The South Korean tech giant's latest offering to the smartphone world, the Samsung Galaxy S3 was unveiled recently. The phone is expected to hit market shelves on May 30. The smartphone has already won rave reviews and has been pre-ordered by more than 100 global carriers, who expect to sell at least 9 million devices to consumers. Samsung Galaxy S3 has become the most pre-ordered gadget in history at 9 million, beating the iPhone 4S's 9 million, when it was released back in 2011. The big question here is: Is it the biggest threat to Apple's domination? Both smartphones have similar suggested retail prices at £499 for the 16GB model, making them the most expensive mainstream handsets in the market. Hence here is a spec-by-spec comparison of the biggies to differentiate how they stack up against each other.
Display: The S3 has a bigger screen 4.8-inch and can display a higher number of pixels 1,280 x 720 as compared to the iPhone 4S. However, S3 has a pixel density of 330 ppi which is marginally lower than the iPhone 4S's 306 ppi. Both displays are protected by Corning's Gorilla display but use different display technology. The iPhone 4S uses an IPS LCD while the S3 uses a PenTile OLED.
Dimension and Weight: The iPhone 4S is significantly smaller but heavier than the Galaxy S3. The S3 has a dimension of 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm while iPhone 4S measures 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3mm. The iPhone 4S, however, weighs 140g, five percent more than the S3 which weighs at 133 grams.
Processor: S3 and iPhone 4S, both are based on ARM's Cortex A9 but Samsung's Exynos 4412 has twice the number of cores, which run nearly twice as fast (4x1.4GHz vs 2x800MHz) compared to the Apple A5. Talking about the GPU, the S3 uses the Mali-400/MP4 which thoroughly outclasses the PowerVR SGX543MP2 in the A5. Anandtech provided with some preliminary figures that show how wide the gap between both phones is on some benchmarks.
OS: The S3 runs on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich while Apple runs on iOS 5.1.1, two distinct and different mobile platforms altogether with their own unique functionality.
Camera: S3 and iPhone 4S, both both have 8 megapixel sensors and have front facing cameras (VGA for the iPhone 4S and two megapixel for the S3). Also, both heavyweights can record full HD footage. In theory, both handsets have similar photographic capabilities and only when the S3 is launched will we be able to assess its true value.
Storage Capacity: As mentioned, both come with 16GB (for the base model) although the S3 can scale up to 128GB (64GB model with 64GB microSD which costs around £60) with 50GB worth of online storage courtesy of Dropbox for two years which is worth a staggering $198 (or £125) on its own. The iPhone 4S has 512MB while the Galaxy S3 has twice that amount.
Connectivity: Both phones have Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and Wi-Fi but the S3 comes with NFC, GLONASS, Wi-Fi Direct, HDMI out (via an MHL adaptor), but S3 scores over here as it has a microUSB port expandable up to 32GB. An easy win for the S3 given that the iPhone has a closed hardware platform.
Battery: The iPhone 4S has a battery life of 1432mAh with an estimated talk time of 480 minutes on 3G. The S3 has a much bigger battery capacity at 2100mAh, which is almost 50 percent bigger. It means a slightly higher talktime at 620 minutes which shows that Apple has probably managed to tweak its platform even further than Samsung.
