With Samsung revealing the Samsung Galaxy S3 earlier this month, the Samsung flagship title will officially move from the Galaxy Nexus to the S3. However newer isn’t always better as you will soon find out.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs Samsung Galaxy S3: Android 5.0 Jellybean dilemma
The Samsung Galaxy S3 launched to mix reactions just this month. While speculations like of a 12-megapixel camera, 2GB RAM and ceramic case were shot down, features like its form factor and screen technology were criticized as well. Many fans didn’t appreciate the hyperglazed plastic exterior of the Galaxy S3, saying that if fell ‘cheap’. As for the display, while we did get the 4.8-inch screen size, Samsung went with a Pentile display which was another soft spot.
Nevertheless, these features aside the Samsung Galaxy S3 hardware was up there with the likes of the most powerful smartphones on the market (e.g. HTC One X). So would we hands-down recommend it over the older Samsung Galaxy Nexus? No.
Looks: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus has a lot of good still going for it. For starters, and this is a matter of personal preference, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus exterior styling looks better than the Samsung Galaxy S3. This especially applies to the blue Samsung Galaxy S3 which in my opinion doesn’t have a single good angle. As for the white Samsung Galaxy S3, because it has a white face up front, it doesn’t look as clean as other ‘oreo’ colored Samsung devices which rely on black face-fronts to hide things like the black light sensors and LED indicators.
Android 5.0 Jellybean: Secondly, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the only device on the market that you can be guaranteed will get the Android 5.0 Jellybean update whenever it rolls out this year. While the Samsung Galaxy S3 would be a shoe-in as well, the wait might kill many folks. Take for instance all the US Samsung Galaxy S2 variants which have yet to get the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update 7 months on.
Processor: Lastly we get to one of the most sought after features of the Samsung Galaxy S3, its powerful quad-core Exynos processor. If the recent Nenamark benchmarks are anything to go by, the US Samsung Galaxy S3 variants will likely be swapping their quad-cores for a dual-core chip in order to be compatible with 4G LTE.
If there’s anything that would make me pick the Samsung Galaxy S3 over the Galaxy Nexus, it would be its camera. However because my smartphone is my secondary camera (I have a DSLR because of my line of work), this is not enough for me to pick the S3 over the Nexus.
What are your thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy S3? Did it live up to all the hype? Is the S3 your next smartphone whenever it arrives here in the US? Sound off in the comments below.
