Other smart gestures like the ability to take a call by putting the phone to your ear, and turning the screen on and off depending on whether you are looking at the display makes for a very intuitive experience, and keeps the friction of use very low.

S Voice is Samsung's go at Siri, this personal assistant lets you search, make appointments, and make phone calls all using voice recognition. As with Apple's Siri, I quit using S Voice within an hour of testing it. It would constantly get my requests wrong, ask me to repeat myself, and would generally defeat its own purpose as it would often be faster to just type in search requests. When I first got the phone, I was told by a Samsung employee that their personal unit would usually last for three days between charges. With the quad-core processor, the 4.8-inch screen and the numerous gesture and camera recognition inputs I was very sceptical of this figure.

Using the phone to browse the web over 3G, watching HD video from the gallery, using gestures, and running different apps -- I managed to squeeze the battery out to about 8 hours.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is easily the premier Android phone out on the market at the moment. While the screen is no longer its main strength, the Galaxy S III's intuitive gesture controls and snappy UI make it a pleasure to use and restores my faith in the Android OS.

4.5/5 stars