Samsung Galaxy SIII: 12 Years Later and Now Just £15

MOBILE PHONE REVIEWS

Hamish

6/2/20245 min read

Today, we’re diving back into the world of budget smartphones, and it looks like we’ve stumbled upon a real bargain. The Samsung Galaxy SIII, despite its somewhat oversized packaging, is what we have on our hands today. Found on eBay, this isn’t a one-off auction win; it’s readily available for about £15 from various sellers.

Interestingly, the seller reached out with a message, which was unexpected. They didn’t say much, just confirmed the delivery time and threw in some encouragement to upgrade from my old phone. The phone arrived within two days, and despite the cheap packaging, it was in good shape and even had some battery life left, which was a nice surprise.

Before we jump into the specs and potential mods (because we’re definitely going to try that), let’s talk about the out-of-the-box experience.

The Specs - A 2012 Powerhouse

Now the specs of the Samsung Galaxy SIII certainly are interesting released 12 years ago now back in May of 2012 I can remember when they came out and being absolutely blown away by the size and the quality of the display with a 4.8” SuperAMOLED Display running at 720p it seemed absolutely huge, powering this though is an inhouse Samsung Exynos 4412 CPU with 4 Cores at 1.4Ghz, and the well renown Mali-400 Graphics Chip, this being the MP4 Variant which from my understanding mostly just comes with higher clocks than the regular chip. It has a 2100Mah battery which you can conveniently change in seconds, but unfortunately is limited by 1GB of DDR3L RAM, the speed isn’t an issue, but the quantity certainly might be…But for £15 you are getting an absolutely phenomenal level of power…So whats next for the mighty Galaxy SIII

So, what’s next for the Galaxy SIII?

The first thing I did was check out the XDA Forums to see if there was still any development for this model. Surprisingly (or maybe not), there’s still a lot of activity. I found a version of Android 14 from the legacy fork of Lineage OS, which meant it was time to start modding.

But modding wasn’t straightforward. The goal was to install a custom recovery using Odin and TWRP, but the phone wouldn’t communicate in recovery mode nor download mode. We tried everything—different drivers, software versions, even different Windows operating systems—but nothing worked.

We then turned to less conventional methods like Kingroot and Kingoroot, which are typically used for automated rooting (and have a questionable method of going about it). Kingroot was a no-go, but Kingoroot eventually recognized the phone after several tries. It showed some progress, but we kept hitting a wall at the last step.

After days of trying, we couldn’t root the phone or flash a custom recovery, a frustration echoed on the XDA Forums. Some people even tried reinstalling their computer’s OS, all for nothing.

So, we shifted gears to see how we could make the phone as usable as possible without any deep mods. We started by replacing the outdated Samsung launcher with Nova Launcher, which sped things up a bit. Web browsing was tough on the original browser, but after some research and testing, Via Browser proved to be the most stable option.

As for gaming, the Galaxy SIII used to impress with its display and graphics. Now, we’re going to see how it holds up in 2024.

Gaming and Performance on a Shoestring

Kicking off our gaming test, we started with Oddworld Munch’s Oddysee. Originating from the Xbox, the game ran in full HD resolution on the Galaxy SIII. There was a minor graphical glitch that resembled interlacing on text screens, but it wasn’t a dealbreaker. Overall, the game performed well, looked sharp, and was quite playable, especially on the larger screen—a notable feat for a port newer than the phone itself.

Moving on to Minecraft, the old pocket edition was the only version available for download via Google Play. With the settings maxed out, the game maintained a smooth 60fps, though there were occasional dips during chunk loading. A quirky bug in the settings menu required a game restart to exit, but gameplay remained unaffected.

Half-Life 1, powered by the Xash3D Engine at 720p HD resolution and full 32-bit color, ran almost flawlessly at 60fps. The only slowdowns occurred during game loads, possibly due to the phone’s aging internal flash storage. Running the game from an SD card might mitigate this issue. It seems most games from the late '90s and early 2000s are fair game for the Galaxy SIII, making it a steal at £15.

For emulation, we dove into DS emulation, which worked well with multi-core processing and some enhancements, despite a slight screen size limitation. Performance was solid, and the games ran smoothly, suggesting the Galaxy SIII could serve as a decent emulation device.

We also tested other emulators, like ePSXe for PlayStation games. Titles like Metal Gear Solid ran without frame drops, fully playable with enhanced settings, though the controls required some adjustment. Gameboy games, too, ran flawlessly, even with upscaling and additional effects like CRT filters. These looked particularly vibrant on the Galaxy SIII’s display, perhaps due to increased saturation settings.

The main limitation we faced was the Android 4.4.4 OS, and while some might criticize the mere 1GB of RAM, it wasn’t an issue—except when using Google Chrome, which slowed the phone considerably. It’s unfortunate we couldn’t root the phone or install a custom OS. Remote app installation from a PC was necessary, as direct downloads from Google Play weren’t possible. However, most apps were still compatible, and even older versions functioned well.

The Camera... A bit dated by today's standards

The camera quality was decent, not as impressive as I recall, but serviceable. Here are some sample shots:

The Final Verdict