I went to Best Buy on Saturday just to poke around, and now I'm sitting here reading Anandtech benchmarks like some kind of addict. The Galaxy S III hit stores eight days ago and I've already fallen into the comparison trap I swore I wouldn't.
The phone is so fast it's actually infuriating. I held one for five minutes and everything felt snappy in a way that made my 2011 phone feel like piloting through molasses. The quad-core processor chews through whatever you throw at it. Jelly Bean's spreading around too, and Android 4.1 supposedly makes everything buttery smooth. I didn't get to test it on the demo unit but I've read like fifty blog posts about it.
Here's the thing though: I don't actually need a new phone. My current one works. It runs apps, makes calls, battery lasts a day if I'm not hammering it. But want and need are different creatures, aren't they? Samsung's really banking on that difference. They know we're going to look at a 4.8-inch screen after squinting at our smaller phones, notice the weight is actually light, and that'll be enough. We'll upgrade even though nothing in our lives functionally requires it.
The design is honestly weird. It's got these little dimples all over the back like a plastic golf ball. Different is fine but it's the kind of different that nobody asked for. I get that Samsung needed to differentiate from the iPhone, but I'm not convinced bumpy plastic is the answer. The front's clean enough—big screen, minimal bezels, the usual. Typical smartphone 2012 aesthetic.
What kills me is the price point. $199 on contract, which sounds reasonable until you remember that's still nearly two grand if you stay with the carrier for two years. I've already spent that much on my current phone. The replacement cycle is getting faster and everybody knows it. A year from now there'll be something faster, something with a bigger battery, something that makes the S III look dated. And I'll be back at Best Buy on a Saturday reading benchmarks I don't actually need to read.
The camera's supposed to be fantastic, and honestly that's the one thing that actually makes sense. Better photos are genuinely useful in ways that faster processors sometimes aren't. Twelve megapixels, wide aperture, better low-light performance. If you're taking photos on your phone every day (and who isn't anymore), that matters. It's not a gimmick like the face recognition gesture stuff Samsung's adding, which let you swipe to unlock by smiling. That's the kind of feature that works once and then sits in a settings drawer forever.
I'm not going to buy one. Not yet. My phone's fine. But I'll definitely go back to Best Buy again. I'll hold it again. I'll probably watch a few more YouTube reviews where people get excited about processor benchmarks. And in six months when the novelty's worn off my current phone and I've convinced myself the battery's degrading faster than it actually is, I'll walk into a Verilog store and upgrade.
That's how they got me last time. That's how they'll get me again. And the worst part? I'll probably be happy about it for exactly three months before the next thing comes out and I start all over again.