Samsung Galaxy S3 review

We all held our breath, expecting the revolution. In part, it was Samsung’s fault, surrounding their announcement with shallow digs at the competition and promising to set the bar so high we’d have to squint to see it.  But as they revealed the pebble-shaped Galaxy S3, I was left in doubt. This can’t be a revolutionary phone - it’s ugly.

No two ways about it, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is just not a photogenic phone. No matter how many official photos you look through, it always looks a little shiny, a little uninspired. A smudge-magnet with a weird camera and speaker setup that mars its back. Fortunately, looks can be deceiving.

While the phone certainly picks up more smudges than we’d prefer, the pebble-blue color is incredibly striking (white is, well, white). After we’d grown accustomed to the shape, we not only liked the way it looked, but the way it felt.

“ the Samsung S3 is simply not the prettiest phone on the market.

The pebble shape helps distribute the phone’s weight, and even at 133g (or .29 pounds), the phone felt as light or lighter than the HTC One X (130 grams), and loads lighter than the compact iPhone 4S (140 grams).

If we had to describe this phone in a single word: sleek. The feel, the color, even the weird water drop overlay and gushy sound effects all scream of its sleekness.

But even after growing accustomed to it, the Samsung S3 is simply not the prettiest phone on the market. Could Samsung seize the throne through sheer power?

While the UK received a 1.4GHz quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM, the US version received a 1.5GHz dual-core processor with an extra gig of RAM. While it’s a bit of a bummer to lose the quad-core, the phone pretty much outperformed any phones we’ve tested recently and felt unsurprisingly snappy. Samsung’s TouchWiz overlay rarely feels bloated or over encumbers Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

But it’s not all great, royal sleekness and our first major complaint is the phone’s humdrum camera. It’s not just that the S3 stuck with an 8MPs years after they released the 8MP S2, but rather that nothing seems to have improved since then. The lens still seems mediocre, and the phone still struggles with low-light. Even the iPhone 4’s camera mops the floor with this phone’s, and that’s a problem.

The camera software is a good deal better than it has been in the past, delightfully stripped of ridiculous or redundant options and, obviously, with the increased power of the phone, pictures can be snapped, saved, and snapped again in fractions of the time it used to take – meaning you’ll get better pictures in the long run.

There’s no dedicated camera button. In fact, there’s not many dedicated hardware buttons at all. Samsung has foregone all hardware buttons except a volume rocker, lock button, and home button in favor of a smooth chassis. The two buttons on either side of the home button are touch capacitive, and disappear into the body when not in use, lighting up only when activated. Interestingly, the S3 has opted for a back button and a menu button, as opposed to Ice Cream Sandwich’s preferred back and recent app buttons – but this works in the phone’s favor.

Without the hardware buttons, all the focus is on the S3’s 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD at a 1280 x 720 resolution. While the display is bright and crisp, it’s just not in the same league as the HTC One X’s LCD screen or Apple’s Retina Displays. Further exacerbating our display woes was the S3’s tendency to leave the phone a bit too dark, especially indoors.

There’s a handful of features that add to the newness of the device, but ultimately feel more like gimmicks than actual fully-developed features. Take, for instance, Direct Call, which allows you to call whomever you’re texting by lifting your ear to call them automatically. None of these anemic features are detrimental to the product, because none fall as flat as S Voice does.

S Voice is Samsung’s answer to Apple’s Siri, and it’s really not much of an answer at all.

While Siri suffers from near-constant hiccups, S Voice still sucks a good deal worse. The difference is Siri is at least covered under the pretense of being in Beta. No such excuse exists for S Voice. To be honest, I’m not even sure I completely like this talk to your phone fad. When it works it seems novel, and when it doesn't it leaves you feeling embarrassed, not just that you're talking to your phone, but that your phone doesn't even understand you.

The phone froze up a few more times than we were comfortable with and a vast majority of these freezes were during S Voice. Hopefully, like Siri, S Voice will keep improving, but for now it feels more like a “me too” than a meaningful addition.

That might seem like a lot of negativity, but rest assured, none of these half-baked features are directly harmful to the S3 if you just don’t use them. The S3 has more than enough gems in its crown without them.

While LTE is a notorious battery killer, the Samsung Galaxy S3 faired well even after a day of intermittent internet surfing. Even better, the 2100mAH battery is replaceable, so after a year or so of use, you can swap your slightly burned out battery for a little extra juice.

Except for T-Mobile’s weird $279 price tag, all major carriers are offering a 16GB version for $199. That makes it comparable to the HTC One X and iPhone 4S, and well worth the price.

This is easily one of the best phones on the market, and is currently only rivaled by the HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE. While we prefer the EVO’s design, and HTC’s overlay (Sense 4.0) is certainly prettier than TouchWiz, the Samsung Galaxy S3 and TouchWiz beats the competitors at just about every other turn.

Of course, Samsung’s been notoriously bad with software updates, and with Jelly Bean right around the corner, it’s up to Samsung to make sure the S3 feels as fresh as it should in a month.

Until then, the S3 gets its rightful place at the throne.



Source : ign[dot]com

E3 2012: BandFuse: Rock Legends Preview

Anyone who wants to work in the gaming business must be passionate -- I think that goes without saying. Still, it's a breath of fresh air when you receive a demo or interview from someone who knows how to show their enthusiasm and project that excitement onto others. Jon Heiner, game director at Realta, is an example of a developer who knows how to make you believe. At E3, I had the chance to talk to him about his first gaming project, BandFuse: Rock Legends.


BandFuse, much like Ubisoft's Rocksmith, is a rhythm game that features a full guitar experience as opposed to the 5-button experience typically associated with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. It currently supports guitar, bass, and vocals, although they were primarily showing off guitar at the show. Realta hopes to differentiate BandFuse from the competition through authenticity. They claim their technology offers a zero latency experience and the use of tablature, guitar's equivalent to sheet music, instead of exploding gems will teach BandFuse players how to read any guitar magazine or lesson book. By the sound of it, Realta has a no compromises approach to creating their guitar experience.

Despite being new to the scene, Realta pulled in a growing list of names from the rock industry to assist them in development. Slash, Zakk Wyld, and Nancy Wilson are already tied to the project, and there's no telling if there will be more to come. Bringing so many musicians on board gives Realta the ability to create perfect to near perfect tabs of the songs. "This is how the part is played." Jon Heiner told me, in reference to Slash's song Back From Cali. "I know this, because I asked Slash." It sounded like the legends would also play a role in teaching the player guitar techniques, telling rock stories, and motivating the player to keep picking up his or her instrument. The legends are integrated into the experience and aren't just names on the box to sell copies. 

Realta has also courted favor from John Nady, developer of a wide array of wireless music technology. For BandFuse, Nady has developed the guitar cable that ships with every copy of the game and an acoustic guitar attachment to allow players to use their acoustic guitars in the game. That's right. For the first time in a game, songs like Drive by Incubus can be played using the proper type of guitar. Unfortunately, since they use their game is designed around their technology, Rocksmith's guitar cable has too much latency to be usable in BandFuse. Jon also showed me an audio adapter that will ship with their game that allows the player to plug a pair of headphones directly into the Xbox. There's a surprising amount of tech being developed for BandFuse; all in the effort to allow players to play how they want.

Realta wants BandFuse to be more than just a personal journey; they want it to be a social experience. Every time you play a song in BandFuse, your performance is recorded. Afterward, you can upload that recording to their BandFuse cloud and share it with friends or even ask someone to record a backing track to combine with your leads. They were not showing any of the social aspects of BandFuse at E3, but Jon described it as one of the three major pillars supporting their game. The ability to share is woven into the fabric of BandFuse, but we'll have to wait to see how it all plays out. 

Any good guitarists knows you don't become great without practice. BandFuse's practice options were not finalized by my E3 appointment, but they understand how crucial practice can be to an experienced player. They know they want to make practicing simple, fun, and worthwhile. Realta also plans to build tutorials to help players learn and get better at guitar. Jon told me they want to "Game-ify guitar practice," and they may be on their way to accomplishing just that.

After my interview with Jon, I strapped on one of the guitars and tried out some of the tracks. I played through Reptilia by The Strokes and Harder to Breathe by Maroon 5 on two of the intermediate difficulties and had varying experiences. Multipliers in the thirties and fourties were not uncommon during Reptilia, but I couldn't even break ten in Harder to Breathe. It was hard to tell if the difference in score was because of the software, an out of tune guitar, or just my mediocre guitar playing. E3 is not the best venue to test a game with so many things that could go wrong. I will say the scoring system is more strict than Rocksmith, but not as restrictive as Rock Band 3's pro guitar. You still have the freedom to play what you want during guitar breaks, and you are never punished for not playing what's in the tablature. Your multiplier will slowly decrease if you aren't playing the notes as they are shown, but you will never fail out of a song. 

I had low expectations walking into BandFuse. Rhythm gaming has gone through a lot of turbulence the past few years, and I'm incredibly skeptical of new IPs in the genre. Rocksmith felt like a lucky strike, but BandFuse may solidify this as a trend. Rhythm gaming could be reborn with a focus on learning and playing real instruments. Based on what I saw at E3, could easily lead that charge.

Source : gamezone[dot]com