Samsung Galaxy S3

The Samsung Galaxy S3 puts an end to the invasion of HTC on the top of our mobile leaderboard in the test. Totally deserved, with impressive results in most testing categories, it conquered the top position. Only Samsung's innovation Department should once again to report.

In the case of the Galaxy S3 Samsung opts for polycarbonate. It should be particularly robust and scratch-resistant, but feels plastic. However, the S3 is significantly better than its predecessors. An iPhone 4S or an HTC one S with metallic components does not approach but in this category. Well we like how Samsung almost uses the entire surface of the device for the display. Therefore the phone despite the XXL touchscreen not bigger than about the Galaxy nexus. Admitted: to operate the touch screen with one hand is not easy.

Under the thin battery cover a removable battery and according a slot for a microSIM card and a microSD card with - according to Samsung - hide the capacity up to 64 GB. Internally, well 11 GB of free space available to assist with the 16-GByte version available in Germany. Samsung puts on it but still 50 GB dropbox storage for two years. Initially, the announced versions of the S3 with 32 and 64 GB are not distributed in Germany.

The power of four cores

The Galaxy S3 is the second in this country available smartphone with QuadCore CPU after the HTC one X. Our tests show that runs the Tegra 3 platform built in the one X 4 + 1-architecture are not completely round. Samsung Exynos-4412-processor in the S3 does a better job. The cores can be individually controlled and shut down at least 200 MHz. In less elaborate programs, the CPU limited therefore automatically, to consume less power. It works superbly at the S3 quite a few exceptions. Even rapid switching between rigid apps and videos or games succeed easily. Opening applications happens fast, Android runs almost without hitch. Only when you call the widget browser, the S3 minimal jerks. You want to go back via home button to the output screen, the Samsung phone approved a little pause for reflection but mostly. In most of the benchmarks, which we examine more closely in our photo gallery, the quad core reached new record highs.

Surfing the Web the Galaxy S3 is also excellent. Via HSPA + up to 21.1 Mbps per second downlink the S3 opens our 600 kbyte large test page in unprecedented 2.6 seconds. The Wi-Fi but no new record able this in 3.1 seconds - also afloat. Prima: The S3 book a always automatically into the best available Wi-Fi network. The operation of the browser is liquid by hand. A small shortcoming we also noticed: zooming on column width by double-clicking does not work correctly - a typical disease of Android 4 browser.