The Apple iPhone 5 takes on the Samsung Galaxy S3, but who comes out on top in this epic clash of the titans? We square up the specs to find out

Whether you love the sound of the new iPhone 5, or massively underwhelmed by the latest Apple smartphone instalment, it's probably going to sell in its millions and have fanboys queuing outside Apple Stores across the world.

Fear not Android lovers, for the Samsung Galaxy S3 is an Android smartphone goliath that should prove worthy competition for the iPhone 5. The question is, does the S3 actually boast better features than the latest Apple blower? It's time for a smartphone spec showdown...

Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3: BuildApple iPhone 5

Let’s start with the chassis because, let’s face it, that’s the only distinct visible change to differentiate it from its two previous family members. Grasp the frame in your hand and the first thing you’ll notice is the weight; it’s the lightest iPhone ever.

By a long way. At 112g, it’s 20% daintier than the iPhone 4S, 16% less butch than the Samsung Galaxy S3 and 14% lighter than the HTC One X. Reducing the SIM to weency, or ‘nano’, size has helped, minutely, as has making the shell out of anodised aluminium.

The brace of glass strips adorning the top and bottom of the rear give both the black/slate and white/silver models a premium feel but are actually employed to allow an uninterrupted phone signal. No-one wants another antennagate.
 

Samsung Galaxy S3

Available in 'Marble White' and 'Pebble Blue' (pebble... blue?!) and now titanium grey, the Galaxy S3 is sporting a curvier look than the iPhone 5 . It actually looks far less like it's older brother, and actually more resembles of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, both in size and contours, although the plastic finish on the back feels more premium than its predecessor. Measuring 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm, the S3 is slightly longer, wider and fatter than the S2 (125.3 x 66.1 x 8.49mm), which may prove to bit a little on the large side for some although the extra thickness may actually make the S3 slightly easier to hold and less likely to slip from your hand, particularly when taking a photo. At 133g, the S3 is very slightly heavier than the S2, although only by 3 grams, so it's barely noticeable.

Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3: ScreenApple iPhone 5

The four-inch screen, which we’ll come onto in detail shortly, is Apple’s belated nod to the industry trend for bigger displays, and means the iPhone 5 now stands a proud 123.8mm tall – width remains the same at 58.6mm. The extra screen real-estate is welcome, though smaller-handed iPhone users might struggle to reach the standby button with a forefinger while holding it in a natural position. They might even have to stretch for the extra top row of apps. Just hold it a different way, perhaps.

It’s still a lovely and Retina; it now boasts 326ppi and a resolution of 1136x640; it’s equally as bright and slightly richer in colour. There’s space for a whole extra row of apps – woop! – and tasks can still be performed with one hand. The main benefit is that you can just see more. Web pages are longer, movies are wider, though many we found from iTunes and YouTube still have to be stretched or cropped to fill the screen, the photo viewing area is bigger (just) and Apple’s own, optimised apps make good use of the extra space.

Samsung Galaxy S3

The S3 one-ups the iPhone 4S and HTC One X on screen size, with an enormous 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED screen, which displays at a maximum resolution of 720 x 1280. At 306 pixels per inch, the screen is slightly below the quality of the HTC One X and the iPhone 4S but frankly, 306ppi is still eye-searing stuff. Everything that we said about the HTC looking great because of it's size is even more true of the Samsung Galaxy S3. Once again the screen uses Super AMOLED technology, to keep the viewing angle as wide as possible.


Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3: CameraApple iPhone 5

The rear iSight camera remains impressive, taking great pictures in bright conditions. There’s a bigger virtual camera capture button and video stabilisation seems to have improved.
It now detects faces and auto-focuses in video and allows you to capture stills while taking video. The video-compression algorithm has also improved, reducing the file-size of footage without any discernible reduction in quality, and making for friendlier email attachments.

Low-light image capture improvement was also discussed in the Keynote but we still experienced a fair bit of grain in our testing. The major improvement is with the front camera, which has been upgraded to 720p video, making FaceTime and Skype chats much clearer. Still shots are captured at 1.2MP, so not exactly archive-worthy. The new Panorama mode is intuitive and produces great results. It doesn’t capture in landscape orientation, which feels counter-intuitive, but the speed at which it processes and pops out a pretty, panoramic shot is impressive.

Samsung Galaxy S3

The rumoured 12MP camera sadly does not make an appearance. Instead the Galaxy S3 arrives with a perfectly reasonable 8MP/1080p camera, exactly the same as that on the HTC One X. In burst mode, the camera takes continuous shots at a rate of 6fps, then picks the best shot based on smile detection, blink detection, contrast and blurring. According to Samsung, the camera also has zero shutter lag along with an improved shot-to-shot time. You'll be able to set up rules for photos to be automatically placed in groups based on faces, contacts or location. There's also Face Zoom which means that you can tap on a face when lining up a crowd shot and the camera will zoom in automatically. The lack of optical zoom means that this is going to be fairly limited, but we look forward to trying it out in the wild.

It also has a 1.9MP camera on the front, which suffices for profile pictures, video calls and the like. Curiously, that's actually smaller than the Galaxy S2's 2MP front camera sensor, but still a major improvement on the 4S' 0.3MP front-facing camera.

Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3: PowerApple iPhone 5

Moving from the A5 processor found in the 4S and the iPad 2, to a new A6 chip, Apple claims it will deliver a CPU two times faster than the A5 and up to times better graphics. So, expect apps to launch quicker, browsing to speedier and overall performance to step up significantly from the 4S.

Samsung Galaxy S3

Samsung has put their own quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos processor into the Galaxy S3, and bolstered it with 1GB RAM. The quad-core processor certainly seemed to do the trick in the limited time that we had with the phone. There was barely any lag when switching between home screens and firing up apps. Flash memory is available in 16, 32 and 64 GB versions, improving on the S2's 16GB offering, while there's also a micro SD card slot should you wish to expand the memory. There's also 50GB of free storage for your content on Dropbox for the next years, which is double what HTC is offering on its HTC One X.

Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3: Operating SystemApple iPhone 5

New phone, new operating system. iOS 6 promises a slightly tweaked user interface with a new look App Store with iCloud support, a smarter Siri that will launch apps, FaceTime over 3G and plenty more. It's still one of the best mobile operating systems and the new features have certainly enhanced its capabilities. If you want to know what we made of the new mobile OS update you can read theiOS 6 review here.

Samsung Galaxy S3

The Galaxy S3 comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as standard. Like HTC, Samsung has taken Android 4.0 and overlayed their Touch Wiz UI - an interface that we already loved from it's Galaxy S2 days. It's been streamlined a little -  the wealth of features remains, but things feel a little less cluttered.S Voice is essentially voice-activated control that will give you direct access to functions such as the camera, calls, text, the alarms, weather, calendar and music and it'll even work when music is playing. What it won't do is answer you back with pithy retorts, like Apple's Siri. An Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update is expected to be available from October but it will be interesting to see how it compares to the version we have seen so far on the Nexus 7 and Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3: BatteryApple iPhone 5

In our testing, real-world battery life doesn’t seem to have changed much since the iPhone 4S, which could be seen as a good thing considering the iPhone 5 is a more advanced product, but you’ll still need to charge it every night to give you enough juice for the next day.

You can watch a couple of films on a flight or listen to hours and hours of music on one charge, but talking and 3G surfing take a heavier toll, and 4G connectivity could be even more of a drain.

Samsung Galaxy S3

The Galaxy S3's 2100mah battery is a big improvement on that of the S2, and ought to be hefty enough to handle all the tech that has been packed into the S3. A bigger battery doesn't mean longer battery life, but we'll give the S3 the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

The battery in the Galaxy S2 was pretty good, and the extra power in the Galaxy S3 probably cancels out the bigger battery. The S2 outperformed the iPhone 4S in this category, so we'd expect the S3 to do the same.

 Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S3: VerdictSo does the iPhone 5 conquer the Samsung Galaxy S3? Well, we gave the Android smartphone a glowing five-star review and the latest Apple handset just four out of five, which indicates that it's this round to the S3.

There's no denying that the iPhone 5 is Apple's best handset to date and while the current Maps issues threatens to put some people off from upgrading, we fully expect the Apple smartphone to still fly off the shelves. The key of course is that many of the new features already appear on Android handsets and the Samsung Galaxy S3 covers most if not all the specs that would usually make the iPhone stand out from the crowd, from the camera, to the sizeable screen and Google's always improving Android operating system. As we said in our iPhone 5 review, It’s good, very good. But the iPhone is no longer the best around.

Already and Apple fan with an iPhone 4S and looking for a change take a look at our iPhone 5 vs iPhone 4S video below to see the old vs the new.

Back when it first shipped in 2010, the original iPad was considered a miracle of modern technology. As with most consumer electronic devices, though, the minute its successor -- the iPad 2 -- was out the door, the original iPad was shunned for the shinier, faster models. But as Wired Enterprise blogger Robert McMillan reports today, original iPads are not only keeping their value, but they're really quite the bargain for a big screen tablet.

Wired performed a study and found that used first-generation iPads are selling well, often at a price tag about US$100 less than a comparable iPad mini. The study quoted Nicholas Fiorentino of Totem, a used equipment reseller in San Diego, as saying "We are shocked at how well the iPad has held its value thus far. There are a lot of people who don't need all the bells and whistles that the iPad 2 and iPad 3 have."

At this point, a first-generation Wi-Fi iPad with 16 GB of storage sells for an average price of $236. That same device sold for $499 in April of 2010, meaning that it's retained almost half of its value. Wired compares that to a Lenovo T410 ThinkPad, which came out at about the same time at $1,270 -- used ThinkPads are now available on eBay for about $300, having lost about three-quarters of their value.

It's expected that the price of an original iPad will drop to about $50 within four years, making the device an irresistible buy for tech-savvy bargain hunters.

Are you ready for the mini?

At an event in San Jose this October, Apple unveiled the long-speculated iPad mini. Much like the name suggests, the device is a shrunken-down version of Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad.

The smaller tablet features a 7.9-inch display and weighs 0.68 pounds (compared to the classic iPad’s 1.44 pounds). Apple’s latest gadget also includes a dual-core A5 chip and can be purchased with 16GB, 32GB or 64GBs of storage space. The price of the tablet starts at $329. (For more specs, check out the company's website.)

According to Mashable, the iPad mini sold out three days after being available for pre-order. But will this device live up to all the hype –- particularly if other tablets like the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Fire are priced at $199 and feature higher screen resolution? To find out, take a look at the gallery (below), featuring iPad mini reviews from USA Today, New York Times, CNET, Wall Street Journal, TIME, TechCrunch, The Verge, Engadget and The Loop.


USA Today
USA Today's Edward C. Baig notes he's never had a problem with the original iPad's screen, but found this new device to be the "right size" for reading a novel. Still, he does admit the iPad mini offers users much less screen space. 

"Despite a few quibbles and strong competitors in the space, the Mini is a splendid choice for folks who held off buying an iPad because it was too large or too expensive."

The New York Times
"Sadly, the Mini doesn't gain Apple's supercrisp Retina display," New York Times reporter David Pogue writes, referring to the brand name Apple puts on screens with such high resolution, the human eye can't see individual pixels. 

But apart from this minor setback, Pogue positively reviews Apple's latest device, calling it a "far classier, more attractive, thinner machine" than most of the other tablets on the market.

CNET
CNET's Scott Stein writes the iPad mini "cost too much," especially without a Retina screen. Still, he wasn't completely dissatisfied. His bottom line? "If you want the full, polished Apple tablet experience in a smaller package, the iPad Mini is worth the premium price. Otherwise, good alternatives are available for less money."

The Wall Street Journal
Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal also gave the iPad mini a decent review. "In shrinking the iconic iPad, Apple has pulled off an impressive feat," he writes. "It has managed to create a tablet that's notably thinner and lighter than the leading small competitors..." Still,Mossberg points out the same two consistent complaints: The tablet has a higher price than the competition and a lower resolution.

We know Apple has a love affair with thin. The iPhone 5 is the thinnest iPhone ever. The MacBook Aircould very well be used to slice bread. And the svelte MacBook Pro with Retina Display shows even premium notebook offerings can stand to shed a few pounds.

Still, when Apple unveiled the new 21.5- and 27-inch iMacs at its media event last week, it was shocking just how much thinner Apple had managed to make them. They seemed almost surgically precise, the result not just of remarkably slim displays but also an advanced welding technology borrowed from the aerospace industry.

Apple cut the volume of the new iMac by 40 percent. The LCD display is 45 percent thinner than that of the previous generation’s, which equates to 5 mm shaved off the total thickness. “The iMac display is really not getting the attention it deserves,” IHS analyst Vinita Jakhanwal told Wired. OLED displays are known for being lighter and thinner than their LCD counterparts, but Apple seems to have bucked that trend. “If it’s anywhere close to OLED display thickness, that’s something really cool.”

LG, for example, introduced a 55-inch OLED TV at CES last year that was 4 mm thick, and a few years before that, Sony demoed an 11-inch OLED TV that was only 3 mm thick. Since the edge of the iMac is only 5 mm thick, it’s safe to assume that the LCD display is down in OLED territory.

NPD DisplaySearch analyst Paul Semenza explained via e-mail how Apple managed to make the iMac display so thin, and the benefits of that process: “Apple is using optical bonding (lamination) of the [LCD] panel to a sheet of strengthened cover glass. This eliminates the air gap between the panel and the glass, which reduces overall thickness, and the optical bonding eliminates the reflections between the inside of the cover glass and the outside of the panel, which improves image quality.”

This may sound similar to the process used to make the display in the iPhone 5, but it’s actually less complicated. The iPhone’s display is higher resolution and has integrated touch sensing, which makes it more challenging to produce. Jakhanwal says that Corning and other glass companies have been working to reduce the thickness of that cover glass, too. In recent years, it’s come down from over 0.7 mm to 0.3 mm.

Apple took full advantage of the thinner displays by creating an ultra-thin body to go along with them. The new iMacs are just 5 mm thick for the entirety of the desktop’s perimeter. To maintain that along seams where the front and back pieces meet, Apple used a process called friction stir welding (FSW) — a method normally reserved for things like airplane wings and rocket booster tanks, areas that need a seamless, fail-safe connection. It was even used on parts in the Space Shuttle.

FSW is a solid-state process, meaning the metal isn’t melted. In simple terms, it works by using a rotating tool pressed against the surface of two overlapping plates. The tool has a small protrusion that fits into the crack between the plates and is pressed down along the length of the joint. This creates frictional heat that softens the two surfaces, which are then pressed together under high pressure to create a bond.

FSW was invented by Wayne Thomas at TWI Ltd, a U.K.-based independent research and technology company. Because this is a patented process, Apple is licensing the technology for its iMacs. A TWI representative said that the specific details of that license are confidential, but it looks like Apple is the first consumer electronics company to employ the technology. Of course, if the rest of the industry follows Apple’s lead — as it is wont to do – TWI could be getting a lot more customers.

The Digital Millennium Copyright makes it illegal to "circumvent" digital rights management schemes. But when Congress passed the DMCA in 1998, it gave the Librarian of Congress the power to grant exemptions. The latest batch of exemptions, which will be in force for three years, were announcedon Thursday.
Between now and late 2015, there will be five categories of circumvention that will be allowed under the Librarian's rules, one fewer than the current batch of exemptions, which was announced in July 2010. The new exemptions take effect October 28.edit.

There's nothing quite like a good prank, and what prank is better than convincing innocent people that they are about to meet their bitter, messy end? That's the path LG went down for this ad, where they use IPS displays to fool people—however briefly—that an elevator's floor is falling out from beneath them.

Presumably these are all random, innocent people, but it's an ad so you can be skeptical if you like. Regardless of what it may or may not say about how lifelike LG's IPS displays are, it's a pretty good trick and it's fun to see people yelp and grab for the railing. I'm just glad I never set foot in there. That's a particularly nagging fear of mine and I'm pretty sure I would wet myself on the spot. Who knows how those displays would fare then. 

Microsoft is launching its new operating system, Windows 8, this week.

Windows 8 is a radical departure for anyone who has used Windows in the past two decades. The new interface is designed primarily for touch-screens. And based on some anecdotal responses from those who have tried it — professional reviewers and normal people alike — it's not exactly love at first sight.

SAI's Matt Rosoff reviewed a preview version of Windows 8 a couple of months ago. He found it "needlessly confusing and hard to use."

The AP said the new OS interface "baffles" consumers.

The New York Times' David Gallagher invited 5 people to try Windows 8 and filmed them while they did so. One of the five people seemed to like the look of the design ("Awesome." "This is so cool."). But figuring out how to actually go about doing things seemed to confuse the hell out of everyone — including the person who liked the design.

The video is embedded below.

Here are some of the quotes:

• "I don't like this design."
• "I think it's really confusing."
• "Some of it feels intuitive once you've already done it, but it doesn't feel automatically intuitive."
• "It should be easier. I shouldn't have to think about it."
• "Beats me." [In response to a question about how to print something]
• "I felt like the biggest computer user amateur ever. It made me feel stupid."

I've never used Windows 8, so all I know about it is what I've seen in this video and read in a couple of reviews. One thing I can tell you I already hate about it, though, is the apparent need to manipulate it by touching your laptop screen.

Yes, I'm quite fond of fondling the screen of my iPhone. And I have no problem touching the screen of an iPad. But I never touch my laptop screen, and I hate it when other people touch my laptop screen. I don't want to have to remove my hands from my keyboard to touch my laptop screen. And I really don't want to have to touch a button on the screen to send a new email, which is what David Gallagher of the New York Times told one of the people in the video they had to do. I like my mouse-pad, and I don't want to have to lift my hand up and touch "buttons" on my screen.

I gather there's a "normal view" or something that gets you back to the friendly old Windows 95 start screen again (at least I hope there is). And I gather Windows 8 is really written for tablets and maybe it will be great on those. But...

I've already made the jump to Mac, which was painful — every minute I have to spend learning how to use a new tool is a minute I could have spent actually working — so I'm presumably not the target customer for Windows 8.

But one thing I would worry about if I were Microsoft is this:

Now that it will apparently require a lot of effort to learn how to use Windows 8, many Windows users who have always been tempted to try Macs but haven't because they don't want to learn a new system now have a perfect excuse to finally make the jump... because even if they stay with Windows, they're going to have to learn a new system.

In short, it seems like Microsoft's taking a big risk here.

If people love Windows 8, and Microsoft can stem its loss of share in the PC market and start winning some share of the tablet market, great.

But if they're confused and befuddled, Microsoft will be in an even tougher position than it already is.

Apple's latest iPhone, iPod touch and iPod nano ushered in a new era, at least for accessory manufacturers: they ditched the old 30-pin Dock Connector in favor of the new Lightning standard. With a durable, double-sided, all-digital design, it might be a vast improvement in the long run. For now, it's a bit of a mess, as Apple's attempt to restrict manufacturing and charge higher fees is causing delays before iPhone 5 accessories roll out.

If you’ve been using the internet long enough, chances are you’ve come across the Blendtec YouTube channel. For those unfamiliar, the Blendtec YouTube channel hosts a series of hilarious videos called, “Will It Blend?” in which a variety of items, electronic and non-electronic, are stuffed into the blender which then tears it apart. In fact one video even had them blending the Guitar Hero guitar controller. Well the folks at Blendtec are back and this time they have decided to pit both the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5 against each other to see which item can withstand the blending better. Funnily enough, this also speaks to the survey wereported on yesterday where it was suggested that most accidental iPhone damage occurs in the kitchen, which we assume is where most blenders are kept (thanks to our reader Lizardwithhat for pointing that out!).

It should be noted that this is hardly conclusive evidence that speaks to the durability of either device, but if you just want to see phones get blended, then be sure to check it out in the video above! Interestingly it seems that the Samsung Galaxy S3 did take noticeably longer than the iPhone 5 before it started to break apart completely. We have to warn you that it is extremely cringe-worthy to see such expensive items get blended, but hey it might be considered entertainment for some.