The new flagship smartphone from the world's number-one mobile phone company, Samsung's Galaxy S III ($199.99 with contract) is literally a huge achievement. If you love big phones with lots of options, the GS3 will deliver state-of-the-art performance with bonus sharing and media features that you're likely to continue discovering a year from now. Sprint subscribers now have two solid choices: The Galaxy S III ties with the HTC EVO 4G LTE ($199, 4 stars) as our Editors' Choice for touch-screen smartphones on Sprint.

Editors' Note: The Samsung Galaxy S III models on all four major carriers are extremely similar, so we're sharing a lot of material between our various reviews. That said, we're testing each device separately, so read the review for your carrier of choice.

Physical Design

All of the new Galaxy S III models look the same, except for the carrier logo on the back panel. Each is available in dark blue or white (AT&T also has a red option coming this summer), and they're some of the biggest phones we've ever handled. At 5.4 by 2.8 by 0.34 inches (HWD) and 4.7 ounces, the GS3 is slightly bigger than the already-large HTC One X ($199, 4.5 stars), although it's still noticeably smaller and lighter than the Samsung Galaxy Note phone/tablet hybrid ($299, 3 stars).  That said, this is not a phone for folks with small hands.

I'm not a fan of the huge phone. But I've given up on panning them because every time I suggest these handsets are too big, I get pummeled by comments from people who adore them. Huge phones are the thing. I accept it.

The all-plastic body feels a little less high-end than the exotic materials of the HTC One series, but the phone is solidly built, and light despite its size. The front of the phone is dominated by the 4.8-inch, 1280-by-720-pixel Super AMOLED HD screen. Yes, it's PenTile, which can sometimes look slightly pixelated. But, no, you probably won't notice. Below the screen, there's a physical Home button, as well as light-up Back and Multitasking buttons that start out invisible, so you have to memorize where they are or change a setting to keep them illuminated. The 8-megapixel camera is on the back panel, which, thanks to its reflective finish (on the blue model), doubles as a pocket mirror. 

The default Automatic Brightness setting makes the screen too dim. Kill it and pump up the brightness and it's fine, even outdoors. It's not as bright as the One X's Super LCD 2 display, but it's fine.

Unlike the competing HTC One X, the S III has a removable 2100mAh battery. Taking off the back cover also reveals the microSD card slot, which supports cards up to 64GB.

 

Call Quality and Internet
Are you willing for Sprint to pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today? The EVO 4G LTE  promises spectacular call quality with HD Voice…sometime in 2013, once Sprint gets the network running. But the GS3 lets you tweak your call quality now.

Default call quality is good. Volume is on the high end of average, with no distortion from loud inputs. The speakerphone isn't quite loud enough to use outdoors, but it's fine for the car or a boardroom. The microphone does a good job of cancelling background noise. Bluetooth headsets work fine with Samsung's S-Voice voice dialing system.

But as with so many things here, call quality gets richer if you burrow down into the GS3's menus. A Volume Boost button throws the phone into a super-loud, quasi-speakerphone mode for noisy areas, but that's just the start. Deep within the settings, there's an option to set custom call EQ. The phone plays you a sequence of quiet high and low tones and you tell it which ones you can hear, and then it EQ's calls accordingly. This is pretty radical stuff. I prefer my calls sharp, with more high-end, and the GS3 delivers.

On data though, the Sprint GS3 is crippled. All new Sprint phones are. Although the phones support speedy LTE, Sprint has steadfastly refused to give us a rollout timetable for its new LTE network, leaving its high-end smartphones on the slowest 3G network in America. We tested Sprint LTE, and it's competitive with AT&T and Verizon, but none of this matters a whit if Sprint won't tell us when anyone is getting it. 

This is why Sprint's Galaxy S III is getting a slightly lower rating than the other major carrier models. Sprint needs to get its act together. We will not give a Sprint phone a 4.5-star rating until the carrier gives its subscribers more information about LTE coverage.

You'll have better luck getting your Internet via Wi-Fi on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC are also onboard, and Google Wallet is preloaded.

Battery life is strong at 8 hours and 42 minutes of talk time, and considering the battery is removable, you can carry a spare. That's something you can't do with the EVO 4G LTE.

Software and Performance

The Galaxy S III runs Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" with a whole lot of exclusive Samsung extensions. Performance was excellent in my tests. The Qualcomm S4 chip running at 1.5GHz is the fastest one we've seen in smartphones so far, and it's able to take on any app challenge you throw at it, including games on the HD screen. Our benchmark tests proved this, although they were within the margin of error when compared with the One X. Both phones are very fast.

Exclusive new features include S-Beam, the ability to transfer files by tapping two phones together and using a combination of NFC and Wi-Fi Direct; S-Voice, Samsung's answer to Apple's Siri; TecTiles, NFC-enabled accessory tags that can change the settings on your phone, and lots of sharing and tagging options in the camera, such as the ability to automatically tag your friends' faces, and the ability for multiple GS3s within a few feet of each other to automatically share all of their photos.

Many of these features work well, but they're almost all buried. The interface is something of a scavenger hunt. Take Smart Stay, a neat new feature which detects your face and keeps the screen from going black while you're looking at it. I love it! But it's not on by default, and the only way to turn it on is by going to the Display area under Settings. S-Beam is similarly buried, under the Wireless menu.