Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE Review

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Review: October 2012

Phone rating:

In a nutshell: The Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE adds superfast 4G broadband to the S3's already formidable arsenal. With an enormous HD screen, a superfast quad-core processor, Android Jelly Bean, voice recognition, advanced photo & video capabilities we think it's the best money can buy.

Best buy: *Free* from The Carphone Warehouse (White or Titanium).

The Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE is a version of the number-one selling Galaxy S3 that runs on 4G LTE networks. A 4G network has a theoretical limit of 100Mbps download, compared with the 3G maximum of 21Mbps.

The only other differences between the regular S3 and the 4G version are that the 4G version is available in a choice of titanium grey and marble white and that it comes with Android Jelly Bean (4.1) ready installed. The 4G version also has 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB in the normal version.

Pricing of the 4G LTE version will be the same as the 3G version. Initially, 4G will be available on the Orange/T-Mobile (Everything Everywhere) networks only, but the other UK networks will be launching their own 4G services in 2013.

Read our detailed review of the S3 for more information.

Features of the Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE include:

8 megapixel camera with LED flash, autofocus, face detection, smile shot, 4x digital zoom, full HD video recording (up to 1080p)
1.9 megapixel front camera with 720p HD video recording
Display: Super AMOLED, 16 million colours, 1280 x 720 pixels HD (4.8 inches) capacitive touchscreen
Music player
MP3 & WAV ringtones
Integrated handsfree speaker
AGPS with Google Maps
Messaging: SMS, MMS, instant messaging, email
Personal organiser functions
Memory: 16/32/64GB plus microSD memory card slot (up to 32GB), 2GB RAM, 50GB free Dropbox cloud storage
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack, DLNA, TV-Out, NFC
Internet: Web browser with Flash support, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSPA (21 Mbps download)
Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900), LTE (800/1800/2600 MHz)
Size: 137 x 71 x 8.6 mm
Weight: 131g
Battery: 2100mAh battery

Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE User Reviews

Love your mobile? Hate it? Please share your experiences to help other people choose the phone that's best for them. Please do not review this phone if you have not used it. This is a review site, not a forum, so please don't just ask questions. Please do not use swear words or offensive language, and please, no advertising!

Average rating from 3 reviews:

Reviewed by David from England on 5th Nov 2012
I've had this phone for over two weeks and I'm really happy with it. I had an apple 4 before and found this S3 easy to customise compared to my old iPhone. With the new jelly bean version of android it runs very smooth with new features such as google now. With the 2gig main ram you can use lots of apps without it slowing down. The only downside is the battery life. It's less than my iPhone but this runs a lot more. You can increase battery life by using power saving mode which only affects games. Also don't use live wallpapers and turn off google now if you don't use it very often. Only use Bluetooth and wifi when needed. I found my battery can last up to 2days. Also I brought a spare battery and charger for 20 pounds so will never run out of power. A brilliant phone. I highly recommend it.
Rating: Reply

Reviewed by don from australia on 23rd Oct 2012
I have had this phone for 2 weeks and love it. It replaced a 2 year old SE Experia x, which was getting old and slow. Several things I would like to share about this phone: very fast, easy to use, great screen resolution, large amount of apps on the market, the battery is ok, but not great. One thing I found very useful - you can adjust/fine tune almost everything on it, or find app to do it. I have tried iPhone 5, but it's not my cup of tea. I am sure it's fine but this phone is absolutely great. It does all business functions I need and it is not as large as the dimensions suggest.
Rating: Reply

Reviewed by David from England on 14th Oct 2012
I've had the LTE 4G version of this phone now for a week and feel I should write a review to help people choose their next phone. I've used the iPhone 4 for the last two years which I thought was great until it went faulty. I was holding out for the iPhone 5 but after seeing it, I felt it was more of a shameless cash-in kind of update with nothing really new and intuitive. After reading reviews etc, I narrowed it down between the GS3 and the HTC one XL. The GS3 swung it for expandable memory and a few other minor things.

Well, one week in and I love it. I was a little apprehensive ditching Apple but for me it's been the right choice. There are things I like about this and things I don't:

The android play market is not as vast as iTunes and some of the apps aren't made as well. I assume this is due to the larger amount of phone models it has to cater for.

The large screen is overwhelming at first but great now and feels normal

The build quality is nowhere near as good as the iPhone but that said, it didn't prevent my iphone 4 from developing faults after one drop.

The customisation of the GS3 is great - you forget the simple things like file movement and folders when having an iPhone.

One of the downsides to the GS3 is the battery which lasts about a day but that's probably down to the fact I've hardly put it down.

Overall I love the GS3 and recommend it to people that like the freedom to customise pretty much anything they want, as well as do cool things like run classic console emulators and connect USB drives as well as other USB drivers - I cant believe what I've been missing.

If you like to keep it simple and straightforward with less customisation then go with Apple.

Also before anyone assumes I'm some kind of Apple hater, please bear in mind I loved my iphone and have a new MacBook Pro.
Rating: Reply

Reply by David from England on 5th Nov 2012
Hi David. I've had this phone for over two weeks and really happy with to. I was an iPhone 4 user but now I'm converted. With the battery life issue, there are ways to expand it. First use power saving mode as it doesn't affect normal use like Facebook etc, only games as it reduces CPU power. Also I've turned off google now as this can drain battery life too. Also during during night time I turn off mobile data. Also I brought a spare battery with charger for 20 pounds from mobile fun. So I will never run out. Hope these tips will help.

Reply by GR from UK on 18th Oct 2012
Thanks for the review David. I am in the same position - switched from Apple after being very underwhelmed by the iPhone 5. I agree, the S3 battery life is not great. However there are other things which really annoy me about this phone (as much as I love it). Simple things, like being able to trim and edit videos quickly (stuff the iPhone has as standard in their video app). One of the things I used my old iPhone for regularly was to send videos of my kids via whatsapp - iPhone would automatically trim the video to a smaller file size but on Samsung the app just refuses to send videos which are too large and does not offer to reduce the file size - This is an issue with Android rather than Whatsapp. The cut and paste feature also doesn't work as well. I like the freedom of the Samsung phone (transferring files and expanding memory is great) but Apple defintely made things a lot simpler on the iPhone. So I can understand why people stick with Apple and refuse to move to other manufacturers.

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