Samsung Galaxy S III (MetroPCS)

The Samsung Galaxy S III is MetroPCS's best smartphone, although you'll pay a high up-front price for this quality. MetroPCS's version of the Galaxy S III brings 4G LTE speed and great tricks like Wi-Fi calling and Google Wallet with NFC. It's good stuff, and we're giving it the Editor's Choice for objectively being the finest phone on MetroPCS's network. But it's also $499, and with MetroPCS potentially switching its focus to GSM in six months, I can't help but wonder if there are even better devices coming down the pike then.

Editors' Note: This review was revised with new information on ongoing VoLTE support.

The big issue here is T-Mobile's impending purchase of MetroPCS, which would take effect in mid-2013. On day one of the merger, the combined company will start selling T-Mobile-compatible phones and shift its focus to folding the MetroPCS network into T-Mobile's.

CDMA phones like the GS3 wouldn't stop working. LTE coverage and speeds will actually get better as they join T-Mobile's new LTE network, and as MetroPCS's CDMA voice network slowly gets turned down, voice calling will switch over either to Sprint's network or to MetroPCS/T-Mobile's own voice-over-LTE system. So your Galaxy S III's coverage won't get any worse with time; it'll actually get better.

Considering MetroPCS's spectacular LTE service plans (including $55 for unlimited talk, text, and data), that doesn't mean shunning MetroPCS between now and then. But I think that if you're buying a MetroPCS phone now, you may want to save your pennies and get a less expensive smartphone like the LG Spirit 4G?or the Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G , socking away the remaining cash for a killer phone on a growing network in 2013.

Physical Design
All of the Galaxy S III models look the same, except for the carrier logo on the back panel. MetroPCS's model comes in white plastic. At 5.4 by 2.8 by 0.34 inches (HWD) and 4.7 ounces, the GS3 is a large phone, although it no longer looks ridiculous in the age of the 5-inch HTC Droid DNA and 5.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Note II. That said, this is not a phone for folks with small hands.?

Solidly built, and light despite its size, the Galaxy S III is dominated by its 4.8-inch, 1,280-by-720-pixel Super AMOLED HD screen. Yes, it's PenTile, which can sometimes look slightly pixelated, but, no, you probably won't notice. Below the screen, there's a physical Home button, as well as illuminated Back and Multitasking buttons that start out invisible, so you have to memorize where they are or change a setting to keep them lit up. The 8-megapixel camera is on the back panel.?

The default Automatic Brightness setting makes the screen too dim. Kill it and pump up the brightness and it's fine, even outdoors. It's not as bright as the LG Connect 4G's Nova screen, but it's fine.

Taking off the back cover reveals the removable 2100mAh battery and a microSD card slot, which supports cards up to 64GB. Talk time was excellent at 12 hours, 15 minutes on MetroPCS's 4G network.

Network and Call Quality
The Galaxy S III performed very well on MetroPCS's LTE network in New York City. Reception was quite strong, and call quality was unusually good for MetroPCS. As with all Galaxy S III phones, you can tune the call audio to the frequencies you best hear, a nice touch. The speakerphone isn't quite loud enough to use outdoors, but it's fine for the car or a boardroom. The microphone does a good job of cancelling background noise. Bluetooth headsets work fine with Samsung's S-Voice voice dialing system.

Calls get enhanced by Joyn, the first voice-over-LTE service in America. Joyn isn't seamless to start?you have to download an app from Google Play and run it?but after that, it always launches at startup. Joyn's top improvement is clear Wi-Fi calling when you can't get MetroPCS signal. That's a big benefit. If you know other people with Joyn phones, you can also stream live video to them and get an improved SMS experience with read receipts.?

The service supports two-way video calling, but only over Wi-Fi. At that point you might as well use Skype or ooVoo and get a larger potential audience.

Here's the thing, though: Joyn works on a bunch of MetroPCS phones, not just the Galaxy S III. It runs on both the LG Spirit 4G and Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G, so you can get these features on less expensive phones than the GS3.

I got very good Internet speeds with the Galaxy S III, with an average of 7Mbps down and 3.4Mbps up. Metro's network has actually been getting faster with time, and that will get even better after the Metro/T-Mobile merger, as phones like this will be able to access both Metro's existing LTE network and T-Mobile's new LTE network.

The Galaxy S III also has Wi-Fi on the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, and NFC. Google Wallet comes preloaded on the phone.

Software and Performance
The MetroPCS Galaxy S III runs Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," and Samsung has said an update to 4.1 "Jelly Bean" is coming. Check out our full reviews of Android 4.0 and Android 4.1 for more information.

The 1.5GHz Qualcomm S4 chip in here isn't the most powerful on the market any more, but it still performs very well, and it's the fastest thing MetroPCS has to offer. For more on the phone's apps, camera and media playback, take a look at our review of the Sprint version of the Galaxy S III; this one performs pretty much the same.

MetroPCS and Samsung have added their own apps to the usual Galaxy S III build. Other than Joyn and Google Wallet, the most interesting is Easy WiFi, provided by DeviceScape. This is a nifty client which runs in the background and auto-detects and logs into public Wi-Fi hotspots. I'm always surprised to see how well it works. Otherwise, the phone is larded down with applications and media stores from both Samsung and MetroPCS.

Conclusions
The Samsung Galaxy S III is the best and most powerful phone MetroPCS is selling right now, which is why it gets a rather qualified Editor's Choice award. But if $500 is a serious chunk of change to you and you have the time to wait, I'd see what kinds of devices appear with MetroPCS plans after the T-Mobile merger. I suspect some impressive phones will appear, so that may be the time to plunk down big bucks. In the meantime, seriously consider the slightly less powerful, but much less expensive LG Spirit 4G as an alternative.

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