Considering Upgrading to a Samsung S3 Smartphone

I am considering upgrading to the recently released Samsung S3 smartphone. As regular readers might recall I was more or less waiting for Nokia to release the Lumia 900 Windows Phone in Australia but I am getting really tired of watching out for when it is actually going to make it to Australia. First is was the end of April, then that became the end of May, which become mid-June, and now, as far I can tell, the word is that it will not be available here until mid-August. And who is to say that date won’t shift again now that they have released a Lumia 900 Mark 2 (or whatever it is going to be called) in the USA.

Going for the Samsung S3 is not an automatic decision. One review I read gave the battery life a great review with the reviewer saying that with ‘normal’ use you could expect three days of battery life. That would work for me. I am into long battery life. It is one of my primary criteria for a mobile phone (cell phone for my American readers).

But then I read a more recent review (the Cnet review referred to below) where the reviewer was of the opinion that the battery is only good a day at best with regular use. Hmmmm.

From what I can find on the Web it would seem that Samsung have put a good antenna into the S3 although Telstra have not given the S3 their famous ‘Blue Tick’ for above average signal gain in low reception areas (see picture at right from the Telstra site and notice the absence of the ‘Blue Tick’).

The camera in the S3 is supposed to be awesome—for a camera in a smartphone, that is. Reviewers are generally agreed that the 8 megapixel camera in the S3 is up there with the best of them.

The following example is from the S3 (lifted from the UK Cnet review).

The following picture shows the awesome detail captured by the very bright camera in the S3. This is a crop of the centre of the flower.

The S3 also takes an ‘external’ MicroSD card up to 32GB so you can add additional removable storage as required. Allowing additional removal storage is a MUST for me when looking at a phone upgrade.

If you want to check a couple of detailed reviews for yourself you can see the UK CNet review here (who give the batter life a sort of bad rap) or the extensive 18 ‘page’ TechRadar review here (they give the batter a good rap and said the battery life was the 2nd best they  had tested in a fully-featured smartphone).

Both reviews end up giving the S3 4.5 out of 5 which is a very good score.

Still some more investigating to do before I make a decision because at $899 outright for the 32GB version the S3 is not a cheap phone. Maybe I should wait a few months and it might come down $150 or so … or Nokia might finally actually release the Lumia 900 or Lumia 900 v2 in Australia.

One neat little trick of the S3 is that it incorporates an FM radio tuner—not to be confused with Internet radio. Very few smartphones do this. So if you want to just listen to FM radio via your phone you can. Handy in a storm to make sure you keep getting storm reports. Well … it sounded useful to me …