Samsung Galaxy S3 vs LG Optimus G
Samsung and LG are rival companies originated from the same country; Korea. Both are very successful companies in smartphone arena as well as a diversified range of electronic and other products. However, in the smartphone market, Samsung holds the record of the highest sales amount in the world while LG closely follows. This relationship between these companies has always facilitated innovation through competition. When one company releases a product, we can definitely expect a counter product from the other and so on and so forth. It is not so different with the two products we are going to lay on the tablet today.
Samsung released their next flagship product Galaxy S3 (Galaxy S III) in May 2012 after a long anticipation. It was an absolute pleasure for the smartphone fans and tech critics alike with the new features and tweaks introduced along with it. Hence we were actually expecting LG to come up with the perfect rival for Galaxy S III for quite some time now. Fortunately, LG hasn’t disappointed us at all when they revealed their new flagship product, LG Optimus G. This is an ideal rival for Samsung Galaxy S III in all senses. So we thought of giving them a spin and comparing them on the same arena to find out who catches our hearts and brains.
LG Optimus G Review
LG Optimus G is the new addition for the LG Optimus product line which is their flagship product. We have to admit that it doesn’t carry the looks of a high end smartphone, but believe us, it is one of the best smartphones in the market today. The Korean based company LG has truly enticed the customer base by including some new features that haven’t been seen before. Before talking about them, we’ll have a look at the hardware specs of this device. We call LG Optimus G a powerhouse because it has 1.5GHz Krait Quad Core processor built on top of Qualcomm MDM9615 chipset with the brand-new Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Android OS v4.0.4 ICS is currently governs this set of hardware while a planned upgrade would be available to Android OS v4.1 Jelly Bean. The Adreno 320 GPU is purported to be three times as faster compared to the previous Adreno 225 edition. It is reported that the GPU can enable seamless zooming in and out of a playing HD video, which shows its excellence.
The Optimus G comes with a 4.7 inches True HD IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen that features a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 318ppi. LG has mentioned that this display panel recreates a life-like fashion with high color density more naturally. It has in-cell touch technology which eliminates the need to have a separate touch sensitive layer and reduces the thickness of the device substantially. There is also a rumor saying that this is the type of display LG is manufacturing for the next Apple iPhone although there isn’t any official indication to back that up. Confirming the thickness reduction, LG Optimus G is 8.5mm thick and scores dimensions of 131.9 x 68.9mm. LG has also improved the optics to 13MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second along with 1.3MP front camera for video conferencing. The camera allows the user to snap photos with a voice command which eliminates the need for a countdown timer. LG has also introduced a feature called ‘Time Catch Shot’ enabling the user to choose and save the best capture among a set of snaps taken just before the shutter button is released.
LG Optimus G comes with LTE connectivity for high speed internet along with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n for continuous connectivity. It also has DLNA and can host a Wi-Fi hotspot to share your high speed internet connection with friends. The 2100mAh battery included in LG Optimus G may be sufficient to get through the day and with the enhancements LG has introduced, the battery might last longer. Optimus G has asynchronous symmetric multiprocessing technology that enables the cores to independently power up and down contributing to an improved battery life.
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 caliber 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 Samsung Galaxy S3 and LG Optimus G
• Samsung Galaxy S3 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 while LG Optimus G is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Quad Core processor on top of Qualcomm MDM9615/APQ8064 chipset with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM.
• Samsung Galaxy S3 runs on Android OS v4.0.4 ICS while LG Optimus G also runs on the same operating system.
• Samsung Galaxy S3 has 4.8 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 306ppi while LG Optimus G has 4.7 inches True HD IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 318ppi.
• Samsung Galaxy S3 has 8MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30fps while LG Optimus G has 13MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos @ the same 30fps rate.
• Samsung Galaxy S3 is bigger, thicker, yet lighter (136.6 x 70.6mm / 8.6mm / 133g) compared to LG Optimus G (131.9 x 68.9mm / 8.5mm / 145g).
• Samsung Galaxy S3 and LG Optimus G have the same 2100mAh battery.
Conclusion
Samsung Galaxy S3 and LG Optimus G are ideal rivals in the smartphone arena. They are from two firms that had a rivalry from a longtime back. They are top of the line flagship devices for both of the companies, and above all, they are two of the best smartphones the mobile market has ever seen. On the face, it may be a competition between Samsung and LG, but inside, it is a competition between the respective chipsets, as well. Samsung Exynos Quad chipset has been tested and benchmarked in numerous occasions while Qualcomm MDM9615 still needs to be tested and benchmarked. However, if it follows to be anything like what they had to offer before, we are on for a delightful fight of Qualcomm and Exynos chipsets. When it comes to memory, LG Optimus G has a beefy cache of 2GB in the RAM which is going to beat the 1GB RAM of Galaxy S3. However, we are not quite sure whether there are applications that would require a 2Gig RAM to handle them smoothly. I can’t wait to take the new Adreno 320 GPU for a ride either as it hasn’t been tested before like the Mali 400MP used in Galaxy S3.
Besides the similarity in performance, LG Optimus G excels in optics having a 13MP camera. This would only reflect in the still images, and we are hoping LG has improved their image stabilization with the increased number of pixels under the lens. If you like your smartphone in various colors, LG Optimus is going to disappoint you with their single Black design while Samsung Galaxy S3 would please you with their numerous color patterns. If these minor differences aren’t your type of dish, we can guarantee that both of these handsets would be an absolute pleasure to use. Hence go ahead and test them on your hand, find out which user interface you like more and which handset feels more intuitive to make your final purchasing decision.