Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy S III

The Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung's new flagship phone, is a large Android phone with a 4.8-inch HD screen and pretty highly customized software. Check out that optional news ticker along the bottom of the lock screen, for instance.

The Galaxy S III uses Samsung's TouchWiz interface over Android 4.0. TouchWiz doesn't actually look much like Android 4.0, but yes, Ice Cream Sandwich is down there.

There's an 8-megapixel camera on the smooth plastic back of the Samsung Galaxy S III, and the device comes in dark blue and glossy white.

This may be a large phone, but it's also a very slim one. The phone isn't much deeper than its 3.5-mm headset jack.

Like on most Samsung phones, the power button is on the side, and there's no dedicated camera button.

Samsung's "Smart Stay" feature prevents the screen from turning off while you're looking at it. You know it's working when you see the little eye icon in the status bar at the top of the screen.

The Galaxy S III tries to automatically tag faces it finds in photos with contact IDs, and then lets you send photos of your friends to their phones or email accounts.

This shows two unique features of the Galaxy S III. The little video window at the top is a pop-up, picture-in-picture video that can show while you're doing other things. The phones are also using Wi-Fi Direct to beam a file to each other.

You can move the pop-up video window around with your finger. It overlays other apps, though, so sometimes you have to move it around to see what you're doing.

There are not one, but two custom app stores on the Galaxy S III: Samsung Apps and this app, S Suggest, which gives you a curated look at the best of the Google Play market.

Samsung's Vlingo-powered S Voice can answer various kinds of questions. Here's a response to a weather query.

S Voice isn't loaded with as many quips as Apple's Siri - I couldn't get it to tell me what its name was or whether it loved me - but it could finish the woodchuck joke.

Samsung swapped out the standard calendar app on this phone for the enhanced calendar that it ships with the Galaxy Note.

Face off! The HTC One X, at right, will be the Samsung Galaxy S III's top competitor.

The Galaxy S III has a shiny plastic back, whereas the HTC One X has a matte, ceramic back. I like the HTC's build more.

Samsung's settings screen on the Galaxy S III reveals some of the phone's more unusual features, such as the highly customizable lock screen and notification LED.

You can set the Galaxy S III to automatically call contacts when you put it up to your ear, for instance.

The Galaxy S III has NFC, and Samsung says that it's compatible with Google Wallet.

There's a relatively large 2100 mAh battery and a MicroSD memory card slot under the back cover of the Samsung Galaxy S III.