Specs for Samsung's 4" Galaxy S3 Mini fall well short of Apple's iPhone 5 - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by lkrupp 


One thing is for certain however. They will declare it vastly superior to the iPhone 5

I don't doubt that there are some android fanboys out there that will think that, but do you think that there are whole forums that do too?

Anyway, it's no surprise that Samsung is unable to craft a 4 inch cellphone as fast as an iPhone.

Originally Posted by wakefinance 
Considering how terribly outdated your phone is, I don't think you're in a position to make broad claims about the user experience on Android.

Sounds like a modern Android phone to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

Sounds like a modern Android phone to me.

drumroll. 

Originally Posted by koop 
drumroll. 

You mean rimshot. But it's inappropriate here, as most phones are sold new with 2.x.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

You mean rimshot. But it's inappropriate here, as most phones are sold new with 2.x.

No most phones are sold with 4.0.x right now.  Most phones in consumers hands have 2.3 because of the awful update process.  His phone is only running 2.1 and has 128 mb of RAM!  Those are 2009 specs and software.

Originally Posted by wakefinance 
No most phones are sold with 4.0.x right now.  Most phones in consumers hands have 2.3 because of the awful update process.

So a million activations a day, most phones are sold with 4.x, and yet 4.x only has 4% penetration. How does that work?

Originally Posted by Frac 
Are you always ...so...
..clumsy?
...or is it because you can?
Just musing.

 

I don't understand what balance has to do with my post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

So a million activations a day, most phones are sold with 4.x, and yet 4.x only has 4% penetration. How does that work?

 

 

I don't understand what balance has to do with my post.

Ice Cream Sandwich is on 23.7% of the active Android devices, and Jelly Bean is at 1.4%.  25.1% of all Android devices are at 4.x.  Gingerbread is on 55.8% of active devices.

http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by pedromartins 

And it still falls well short.

 

(especially when you consider diferent launchers, icon packs, launcher themes as android apps. that's almost 1 third)

Be more specific. When someone says "specifications", it is generally regarded by the industry as hardware specifications. How does the GS3 "fall short" in that regard?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

So a million activations a day, most phones are sold with 4.x, and yet 4.x only has 4% penetration. How does that work?

 

 

Those figures are from the amount of users logging onto the Android developers website. That represents a fairly minor population and is most definitely not a reflection of what is going on in the general population.

Originally Posted by Galbi 
Those figures are from the amount of users logging onto the Android developers website. That represents a fairly minor population and is most definitely not a reflection of what is going on in the general population.

So it's less in the real world, then, since these are developer figures and would be skewed higher?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galbi 

Those figures are from the amount of users logging onto the Android developers website. That represents a fairly minor population and is most definitely not a reflection of what is going on in the general population.

I know you didn't quote me in your response, but if you're referring to my link then your statement is incorrect.  The statistics from the page I linked are based on the number of users accessing the Google Play Store, so it gives a fairly accurate picture of the consumers, not the developers (though it includes developers too).

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 

Wow! that 4.8" phone is comically large. And judging by the bottom row of icons you aren't gaining any real usability with that larger display for basic usage.

Something doesn't seem right with these two phones. If the bigger one is truly only 4.8" then the smaller one (I applied a ruler to my monitor) is only 3.6" or thereabouts. At that size those 5 icons on the bottom row are going to be hard to hit with a one-handed thumb.

If the smaller one is 4" then the bigger one would be well over 5".

The reason the specs are so relatively bad on this phone is pretty simple: Without the big battery that the big screens are there to camouflage, you just can't get decent battery life on one of these Android phones using the latest CPUs and high res displays. So, the only way to get decent battery life is to dumb down the phone. This pretty much validates the idea that the only reason Android devices evolved big screens was to hide the fact that the phone needed a huge battery to last a day, or at least more than a couple hours.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonshf 

 

Something doesn't seem right with these two phones. If the bigger one is truly only 4.8" then the smaller one (I applied a ruler to my monitor) is only 3.6" or thereabouts. At that size those 5 icons on the bottom row are going to be hard to hit with a one-handed thumb.

 

If the smaller one is 4" then the bigger one would be well over 5".

AI's side-by-side is not to scale, as another poster mentioned. I believe it was intentionally done to be misleading since it appears someone at AI altered the original source image, linked here:

http://mobilegeeks.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Galaxy-S3-Mini-vs-Galaxy-S3.jpg

I've no idea why some writers feel the need to stoop to dishonesty. They don't do the forum members any favor by giving them faked images. I think we're all adult enough here to handle facts and judge for ourselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galbi 

 

Be more specific. When someone says "specifications", it is generally regarded by the industry as hardware specifications. How does the GS3 "fall short" in that regard?

Hardware? ok.. it has a much weaker GPU (really weaker.. Huge difference), an worse processor where LTE is used, equal powerfull processor (international version) but since android is based on java(very important to mention this. even the iphone 4 has better UI speed) the s3 loses a lot of performance again, worse camera, much worse build quality, shitty oversaturated screen, it isn't a real "high density" screen, worse battery life expecially when doing heavy tasks (4g browsing, gaming), much worse browser (especially if you consider benchmarks).. do I need to go on and on about this?

Not to mention the marvel that the a6 is.. I can only imagine what's to come.

are you going to deny any of those points? you can't (if you are serious).. so what are you going to say?

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasanman69 


I don't get that argument, a bigger screen negates a bigger battery. My screen uses up 60% and up of my battery while everything else is less than 5%.

Yes, we've seen these claims before, but they don't hold up. They're actually nonsensical on their face. The screens are not eating more power than the LTE chipsets on these phablets.

I do think your bit about women being intimidated by big screens is pretty funny, even if you didn't mean it to be. Right, the reason people don't want a giant screen is fear. Good one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gatorguy 

Apparently it's not an issue. I've seen comments from folks happily running Jellybean on relatively ancient phones, including the original Galaxy S. 

 

EDIT: I just came across an article showing Jellybean running on the original Motorola Droid. That phone only has a 550MHz single-core processor and 256MB of RAM

Gator guy while you've seen comments and read an article, I can tell you I am running jelly bean on my htc one v (its a cyanogenmod rom) and it did absolutely nothing for me other than having a different skin, and lots of graphical glitches, than the original ROM which was ICS with HTC sense.  Not only has it done nothing but at times it seems to make my phone run poorer than it did with original ROM.  Perhaps on a higher end phone it works well but on my budget phone it came with project molasses not project butter.  I can assure you jelly bean on a motorola droid with 550 Mhz and 256MB RAM processor would suck just as my old iPhone 3G running iOS 4 was hindered. 

So am I happily running Jelly Bean on my non ancient budget phone?  I'm just as unsatisfied with it now as I was when it was stock.  I guess the tight grip Android seems to have a hold on you doesn't work for me. 

Budget phone with a buggy software.  It just tries to do to many pointless things at once and has never felt as refined as iOS and also I'm tired of the few apps I have that seem to get updated on a daily basis.  It seems every time I look at my phone viber has an update, yahoo sportacular has an update, google street view has an update, gmail has an update.  I don't know if updates count as downloads but if they do I know why app downloads has caught up to Apple App Store.  That and the fact that Google has 20 different apps that are always in the top 20 free download lists and maps is broken into three seperate apps, maps, streetview and navigation.  You people that have lived with iPhone from the beginning really need to experience Android for a little time period just so you can appreciate it more than you do and trust me most of you will.   

Quote:

Originally Posted by thataveragejoe 

I'm confused why AI's following this particular model. It's just another 'midrange' device. Who called it a flagship? :confused:

 

This looks more like a sequel to the old international Galaxy W. I'll bet this won't ever even come to the US. Sounds like people can't see the forest through the trees.

Because it's being floated as a Galaxy S III phone, and that's Samsung's current flagship smartphone. It would bring Samsung into direct competition with Apple, allowing us to make a more (pardon the phrase) apples-to-apples comparison of the design choices of the two companies beyond just measuring screen size. Especially since Apple's announcement of the iPhone 5 was "anyone can do bigger, but we wanted to do more and smaller", it gives Samsung the opportunity to say, "well yeah, we can do that too."

Quote:

Originally Posted by xuselppa 

Why is anyone comparing a low level entry phone to an iphone 5? Might as well compare an iphone 4 to a Galaxy S3 while you are at it. The only thing this S3 mini has in common with the ip5 is the size.

It's funny you say that because When Samsung GS3 came out all I read about was comparisons to an iPhone 4s and how it was so much better even though it came out 7 or 8 months later I believe.  The iPhone 5 comes out and it out duels GS3 as should be the case and the Android community says yeah sure compare it to a phone that came out 3 or 4 months prior.  The reality is these phones will never coincide with release dates but will always be pitted against each other.  Although this GS3 minis obvious lower end tech compared to the GS3 does not put it in direct competition with the iPhone 5.  The fact that it carries the the Galaxy S branding and has a screen size comparable to the iPhone is the reason it will be compared to and actually very smart of Samsung to do that.  Performance it won't even be close but to the unsuspecting consumer who doesn't like the big form factor of Android flagship phones may very well consider this is an alternative because they have heard the GS3 name associated with high end Android phones.  It's misleading and evil but smart.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 

Wow! that 4.8" phone is comically large. And judging by the bottom row of icons you aren't gaining any real usability with that larger display for basic usage.

It's a lot easier on the eyes, less eye strain.

Originally Posted by dasanman69 
Did Apple add real usability to the iPad in it's icon arrangement?

Phones sure are tablets, that's for sure!

Quote:

Originally Posted by wakefinance 

No most phones are sold with 4.0.x right now.  Most phones in consumers hands have 2.3 because of the awful update process.  His phone is only running 2.1 and has 128 mb of RAM!  Those are 2009 specs and software.

I heard if you root your old 2009 Android phone, you can increase RAM to 1GB, double the number of cores, bump the clock to 1.6Ghz and install Jellyfish. All the cool kids are doing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton 

 

I heard if you root your old 2009 Android phone, you can increase RAM to 1GB, double the number of cores, bump the clock to 1.6Ghz and install Jellyfish. All the cool kids are doing it.

Actually, you can overclock the the thing so much and toy with swap partitions on the sd..

obviously problems might appear, but that's the point of having a flagship phone each 2 weeks.

that galbi guy hasn't answered my previous post.

Why is this shocking? It's been obvious for a while why everyone moved to massive phones: Samsung and other simply don't have the engineering and design expertise to fit high end components into a smaller body, while maintaining battery life. Creating large phones instead gave them a way out of the problem, while adding a bullet point to their marketing. In reality, the design decision was based on incompetence and inability to compete with a smaller body. I'd love to see anyone else fit the performance and battery life of the iPhone5 in the same shell, along with LTE etc. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rabbit_Coach 

Wich is probably even more of a challenge for the poorly performing processor.

Umm, no. Jelly Bean runs more efficiently than ICS.  Look it up. Or not. Ignorance befits you.