Galaxy S3, iPhone 5 vs Lumia 920, the specs battle

The time has come to talk about the differences between Samsung’s Galaxy S3, Apple’s iPhone 5 and Nokia’s Lumia 920 in terms of specifications. And things look as follows.

In terms of touchscreen, the iPhone 5 has a 4″ display that features a resolution of 1,136 x 640 pixels. The Galaxy S3 has a display of 4.8″. Compared to these two, the touchscreen on the Lumia 920 is a 4.5″ one. Everybody was expecting a larger screen on the iPhone 5, but alas, it didn’t happen.

The processors

The processors on these three devices also differ from one another. While the Galaxy S3 and the Lumia 920 run on a quad-core Exynos 4412 1.4GHz and a dual-core Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz respectively, the iPhone 5 uses a dual core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU.

Moving on to operating systems, here is what we noticed. The version on the iPhone 5 is the iOS 6. The Galaxy S3, on the other hand, features the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Then there is the Lumia 920, which boasts Windows 8. The iOS version 6 includes things like turn-by-turn navigation, FaceTime over 3G and so on. The Windows 8 OS sports a Live Tiles UI. The Ice Cream Sandwich operating system has a custom user interface. Its name is TouchWiz (even if Samsung still works with an older Android version, the company said that the 4.1 Jelly Bean version will come somewhere near the end of 2012.

The cameras

All three smartphones we are comparing here ship with 2 cameras each. In the case of Samsung’s Galaxy S3, one of its cams is a 1.9MP one with 720p@30fps. The second camera is an 8MP one. It offers LED flash, autofocus and 3264×2448 pixels. The cameras on the Lumia 920 are these two: one an 1.3-megapixel and the other an 8-megapixel, too, with 3264 x 2448 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, optical image stabilization, autofocus and dual-LED flash. One of the cams on the iPhone 5 is an 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash. The second camera is 1.2MP (with 720p@30fps).

Each of these cams has something different to offer. But all of them make sure that the user can videochat with loved ones. The cams on the Lumia 920 have an added advantage: they can plug in camera apps. If, at some point, you want to take pics at night, the Galaxy S3 and the Lumia 920 come with a burst mode. The latter was added so that the user can snap millions of photos once. Moreover, the optical image stabilization feature on the Nokia smartphone is there to get you rid of blurs.

A thing that struck our fancy when we tested the 3 displays was that they delivered very good performance. Even if the touchscreen on the iPhone 5 was a bit underwhelming compared to the other two. But most of that had to do with the fact that it’s not as large as expected.

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Compared to the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S3, the display on the Lumia 920 has something more: a Nokia PureMotion HD+ addition. Which means superior image quality on the whole. Even though the screen on the Samsung Galaxy S3 had 306ppi along with Super AMOLED HD, quality is not as perfect as the company wanted it to be. Still, we haven’t seen such stunning touchscreens in quite a while.

The batteries are another spec the three devices do not have in common. For example: the one sported by the iPhone 5 is a 1440mAh model. The Galaxy S3, on the other hand, uses a 2100mAh battery. Which can be removed easily. Finally, the battery featured on Nokia’s Lumia 920 is a 2000mAh battery.

Surprisingly, Apple’s new iPhone 5 lacks something that’s very important nowadays: NFC. Without it, you cannot charge the device wirelessly. Both the Galaxy S3 and the Lumia 920 have this technology. In terms of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, all of the devices here include them. Each of the smartphones, though, offer compatibility with 3G/HSDPA. However, only the iPhone 5 boasts full 4G LTE.

The iPhone 5 comes with a new type of dock connector. Which is known as Lightning.

The memory and storage

Memory and storage depends on each of the three smartphones we’re talking about today. Compared to the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S3, which include 16/32/64 GB storage and 1 GB of RAM, the Lumia 920 has 32GB of on board storage. Samsung’s newest phone offers 25GB and also 50GB of Dropbox storage along with microSD card support. Nokia’s Lumia 920 ships with a SkyDrive cloud storage system.

All in all, the Galaxy S3, the iPhone 5 and the Lumia 920 are smartphones with all sorts of pros and cons if taken together. In the end it all depends on what consumers want from such a device. Based on that they can buy the model they consider good for them. Hopefully the comparison here will help our readers make up their minds.