TRICKS AND NEWS: A Comparison between Samsung Galaxy S3 and Apple iPhone 4S

Friday, June 1, 2012

A Comparison between Samsung Galaxy S3 and Apple iPhone 4S

Samsung's Galaxy S3 was unveiled at the beginning of the month. Yesterday, Samsung announced the official launch of Galaxy S3 in India. The phone has been highly anticipated. The initial price was revealed to be Rs. 43,180.

That price seemed a tad to high and lately most online retail websites are showing the prices as Rs. 38,900/-

Specs

Usually I do not expect a lot to be different between the two phones. In recent times apps and features seem to be the big difference in the smartphone category.

Galaxy S3 does come with only 16 GB but supports expansion upto 128 GB. iPhone's memory cannot be expanded.iPhone 4S has a storage space of 64 GB at the maximum.
The screen on the Galaxy S3 has 4.8 inch display. It has a resolution of 1280 X 780. iPhone has a 3.5 screen with resolution of 960 X 640.
The iPhone 4S has a A5 processor while Galaxy S3 has Exynos 4 Quad processor which is nearly twice as fast.

Android vs iOS

Galaxy S3 has Android 4.0 (ICS) running on it. ICS has been considered the best of Android to date. Samsung took a really long time pushing an upgrade to its previous models like Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note.
Apple's iPhone 4S runs on iOS 5.1. Usually most users can upgrade to a new OS version within a day after it is made available by Apple.

This difference is mainly because Android is highly customized by Samsung for it's phones and hence it takes them time to initiate a updated version.

Availability

Samsung unveiled Galaxy S3 on 4th May while its already available in India inside a month. Apple is usually a lot slower introducing their products in India.

Galaxy S3 will be available at most mobile phone retailers and also will be available on a majority of online retail shops.

iPhone 4S is usually not available officially on any online retail website in India.

Price

The price of a phone in India can literally make or break it. This is where Samsung has a big advantage over Apple. Apple's iPhone 4S is priced from Rs. 42,000 onwards. The price of Galaxy S3 as I mentioned earlier is Rs. 38,900.

Final words on the iPhone 4S vs Galaxy S3 debate

All said and done it looks like the Galaxy S3 is a much better phone. It also is a lot more powerful but it remains to be seen if that better processor ends up being a battery hog.

But it should be noted that Galaxy S3 is not really a competitor to iPhone 4S. It will eventually compete with iPhone 5. With Apple expected to launch iPhone 5 later in the year, it could be worthwhile to do a comparative analysis then.