Best Smartphone for Q4 2012 on Verizon Wireless

The fight of the titans is going on in the marketplace and in the courtrooms. There are many powerful and easy to use devices on the market. Verizon has top contenders from Apple, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung in their lineup. All of them have or had some sort of lawsuit somewhere in the world against each other. Right now, we're only interested in which one is the top contender and not who is going to win the battle in the courtroom. The choice was tough. There are many good choices, but in the end our pick goes to the Samsung Galaxy S III despite it being released before the Apple iPhone 5 or HTC Droid DNA.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is one of the most advanced smartphones currently on the market. It'll get even better when it gets Samsung's Premium Suite upgrade. It's a little bit on the large size being that it is 4.8 inch smartphone, but it's smaller then HTC's Droid DNA. Apple's iPhone is better at 4 inches, but it suffers growing pains. It's like watching an analog video on an HDTV, black bars show up when old apps are used on the new larger iPhone 5. No matter the size of the device, Android doesn't have this issue. While Apple improved iOS with the notifications shade, Android has long had this feature. What separates Samsung's Galaxy S III from other Android phones and even the Apple iPhone are motion gestures. One of the motion gestures we really like is Samsung's Smart Stay. It keeps the display on when you're looking at and turns off the screen when you're not. It makes a whole lot of sense compared to the display sleep setting. This is especially useful when reading an e-book. Apps either use the sleep setting and turn off the display while you're reading, or it forces the display to stay on and drain your batteries. With Smart Stay, the smartphone only needs to keep the display on when you are looking at it. Another neat motion gesture is Direct Call. Just pull up the contact and take the phone to your ear and it'll automatically call that contact. What happens if you miss a call? If the phone is face down and the screen is turned off, Smart Alert will vibrate the phone when you pick it up to let you know that you've missed calls. There are even more motion gestures but these are the ones we liked. The Galaxy S III also has other features such as Google Maps. It's practically on every Android phone, but the S III's large screen makes it easier to use. It's one of Google's crown jewels and there isn't a better solution unless you're talking about actual GPS navigation devices like Garmin's Nuvi. Apple Maps is like beta and in its infancy, but Apple is working on improving it. Another feature the Galaxy S III has an advantage over iPhone 5 is NFC. We're actually surprised and not surprised that Apple did not include NFC with the iPhone 5. We're not surprised thou because Apple seems to like proprietary solutions, and their war on Android is probably another reason why they didn't include it. With NFC, the user can tap to pay if they're using Google Wallet or ISIS. Another way NFC is used is Samsung's S-Beam. S-Beam is where the user taps the phone with another Samsung smartphone with NFC to share pictures and files. With a powerful processor, microSD card slot, user replaceable battery, and a multitude of neat and innovative features, the Samsung Galaxy S III is our pick for best smartphone on Verizon Wireless.

Innovative in its own right, another smartphone to consider on Verizon Wireless is the newest in Verizon's line of DROID marketed phones, the DROID DNA by HTC. It's currently $199 after two-year agreement. It was a close call. We would of picked the Samsung Galaxy Note II with its replaceable battery, microSD slot, and the neat apps that Samsung includes with the stylus, but it wasn't enough to justify the $100 USD premium over the DROID DNA. The Apple iPhone 5 was another close contender, but it also doesn't have a microSD slot or user replaceable battery, and in our opinion really isn't that much of an innovation over the iPhone 4S. Another issue with the iPhone 5 is that Apple Maps is a work in progress. With smartphones getting bigger, they're also becoming our navigation devices as well.
In the next segment of our Best Smartphone series, we'll be discussing the best overall smartphone for Sprint.