out the photoblog below.
