Get a Samsung Galaxy S3 or wait for iPhone 5, Windows Phone 8?

The much awaited Samsung Galaxy S3 is out and getting rave reviews. We compared it to the nearest competition, the HTC One X. Samsung has gone all out to promote the Galaxy S3 and nearly every reviewer has praised it to the sky. So is it the best choice? Well, if you’re looking at Android phones, it probably is. But if you’re out to buy a high end smartphone anytime soon and aren’t specifically interested only in Android, you might want to wait a bit. There’s two solid competitors yet to release their products in the following months.

First up is the long rumored iPhone 5, expected to release around September-October and then there’s the Windows Phone 8 devices, set to release by the end of 2012. Let’s just run through the present and future choices, shall we?

Samsung Galaxy S3

The Samsung Galaxy S3 had a lot to live up to, the Galaxy S2 was hailed as the best smartphone and even now gives newer smartphones a run for their money. Samsung had set the bar pretty high and looked to raise it even higher with the S3. Did they succeed? Well, yes and no. While the Galaxy S3 is fantastic phone, there are complaints about it as well. It comes with a quad core Samsung Exynos SoC running a 1.4 Ghz ARM Cortex A9, 1 GB RAM and ARM Mali-400 GPU. The onboard storage is 16/32 GB that can accommodate another 64 GB through a MicroSD card. These specs are fantastic and the S3 is high up there in terms of raw processing power. The screen is a 4.8 inch 1280 x 720 HD super AMOLED display. It has a rear facing 8 MP camera and front facing 1.9 MP camera.

Everything’s not perfect about the Galaxy S3 though. The body looks uninspiring (purely subjective) and the build quality is not really what you’d expect it to be. Furthermore, the camera remains the same 8 MP as the S2 and is unfortunately inferior to that on the HTC One X and iPhone 4S. Also, the iPhone 4S still holds the edge in terms of screen clarity. Another big factor is the price, in India it retails at a whopping Rs. 43,180 or about 860$.

Apple iPhone 5

In the recently concluded WWDC, while Apple didn’t reveal the iPhone 5, we at least got to the see the software it would be running on, iOS 6. It’s got some pretty sweet features that you can read about here. Over the past year there’s been a lot of buzz about the iPhone 5. Foxconn, the manufacturer of Apple products says the new iPhone will put the “Samsung Galaxy S3 to shame”.  It’s a tall claim, but we’ve yet to see what Apple is going to pull out of its hat. There’s been a few pictures leaked that are supposedly of the backpanels of the iPhone 5. From it, there have been numerous deductions. Here’s some of the rumored features/design changes:

• New 4 or 4.8 inch Retina Display screen
• Dual tone color body
• New 19-pin dock connector
• Will feature a quad core processor (Apple A6?) and 1 GB RAM
• 4G LTE support where available
• NFC Support
• Support for expandable storage

Keep in mind these are mostly rumors and only the features announced in iOS 6 here are confirmed. Also, based on the leaked panels, there have been renders of the phone. It looks like a photograph, but it is only a render. Here it is:

Windows Phone 8:

Last but not least is Windows Phone 8. We just covered a preview of it here. Windows Phone came as a pleasant surprise to the tech world upon launch. No one really expected that it would be so attractive and easy to use. The Nokia Lumia 800 was one of the phones that came with Windows Phone 7.5. It was met with positive reviews, but it’s not exactly a behemoth in terms of hardware. Unlike the last two mentions, we don’t really know what specs the new Windows Phone 8 devices will come with. However, we’re pretty sure they will come with quad core processors and at least a gig of RAM. We also expect them to be priced reasonably, not like the sky high Galaxy S3 and iPhone prices.

Windows Phone 8 will have ease of use, a refreshing look and of course Windows integration going for it. Since Windows Phone 8 shares the same kernel with Windows 8, expect much better integration. The manufacturers making Windows Phone 8 devices are Samsung, Nokia, HTC and Huawei. So don’t write it off just yet, it just might be the dark horse of the trio!