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Hooray — the Samsung Galaxy S3 is on sale today! After excitement built to fever pitch over the past few weeks and months, the new Android powerhouse has finally hit shops — so we’ve rounded up everything you need to know.
We’ve put the quad-core, Ice Cream Sandwich-packing behemoth through its paces with a gamut of tests. See the S3 beat the HTC One X in our benchmark test, or find out how the S3’s S Voice fares against Siri on the iPhone 4S.
We were relatively impressed by the S3’s stamina in our battery test — it should last you a whole day, at least — and we put it up against the iPhone and HTC One X again in a camera test.
Here’s what you get in the box, and here’s a look at the C-Pen stylus and other accessories, as well as the iPod nano-style Pebble MP3 player. You also get the chance to win Olympics tickets, as the S3 is the official Olympic phone, complete with no-touch NFC payments.
With more than 9 million phones expected to sell in this first wave, the S3 is set to find its way into a lot of your pockets. Sadly, you may not be able to get your hands on the S3 you want right away: a shortage of the blue version means you could wait two or three weeks for a blue-hued blower here in the UK, while the 32GB model is only on Vodafone until July.
To take a closer look at the S3, press play on Natasha’s video review below:
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Samsung Galaxy S3
3:44
For an in-depth gander at the S3’s software, hit play and see TouchWiz, Ice Cream Sandwich and S Voice in action:
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Samsung Galaxy S3 software preview
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At the S3’s launch, we pitted the S3 against its hugely popular forerunner, the Samsung Galaxy S2. Press play to see our first impressions of the two phones head-to-head:
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Galaxy S2 vs Galaxy S3
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Nobody’s perfect, so here’s the features we didn’t get on the S3. If you want to try before you buy, you can check out the S3’s TouchWiz experience now on your Galaxy S2, or try out the leaked ROM. If it’s music you’re interested in, the S3 introduces Music Hub to take on iTunes and Spotify.
If you haven’t got your order in yet and want to secure the best package for your money, let us help with our regularly updated Samsung Galaxy S3 price comparison guide. Or you may find if you’ve got the cash to buy the phone outright you could save money in the long run. The S3 costs
around £500 SIM-free.
Is the S3 your ideal phone, or do you think it’s over-powered and overpriced? Does it look sleek or cheap? If you got one today, what do you think? Deliver your verdict in the comments below or over on our Facebook page.