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Form
Samsung Galaxy S3 - 136.6x70.6x8.6mm, 133g
Asus Padfone - 128x65.4x9.2mm, 129g
From the front, the Asus Padfone looks very much like any other smartphone on the current market with its rounded corners and ‘candy bar’ proportions.
The only slight difference is along the bottom edge, which has a slightly raised lip but then curves downwards under the handset. From the side you can see the device has a distinctive wedge shape going from top to bottom while on the back there’s an extremely clean and minimalist aesthetic and a brushed texture.
In terms of build quality it does seem very solid and well-made, though the materials aren’t the most premium feeling you’ll encounter.
Samsung’s Galaxy S3 is very different from its predecessor, the Galaxy S2. The Galaxy S2 had a similar overall shape to the Padfone, though being more or less flat rather than wedge-shaped.
With the Galaxy S3, Samsung has tapered the corners even further to make a much curvier device, though proportions seem on the whole fairly familiar here. It’s a pretty good looking device but the problem is when you pick it up as the feel of the materials is very sub-par.
There’s no question that the Galaxy S3 will endure the rigours of typical smartphone use, it’s not flimsy, but for the price of a premium device we’ve come to expect a better finish on the surfaces you spend much of your time gripping on to.
We’d say that on looks the Galaxy S3 probably has an edge but it’s outweighed by the issue with material quality. The Padfone might not have the most premium feel to it but it’s much better than Samsung’s slippery and shiny construction.
Winner – Asus Padfone
Display
It’s difficult to over-emphasise just how large the Galaxy S3’s display is, it utterly dominates the front of the device and pushes the bezel out to a wafer-thin strip. At 4.8-inches it’s a bit of a giant, but despite this the size of the handset hasn’t changed much from the Galaxy S2.
Samsung has managed to squeeze all that screen real estate into a fairly regular-sized body shell. It’s a Super AMOLED capacitive multi-touch screen with the resolution clocking in at 1280x720 pixels and pushing out a pixel density of 306 pixels-per-inch. The result is crystal clear visuals with great colours and contrast which, for a screen of this size is quite an impressive feat.
The Padfone’s 4.3-inch screen might not have such colossal proportions but it’s still a decent size and, importantly, it’s also Super AMOLED with a 960x540 pixel resolution. Colours and brightness are excellent and it’s still on the sharper side of things with a pixel density of 256ppi.
As nice as the Padfone’s display is, we have to say the Galaxy S3’s is much better owing to the fact it delivers excellent clarity, contrast and colour reproduction on a larger scale which is great for viewing multimedia content.
Winner – Samsung Galaxy S3
Storage
Asus’ Padfone has two storage options for either 16GB or 32GB onboard, together with 1GB of RAM and micro SD support for cards up to 32GB. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is similarly well-equipped with the same card support RAM and both 16GB and 32GB options, plus the addition of a top-tier 64GB internal storage variant.
It’s a close run thing and both devices are extremely generous for storage space, you’ll hardly be found wanting. That said, that additional 64GB model makes a difference in terms of variety and secures Samsung a win this round.
Winner – Samsung Galaxy S3
Processor
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is the first quad core device from the South Korean manufacturer and as such the company has really gone to town on this hardware setup. It sports the latest design of Samsung’s own Exynos chipset, the 4212, on ARM’s Cortex-A9 architecture and clocked at 1.4GHz.
This also features a Mali-400MP graphics processing unit (GPU). Performance is snappy and responsive, make no mistake, this device runs Android as smoothly as the iPhone runs iOS and that really is saying something in our book.
The Asus Padfone is no less impressively equipped, however. It uses a Qualcomm S4 dual core Snapdragon Krait, but while it might have half the cores that doesn’t mean it has half the power.
It’s clocked at 1.5GHz and features an Adreno 225 GPU. As we’ve found on the HTC One S, this setup can easily keep up with quad core alternatives and not only is it fast it tends to run cooler than its rival, which can have a tendency to get a bit warm.
We’d say these two will consistently deliver comparable results.
Winner - Draw
Operating System
Both devices run the latest build of Google’s Android platform, version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).
The Padfone runs just about the most untouched and unadulterated iteration you’re likely to see, the only noticeable tweaking is some of the pre-installed apps and widgets but, of course, these are entirely optional.
On the other side of the coin, Samsung’s Galaxy S3 has a very obvious interface overlay with TouchWiz, it makes a few changes to the drop down notification menu and various Samsung themes are peppered throughout.
At its core, however, the basic operation of the system is still very much vanilla ICS, it’s just wearing a fancy suit which you might either like or loathe.
The Galaxy S3 also has a few extra tricks up its fancy sleeve with things like S-Voice and Smart Stay, which tracks your eye movement to determine whether the screen should be on or off. However, these features are often troublesome and problematic and really don’t do much to enhance the experience in our view.
More important is what’s present across both devices, that being improved performance and stability as well as restructured menus and a very useful fast app switcher for some highly satisfying multi-tasking.
Winner - Draw
Final Thoughts
The Galaxy S3 looks nicer in our view, while the Padfone is a decent runner-up in this regard. It’s not all about looks, however, and although the materials used on the Padfone aren’t the best they’re substantially superior to Samsung’s use of tacky plastics.
In terms of overall performance and other capabilities these two devices are on an even playing field as smartphones, but there is just one more twist in the tale.
The Padfone, as its name suggests, can also be transformed into a tablet with the use of a proprietary 10.1-inch dock, this can also in turn be docked to a keyboard for a laptop-like experience. Other additional peripherals include a stylus which doubles as a Bluetooth handset for receiving calls while the phone is docked.
The dock’s screen offers similarly high-quality visuals as the Padfone itself while upping the battery life. Performance is exactly the same as the phone’s guts are what’s running the show here.
We raise all this because, if you’re looking at these two handsets purely as phones, you’re left with deciding on the basis of aesthetics, build quality and whether or not you want 64GB of internal storage. Apart from that they’re evenly matched.
If, however, you’re interested in the extra functionality offered by the Padfone’s modular nature then it has a very clear advantage.
Our own choice would be the Padfone as we prefer the build quality, the Qualcomm S4 chip, the cleaner ICS interface and the option of using the additional tablet and laptop docks.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is the first quad core device from the South Korean manufacturer and as such the company has really gone to town on this hardware setup. It sports the latest design of Samsung’s own Exynos chipset, the 4212, on ARM’s Cortex-A9 architecture and clocked at 1.4GHz.
This also features a Mali-400MP graphics processing unit (GPU). Performance is snappy and responsive, make no mistake, this device runs Android as smoothly as the iPhone runs iOS and that really is saying something in our book.
The Asus Padfone is no less impressively equipped, however. It uses a Qualcomm S4 dual core Snapdragon Krait, but while it might have half the cores that doesn’t mean it has half the power.
It’s clocked at 1.5GHz and features an Adreno 225 GPU. As we’ve found on the HTC One S, this setup can easily keep up with quad core alternatives and not only is it fast it tends to run cooler than its rival, which can have a tendency to get a bit warm.
We’d say these two will consistently deliver comparable results.
Winner - Draw
Operating System
Both devices run the latest build of Google’s Android platform, version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).
The Padfone runs just about the most untouched and unadulterated iteration you’re likely to see, the only noticeable tweaking is some of the pre-installed apps and widgets but, of course, these are entirely optional.
On the other side of the coin, Samsung’s Galaxy S3 has a very obvious interface overlay with TouchWiz, it makes a few changes to the drop down notification menu and various Samsung themes are peppered throughout.
At its core, however, the basic operation of the system is still very much vanilla ICS, it’s just wearing a fancy suit which you might either like or loathe.
The Galaxy S3 also has a few extra tricks up its fancy sleeve with things like S-Voice and Smart Stay, which tracks your eye movement to determine whether the screen should be on or off. However, these features are often troublesome and problematic and really don’t do much to enhance the experience in our view.
More important is what’s present across both devices, that being improved performance and stability as well as restructured menus and a very useful fast app switcher for some highly satisfying multi-tasking.
Winner - Draw
Final Thoughts
The Galaxy S3 looks nicer in our view, while the Padfone is a decent runner-up in this regard. It’s not all about looks, however, and although the materials used on the Padfone aren’t the best they’re substantially superior to Samsung’s use of tacky plastics.
In terms of overall performance and other capabilities these two devices are on an even playing field as smartphones, but there is just one more twist in the tale.
The Padfone, as its name suggests, can also be transformed into a tablet with the use of a proprietary 10.1-inch dock, this can also in turn be docked to a keyboard for a laptop-like experience. Other additional peripherals include a stylus which doubles as a Bluetooth handset for receiving calls while the phone is docked.
The dock’s screen offers similarly high-quality visuals as the Padfone itself while upping the battery life. Performance is exactly the same as the phone’s guts are what’s running the show here.
We raise all this because, if you’re looking at these two handsets purely as phones, you’re left with deciding on the basis of aesthetics, build quality and whether or not you want 64GB of internal storage. Apart from that they’re evenly matched.
If, however, you’re interested in the extra functionality offered by the Padfone’s modular nature then it has a very clear advantage.
Our own choice would be the Padfone as we prefer the build quality, the Qualcomm S4 chip, the cleaner ICS interface and the option of using the additional tablet and laptop docks.
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