Samsung Galaxy S III: Big screen, big battery, big potential

A look at early hands-on reviews of the Samsung Galaxy S III. 

Next month, Samsung will officially launch the Galaxy S III, a high-powered LTE smartphone running Android 4.0 and a majorly powerful quad-core processor. The Galaxy S III is clearly designed to go toe-to-toe with the iPhone and the Droid line: Witness the 4.8-inch AMOLED screen, the sleek chassis, and the 4G capability. 

So is the Galaxy S III actually any good? Samsung, for its part, has not yet released a finished version of the product. But several tech sites have managed to take a few spins on the S III, and what they found is heartening indeed. Over at CNET, for instance, Jessica Dolcourt lauds the integration of the 8-megapixel camera and the so-called Buddy Share functionality, which allows users to tag and then text or email photos of friends.

There is "a bit of the learning curve and plenty of finger-tapping as you seek out features," Dolcourt writes. "Regardless, I do really like Samsung's effort to deeply integrate the camera with the address book in an effort to make sharing photos even more seamless." As for the photos themselves, they're "sharply defined and colorful, with the greens looking a tad over saturated as they tend to do on Samsung's camera phones," she adds.

Meanwhile, over at GSM Arena, a team of testers put the Galaxy S III through a series of battery tests. Battery life will be particularly important on the S III, with its 4.8-inch screen and energy-sucking processor. But the "huge" 2100 mAh battery lives up to expectations, GSM Arena testers said: You can talk for 10 hours on the S III without draining the battery, or browse the Web for five hours. 

Best of all is video playback time. The Galaxy S III, GSM Arena alleges, "required a minute over 10 hours of continues video playback to drain 90 percent of its battery. This should make the S III a great travel companion on those long flight and train trips."

And what about the sleek chassis of the Galaxy S III? Well, over at Geek.com, Russell Holly likes what he sees. 

In the past, Samsung has been highly criticized for having phones that simply felt cheap. Devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note and Galaxy Nexus have helped put a stop to that, but the new Galaxy S III stops that thought completely," Holly writes. "The phone feels incredibly solid, and the plastic construction only helps it feel lighter. It seems entirely likely that you would lose this phone in your front pocket, simply because you are unable to feel that it is there while you walk around." 

Interested in picking up a Galaxy S III? Drop us a line in the comments section. And follow on Twitter @venturenaut for more tech news.