Although there are articles out there comparing the iPhone 4S to the Samsung Galaxy SIII or S3, along with theoretical comparisons between what we expect the iPhone 5 to arrive with based on all those rumours, Samsung knew its flagship Galaxy would soon be lining up against Apple’s new iPhone.
That’s why Samsung fought to keep the design of the Galaxy SIII a secret, with Apple-levels of secrecy, even from family, because it didn’t want HTC, Apple or anyone else to learn of its plans, and it wanted to create a phone that would do its darndest to be a big iPhone 5 challenger, despite months in between the launches of the two models.
Samsung’s SIII certainly blows the iPhone 4S away on hardware specs alone, and when it comes to the customised Android OS, it’s certainly the smoothest and nicest version of Android I’ve used thus far, even though I installed an anti-malware program right away before downloading anything else from the Google Play Store.
Apple arguable still has the very best harmony between software, hardware, apps and the entire ecosystem, and thus still does extraordinary well as a single company against a sea of smartphone vendors.
But Google has been working hard to catch up, and it definitely shows, but Apple hasn’t been asleep at the wheel either, as iOS 6 shows, with Apple and Google fiercer competitors than ever before.
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The iPhone 5 is expected to either sport Apple’s first true quad-core processor with an unknown but presumably more powerful and multi-core graphics processor, along with 1GB of RAM for the first time in an iPhone.
Meanwhile, the quad-core Samsung Galaxy SIII models launched with 1GB of RAM, despite dual-core models in the US due to issues with getting quad-core chipsets and 4G LTE working together quickly enough, something Samsung has actually now overcome with its first quad-core 4G LTE SIII model that just launched in South Korea – which hasn’t yet made it to the US.
Both the iPhone 4S and SIII models have 8 megapixel cameras, and while the iPhone 4S is fast, the SIII’s is even faster, featuring “zero shutter lag”, panoramic and burst modes within.
Still, that’s the iPhone 4S camera – we can only imagine the iPhone 5’s camera will be equally impressive, if not equipped with even more megapixels and bigger lenses, sensors and apertures to create the very best iPhone still and video camera experience yet.
SIII’s are of course expandable with microSD memory, whereas the iPhone famously isn’t, and unless Apple goes with shock and awe of an even more shocking nature, expandable microSD isn’t coming to iDevices anytime soon, giving the expandability win to the SIII.
Apple’s iPhone 4S can mirror wirelessly to a TV though the Apple TV box, which the SIII isn’t capable of, but like the SIII, the iPhone 4S can be augmented with an HDMI dock connector and plugged into a monitor or TV using an HDMI cable for mirroring also, with the iPhone 5 surely set to perform both tasks even better than the iPhone 4S can.
The iPhone 5 will come with iOS 6 and will be upgradeable to iOS 7 when Apple releases it on the day of launch, if previous release schedules are anything to go by. There’s no word as to how quickly, or it at all, the Galaxy SIII will upgrade to any future Android OS 5.0 version.
The SIII has a very cool “screen capture” capability – just swipe the side of your hand either left-to-right or right-to-left over the screen, and presto, you’ll get a screen shot. Apple’s been able to do this for a long, long time by just pressing the home and top buttons, but the way the SIII does it is a lot of fun.
iPhone 5 will have an improved Siri, but the SIII has S-Voice which can also answer questions in a Siri-like manner, and even be woken up by voice alone (at least when in the app), something Siri cannot yet do on the iPhone 4S.
So, what should you choose between an iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy SIII? Answers on page two, please read on!
