Samsung Galaxy S III Phone Bristles With Extras - State of the Art Olivia Harris/Reuters The Samsung Galaxy S III's designers have married hardware with software to create dozens of handy features. When Samsung wants to win, it doesn't kid around. Its new flagship Android phone, the Galaxy S III, is teeming with features aimed at humiliating the iPhone. It's like a boxer entering the ring with ceramic body armor and semiautomatic weapons. The question is, Does it all work together to create a masterpiece? Or is it a heap of chaotic spaghetti? The Galaxy S III is available from all four major carriers in the United States - Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile ($200 for the model with 16 gigabytes of storage, with a two-year contract). It runs on each carrier's fastest data network - 4G LTE, for example. The first thing to know: This phone is huge. Its 4.8-inch screen is a broad canvas for photos, movies, maps and Web pages. But you can't have a big screen without a big body, and this one is more VHS cassette than postage stamp. It's the old trade-off: A big phone is better when you're using it, but a small one is better when you're carrying it. Still, once Samsung decided to incorporate a Jumbotron, its designers did a spectacular job designing a case around it. The back is glossy plastic (white or dark blue), rounded at all edges and corners. It's superthin - 0.34 inches, even thinner than the iPhone - and feels glorious; when you're nervous, you can rub it like a worry stone. Samsung may not call it a Retina display, but the screen actually has more pixels than the iPhone's, 1,280 by 720 pixels versus 960 by 640. It's nearly as sharp, too: 306 pixels per inch instead of 326. It's an Amoled screen: bright, vivid and relatively energy-efficient. The Galaxy has a removable battery and a memory-card slot - take that, Apple! It runs the latest version of the Android operating system from Google (4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich). The camera on the back takes bright 8-megapixel photos, although they're not very sharp. More important, the S III's designers have married hardware with software to create dozens of truly ingenious, handy features. On the iPhone, Apple would probably crow about any one of these: ¶ Smart Stay. The phone's front-facing camera looks for your eyes. When you look away, the screen dims to save power; it brightens back up when you return your gaze. Brilliant. ¶ Buddy Shot. The Galaxy's face recognition software knows whose face is in the scene. The first time you take a photo of someone, you can type in the subject's name - your mom, for example. Thereafter, whenever you take her photo, one tap sends it to her without your having to fuss with entering an address. ¶ Direct Call. If a texting conversation is getting too complicated, just lift the phone to your ear. It calls your texting partner, no taps needed. ¶ Tap to top. Swat the top edge of the phone to jump to the top of a list. ¶ Tilt zooming. With two fingers on the screen, tip the phone toward you and away to zoom in and out of a photo, map or Web page. ¶ Instant muting. Mute audio and video playback by covering the screen with your hand, as though to say, "Shhhh!" Mute incoming rings and notifications by turning the phone face down on the table - in a meeting, for example. That's just so, so smart. ¶ Palm swipe capture. Save an image of the screen by wiping the edge of your hand across it, as though you're the scanner of a photocopying machine. ¶ Answering key. You can answer an incoming call by pressing the Home button, and hang up by pressing the on/off button. No need to look at the screen. All of these features are optional - you turn them on in Settings. There's another crazy-great idea in TecTiles: small, embedded-circuit stickers ($15 for five). When your phone gets near a sticker, it activates some task that you've selected from a list of dozens in the free TecTiles app: make a call, send a text, adjust a phone setting and so on.