Samsung Galaxy S3 vs S2 Skyrocket HD | Full Specs Compared
The third generation smartphone from Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S family was unpacked in London today (04 May 2012). The Galaxy family has earned the majority of credit endowed upon Samsung in their success of smartphones. They started with Galaxy S and continued the legend with Galaxy S II and now they have announced Galaxy S3 (Galaxy S III). Samsung will release Galaxy S3 over 50 competitive markets around the world and will start rolling to the market in end may 2012 in Europe. The latest marvel of a phone from the Galaxy S family is compared with another massive phone from the same family.
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 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 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 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 S III only supports the use of micro SIM cards.
Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD
Skyrocket has the same look and feel of the previous members of the Galaxy family, and almost the same dimensions, as well. Smartphone manufacturers are thriving to produce thinner and thinner phones, and this is a nice addition to that. But Samsung has made sure to keep the level of comfort intact. The battery cover of the Skyrocket is ultra-smooth, though, which makes it prone to slip through the fingers. It has a 4.65 inches gigantic Super AMOLED Plus Capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels with a high pixel density of 316ppi, to make the images and text look crisp and clear. The processor specification for Skyrocket HD could be similar to that of Skyrocket, which would be 1.5GHz Scorpion dual core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8260 chipset. The RAM scores a fair amount of 1GB and Skyrocket HD features storage of 16GB, which can be expanded up to 32GB worth of storage using a microSD card.
Skyrocket comes with an 8MP camera, following members of the Galaxy family, and it can record 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. It also promotes the video chat with the 2MP front camera along with Bluetooth v3.0 HS for ease of use. Galaxy S II showcases the new Android v2.3.5 Gingerbread, which is promising while it is capable to enjoy the LTE network for fast internet access using built in Android browser with HTML5 and flash support. It is worthwhile to note that Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket manages to score a good battery life, even with the high speed LTE connectivity. It also comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n enabling it to access the Wi-Fi networks, as well as, act as a Wi-Fi hotspot. Samsung hasn’t forgotten A-GPS support together with the unmatchable Google maps support enabling the phone to be a powerful GPS device. It also supports Geo-tagging feature for the camera. Like most of the smartphones nowadays it comes with an active noise cancellation with dedicated mic, microUSB v2.0 for fast data transfer, and Near Field Communication support. Samsung also introduces a Gyroscope sensor for Skyrocket HD. Samsung Galaxy Skyrocket HD promises a 7h of talk time with 1850mAh battery, which is brilliant compared to its screen size.