Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3
If a certain firm intends to excel in their industry, one of the key components they should pay their attention is to market research. One has to find out what the market wants before pursuing innovative products. For instance, if the market wants a mere mouse trap, making a mouse trap in gold and trying to sell it for a premium is not going to work. On the other hand, if the market is in the lookout for a gold watch, making a nickel plated watch and trying to sell it at a budget price wouldn’t work either. Hence companies have two specific options for this situation. One is to do a thorough market research before they make their design decisions. The other option is to come up with a product that falls in between the two extremes which is likely to attract at least some customer base. We can see company’s complying with both of these standards in different ways. In the mobile computing market, when it comes to high end products, manufacturers conduct a thorough market research. This also enables them to understand the flows of their previous design which can be rectified in the new design to come. When it comes to budget devices, companies don’t necessary carry out a thorough market research and instead demote themselves to the latter standard. Today we will be talking about two products that have been released as the result of thorough market research conducted at various levels. The two companies can be considered as arch rivals and hence we can expect a strong competition. Let us open our stage to the newly revealed Apple iPhone 5 and its arch rival and the strongest competitor Samsung Galaxy S3.
Apple iPhone 5 Review
Apple iPhone 5 that was announced on 12th September comes as the successor for prestigious Apple iPhone 4S. The phone was launched on the 21st of September to the stores, and already getting some pretty good impressions by those who have put their hands on the device.. Apple claims iPhone 5 to be the thinnest smartphone in the market scoring a thickness of 7.6mm which is really cool. It scores dimensions of 123.8 x 58.5mm and 112g of weight which makes it lighter than most of the smartphones out there in the world. Apple has kept the width at the same pace while making it taller in order to let the customers hang on to the familiar width when they hold the handset in their palms. It is made entirely from glass and Aluminum which is a great news for artistic consumers. No one would doubt the premium nature of this handset for Apple has tirelessly engineered even the smallest parts. The two tone back plate feels genuinely metallic and is pleasing to hold on to the handset. We particularly loved the Black model although Apple offers a White model, as well.
iPhone 5 uses an Apple A6 chipset along with Apple iOS 6 as the operating system. It will be powered by a 1GHz Dual Core processor that Apple has come up with for iPhone 5. This processor is said to have Apple’s own SoC using ARM v7 based instruction set. The cores are based on Cortex A7 architecture which was previously rumored to be of A15 architecture. It is to be noted that this is not the Vanilla Cortex A7, but rather an in-house modified version of Apple’s Cortex A7 probably fabricated by Samsung. Apple iPhone 5 being a LTE smartphone, we are bound to expect some deviation from the normal battery life. However, Apple has addressed that problem with the custom made Cortex A7 cores. As you can see, they haven’t increased the clock frequency at all, but instead, they have been successful in increasing the number of instructions executed per clock. Also, it was noticeable in the GeekBench benchmarks that the memory bandwidth has been significantly improved, as well. So all in all, now we have reason to believe that Tim Cook wasn’t exaggerating when he claimed that iPhone 5 is twice as faster as iPhone 4S. The internal storage would come in three variations of 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB with no option to expand storage using microSD card.
Apple iPhone 5 has 4 inch LED backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1136 x 640 pixels at a pixel density of 326ppi. It is said to have 44% better color saturation with full sRGB rendering enabled. The usual Corning gorilla glass coating is available making the display scratch resistant. Apple CEO Tim Cook claims that this is the most advanced display panel in the world. Apple also claimed that the GPU performance is as twice better compared to iPhone 4S. There may be several other possibilities for them to achieve this, but we have reason to believe that the GPU is PowerVR SGX 543MP3 with a slightly overclocked frequency compared to that of iPhone 4S. Apple has apparently moved the headphone port all the down to the bottom of the smartphone. If you have invested in iReady accessories, you may well have to buy a conversion unit because Apple has introduced a new port for this iPhone.
The handset comes with 4G LTE connectivity as well as CDMA connectivity in different versions. The implications of this are subtle. Once you commit to a network provider and a specific version of Apple iPhone 5, there’s no going back. You can’t buy an AT&T model and then transfer the iPhone 5 to Verizon or Sprint’s network without buying another iPhone 5. So you will have to think rather carefully on what you want before committing to a handset. Apple boasts of an ultrafast Wi-Fi connectivity as well offering Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n dual band Wi-Fi Plus cellular adapter. Unfortunately, Apple iPhone 5 doesn’t feature NFC connectivity nor does it support wireless charging. The camera is the regular culprit of 8MP with autofocus and LED flash that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. It also has a front camera to make video calls. It is worthwhile to note that Apple iPhone 5 only supports nano SIM card. The new operating system seems to provide better capabilities than the old one as usual.
Samsung Galaxy S3 (Galaxy S III) Review
Galaxy S3, the 2012 flagship device of Samsung, comes in two color combinations, Pebble Blue and Marble White. The cover is made with a glossy plastic that Samsung called as Hyperglaze, and I have to tell you, it feels so good in your hands. It retains a striking similarity to Galaxy Nexus rather than Galaxy S II having curvier edges and no hump at the back. It is 136.6 x 70.6mm in dimensions and has a thickness of 8.6mm with a weight of 133g. As you can see, Samsung has managed to produce this monster of a smartphone with a very reasonable size and weight. It comes with a 4.8 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen that features a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 306ppi. There’s apparently, no surprise here, but Samsung has incorporated PenTile matrix instead of using RGB matrix for their touchscreen. The image reproduction quality of the screen is beyond expectation, and the reflex of the screen is also rather low.
The power of any smartphone lies in its processor and Samsung Galaxy S3 comes with a 32nm 1.4GHz Quad Core Cortex A9 processor on top of Samsung Exynos chipset as predicted. It also accompanies this with 1GB of RAM and Android OS v4.0.4 IceCreamSandwich. Needless to say, this is a very solid combination of specs and tops the market in every aspect possible. A significant performance boost in the Graphics Processing Unit is also ensured by the Mali 400MP GPU. It comes with 16 / 32 and 64GB storage variations with the option of using a microSD card to expand the storage up to 64GB. This versatility has landed Samsung Galaxy S3 with a huge advantage because that was one of the prominent disadvantages in Galaxy Nexus.
As predicted, the network connectivity is reinforced with 4G LTE connectivity that varies regionally. Galaxy S3 also has Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n for continuous connectivity and the built in DLNA ensure that you can share your multimedia contents in your big screen easily. S3 can also act as a Wi-Fi hotspot enabling you to share the monster 4G connection with your less fortunate friends. The camera seems to be the same available in Galaxy S 2, which is 8MP camera with autofocus and LED flash. Samsung has incorporated simultaneous HD video and image recording to this beast along with geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection and image & video stabilization. The video recording is at 1080p @ 30 frames per second while having the ability to video conference using the front facing camera of 1.9MP. Besides these conventional features, there are a whole lot of usability features.
Samsung is boasting a direct competitor of iOS Siri, the popular Personal Assistant that accepts voice commands named S Voice. The strength of S Voice is the ability to recognize languages other than English, like Italian, German, French and Korean. There are a lot of gestures that can land you in different applications, as well. For instance, if you tap and hold the screen while you rotate the phone, you can go directly in to the camera mode. S3 will also call whoever the contact you were browsing when you raise the handset to your ear, which is a good usability aspect. Samsung Smart Stay is designed to identify whether you’re using the phone and switch the screen off if you’re not. It uses the front camera with facial detection in order to achieve this task. Similarly, Smart Alert feature will make your smartphone vibrate when you pick it up if you have any missed calls of other notifications. Finally, Pop Up Play is a feature that would best explain the performance boost S3 has. Now you can work with any application you like and have a video playing on top of that application on its own window. The window size can be adjusted while the feature worked flawlessly with the tests we ran.
A smartphone of this calibre needs a lot of juice, and that is provided by the 2100mAh batter resting at the back of this handset. It also has a barometer and a TV out while you have to be careful about the SIM because S3 only supports the use of micro SIM cards.
A Brief Comparison Between Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III
• Apple iPhone 5 is powered by 1GHz Dual Core processor that is based on Cortex A7 architecture on top of Apple A6 chipset while Samsung Galaxy S III is powered by 1.5GHz Cortex A9 Quad Core processor on top of Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad chipset with Mali 400MP GPU and 1GB of RAM.
• Apple iPhone 5 runs on iOS 6 while Samsung Galaxy S III runs on Android OS v4.0.4 ICS.
• Apple iPhone 5 has 4 inch LED backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1136 x 640 pixels at a pixel density of 326ppi while Samsung Galaxy S III has 4.8 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 306ppi.
• Apple iPhone 5 is smaller, thinner and significantly lighter (123.8 x 58.6mm / 7.6mm / 112g) compared to Samsung Galaxy S III is bigger, thicker yet lighter (136.6 x 70.6mm / 8.6mm / 133g).
Conclusion
We are talking about the strongest opponents both iOS and Android has come up with. Further, this is also an interesting time to talk about it. It was not long ago when Apple won a law suit against Samsung for patent infringement. However, with the release of Apple iPhone 5, Samsung is said to be moving on to yet another patent infringement law suit against Apple. Hence this is a heated situation and we are mere spectators enjoying the show. So let us see what these two firms have done in their signature products. It’s obvious that Samsung has gone in the traditional path and included a faster Quad Core processor in Galaxy S III and included a chunky battery to compliment the power surge. On the contrary, Apple is offering the same Dual Core processor clocked at the same rate as iPhone 4S. So what makes it any different, or any faster? Well this processor is engineered by Apple which makes it an in house product. According to Analysts, Apple has been developing this since 2008. The processor is made up based on Cortex A7 architecture although it’s not Vanilla A7. The instruction set architecture is based on ARM v7 which is also customized by Apple. So it is only obvious that Apple has increased the number of instructions executed per clock cycle in order to compensate the lag in cores. In layman’s terms, this is how Apple has increased the performance without increasing the clock frequency. We cannot deny nor admit that these two handsets will be at the same level. However, knowing Apple, there is no way they would release their signature product if they weren’t confident that iPhone 5 can go head on with Samsung Galaxy S III. So ultimately, it all comes down to the price and your preference on the size and the operating system. If you are an inherent Android fan, Apple iPhone 5 isn’t going to convert you to an Apple fan. If you are on the edge and need advice on buying, then it depends on your economy and the size preference where iPhone 5 will fit conveniently into your palm while Galaxy S3 has a larger screen to play around. The definite audience for Apple iPhone 5 is the inherent iPhone users who would gladly update their smartphones.