Android Beam gets a boost in S Beam, which can share videos and photos with a tap.

Android Beam gets a boost in S Beam, which can share videos and photos with a tap.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Not every one of the GS3's special additions is essential, and some, like sharing content through AllShare Play and GroupCast, are unnecessarily complicated to set up and use. While Samsung deserves kudos for brainstorming and implementing these features, customers will care more about overall camera performance than the capability to tag friends' faces in photos.

S Beam: Built on top of Android Beam for Ice Cream Sandwich, the Samsung-only S Beam wields NFC and Wi-Fi Direct to "beam" larger-file photos, videos, and documents -- that's in addition to Android Beam's capability of sharing URLs, maps, and contact information. Behind the scenes, NFC initiates the handshake, and the Wi-Fi Direct protocol takes over for larger files. The combination isn't groundbreaking, perhaps, but Samsung deserves credit for packing it up in one seamless action. As with Beam, you won't have to do more than press the backs of the phones together, confirm the beam, and pull the phones apart. The larger the file, the longer it usually takes for the transfer magic to happen.

S Beam worked flawlessly every time I tried it. Samsung really does get a high-five for this addition, which goes beyond simple cleverness to actual usefulness.

S Voice: And then there's S Voice. Samsung's answer to Apple's Siri, S Voice is a personal assistant that plumps up Android's built-in Voice Actions into the more personal format that Apple popularized with Siri. Vlingo powers S Voice on the listening and interpretation front (Siri uses Nuance), and sources answers from databases like Wolfram Alpha. You launch S Voice by double-pressing the home button, and can wake up S Voice in between commands by saying, "Hello, Galaxy" (this is optional and drains the battery faster.)

You can do a lot with S Voice (left), but only if it understands you (right.)

(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

S Voice can launch apps and turn-by-turn navigation; switch into driving mode; voice-dial; tweet; get the weather; compose a memo; search contacts; and schedule tasks. It can also take a photo, place and answer calls, search the Web, adjust the volume, send e-mail and text messages, record voices, and launch the native music player. It also ties into Android 4.0's lock screen security, so you can use your voice to unlock the phone. As a bonus, you can program four of your own voice commands to open the camera, record your voice, and check for missed calls and messages.

S Voice sounds great in theory, but it didn't work well. Sometimes it didn't work at all. Throughout my testing period, I used S Voice extensively, asking the phone to perform the full range of tasks. Sometimes it delivered what I wanted immediately, like driving directions or turning Wi-Fi on and off. Other times, it must have stuffed cotton in its digital ears and repeatedly garbled or blanked on what I wanted. My favorite was when it knew exactly what I said, repeated my command (you can choose voice feedback in addition to text,) and then did nothing. There was also the time that S Voice stalled on deleting an alarm, then ignored my subsequent request to finish the first one.

S Voice is Samsung's garbled answer to Apple's Siri.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

On the whole, S Voice is more rigid than Siri about syntax and the software takes a while to process. Unless I'm driving or otherwise hands-free, I find it faster and less frustrating to set your own alarm, or turn on driving directions before engaging the ignition. Siri also has its share of slowness and interpretation issues, but it's performed more consistently for me in my tests thus far. Stay tuned for a more detailed comparison with Siri, and in the meantime check out our CNET UK editor's test, in which S Voice clearly won only one out of 15 voice test scenarios, a poor showing that makes S Voice seem more like a beta product than a Siri substitute. I'll update this review with a similar showdown.

Sharing software: Multimedia sharing is a Galaxy S3 emphasis, with four main ways to share your stuff through different means, like DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct protocols.

AllShare Play uses DLNA to share multimedia across your Samsung TVs, tablets, and phones, so you can play a video you shot on your phone on the TV, and do things like control the volume from your handset. A Web storage element has you access content on your other devices by tapping into a third-party client, SugarSync.

Face recognition software prompts you to tag yourself and your friends, even on photos taken with the front-facing camera, like this one.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

GroupCast, which you can use as a presentation service, uses AllShare Play. It takes seven steps (including a password and PIN number) to set up the share, but once you do, you can share a folder -- like slides or photos -- across all phones you've invited into the GroupCast. Any device can control the screens, and annotate with pen strokes that fade after a few seconds. Samsung should let the GroupCast leader lock it down.

Buddy Photo Share is a neat optional in-camera feature that can e-mail or text a freshly shot photo to the person you tag in it. Photos show up in a "received" folder in the recipient's gallery.

ShareShot is a camera shooting mode that uses Wi-Fi Direct in the background to automatically send photos to your friends as you shoot them, instead of e-mailing them after the fact. Multiple people can get in on the deal -- so long as they're within about 100 yards, about the length of a football field. Photos also appear in the gallery. You lose ShareShot when you switch shooting modes.

My problem with these tools is that some of them have unintuitive and disjointed user experiences. It isn't always obvious how to get to a feature, how to sign others up, and how to find your shared content afterward.