[Xperia Z General] hydenobuyuki:
I've played a lot with the Galaxy S3 and the Xperia GX as these were the two phones I was debating over purchasing.

I eagerly anticipated the big announcement of the Galaxy S3 but counting down to and watching that big live press conference was incredibly anti-climatic when I saw the actual phone. It was so overwhelmingly disappointing on the industrial design front but I figured I have to see it in person to give it a chance.

I eagerly anticipated the Xperia GX as well and went to see pre-production models in person. The industrial design was good but the performance was so poor.

In the end, industrial design can't magically be improved but software could.

In the Japanese market, the Galaxy S3 is the exact same S4 SoC as the Xperia GX except the Galaxy S3 has 2GB of RAM.

Playing with this 2GB device, it was super smooth (far smoother than the Xperia GX pre-production model). Animations felt smooth albeit slow (in that transitions took too much time to happen but were not laggy). The Galaxy S3 is kind of an awkward and awkward looking shape and very large but it did not feel so bad in the hand. It was not too thin like NEC Medias phones but not too thick either. It was also an okay weight.

In the end though, it's the 2GB of RAM that made the difference more than any custom software that watches you watch it or allows you to beam things even better than everyone else but only if you can find other people with the exact same phone. The gingerbread-like version of touchwiz for ICS from Samsung was another major killjoy along with capacitive buttons (I want real buttons or onscreen buttons)

So, with the Galaxy S3 in one hand and a pre-production model in the other hand, I compared these two devices (plus the Tegra3 Fujitsu phone and the Sharp ZETA phone and the Xperia SX, that annoying-to-use evangelion phone, etc...)

Everything in the line up aside from the Tegra3 Fujitsu phone has the same S4 SoC so makers need to bring a lot more to the table to steer me away from buying the Xperia GX. Most domestic (in Japan) makers' devices are not all that great (I don't consider Sony to be domestic until autumn) so it was easy to whittle down the selection to only the Galaxy S3 and the Xperia GX.

Galaxy S3 was smooth with 2GB of ram.

Xperia GX became just as smooth after getting a lot of optimizations in the subsequent couple of updates before launch.

Galaxy S3 and Xperia GX were both easy to use, not too thin/thick, not too light/heavy.

Xperia GX in matte black felt like decent materials (the same rubbery matte finish on the black X10s)

The GX in white looked good but didn't feel so good in matte (glossy might have been a better choice there)

The galaxy s3, on the other hand, felt super cheap and plasticy in the material.

Build quality is not that poor but it feels cheap.

Xperia GX in the end became the obvious choice for an LTE phone on my carrier.

Each device needed to differentiate itself from the others but a lot of the GS3's differentiators quickly started to become moot

while the Xperia GX's industrial design carried through. (Having GB-style touchwiz is not a positive differentiator)

As I wrote, I was initially really disappointed with the firmware build on the Xperia GX, but in the end they dramatically improved it so I purchased the Xperia GX.

Only gripes are that copy and paste is hard to use sometimes and that it's hard to distinguish the camera button from the power button when not looking at the orientation of the phone. I've pressed the wrong one so many times.

While it is unfortunate the GX does not have the stacked Exmor RS camera, I'm perfectly satisfied with the camera.

I've had the GX for 2 weeks now and I'm very happy I purchased it over the Galaxy S3.