Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini Review

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini: Introduction, Design and Screen

Introduction

With the Samsung Galaxy S3 continuing to dominate the smartphone market, lining up as a true Android based rival to the iPhone 5 (check out our iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3 piece), Samsung has looked to capitalise on the handsets success with the more accessible Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini.

Sharing a number of design characteristics with its full-sized sibling, the 4-inch Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini features a reduced spec and lower price point than its predecessor, whilst maintaining some of the desirability and pleasingly curved aesthetics of the full sized model.

Despite the handset featuring a similar design to the high-end Samsung Galaxy S3, that is where the similarities between the two devices end. Tasked with bringing the S3 brand to a wider audience, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini is designed to appeal to younger markets, with its heavily reduced specs sheet, and lower price point testament to this.

Playing host to a 1GHz dual-core Cortex A9 processor, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini ticks all the boxes necessary to appease mid-market expectations, without ever standing out from the crowd. Available in Ceramic White and Pebble Blue colour options, the Mini adds 1GB of RAM, a 1500mAh battery and a 5-megapixel rear-mounted camera to the fray.

What’s more, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini price tag does not help the handset separate itself from the competition either, with the not inconsiderable £269.99 fee, when snapped up on a Pay-As-You-Go basis, seeing the device have the same impact on the wallet as the specs superior Google Nexus 4 and the Sony Xperia S.

Unlike the Google Nexus 4 and Sony Xperia S, however, the S3 Mini does not have the same level of stand-out specs and performance capabilities that, on paper at least, offer reassurance in the handset’s potential. We take a closer look at how the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini stands up to the competition.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini Design

Piggybacking on the success of its illustrious sibling, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini plays host to a number of design characteristics found on its big brother, whilst a smaller 4-inch screen makes the handset a more viable mid-market offering and one that will appeal to younger markets.

Appearing as a shrunken rendition of its iPhone 5 rivalling counterpart, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini features the now recognisable pebble-esque curved edge design of the original Samsung Galaxy S3. Although a slightly curved, removable rear plate ensures the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini sits relatively comfortably within the hand, the device feels slightly undersized by modern standards. Working in the handset’s favour, the S3 Mini, despite a predominately plastic construction, feels well pieced together for the most part, offering up little unwanted flex on unnerving creaking when put under stress.

Lining up at just 9.9mm thick and 111.5g in weight, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini is compact and well-balanced, with the modest weight distributed evenly throughout the handset. Despite these largely pleasing aesthetics, however, the heavily rounded, almost bulbous base of the handset and its slick, glossed plastic finish mean the device can prove slightly difficult to grip on occasion.

Shy on the physical buttons, the smooth edged finish of the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini is largely untainted, with just a trio of physical controls (power, volume and home), and a microUSB charger port, located centrally on the handset’s base, detracting from the pleasing finish.

Whilst the handset does not suffer from poorly placed controls, ensuring accidental presses of the power/sleep button are not performance depleting issues; the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini home button is not without its user aggrieving problems.

With the physical home button proving a squat, squashed affair, the integral control option offers no height but plenty of width meaning that, during testing and general use, the button was overshadowed by our thumbs, an issue that caused the handset to become slightly troublesome and far natural to use. Further detracting from a natural user experience, the sub-sized nature of this home button gives the feeling that the button has been broken and only a fragment of its intended form remains, hardly the most comfortable of offerings.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini Screen

Where the Samsung Galaxy S3 display is a 4.8-inch expansive of high quality visual enjoyment, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini screen falls dramatically short of the mark, with the 4-inch AMOLED offering providing a disappointingly low grade 800 x 480p resolution.

Although we have come to expect a lot of Samsung’s displays, the low res offering fitted to the Samsung Galaxy S3 is significantly below par when compared with its similarly priced rivals, such as the 1280 x 768p Google Nexus 4 screen, and one which fails to appease itself to continued video playback or app-based game playing.

With the handset’s inbuilt light sensor proving effective at offering the optimal screen brightness to the surrounding settings, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini screen also handles its own when in use in bright outdoor environments of direct sunlight, suffering only minor levels of performance depleting, eye-straining glare.



As tends to be the case with AMOLED screens, the colours and contrast ratios offered by the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini screen appear over exaggerated and far from natural, an issue that, although quickly overlooked through continued use, does detract from and diminish the subtleties of a high quality image. When comparing the screen with the ClearBlack options found on recent Nokia handsets, such as the Nokia Lumia 800, there is a noticeable change in the artificially warmed colour notes found on the Samsung branded device.

Further compounding the handset’s poor screen to levels of pure annoyance, viewing web pages and text-heavy documents on the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini screen results in visibly pixelated content which fails to encourage continued use. Although this issue will not prevent essential use of the handset’s core features, unlike a device such as the iPad mini, which pairs a less than pristinely sharp display with a raft of performance enhancing features, the S3 Mini sees its screen line up as just one of a number of core issues that fail to inspire use in the device.

That said, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini screen is not without its positives. In terms of responsiveness and transitions the device is second to none. Proving highly responsive to all touch based commands, from single finger actions to more advance features like pinch-to-zoom, the screen of the S3 sibling helps create a predominately immersive and seamless user experience when transitioning between home screens, menus and in-app pages.

Whilst the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini screen would be a welcome addition to a handset with an entry-level price point, given the device’s near £270 PAYG billing, the 800 x 480p resolution option on offer falls considerably below expectations and maintains a level of disappointment throughout all levels of use with the 4-inch handset.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini: Interface, Usability and Camera

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini Interface and Usability

Bringing much of the same from both Samsung and Android, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini interface is largely uninspiring with the handset offering little difference from a number of its Galaxy branded siblings, be they targeting the entry-level, mid or high-end markets.

With Google’s Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS running the show alongside Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini interface is pleasant and easy to use and a system that, thanks to its basic touch-based controls and clearly labelled features will attune itself as much to smartphone newcomers as seasoned handset owners.

Pulling on the strength of the handset’s 1GHz dual-core Cortex A9 processor and the incorporated 1GB of RAM, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini runs smoothly and with few glitches or stutters when working through the handset’s seven app and widget enhanced home screens, menu options and basic services. With a raft of widgets available, the up-front user experience is bolstered by instant access to the likes of email, music, video and news content all without having to delve deep with the device’s OS.



Although the device slows noticeable when opening high-demanding applications, with a defined pause before springing to life even with the likes of Rovio’s Bad Piggies, running more premium tasks the S3 Mini can show its reduced specs.

With the handset’s communication and contacts offerings once again proving to be standard Android, with contacts able to be imported from the likes of Gmail accounts and Facebook profiles, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini calling capabilities are run of the mill but appealingly straightforward and simply to use.

With no dropped calls recorded during our time with the device, the S3 Mini tended to hold strong signal is areas of expected coverage, with communications clear with only minimal background noise and disruption. What’s more, in terms of text-based messaging, the handset is bolstered by Samsung’s much loved Swype input options, allowing users to drag their fingers between letters to spell out words in double quick fashion.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini Camera

Continuing the theme of acceptable but far from ground breaking internals, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini camera is another at times troubling addition to the handset’s specs sheet, with a 5-megapixel rear-mounted camera paired with a second, disappointingly dated VGA offering up front.

Although far from impressive by high-end standards, for a mid-range handset the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini camera collection is, on paper, acceptable if a little run of the mill. In practise, the handset’s snappers fair little better, with the 5-megapixel rear-mounted camera producing at times grainy images with poor colour management and weak contrast ratios.

Producing a selection of less than impressive results, the S3 Mini camera features a contrast ratio that is lacking in depth, meaning colours can become quite blocky with images missing out on the finer details of the real-world situations being captured, an issue that is further compounded when shooting in less than ideal lighting conditions. When photographing in transitional phases of light, between strong natural light and situations where it is appropriate to use the handset’s integrated LED flash, results are frequently below expectation with the camera’s poor colour management often resulting in dull, bleak shots.



Pleasingly, when it is appropriate to utilise the handset’s inbuilt flash, the results are surprisingly strong and an improvement on much of the smartphone competition. Although on occasion the handset whited out images of people with an overzealous flash, for the large part we found the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini was quite adept at correctly monitoring the severity of the flash, helping create a selection of satisfactory shots in otherwise impossible lighting situations.

Whilst the flash is an improvement on some competitors, like any smartphone snapper, the zoom capabilities on the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini camera are best avoided, with even slight use of the digital zoom transforming acceptable images into pixelated jumbles of indistinguishable shapes and colours.



More than a basic point-and-shoot snapper, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini camera comes paired with a selection of features and effects that offer a little something extra to the user experience and allow the likes of panoramic and black and white shots to be captured at will.

Although the photo effects included, such as cartoon or vintage looks, can help create interesting snaps, in long term use, they offer little to the handset’s overall appeal beyond first use. More interesting, however, is the handset’s panorama mode, a feature now available on many devices. Sadly, however, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini panorama mode suffers from continued issues with stitching, frequently leaving noticeable joins in panoramic shots.



Moving on to the handset’s VGA forward-facing camera, and the less said the better. Although the presence of a front-mounted camera, in theory, allows for the option of video calling, in practise the integrated snapper is of such low quality that it detracts from desired use, pushing use back to more location locked video calls such as from our PCs or even our tablet devices.

With the device capable of shooting 720p HD video content at 30 frames-per-second, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini video recording capabilities suffer from the same issues as the handset’s stills options, namely poor colour management, issues with motion and disappointingly basic contrast ratios.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini: Multimedia, Connectivity, Battery Life and Verdict

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini Multimedia

For a handset targeting the tech savvy youth market, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini checks all the required multimedia boxes without every stretching the expectations of a £270 handset on the multimedia front.

Playing host to the now standard MP3 and video players, the S3 Mini has capable of handling a broad range of file types, with the likes of MP3, MPEG-4, WMA and MP4 files all tackled with equal aplomb and pleasingly simply to transfer across to the 4-inch device.

Whilst the handset plays host to just 8GB of integrated storage (a 16GB version is available), the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, like many Android smartphones, benefits from microSD expansion, allowing users to bolster the device’s storage abilities to a more reasonable 32GB.

As with many smartphones, no matter where they sit in the market, the integrated speaker found within the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini leaves much to the imagination, but is far from the worst smartphone speaker doing the rounds. Although the handset loses some clarity at higher volumes, and there is a slight lack of depth to some tracks, with the device unable to handle the intricate nuances of a song, for casual music playback or for providing audio to YouTube clips the S3 Mini is perfectly acceptable. Diving a little deeper and the handset’s bass levels are somewhat disappointing, with many music styles tackled in the same run of the mill manner.

In terms of speaker location Samsung has done well. Despite the S3 Mini speaker residing on the device's rear, it manages to avoid accidental covering when held in conventional left or right handed manners. What's more, thanks to the slightly curved back nature of the Samsung Galaxy S3 design, the handset's speaker does not become excessively muffled when placing the device down on a soft or hard surface.

Whilst the handset fails to excel in a number of areas, one aspect where the handset manages to stand out from the mass mid-market Android crowd is an unexpected one, the devices boxed in-ear headphones.

Far from a pair audiophile appeasing music providers, the in-ear buds boxed with the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini are, however, much more impressive than the 'free' headphones which come packaged with many of its rivals. Comfortable and secure within the ear thanks to a selection of variably sized soft silicone tips, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini headphones offer well-rounded sound with a broad sound stage benefitting from stronger bass offerings.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Battery Life and Connectivity

Somewhat surprisingly, given the state of many modern smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini battery life is surprisingly strong, with the 1500mAh power supply living true to its touted 470 minute talk time, 360 hour stanby billing.

Getting us far beyond that dreaded one day hump, based on moderate to high usage, the Samsung Galaxy S3 battery life saw the 4-inch device power well into a second day without need for a charge. What's more, on light usage of just calls, messages and the occasional email check and internet browse, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini battery life saw the handset maintain staying power for close to three full days.

Playing host to a raft of connectivity options, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini is now available in the basic 3G as well as a new LTE 4G compatible model, perfect for the upcoming onslaught of UK 4G networks.

Aside from their 3G/4G differences, the two Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini options both support the same collection of connectivity options with the expected Wi-Fi features not only present, but simple to set up thanks to the handset’s Android OS innards and providing strong connections during testing.

With the microSD expansion and microUSB charging and connections options already covered, the handset also features the customary 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as HSPA and GPRS services. What’s more Samsung’s favoured Kies Air Support is present allowing for variable file transfer options.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Verdict

Whilst the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini might look the part, the handset fails to push the boundaries of its respective market like its big brother has managed to do. Pairing slightly disappointing specs and a run of the mill performance with a price tag that can offer so much more, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini fails to set itself out as a viable and desirable option.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini feels like a lazy effort from the South Korean manufacturer. Sure to cash in on the lucrative brand the company has created with the Samsung Galaxy S3, the Mini appears half hearted in its specs and performance, failing to ever truly hold its own without the backing of its big brother.

At £270 on a PAYG basis, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini is cheap enough to attract the masses, but for that price, we would certainly recommend looking beyond the alluring branding on the box and target one of the boundary-pushing, specs-impressive offers around the same print point.