Samsung Galaxy S3 mini review and price details

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini review

Price: From £26.00 p.c.m

L ooking for a decent Android smartphone, but don't want one as big and expensive as the Samsung Galaxy S3 or HTC One X+? Then read our Galaxy S3 mini review to find out if this is the phone for you.

Samsung's Galaxy S3 mini looks like a smaller version of its flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone, and it is, but there's more to this phone than just its shrunken size. See also: Group test: what's the best Android phone?

Samsung Galaxy S3: Design and build

The Galaxy S3 mini looks almost identical to its bigger brother, the Galaxy S3, apart from a few minor, almost unnoticeable, cosmetic changes and of course the fact it's smaller. All the buttons are in the same place but the front facing camera and sensors have switched sides, as has the headphone port, and on the back the LED flash and speaker have moved slightly.

Apart from these insignificant changes, the Galaxy S3 mini has the same appearance with nice curved sides and rounded corners. It’s more pebble-like because it's smaller and also fatter than the Galaxy S3. It's 10.2mm thick compared to 8.6mm. Nevertheless, it's still lighter than the already light full-size S3 at 113g.

Being small and rounded makes the Galaxy S3 mini fit nicely into the hand. The only time you have to stretch when using it one handed is to pull the notification bar down from the top of the screen.

At the time of writing the Galaxy S3 mini is available in pebble blue and marble white but other colours including garnet red and titanium grey are in their way.

Like its flagship counterpart, the Galaxy S3 mini feels well made. The front is one piece of glass with a silver metal surround giving it rigidity and strength. However, we're not fans of the flimsy plastic rear cover which hides the battery, SIM card slot and microSD card slot.

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini: Hardware and performance

Samsung has fitted the Galaxy S3 mini with a 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. It's nothing to get excited about and neither are the benchmark results.

In GeekBench 2 the Galaxy S3 mini managed an average score of 763. The similarly priced Nexus 4 scored a whopping 2,009. The Galaxy S3 hit 1669 points. Performance from a user point of view is generally good but there are signs of lag every now and then.

The Galaxy S3 mini didn't do amazingly well in the SunSpider JavaScript test completing the test in an average of 2,037ms. Our recorder holder is the iPhone 5 with 903ms but the score isn't far off the Nexus 4's 1,906ms time.

We also test graphics performance with GLBenchmark 2.5 in which the Galaxy S3 mini posted a frame rate of 12fps. Not great when compared to the 39fps recorded by the iPhone 5 and Nexus 4 but we found the phone could play games like Temple Run 2 smoothly enough.

As we've mentioned already, the Galaxy S3 mini has a smaller screen than the S3, and most smartphones for that matter. It matches the iPhone 5 at 4in and is a much more manageable size than many smartphones on offer in today's market.

Although it might be manageable, we're not bowled over by the screen quality. It's bright and vibrant like the Galaxy S3 thanks to its Super AMOLED technology but it has a relatively low resolution of 480x800 and a pixel density of 233ppi. This is the same as much cheaper phones like the Huawei Ascend G330 and way short of the Nexus 4's 768x1280 and 318ppi. Things look generally a bit rough round the edges.

On the storage front, the Galaxy S3 mini is fairly limited with only 8GB and 16GB models. It's not as limited as the Nexus 4 though since it has a microSD card slot for up to 32GB cards. The expansion slot is annoyingly located underneath the battery.

Connectivity includes the usual dual-band Wi-Fi, assisted GPS and Bluetooth 4.0. When the Galaxy S3 mini launched it didn't have NFC (near-field communications). Our review sample didn't either but Samsung has re-launched it with this feature so you should get it if you buy one. If you're looking to start using 4G mobile broadband on EE or other networks later in the year then you'll have to look elsewhere as the Galaxy S3 mini is restricted to 3G.

One thing that annoyed us was the pickiness of the Galaxy S3 mini when plugging it into a PC. The handset would only show up as an external storage device to transfer files when we used the supplied Samsung USB cable.

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini: Cameras

Another area of compromise on specifications to achieve the price of the Galaxy S3 mini is the cameras. It has a distinctly mid-range 5Mp rear facing camera and a low quality VGA front facing camera.

The rear facing camera produced the kind of pictures you'd expect from a mid-range 5Mp smartphone. It's a pretty good camera and the software Samsung provides is decent too. Video footage is not too shabby at a maximum of 720p. See below for one of the photos we took with the Galaxy S3 mini.

Unfortunately the front facing camera doesn't exude the same quality. At VGA resolution it's predictably grainy.

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini: Software

An advantage of the Galaxy S3 mini is that is comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box. For a while it was more up-to-date than the Galaxy S3 but this is not the case anymore.

As we've come to expect from Samsung smartphones, there is the TouchWiz user interface instead of stock Android, which in its latest form is very good. Which you prefer will be down to personal taste as each has their own pros, cons and exclusive features.

The Galaxy S3 mini has almost all the features which made the Galaxy S3 good such as various motion controls like Direct Call and Smart Alert, customised notification bar, Smart Stay and a power saving mode.

One of the main features of Jelly Bean is Google Now, a predictive search hub which Samsung has left into the OS. There's also the inclusion of expandable notifications but there's no option for widgets on the home screen. We can't say what features will be added with a software update in the future.

There's a reasonable small amount of pre-loaded apps and there are a decent selection of widgets on offer.  

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini: Battery life

We were a bit confused to find a 5.6Wh (1500mAh) battery inside the Galaxy S3 mini – the Galaxy S2 had a 6.1Wh (1650mAh) battery. However, we got a far better battery life than we were expecting.

The Galaxy S3 mini lasted through a day of use comfortably. As you can see from the screenshot, after 24 hours of use we still had nearly 40 percent of the battery remaining. This gives it the potential to be a two day phone, provided you don't use it intensively for gaming or video playback.

 We like the inclusion of a power saving mode which can be easily switched on and off from the notifications menu. It doesn't have quite the same control as the Galaxy S3 though with only CPU and screen power saving options. We only used the power saving mode for a portion of our test making the battery life look even better.

Another good point is that the battery charges up very quickly. However, it's disappointing to find that the Galaxy S3 mini wouldn't charge properly from a PC using a generic USB cable. In fact, the battery life dropped even though it was plugged in. The device only worked properly when using the supplied cable

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HTC One SV review

£319.95 inc VAT

HTC has been criticised for releasing too many phones in the last few years but it seems the Taiwanese giant just can't help itself. Announced and released late in 2012, the One SV is yet another Android phone. It's a mid-range device that features 4G capability and an excellent design but ultimately offers little that we haven't seen before. It's also overpriced. Read ourHTC One X+ review.

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Smartphones seem to be heading towards a "bigger is better" trend, but the HTC One SV has steered away from this. It has 4.3in screen so it's smaller in size than most current flagship devices, which tend to range from 4.7in to 5in. The end result is a positive one as the One SV is one of the most comfortable phones we've used. See also: Group test: what's the best smartphone?

The smaller footprint means the One SV is easy to hold and use single-handedly and the screen is almost the perfect width. It's not a stretch for your thumb to touch all corners of the screen, which can be an issue on larger devices. Further, we love its design. The black, rubberised material on the back provides a comfortable, non-slip grip while the gloss black bezel on the front is attractive.

There are a number of small touches that add to the overall look and feel of the One SV. The back tapers inwards towards the edges making the phone feel slimmer than it actually is. We also like the angled top and bottom edges. The former makes it particularly easy to press the near perfectly positioned power/lock button. Touch-sensitive back, home and multitasking shortcut keys sit below the display, while a volume rocker is located on the right side. All are well positioned.

The back of the One SV is removable and this provides two advantages over HTC's more expensive One X — the battery is removable and therefore replaceable and there's a microSD card for extra storage. There's 8GB of internal memory available on the phone itself.

The HTC One SV is a mid-range device so there's always going to be compromises. This comes in the form of the screen, which has a resolution of 800x480 and is significantly lower than many flagship devices on the market. The SLCD 2 display is bright and clear and offers exceptional viewing angles, but the low resolution means it can't display the same crisp text as other smartphones.

An Ice Cream Sandwich, with Sense

The HTC One SV runs Google's 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich software and once again features HTC's Sense UI overlay. The user experience is very similar to most of HTC's more expensive range, with a few exclusions. HTC hasn't officially stated if or when the One SV will be upgraded to the latest 4.2 Jelly Bean version of Android.

We love some of Sense's less advertised touches, such as asking whether you'd like to save an incoming phone number as a new contact, the convenient four dock icon shortcuts on the lock screen and a slick suite of widgets, including HTC's now iconic clock and weather widget.

While Sense is user friendly, however, we still feel HTC has made plenty of changes for changes sake. The phone app offers excellent linking of contacts from multiple sources but the interface feels cluttered and doesn't achieve any consistency with the regular Android UI. The default Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard has been replaced by HTC's keyboard and is neither better looking or designed. The multitasking menu is neither better implemented or more effective than Android's stock version.

Also a source of annoyance is the amount of Optus bloatware pre-installed on the phone. There's no less than 12 Optus apps that come with the One SV and almost all of them are useless. App Store, Games, Go Places, Music Shop, My Optus, Optus Ideas, Optus Now, Optus Zoo, Pics & Vids, Smart Safe, SocialView, TV & Video can all be disabled from the settings menu, but can't be uninstalled.

Thankfully, the HTC One SV isn't a slow or sluggish smartphone. It has a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and comes with 1GB of RAM. We didn't experience very much lag or slowdown, though some graphically intense games like GTA III and Dead Trigger did take a little longer to load than we expected. Overall, the performance of the One SV won't pose an issue for most users.

Mediocre camera, decent battery life

The HTC One SV has a 5-megapixel camera that can be best described as below average. The camera interface itself is one of the best we've used on a smartphone but the images captured suffer from a lack of quality, excess image noise and questionable colour reproduction. We also found the built-in autofocus to be erratic, especially when taking macro photos. A 1.6-megapixel camera on the front does a reasonable job for video calling apps like Skype and Tango but predictably captures poor quality photos.

The video recorder on the One SV doesn't fare much better either. The quality is passable and the phone records in full HD 1080p, but quality is grainy and it's almost impossible to capture a video without shake or judder.

Despite being a 4G phone, the HTC One SV has reasonable battery life. It lasted almost a full day during testing before needing a recharge. This is a particularly good result since most 4G phones suffer from poor battery life. The smaller screen and mid-range specifications obviously help in this regard.

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Nokia to launch 41Mp PureView Lumia smartphone

Nokia is planning to bring its 41Mp PureView camera to its Lumia range of Windows Phone 8 smartphones.

The excellent 41Mp camera found on the Symbian-powered Nokia 808 PureView might be making its way onto a Lumia smartphone. The new model will be called the EOS and will launch this summer in the US, according to the Guardian.

Nokia's current flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920, has PureView technology but an 8.7Mp camera. The 41Mp 808 PureView was unveiled at Mobile World Congress (MWC) last year. Favourable reviews, of the camera at least, followed.

See also: Group test: what's the best Windows phone?

Instead of taking astonishingly large pictures, the 41Mp sensor is designed to oversample and combine up to seven pixels into one to eliminate noise, especially in low light situations. By default the camera shoots at 5Mp but can be set at 38Mp at its highest.

We found the 41Mp camera on the Nokia 808 PureView extremely impressive but it was a shame it had to be attached to a poor quality Symbian handset. So bringing the technology to a Lumia Windows Phone 8 device would be a step in the right direction and a means by which Nokia can distinguish itself from the competition.

MWC is coming up at the end of the month and Nokia will be there so it's likely, if this 41Mp Lumia EOS does exist, that it will be announced there. We'll be there to bring you all the news and hands-on with the devices.

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ZTE releases Blade 3 smartphone

ZTE releases Blade 3 smartphone

Blade 3 budget Android smartphone heads to Virgin Mobile

ZTE has announced its latest smartphone for the UK, the Blade 3.
The ZTE Blade III is a budget Android smartphone with a 4in screen and launches on Virgin Mobile Today. ZTE's Blade 3 can be purchased for £79 on Pay As You Go or from £13 per month on a contract. See also: Phones 4U to launch its own smartphones.
Kalam Meah, account director at ZTE UK, said: "We paid close attention to user feedback when designing the Blade III. It is the first smartphone in its price range with a 4-inch touch screen and Android 4.0 and is very well suited for the UK market. We believe that the ZTE Blade III will bring a quality mobile experience to a larger UK audience,"
See also: ZTE Grand S hands-on review.
The ZTE Blade 3 features a 4in  (480x800) touchscreen, 1GHz Qualcomm processor, 5Mp rear facing camera and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Its low price is reflected in the fact it has 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage (2.5GB of which is available) and no front facing camera.
The idea, according to ZTE, is to provide a 'smooth user experience at a modest price point'. ZTE joined forces with Virgin Mobile to launch the Windows Phone ZTE Tania Windows Phone and the Android-powered Grand X and Kis.
Jamie Heywood, director of mobile at Virgin Media, said, "the ZTE Blade III offers customers plenty of smartphone bang for their buck."
The Blade 3 follows on from the original Blade and Blade 2 which were better known as the Orange San Fancisco and San Francisco 2.

 

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The Huawei Ascend G330 adds a faster processor and new features to Huawei's already tempting budget Android phone, offering a mix of low price and usable performance.

Huawei Ascend G330 review

Previously we were impressed with the Huawei Ascend G 300, a budget Android smartphone (£100 Vodafone PAYG) that outperformed everything in its price range. This smartphone - the Huawei Ascend G330 - is the Chinese company's follow-up to that device. With a faster processor, some new features and a similarly tempting price, the Ascend G330 looks to offer that same unbeatable mix of low price and usable performance. See also Group test: What's the best smartphone?
The Huawei Ascend G330 is available on a two-year TalkTalk contract from £10 per month. This nets you 100 minutes, 250 texts and 200MB of data, plus 100 minutes to other TalkTalk mobiles. Of course, the original G300 appealed to pay-as-you-go users, thanks to its low asking price. If you want to avoid signing up to a TalkTalk contract, the white version was available from Amazon SIM-free for £184 at the time of writing. Given that the complete package will cost you just £240 over two years through TalkTalk, though, the SIM-free route won't offer the best value. Visit Group test: What's the best Android phone?

Huawei Ascend G330: Build

This generic-looking handset is built entirely from plastic, but it feels tough enough. It's still no stunner, yet the Huawei Ascend G330 is better looking than the G300, with that handset's silver-and-black livery swapped out in favour of an all-black chassis. The now glossy black front extends to the Huawei's screen bezel and circumference, with a matt black rear panel aiding grip. At 11.2mm thick and 130g, the Ascend G330 is chunky enough to easily grab and operate in a single hand.
There's no flex in the Huawei Ascend G330's chassis, although the removable rear panel is rather creaky. Whereas so many Android smartphones are now supplied with non-removable batteries, we appreciate being able to snap off this rear panel and access the microSD slot, full-size (mini) SIM and cell hiding inside. This is particularly useful, given the stingy 4GB of internal storage and low-capacity 5.6Wh battery.
In common with its predecessor, there's a volume rocker on the left side, a power button and a headphone jack on top, and a Micro-USB charging port on the bottom. Three non-backlit touch-sensitive buttons offer access to Android's Back, Home and Options buttons although, here, Back and Options have traded places, with the former now falling more naturally to the left.
Also like its predecessor, the Huawei Ascend G330 is fitted with a 4in touchscreen with a 480x800-pixel resolution, resulting in a pixel density of 233ppi. This is some way behind the best of what we see today, but not bad for a budget smartphone. The screen is bright, clear and, importantly, reponsive, if the text seems overly bold.

Huawei Ascend G330: Performance

When we reviewed the Ascend G300, we marvelled at the sheer amount of performance on offer at such a low price. We said the G300 was on a par with previous-season high-end devices; but that was in 2012. Now in 2013, smartphone performance has gone up a notch. Huawei has upped its game, trading the 1GHz Qualcomm single-core processor for a dual-core (still 1GHz Qualcomm) chip. There's still a paltry 512MB of RAM, which isn't the best news for multitaskers, but the G330 is quite capable of frustration-free performance.
With 652 points scored in Geekbench 2, this Huawei Ascend is measurably faster not only than the Ascend G300 (525 points) and plenty of its budget competition, but Apple's premium iPhone 4S (622 points). Since we tested the G300, though, a new record has been set in this test by another wallet-friendly smartphone - the Google Nexus 4. When every pound counts, the Nexus 4 is in a different league to the cheaper Huawei, given that you must still pay for your calls and data on top of its £239 asking price, but it has redefined the way we assess value in the smartphone market and, notably, it blew the Huawei out the water with 2,009 points.
We also tested graphics performance; the Huawei's Adreno 203 GPU managed just 8fps in GLBenchmark 2.5, which isn't anything to shout about. In the SunSpider JavaScript test the G330 was capable of 2,041ms, which isn't too far behind the Nexus 4's 1,906ms. Importantly, it felt sufficiently snappy when loading websites and in general navigation.

Huawei Ascend G330: Camera

The Huawei Ascend G330 is now fitted with two cameras: joining the LED flash-equipped 5Mp (2592x1944) rear stills camera, which can also shoot 864x480 video, is a 0.3Mp front snapper with support for VGA (640x480) video. This new camera provides a grainy image, but it performs reasonably well in low light, and it's nice to now have the option to conduct Skype conversations and the like.
Whereas most new smartphones are now fitted with 8Mp cameras, and we're expecting 13Mp models in the coming months, the 5Mp snapper on the Huawei Ascend is comparatively old-school. It can take a second or two to focus, and is unlikely to completely replace your digital camera, but the resulting image quality is far from awful, particularly outdoors. We do like the ability to add filters such as Mono, Aqua and Solarise at the composition stage; there's also a panorama mode and an easily accessible list of camera settings.

Huawei Ascend G330: Software

Huawei's Ascend G330 runs Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, which runs more smoothly than the Android 2.3 Gingerbread we witnessed on its predecessor. In other ways the interface is identical, save for the removal of that neat ability to continuously scroll through home screens (you can at least delete those not in use).
Huawei offers a circular lock screen, which offers quick access to the Call log, Messaging and Camera. The Fast boot option we admired in the G300, which reduces startup to a matter of seconds, is also present.
Other than the usual host of preloaded Google services, Huawei has installed its own backup service with the All Backup app. This lets you run quick or scheduled backups comprising your choice of contacts, call log, system settings, alarms, bookmarks, email accounts, calendar events and more, and restore from that backup. Within All Backup you can also back up, restore and manage your apps.
There's also a useful Flashlight app that takes advantage of the Huawei's LED flash, an FM radio, a Music+ audio player, an AppInstaller, a File Manager app and an EA Games store that lets you try out The Sims, Dead Space, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Plants vs Zombies and others.
In connectivity terms little has changed. Bluetooth support still stretches only to version 2.1, while you also get 802.11n Wi-Fi and DLNA connectivity.

Huawei Ascend G330: Battery life

The 1,500mAh, 5.6Wh cell inside the Huawei Ascend G330 is of a relatively low capacity for a 4in touchscreen smartphone. It lasted a full day away from the mains in our tests, but heavy users may be disappointed.
A power-saving mode can help to extend the runtime, but its blanket settings involve a few compromises that may prove a step too far. For example, background data, animation and haptic feedback are switched off, while the screen is set to its lowest brightness level. There's little point in extending the battery life if doing so results in a phone that isn't enjoyable to use, so we recommend you instead use the power-saving mode as a guide to the sort of settings you could tweak if required.
Usefully, though, you are prompted to invoke the power-saving mode when the battery gets low.

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