May 05, 2012, 4:00 PM — Samsung Thursday unveiled the Galaxy S III, the highly-anticipated successor of the popular Galaxy S II, and of course, the iPhone’s newest big rival. The Galaxy S III is like a sequel to the Galaxy Nexus that was made in collaboration with Google, but has a bigger screen, a beefier processor, and a better camera.
There’s no word on availability in the U.S. besides an expected summer launch, or any details on pricing and carriers. But since we know the specs, here’s how the Galaxy S III stacks up against the competition.
Display Comparison
The display of the Samsung Galaxy S III is huge. It’s 4.8 inches in diagonal, bigger than the HTC One X’s 4.7 inches or the Galaxy Nexus’ 4.65 inches.
But while the screen is bigger, the resolution has not gone up: It’s still 1280 pixels by 720 pixels, as with the One X and Galaxy Nexus, making the S III pixel density 306 pixels per inch (ppi), which is still below the iPhone 4S’ 326 ppi for its 3.5-inch screen--which is the leading pixel density in this comparison.
Width Comparison
The bigger screen and size of the S III allows for a thinner phone, the thinnest of the bunch at 0.34 inches, only by a hair slimmer than the 0.35 inches HTC One X. The iPhone 4S and the Galaxy Nexus are 0.37 inches thick, while the chunkiest is the Nokia Lumia 900 at 0.45 inches. At just under 4.7 ounces, the Galaxy S III is also lighter than the iPhone 4S, and only slightly heavier than the One X.
Processor Comparison
Samsung packs an Exynos 4 Quad 1.4 GHz quad-core system-on-chip in the S III, which is the most powerful processor in this comparison. The HTC One X has a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, while the iPhone 4S runs on Apple’s A5 1GHz dual-core chip. The Galaxy S III runs on 1GB of RAM, just like the HTC One X. That's double what’s inside the iPhone.
The Galaxy S III will come in 16GB and 32GB versions, with a 64GB model promised. All the other phones in the comparison also come with a minimum of 16GB, but the S III has one advantage over them all--it has a microSD card slot.
Camera Comparison
