Samsung Galaxy S III vs Samsung Galaxy S II

In this comparison, we're using the international version of the Samsung Galaxy S III, which comes with a quad-core Exynos CPU and 1GB of RAM. The U.S. versions come with a dual-core Snapdragon S4 CPU and 2GB of RAM, as well as LTE, except for T-Mobile's, which lacks LTE.


Introduction:

The Galaxy S series of phones is the dream of every Android fan. Being the best of the best, these handsets have always represented the best that Android has to offer, mostly due to their spectacular specs sheets and real-life performance. The Samsung Galaxy S II, which came out last year, was so successful that it could hardly be challenged by any model that launched in the year following its release. However with this new breed of quad-core smartphones, Samsung had to refresh its otherwise still strong offering, by introducing a successor. That successor is, naturally, the Galaxy S III – a beast of a phone that comes to reaffirm Samsung's leading position and fight off the contenders looking to dethrone it.

However, since we know that a lot of you guys are still rocking that trusty GS II, we wanted to take a look at how the new model compares to the old one, and exactly how much of a reason there is in upgrading from the GS II to GS III.

Design:

The form-factor of the new handset might hold all the reasons you need to make the jump, but it might as well keep you away from the new Galaxy S. The reason we're saying this is because it's much bigger, due to having a much bigger screen. While the Galaxy S II can be seen as a compact phone these days (even though its 4.3” display was considered massive a year ago), the Galaxy S III is very big. In terms of usage comfort, it's obvious that the S II has an edge.


As far as materials and construction go, the S III and II are about equal. They are both made of plastic (though the plastic of the GS III should be of the polycarbonate type), and both feel solid enough when held in the hand. If you prefer a glossy finish, the Galaxy S III might appeal to you more, while the S II's plastic is matte. Both have strengths and weaknesses. For example, the glossy finish of the GS III will probably get a bit more attention, but it will also attract more fingerprints.



Display:

If you need a screen as large as possible on your cell phone, then upgrading to the new Galaxy S will be a no-brainer. With a gargantuan 4.8” panel, the Galaxy S III easily dwarfs the 4.3” Galaxy S II.

Of course, with such an increase in size, the S III also needed a bump in resolution. That's why it's now sporting a 720x1280 res, guaranteeing a high pixel density of 306ppi. The pixel density with the Galaxy S II's 480x800 pixel resolution is just 218 ppi. However, the S II relies on the traditional RGB pixel arrangement, while the HD screen of the S III uses a PenTile matrix. The result of this is that the effective resolution of the S III isn't really 720x1280, but a bit lower. Still, it's high enough to make everything perfectly readable. There's a bit more pixelization observed with the display of the Galaxy  S II.

Both handsets use the Super AMOLED technology (the Galaxy S II actually uses Super AMOLED Plus, which means that it has the RGB matrix of which we told you in the previous paragraph). This basically guarantees having ultra-saturated colors and incredibly deep contrast levels, which is all cool. However, the good thing in the Galaxy S III is that it allows you to change the color saturation level. This way, if you prefer having more natural-looking colors, you can simply choose the “Natural” preset, which is missing on the GS II. Samsung has also improved the color temperature a bit with the Galaxy S III, which now sports slightly warmer colors, although there still room for improvement in this respect.