When we first saw the Galaxy S3 during the global launch in London back in May, we were not that crazy about its design. The hardware was pretty impressive, the additional Samung features were nice but a bit gimmicky, yet the design did not really sink in that well with us (close to saying it’s an acquired taste).

However, once you’ve held the Galaxy S3 and used it for some considerable amount of time, your perception of the handset’s design will probably change and learn to love it. We were fortunate enough to be able to use both the Ceramic White and the Pebble Blue for this review.

Design and Construction.

Since the popular Galaxy S2, Samsung has made a lot of changes in the design of the Galaxy S3. The material used is still the same polycarbonate component with a glossy coating Samsung referred to as hyperglazed.

We got both the Ceramic White and the Pebble Blue variants to review and noticed a slight difference between the two. Both have that glossy coating over the materials but the Ceramic White has more of a plain or flat texture while the Pebble Blue has that brushed pattern beneath that hyperglazed surface.

The body of the handset is more rounded and looks closer to the Galaxy Nexus than the S2. The curved back panel allows it to fit more comfortably on the palm of your hands, giving you a better grip of the handset. However, the glossy finish also makes the device a bit slippery in some occasions (slipped off my jacket pocket once and twice on my desktop table); hence, we recommend getting a case for the device as soon as possible.

The construction of the S3 is pretty simplistic with very few exterior embellishment. The 3.5mm port is on the top left corner; the power button is on the upper right side; the volume control is on the left side and a micro-USB port is at the bottom. There are two microphones — one at the top and one at the bottom, the other could be for active noise-cancellation.

At the back side, you will find the 8MP camera with the LED flash on its left side and the speaker on the right side. The front panel features the physical Home button at the bottom end along with two soft keys that sandwiches it (Menu and Back). It’s curious that Samsung used the Menu and Back soft keys on the handset since these two were prominent with Gingerbread rather than ICS which already incorporated the soft keys into the screen. The only reason we can think of is that TouchWiz UI 4.0 has skinned ICS and removed those native keys.

To better appreciate the handset design, we’ve prepared a short unboxing video of the Galaxy S3 below:

We also noticed that the battery cover is also plastic and so thin that you’ll need to be careful when taking the cover off lest you might break it.

On the Ceramic White variant, the two-tone complexion is white with a silver lining on the side while the Pebble Blue has a dark-blue body with a ocean-blue lining. It will really be a matter of taste which of the two you prefer. Apparently, there’s been a lack in supply of the Pebble Blue variant because of some manufacturing delays.

Nevertheless, we find the device very firm and solid. The implementation of the design is done very meticulously and the hyperglazed coating does have its advantages. Despite the 4.8-inch size of the handset, we are able to use it with one hand comfortably and with ease. Of course, that’s really dependent from one person to another.

Display.

Samsung uses a Super HD AMOLED display on the Galaxy S3. It only means that the handset uses an AMOLED screen (with an integrated digitizer) with a 720p HD resolution (1280×720 pixels). This gives the Galaxy S3 a pixel density of 306ppi.

While that isn’t really at the top of the pixel density charts (the Galaxy Nexus has 316ppi, the Xperia S has 343ppi and the One X), it’s right up there with a lot of flagship handsets. Both the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Nexus shared the same Pentile technology with the Galaxy S3.

Nonetheless, we loved the bright and crisp display of the Galaxy S3. Outdoor visibility if decent to good and manages to be usable even with glare caused by direct sunlight (only to a certain extent).

The entire front panel is covered with a single solid sheet of glass that spills toward the edges. The physical Home button looks like it’s made of aluminum and is carved out of the glass, separating it from the rest of the homogenous surface.

The glass surface is slightly raised (or embossed) so the viewing angles are pretty close to 180-degrees (especially when watching videos or movies).

Android ICS and TouchWiz UI.

The Galaxy S3 came out with Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS v4.0.4) out of the box. They also added a custom skin using Samsung’s own TouchWiz UI 4.0. The UI has improved a lot since the first time we saw it in the Galaxy S3 a couple of years ago. It’s simple yet fluid and we’re liking the design of the native icons, widgets and layout.

The UI is pretty clean and simple. If you’ve used a Galaxy phone from Samsung before, you will already be familiar with TouchWiz. The little additional touches, the transition effects and smoothness of the navigation really adds to the prettification and usability of the device.

A lot of widgets have also been added and incorporated into the UI. We also noticed the drop-down menu added more options and shortcuts to more-commonly used features.

Samsung added a lot of interesting features that uses motion sensors and gestures. We liked the Direct Call feature and have used it a lot of times. Smart Stay seems like a very neat feature but using it is a hit or miss (really depends on the ambient light).

The Pop-up Play looks gimmicky and the fact that there is an app in the Google Play Store that the do the same makes it not that unique. In fact, the Super Video app supports two floating videos at the same time.

While there are a number of Samsung-exclusive apps pre-installed in the S3, you have access to hundreds of thousands of apps in the Google Play Store (both free and paid). And if you get bored of the TouchWiz UI, you can always download a custom launcher like Go Launcher EX.

Well, hi there, Galaxy!

The S Voice is one of the newer features introduced with the Galaxy S3. It is an evolution of the Voice Talk app found in the Galaxy Note (powered by Vlingo).

It is obviously a play on the Apple’s Siri personal assistant. Surprisingly, we realized that S Voice is much more usable than Siri because it supports our location (meaning, you can ask for location-based services).

S Voice managed to pin-point us to a map when we asked “where I am”, and also gave us the local weather and answered who the president of the Philippines correctly.

The voice is also more human and less robotic compared to Siri. Of course, we also experience some issues with “accent” and “pronunciation” with S Voice.

Multimedia and Camera.

While the S3 still had the same 8MP camera like the S2, the sensor has been vastly improved. Image quality both in stills and video are really good. The snapper is very fast and can do up to 3 shots per second with a burst of 20 continuous shots which is great for action scenes.

Chekc out some of our sample photos in the gallery below:

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Images are crisp and well-saturated, the exposure levels are even and the colors are rich and vivid. We can definitely say that the S3 has one of the best built-in camera in a smartphone.

The native camera app has a lot of functions and features including shooting modes like HDR and Burst shot (at 20 continuous frames). There’s also Face Detection but it’s a hit or miss when used in the field.

The S3 can capture full HD 1080p video at 30fps. The camera can auto-focus while recording or you can switch the focus area by tapping on the object on the screen.

Check out our sample clip below (make sure to select the 1080p version on playback):

The camera also has the ability to take stills while recording and there are options in the settings for enabling Outdoor Visibility and Anti-Shake (video stabilization).

The speaker of the unit is situated at the back beside the camera and while it is obviously facing away from the user, the volume of the audio isn’t sacrificed. Sound quality is good though we could not really say it’s the best we’ve ever used on a smartphone. The speaker is also slightly muted when you lay it down on its back.

The S3 also plays full HD video and movies very smoothly. The AMOLED screen adds to the crispness and brightness of the videos although we’d suggest using a headphone to better appreciate the audio/sounds when doing so.

The Pop-up Play is a neat trick which allows you to watch a video on a small floating screen while doing something else, but as we mentioned earlier, it’s just that — a neat trick.

Performance and Benchmarks.

Samsung has done very well in making the S3′s performance as smooth and fluid as possible. The handset is very fast, very responsive and can handle a lot of tasks and running apps all at the same time without any noticeable lags.

We also liked the idea of maximizing the features offered by NFC and WiFi Direct. We’ve tried the S Beam between two Galaxy S3′s and it worked very well in transferring large files in such a short time. NFC was used to quickly pair the two handsets then WiFi Direct kicks in to deliver blazing-fast data transfers.

This feature currently works with the S3 at the moment but with the announcement of JellyBean, it will be standard to Android handsets.

Based on the numbers alone, the Galaxy S3 trumps all other smartphones in all three (3) benchmark tests we did — Quadrant Advanced, Antutu Benchmark and NenaMark 2.

With a Quadrant score of 5,859, it’s the highest we’ve seen on any handset or tablet we’ve ever tested or reviewed. The same goes with Antutu benchmark — the S3 surpassed the 10k mark with a score of 12,044. The Nemark 2 score gave it an impressive 58.8fps rating.

Again, these are just benchmark results and though they may not represent real-world performance, it’s a good indication of the relative performance of the S3 compared to other handsets in the market. But, by the numbers alone, we can already say the S3 is the “King of Benchmarks“.

Call Quality and Battery Life.

Voice calls on the Galaxy S3 are pretty clear and loud. We did not experience any drop calls in the last couple of weeks using it.

The 2100mAh Li-ion battery on the S3 might seem enough but if you’re connected to a 3G network all the time, you’d be lucky to survive the day without recharging your unit. However, with moderate use, we’re surprised that the handset can actually last two full days with casual internet and mostly calls and SMS.

We also noticed that the power-saving mode of the S3 works pretty well when the handset is in idle. The again, the battery life will greatly depend on your usage behavior.

Conclusion.

With the launch of the Galaxy S3, we noticed that Samsung is slowly inching towards the cloud and adding more soft features into their devices. They’ve already proven they’re really good at making their own hardware so adding a more compelling ecosystem (aside from the basic Android ecosystem) is the next logical step.

The Galaxy S3 certainly delivered the promise a lot of people were expecting, and maybe even more. It’s got the impressive hardware and a mature platform to run on. Samsung has done it again and we are pretty sure they will be selling millions of S3 (and millions more) in the coming months.

Samsung Galaxy S3 i9300 specs:
4.8-inch Super HD AMOLED screen @ 1280×720 pixels (306ppi)
1.4GHz Samsung Exynos 4 Quad processor
Mali-400MP GPU
1GB RAM
16GB internal storage
up to 32GB via microSD card
HSPA+ up to 21Mbps
8MP rear camera with LED flash
1080p @ 30fps video recording
1.9MP front-facing camera
720p HD video recording
NFC
Bluetooth 4.0
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n with WiFi Bonding
2,100mAh Li-Ion battery
Android 4.0 ICS with TouchWiz UX
8.6mm thickness, 133gram weight

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has a suggested retail price of Php32,990 and is available in stores nationwide. Local telcos are also offering it under postpaid plans — comes free with Unli Data Plan 2000 with Smart and Supersurf Plan 2499 with Globe.

What we liked about it:
● Top-notch performance
● Great camera
● Quad-core processor
● NFC & WiFi Direct put to good use
● Good battery life
● S Voice is pretty usable
● Free 50GB DropBox account for 2 years

What we did not like:
● Still pricey
● Glossy finish makes it slippery
● Some gimmicky features

Disclosure: The White Ceramic S3 was provided to us by Samsung Philippines while the Pebble Blue S3 was provided to us by Lazada Philippines (sells for Php31,989 in their listing here).

The post Samsung Galaxy S3 Review appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Samsung is also giving the two telcos (Globe and Smart) around one week to sell the Galaxy S3 with their postpaid plans before the handsets will be released in store shelves unlocked.

That means you’ll have to wait until June 9 before you can go and get it in stores for Php32,990. Otherwise, you’ll have no choice but to it get from either Smart and Globe.

We’ve already covered the Samsung Galaxy S3 to overkill levels so we’ll just share our previous stories about it here:

May 3: Live Blog: Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012 in London
May 4: Samsung Galaxy S3 is official!
May 4: Samsung Galaxy S3 in the flesh, first impressions
May 4: Galaxy S3 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Lumia 900
May 4: Samsung Galaxy S3 Benchmark Results
May 5: HTC One X vs. Samsung Galaxy S3 — Let’s Quad Core!
May 10: Globe & Smart to offer the Samsung Galaxy S3 this May
May 12: Smart Galaxy S3 Pre-order starts on May 23
May 14: Samsung Galaxy S3 price to hit no more than Php37k
May 16: Globe Galaxy S3 pre-order starts on May 23
May 22: Samsung Galaxy S3 goes up on Amazon for $799.99
May 23: Samsung Galaxy S3 Plans and Price on Globe
May 26: Smart offers Galaxy S3 at UnliData Plan 2000
May 26: Galaxy S3: Smart UnliData 2000 vs. Globe UnliSurf 2499

The SRP of the Galaxy S3 directly competes with the HTC One X so it should be interesting to see how the sales of these two units fare. We’ve seen the S2 trump the HTC Sensation before and we’re predicting the S3 will make a repeat performance this year.

The post Samsung Galaxy S3 launched, priced at Php32,990 appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Globe Telecom announced that it is launching Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S3, under its suite of fully-customizable postpaid plans bundled with unlimited mobile internet.

Globe subscribers can avail of the Samsung Galaxy S3 under My Super Plan Unli Surf Combo, which comes with unlimited mobile browsing, bonus call and text services, and choice of unli boosters for the ultimate smartphone experience. With My Super Plan Unli Surf Combo, Globe provides users with unlimited surfing, their gadget of choice, and freebies all in one subscription. This plan also helps maximize the features of the Samsung Galaxy S3.

“As the first Philippine operator to bring Samsung Galaxy S1 and S2 to the Philippines, Globe is proud to be carrying the Samsung Galaxy S3 once again, powered by our portfolio of personalized and fully-customizable data plans and backed by a stronger and more reliable HSPA+ network which we continue to aggressively expand nationwide,” said Peter Bithos, Globe Senior Advisor for Consumer Business.

Globe did not indicate which plans it will come free but we estimate it will be under Unli Surf Combo 2499 and Unli Surf Combo 3799. For My Super Plan, it could be free on Plan 2499 and 3799. Unfortunately though, there is no word on a prepaid kit plan.

Pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S3 will begin on May 23, 2012 via www.globe.com.ph/galaxys3. New subscribers can call the Globe Sales Hotline via toll-free number (02) 730-1010 or visit www.globe.com.ph/galaxys3 to place their orders. For Platinum subscribers, they can get in touch with their Relationship Managers for reservations.

The post Globe Galaxy S3 pre-order starts on May 23 appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

There were so many gadgets and tech toys that came out this year it’s really hard to pick one that tops them all. So instead of doing my top 10, I thought I’d ask my readers which ones they loved the most.

So here are the candidates for the top gadget of the year.

Samsung Galaxy SII. The S2 became an early favorite among Android fans and has set the standard for flagship smartphones in 2011.

Apple iPhone 4S. Still a very strong contender this year, despite the late release in the Philippines. One of the very few devices people crazily line up to just to get the first units.

Nokia N9. Represented a different face for Nokia and has attracted a lot of attention for being one of a kind because of Meego.

Asus Transformer. The Taiwanese company’s version of a tablet-cum-netbook provided a different approach with its unique form factor.

Microsoft XBox Kinect (Project Natal). It all started with the Nintendo Wii but Microsoft sets it up a notch with the Project Natal.

Macbook Air 2011. Slim, light and powerful — the 2011 Macbook Air has actually replaced Apple’s Macbook as its entry-level offering.

Asus Zenbook. Arguably the closest competitor to the Macbook Air and one of the most popular ultrabook that came out this year.

Nintendo 3DS. Nntendo’s portable gaming device, the 3DS, has amazed a lot with its glasses-less display and loads of fun games.

Apple iPad 2. This second-generation iPad from Apple quickly ran out fo stock when it hit the Philippines, despite it’s very late entry.

BlackBerry Curve. It’s hard to ignore the surveys — the BlackBerry Curve is the most popular smartphone in the country, thanks to the telcos subsidy and giving it away for free at very low postpaid plans.

Go hit the comments and let your vote be counted. At the end of the day, no gadget is really awesome unless people actually go out and buy them.

In the honorable mention (really worth mentioning) are devices like the Motorola Droid Razr, LG Optimus 2X, HTC Sensation series, BlackBerry Bold 9900, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 & 10.1, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Sony-Ericsson Xperia Play, Samsung Galaxy Note, the Smart TVs from LG, Sony & Samsung, the Amazon Kindle Fire, Samsung Series 9, Sony PlayStation Move, Canon 600D and Acer Aspire S3.

I’ve never had a full review of Samsung’s Smart LED 3D TVs but the two instances I have had an overnight stay with the Samsung Smart TV a couple of months ago (see story here) gave me wet dreams. If only I have the chance to get one of them 60+ inchers to set up at home, that would be the day. 2011 is indeed also the year of Smart TVs. Besides, I really need to replace that 32-inch Samsung TV I bought a couple years ago.

If you’re wondering about my vote, I’m placing it under the Galaxy Note.

The post So, What’s our 2011 Gadget of the Year? appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

[Updated: The pre-order period has been extended until November 18, 2011. See below for details.]

This is basically the same strategy they did with the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

The suggested retail price of the Galaxy Note is pegged at Php35,990.

Bookmark this page for details on how you can get into the pre-order and grab additional discounts and freebies for your unit. Will update once the DTI permit is already approved.

Updated: Here’s the complete text of the promo.

Here’s the low-down:

- Free with a Smart Postpaid Plan 2000 plus one month FREE service fee (P2,000) and a free flip cover valued at P1,450.
- P2,000 off of its suggested retail price of P35,990 with a free flip cover valued at P1,450 and a free 45-day subscription of Philippine Daily Inquirer Digital Edition valued at P1,120.

Note that the Nokia N9 is also being offered by Smart for free at Data Plan 2000 or All-In Plan 3500.

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I have to admit that I have not been a huge fan of the BlackBerry — have not bought one before either and the only time I get to use them is when I get a review unit to use for 2 weeks to a couple of months.

Having tried the Bold 9900 has rekindled my love for full-qwerty smartphones. It reminded me of how much I liked the Samsung BlackJack & Nokia E71 when I first bought them many years ago.

I have long since moved to bigger screens and full touch interface. The BlackBerry Bold 9900 is the total opposite — full qwerty (the physical kind) and relatively small screen. But allow me to take the case of the Bold — because, at the end of the day, either you’re the full touchscreen type of person or the full-qwerty keypad type.

In some ways, the Bold 9900 did not really depart from the usual design mantra of RIM. It’s classic and elegant, ergonomic for fast texters and does the job as you’d expect from any BlackBerry device.

Yes it’s thinner, it’s faster and it’s bolder.

If you’ve tried any of the previous models of BlackBerry handsets, you’d agree that they needed a little work-out to trim down their waistline. The Bold 9900 did just that — it’s fit and sexy, not the thinnest of all the smartphones but definitely the thinnest among the BBs.

The design is minimalistic yet elegant — a metallic silver lining along a curved edge, power button on top, volume control (with pause/play in the middle) on the right side along with a dedicated camera button, microUSB port on the left along with the 3.5mm audio jack, and camera with flash at the back.

The back panel’s got a chiseled edge with what could be polished glass and transparent, embossed polymer covering a woven pattern on the battery lid. Great idea putting a nice piece of solid hard glass on top of the camera and flash — helps keep the scratches off the lens and makes it easier to clean the smudge off when you want to take photos later.

The SIM card and microSD card slots are both found under the battery compartment. There are no speaker grills to speak of but seems like the sound is coming from the battery compartment and the little latch to open the lid serves as a small opening for the speakers.

Up at the front, the 2.8-inch display seems very small but that’s what you get when you compromise in favor of a physical keyboard. Nevertheless, the screen looks great with very high pixel density of 286ppi (the iPhone 4 has 330ppi while the SGS2 has 217ppi) — rich, vivid colors and images are crisp and clear. It’s got very good viewing angles as well, perhaps in the 178-degrees range.

The usual touch panel menus are found just below the screen with the optical trackpad right in the middle. Between the touch screen and the optical trackpad, I found it was way easier for me to navigate using the latter.

The full-qwerty keypad on the Bold 9900 is probably the best keypad I’ve ever used on any handset. It’s soft, easy to type on and the keys are chiseled in such a way that it fits very well with both your opposing thumbs. No individual keys are alike as they are shaped and fitted to the contours of a curved layout.

Performance of the Bold Touch 9900 has improved a lot compared to the previous model, thanks to the powerful 1.2GHz processor and the generous 768MB RAM. And since BB 7 OS has also improved, this added to a better user experience. The UI is very responsive, apps load fairly quick, HD video playback is smooth and web browsing is generally fast with efficient page rendering (no Flash support though).

The 5MP camera on the Bold 9900 is surprisingly good — takes decent to very good pictures even if it’s just fixed focused, and fairly quick in between shots. I’d say it’s pretty much in the same league as the Nokia E6 in terms of quality. The downside is that in might not perform as well on low-light environments and close-up subjects.

The video is also pretty good at 720p although the footages are noticeably over-sharpened. See sample video taken with the handset below — sharp, good frame-rates and well saturated. The camera quality really reminds me of the one used on the BlackBerry Playbook though I’d say the one on the Bold is a better shooter. The dedicated camera button is a bit awkward to use but it beats any on-screen, touch shutter anytime.

BlackBerry Bold 9900 specs:
• 2.8″ capacitive touch screen display @ 640×480, 287 dpi resolution
• QWERTY keyboard, optical trackpad
• 1.2 GHz processor
• 768 MB RAM
• 8GB on-board memory,
• microSD slot supporting up to 32GB
• NFC technology
• 5MP camera w/ 720p HD video recording
• Orientation Sensor (Accelerometer)
• Digital Compass (Magnetometer)
• Proximity Sensor
• GPS with aGPS support
• Dual-Band WiFi 802.11 b/g/n @ 2.4 GHz and 802.11 a/n @ 5GHz
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• 1230 mAh Li-Ion battery
• BlackBerry 7 OS

The BlackBerry 7 OS has definitely added a bit of enhancement coming from the previous OS. The navigation and UI might seem a little confusing at first (especially if you’re a new user) but you will soon find it pretty easy to use. Sometimes though, you get too much options you feel like drowning in menu options. But if you’re already a BlackBerry user, you’re in familiar territory.

Availability of apps is something a lot of people consider when getting a smartphone and luckily, the BlackBerry App World has enough of them for you to download. A total of about 14,000 apps listed on the App World should be enough, right?

The top apps I’d download on any other smartphones are there — Twitter, FourSquare, Facebook, Dropbox. There are games as well but I noticed most of the apps here are paid instead of free. I guess developers think BB users can afford to buy apps than most other smartphone users.

The NFC feature is cool to have but because there aren’t any NFC-capable devices/services around to pair it with, it remains just that — a nice, un-usable feature.

Call quality is very good but the audio is just average (as mentioned earlier, the speaker was positioned at the back beneath the battery lid.) The absence of an FM tuner isn’t a biggie but some might still want that feature in their handsets.

Battery life is decent, not the very best, but is expected of any BlackBerry Bold before it. If you’re not heavy on the apps, it will last you 2 to 3 days of regular use. Just wondered why they didn’t bump it to at least 1500mAh though.

The BlackBerry Bold 9900 isn’t perfect — it’s obviously targeted to a niche group of people, those who prefer functionality, speed and organization more than gaming, multimedia and screen real estate.

It will be hard to sell the Bold 9900 to someone who’s used to large screens and virtual keypads but it’s an easy sell, and I’d even dare say, a top choice for those looking at a qwerty smartphone. That, plus the fact that BBM still rules in some segment of the market.

When RIM said that the BlackBerry Bold 9900 is the best BlackBerry they’ve ever made, I’d easily agree and say yes. But that nod practically ends there. If you’re not into the BIS and BBM, there’s the cheaper Nokia E6, the HTC Chacha and the Samsung Galaxy Pro.

The handset is out in the market with a suggested retail price of Php31,690 and was released last week (some stores sell unlocked units for as low as Php28,500). I’d suggest getting it with a postpaid plan so it’s free or subsidized.

The post BlackBerry Bold 9900 Review appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Ok, let’s pretend for a moment that the Cloudfone Ice was a direct competitor to the Smart Netphone 701. Globe’s ad somehow gives us a hint in that direction (the strategic naming of the phone is also a giveaway).

Let’s look at the hardware specs and see which handset is better (funny how Huawei and ZTE are always the brand behind all these).

Except for the screen and RAM, the two handsets are like cousins (much like what the Samsung Ace is to the Galaxy SL).

The biggest difference is in the price point. The Smart Netphone 701 is twice the price of the Cloudfone Ice. The two handsets belong to different price categories. In hindsight, people would look at the price first and say the Cloudfone Ice gets you the better bang for your buck. We Filipnos are very price-sensitive.

At that price range, the Cloudfone Ice competes with the likes of Alcatel and Cherry Mobile Android phones while the Smart Netphone competes with Android handsets from LG, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.

If we look at the postpaid offering, I am more inclined to compare Smart Netphone’s Plan 999 to Globe’s SE Walkman W8 with My Super Plan Unli Surf Combo 999.

The differentiator — SmartNet. Both handsets run on the Android platform but the Netphone adds a social ecosystem on top of that.

Comparing the Smart Netphone to Globe Cloudfone is like comparing a BlackBerry Curve 3G on BIS to a Nokia C3 on SuperSurf. They’re different and the deciding factor will still depend on one’s needs and budget.

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