iPhone 5 & Samsung Galaxy S3: More Alike Than They’d Admit

If you’re in the market for the best smartphone around right now, you’ve got the choice of the iPhone 5 or the Samsung Galaxy S3. You’ve got two minutes to choose – how do you do this?

Samsung Galaxy S3 vs iPhone 5 (quick comparison)

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has sold 20 million units so far, and expects to shift another 10 million before the end of the year. It has a 4.8” Super AMOLED screen with 1,280x720p, and a 306ppi. It runs on Android 4.0, but is getting Jelly Bean very soon, and has 4G.

Storage options are a 16GB, 32GB and 64GB version, starting as low as $99 with some major US carriers. You can get it in blue, white, grey, black and red, depending on your region.

The iPhone 5 has a 4” Retina screen with a 1,136x640p resolution, giving a ppi of 326 and a 16:9 ratio. The iPhone 5 has Apple’s latest OS, iOS 6, and you can take your pick from 16, 32 and 64GB versions. The 8MP camera is very well-regarded indeed and the phone runs on a dual-core A6 chip. The battery promises eight hours of talk time.

The iPhone 5 starts at $199 on a two-year tie-in, and it’s out on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. This phone is thinner – by 0.04” – than previous iPhones and is 0.75oz lighter. You can choose either black or white.

In terms of hardware, both phones are more similar than they’d like to admit – hi-res displays, 4G LTE connectivity, dual-core processors, 8MP cameras and slim/light bodies. Really, it comes down to a choice of operating system and which one you prefer – iOS or Android. So pick up both devices and have a roam around the home screen, settings and their respective app stores. The answer will lie there and not at the bottom of a specs sheet.