News - Samsung Galaxy S3 ships 18 million in Q3, beats iPhone 4S

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11 per cent of all smartphones sold worldwide during the quarter were SGS3s.

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Whilst I think it's life at the top will be shortlived I expect Samsung to handsomely beat Apple this quarter in many areas. For the first time I can remember people are not saying the iPhone 5 is THE phone to own...

All this is good news, choice is beginning to return, and that empowers us as customers. Let's hope they can sort the patent systems out so things can progress quicker.

I don't think the iphone 5 is selling as well as people may think or hope. Other than the intial launch figures, Apple have not made any bragging claims of sales figures.

Not one Apple fan boy I know owns an iphone 5.

I actually know a few people who have refused iPhone 5's from work because their docks etc. won't work...

i know a guy who has been waiting for one for like 3 weeks because of stock issues... must be something going on.

People are eventually going to have to change, once a significantly faster version of the iphone comes out, it will sell in insane numbers.

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

once a significantly faster version of the iphone comes out, it will sell in insane numbers.

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I'm confused by this statement, the iPhone 5 has pretty much the fastest hardware of any phone (both graphics and general).
Are you suggesting the OS is slow? If so, is it hardware inefficient or is it that it requires the user to jump through hoops to do simple tasks?
This is a genuine question, I've not touched an iPhone for a long time.

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Originally Posted by Scarlet Infidel

I'm confused by this statement, the iPhone 5 has pretty much the fastest hardware of any phone (both graphics and general).
Are you suggesting the OS is slow? If so, is it hardware inefficient or is it that it requires the user to jump through hoops to do simple tasks?
This is a genuine question, I've not touched an iPhone for a long time.

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I dont think it does technically have the fastest hardware, but the OS is well optomised to it. Im not suggesting that its not quick enough, just that its not quick enough to sway people away from their 4 or 4s which are still pretty decent handsets for most people.

Those who would buy iOS buy an iPhone and usually the latest one because even the older ones are still pricey so you might as well shoot for the moon. Those who would buy a Android have the Galaxy but also many other Android choices (also from Samsung as well as other companies) at many price points so comparing individual models against iPhone is rather misleading. Comparing between manufacturers in each price bracket would be far more useful to see who's "winning" (on sales anyway, Apple always win on profits thanks to their huge margins).

For example: Samsung also sell the Note2 competing for S3 sales, and the Nexus 4 is bound to grab some Android share...

I'd like to see market share breakdowns by company for their average street price of £0-100, £101-200, £201-300, £300-400, £401+ etc

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

I dont think it does technically have the fastest hardware, but the OS is well optomised to it. Im not suggesting that its not quick enough, just that its not quick enough to sway people away from their 4 or 4s which are still pretty decent handsets for most people.

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The A6 (iPhone 5) is quick and a lot faster than the A5 (4S) according to benchmarks, it beats Tegra and a dual or quad Krait in most benches but is close with the Samsung Eynos in the S3 and Note and the Atom in the Moto Razr i (for things like Javascript at least).

The iPhone has the fastest graphics and a fairly paltry screen res to feed so it's quite fast. How much value this has on the pokey little screen is debatable... some numbers on Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6426/i...under-the-hood

Adreno 320 isn't far behind the new Mali 6xx is catching up too.

Apple aren't doing anything that other phone manufacturers couldn't, the PowerVR GPUs could be licensed by anyone - it's just no other company thinks they need that level of graphics grunt in a phone (and excluding games they'd be right - battery life is more important). Only other thing using the SGX 5xx MP4 is Playstation Vita IIRC, that seems to be why Apple include the graphics - they want a slice of the mobile gaming market and they've been quite successful.

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Originally Posted by kingpotnoodle

[snip]... so comparing individual models against iPhone is rather misleading. [/snip]

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However it is still an interesting statistic. One handset model from one manufacturer is rivalling the flagship phone from the other large mobile platform for sales (and a flagship phone that will be making the bulk of sales on that platform). It does highlight just how vast the Android market is.

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Originally Posted by kingpotnoodle

The A6 (iPhone 5) is quick and a lot faster than the A5 (4S) according to benchmarks, it beats Tegra and a dual or quad Krait in most benches but is close with the Samsung Eynos in the S3 and Note and the Atom in the Moto Razr i (for things like Javascript at least).

The iPhone has the fastest graphics and a fairly paltry screen res to feed so it's quite fast. How much value this has on the pokey little screen is debatable... some numbers on Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6426/i...under-the-hood

Adreno 320 isn't far behind the new Mali 6xx is catching up too.

Apple aren't doing anything that other phone manufacturers couldn't, the PowerVR GPUs could be licensed by anyone - it's just no other company thinks they need that level of graphics grunt in a phone (and excluding games they'd be right - battery life is more important). Only other thing using the SGX 5xx MP4 is Playstation Vita IIRC, that seems to be why Apple include the graphics - they want a slice of the mobile gaming market and they've been quite successful.

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Again... Im not saying it isnt a quick phone, im saying that those with a 4s and 4 havent been offered enough of a performance boost over their existing handsets. Benchmarks are 90% redundant for most people, if their phone still does things quickly then who cares if the 5 is half a couple of miliseconds quicker.

As I said right up the top, the iPhone 5 is not THE phone to have right now. It's not a mega jump up from the previous 2 generations, it has had numerous little issues with stock being one of them (I read somewhere that scuffgate being a main reason, they just cannot make them quick enough without scuffing the case) and now Apple has launched the iPad mini as well as refreshing other products they have their hands full

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

Again... Im not saying it isnt a quick phone, im saying that those with a 4s and 4 havent been offered enough of a performance boost over their existing handsets. Benchmarks are 90% redundant for most people, if their phone still does things quickly then who cares if the 5 is half a couple of miliseconds quicker.

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It's a good deal quicker in many benches, the gamers will have a reason but I agree - it doesn't really offer enough over the 4S to upgrade early, only if a contract finished and the next phone must be an iPhone. The 5 is significantly faster than the 4-non-S though.

Totally agree a lot of the iPhone is "THE" phone media buzz is calming... iPhone 5 is looking a bit humdrum these days, it's no longer elite/cool cos half the chavs and loads of old people have got one, it's not particularly big or a statement and the OS is looking increasingly basic against the competition, the App market on Android and WinPho is picking up as well and Apple are going backwards on quality trying to implement their own maps.

There does remain a lot of Apple sycophancy in the mainstream media (newspapers, BBC, Sky) though and that does sustain a lot of Apple sales I'm sure.

If you look at the recent price of Apple, its not a happy story lately. Whilst the YTD performance is still good, the last 3 months have been poor.

It is entirely the fault of the iPhone 5.

What is the difference between an iPhone 4s and 5?

Screen is slightly different is the most obvious one, its just simply not a reason to upgrade. The speed differences are barely noticeable, and iOS maps is soo poor the older OS is preferable.

So there is little reason to choose a 5 over a 4S, then add in the fact that Apple are having problems producing them in any significant quanity. Roumers fly about this been due to the low-quality anodised alluminium finish on the back become easily damaged.

Why would a potential buyer wait for a 5? They would surely be tempted by the 4S, but wait, thats old and obsolete, meanwhile the S3 has LTE (important for the global market) and NFC.

So the S3 is a better device than the 4S, and the 5, but you can't even get hold of the 5. Would anyone really choose the 4S over the S3? No, not on mass.

That is why the sales aren't going to be good for apple this winter. However the new iPad will probably still sell like hot cakes if they are able to make enough.

I think that the main negative of the 4S since the release of the iPhone 5 is less because "old and obsolete", but because they are not made in capacities greater than 16GB. Granted that it's a significant improvement over the the previous generation (max of 8GB), and quite serviceable if you do not put much media in your device but to me, that's the biggest negative. At the moment I am still assessing the S3 with the iPod Touch 4G (quite a bit step back from the 4S), and while the S3 walk all over from a hardware perspective, there are still aspects on the software/app side where Apple wins. Still I acknowledge that I have some relatively niche requirements.

I do wish that they could streamline the S3 a bit more though. I can accept that there is no global LTE since no device has it. Having different amount of RAM, or using different kind of CPU is a minor annoyance. But using different kind of batteries is a major one. I am not sure if it's just Japan that's different, but the Japanese batteries and chargers are -not- compatible with the International models. This is a problem when I am looking to buy a charger for extended batteries (as the official chargers can't handle them) and there is simply none in the local market (meaning that I'll have to look at importing one). Really, having swappable batteries is probably the thing I like the most about the S3 along with external microSD card, and there is simply no reason why they can't all be the same.