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Hands-On with the Samsung Galaxy S III for Sprint


It is the Samsung Galaxy S III, one of the most talked about smart phones in the world and part of one of the most popular smart phone series in the world. This Galaxy S III happens to be the version for Sprint. This version looks exaaxctly like all of the other American carrier Galaxy S III's, even the international version. Let's take a look at this version of Samsung's flagship.

Look and Feel





The Samsing Galaxy S III is made of a glossy plastic that comes in either a white or brushed plastic blue color. These materials are not the materials that should be used with a company's flagship, but the plastics feel some what good in the hand and make it light. The plastics and the fact that it feels light do not make it feel cheap or premium, but a place in the middle of cheap and premium. The Samsung Galaxy S III is also a very thin smart phone at 8.6mm thin. In direct sunloght, the lighting up of the buttons make them harder to see on the white version. The curvy pebble design of the Samsung Galaxy S III makes it feel really good in the hand and look really nice. Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S III looks and feels good, but it should be made of better materials since it is a flagship.



Software



The Samsung Galaxy S III runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich version 4.0.4 with the Samsung TouchWiz skin and Nature UX over it. The new skin is much better than the old one, but it still looks like you have a Gingerbread phone. Yes there is the settings in the notification tray, but there should be more obvious features in the UX to let you know that you have an Ice Cream Sandwich handset. The skin is somewhat heavy, but not as heavy as Sense 3.0 was, but it does not slow down the handset. In our few minutes with the Sprint Galaxy S III, there were no hiccups in performance and we had a very smooth experience.

Display


The Samsung Galaxy S III has a gorgeous 4.8 inch 1,280 x 720 HD Super AMOLED display. Colors are nicely saturated and viewing angles are extraordinary as shown in our pictures. Text has no jagged edges, you can not see any pixels at a normal distance, and you have to get really close to the screen to see any pixels. This screen is not as good as the screen on the HTC One X or the HTC EVO 4G LTE (those screens are just jaw-dropping), but this screen is still amazing and is one of our top screens on the market.


Performance


The Sprint version of the Samsung Galaxy S III has the same innards as the other U.S. Galaxy S III's: a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Krait processor clocked at 1.5GHZ and 2GB of RAM. Performance is incredibly swift and buttery while touring the phone and there was no lag while the phone was in our hands. Data speeds and online activities were very different from that. Sprint does have it's LTE up now in a couple of non-major cities, but for most of us, we have no Sprint LTE. If you are not one of the twelve people that have Sprint LTE, you are stuck on 3G EV-DO speeds on your Sprint Galaxy Nexus, HTC EVO 4G LTE, or Sprint Samsung Galaxy S III. These speeds are simply atrocious, even for 3G. As our video shows, we got can get 0.35MBPS down and 0.61 MBPS up with only one bar under perfect coverage. These speeds are incredibly slow compared to Verizon 3G getting about 1MBPS down and 1MBPS up on full bars, and Sprint is even slower compared to AT&T's 2MBPS down and 1MBPS up. Sprint was one week late for delivering LTE and they only had it in a few cities. The LTE roll out needs to be very quick for Sprint to catch up to Verizon and AT&T.

Wrap-up


The Sprint version of the Samsung Galaxy S III is fantastic. It looks exactly like the other S III's and performs as well as them in pure benchmarks. In overall speeds, Sprint's model is worse than the others, because it is hindered by Sprint's slow EV-DO speeds and slow LTE roll out. If you are on Sprint, this is a great option for you and probably your best option. If you do not like Sprint, you should definitely jump ship to go to AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon. Yes you may not have unlimited data, but you can get it faster and just not watch all those funny cat videos on YouTube. If you are a happy customer on Sprint and love your slow, unlimited data, you can buy this as a phone that will be futureproofed and not let you down. This is not superior to the other Galaxy S III's as the Epic 4G Touch was to the S II's, but it is still a great phone only hindered by slow data speeds. In conclusion, if you like Sprint and do not want to leave Sprint, the Samsung Galaxy S III is your best option that will not disappoint you.

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