Motorola Atrix HD vs Samsung Galaxy S3
Most of the analysts claim that the telecommunication industry is saturated. This may be true in certain aspects of it, given the network connectivity options that are provided are rather limited and the opportunity for innovation is only minimal. However, the opportunity for innovation in the area of network equipment complements this void. It has become one of the fastest moving industries ever in the world and keeping a tab on the new advances has become a rigorous task. Due to this nature, we are unable to say whether certain equipment is a follow-up for another of a same caliber from a rival or not. But fortunately, the two smartphones we are going to talk about today has their history recorded in such a way that we can actually realize what came first.
Samsung and Motorola have always been heavy competitors in the smartphone market, and while Samsung thrives to make the smartphone smarter, Motorola thrives to make the smartphones more endurant. Hence it has become a habit that someone or the other would release a follow-up product to as a rival for a product from the other manufacturer. In this case, we are talking about Motorola Atrix HD and Samsung Galaxy S III. You may well think that Motorola Atrix HD is the follow-up product here, but that’s not the case. Motorola Atrix HD has been speculated from the late 2011s and was released under a different name to the Chinese market. This smartphone was called Motorola Dinara, and by the looks of Atrix HD, it seems like the same smartphone. Hence, Galaxy S III becomes the follow-up product. However, Galaxy S III isn’t exactly a follow-up for Dinara because by the looks of it, S III surpasses the performance of Dinara fair and square. But for the benefit of the comparison, we will talk about the handsets individually and compare them afterwards.
Motorola Atrix HD
As indicated in the introduction, Motorola Dinara has been released in China in the late 2011s. Looking at the Atrix HD, it seems like the same smartphone, only to be introduced in the US after 6 months of delay in a new name. The model number for Atrix HD is MB886, and this indicates that Motorola considers this as a high end device. However, fortunately, this is not the best Motorola can do because their best products normally have a model number in 900s.
Motorola Atrix HD is powered by 1.5GHz dual core processor, and information about the chipset has been withheld, but we can assume it to be TI OMAP chipset. The RAM is 1GB and the internal storage stagnates at a fixed 8GB limit that can be expanded using a microSD card. The smartphone runs on Android OS v4.0 IceCreamSandwich which makes us assume that it’ll be a fast and elegant smartphone with seamless multitasking. Atrix has a striking resemblance to Motorola Droid Razr HD in terms of the form factor and build quality while Motorola boasts a Kevlar reinforced back plate as they usually include in their higher end products.
Atrix HD comes with a 4.5 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen that features a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 326ppi. It is reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass and comes with MOTOBLUR UI along with live widgets. The addition of ColorBoost will make it more attractive to the customers. The network connectivity in Atrix HD is defined by 4G LTE that can gracefully degrade to HSDPA when 4G is not available. You can share your super-fast internet connection with your friends using the in-built Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n with Wi-Fi hotspot functionality. Atrix HD also houses Bluetooth v4.0 that can be used to operate hands-free devices using A2DP. The optics included in Atrix HD is nothing new where they feature 8MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. It also has a 1.3MP front facing camera that can be used for the purpose of video conferences. As far as we could gather, Atrix HD may come in either Modern White or Black, but the sources were not official on that. Motorola has included, rather, a small battery of 1780mAh which would be barely sufficient for this big fish, but we can assume it’ll safely work up to 6 hours or so.
Samsung Galaxy S3 (Galaxy S III)
After a long wait, initial impressions of Galaxy S III haven’t disappointed us at all. The much anticipated smartphone 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 S III 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. The initial benchmarks of this device suggest that it’s going to top 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 S III with a huge advantage.
As predicted, the network connectivity is reinforced with 4G LTE connectivity that varies regionally. Galaxy S III 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. S III 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 II, 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 that we can eagerly await.
Samsung is boasting a direct competitor of iOS Siri, the popular Personal Assistant that accepts voice commands named S Voice. The model exhibited didn’t have a sound model of this new addition, but Samsung guaranteed that it would be there when the smartphone is released. 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. S III 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 S III 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 caliber needs a lot of juice, and that is provided by the 2100mAh battery 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 S III only supports the use of micro SIM cards.
A Brief Comparison Between Samsung Galaxy S III and Motorola Atrix HD
• Samsung Galaxy S III is powered by 1.4GHz quad core Cortex A9 processor on top of Samsung Exynos 4212 Quad chipset with Mali-400MP GPU and 1GB of RAM while Motorola Atrix HD is powered by 1.5GHz dual core processor with 1GB of RAM.
• Samsung Galaxy S III runs on Android OS v4.0.4 IceCreamSandwich while Motorola Atrix HD runs on Android OS v4.x ICS.
• 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 while Motorola Atrix HD has 4.5 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 326ppi.
• Samsung Galaxy S III has 8MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second with a 1.9MP front camera while Motorola Atrix HD has 8MP camera that can capture 1080p HD video at 30fps with 1.3MP front camera.
• Samsung Galaxy S III comes in three different internal storages ranging from 16GB to 64GB that can be expanded using microSD card while Motorola Atrix comes in 8GB of internal storage that can be expanded using microSD card.
• Samsung Galaxy S III is slightly larger and thicker; yet lighter (136.6 x 70.6mm / 8.6mm / 133g) than Motorola Atrix HD (133.5 x 69.9mm / 8.4mm / 140g).
Conclusion
The introduction might have included a spoiler alert since I gave the verdict on these two smartphones there. Nonetheless, let me summarize what we can see in these two handsets. Samsung Galaxy S III is Samsung’s flagship product, and it’s relatively new compared to Atrix HD. Hence, Samsung Galaxy S III exceeds the performance barrier of Atrix HD since it has a quad core processor clocked at 1.4GHz on top of Samsung Exynos chipset. If we let the numbers blur and look at what we’d experience, I’d say the user experience in general would be the same seamless native android experience from both handsets. However, the moment you start playing a game or start a processor intensive task, you will start to feel the difference. In essence, Samsung Galaxy S III will seamlessly multitask better than Atrix HD.
When we look at the display, Samsung Galaxy S III is one step further with their Super AMOLED touchscreen that is superior to the TFT touchscreen of Atrix HD. However, the resolution is the same in both handsets and Atrix HD actually features the higher pixel density among two. Apart from that, the only fallback we can see in Atrix HD is the lack of internal storage where it’s limited at 8GB cap. This may or may not be a problem to you depending on the individual user pattern. That been said, Motorola Atrix HD is still a high end smartphone compared to most of the handsets in todays’ market. The selling price wasn’t mentioned by Motorola yet, and hence we won’t be able to help you there. In my opinion, Samsung Galaxy S III will be better, but then, it really depends on your opinion.