Plastic has many plus points from the consumers point of view, weight a huge factor in a drops, flexibility and shock absorption again in drops or bumps, cost savings for the manufacturer leading to less corners cut elsewhere and an easy ergonomic design and ease of permanent colours in the body.
I hope the hard home button is two tone in colour and texture like the S3, I hate it when my phone looks good
Weight isn't really a plus point as aluminium is
extremely light too i.e. the one S is 119g and the iphone 5 is 112g
Also, ergonomic design isn't really an advantage of plastic only i.e. the xperia P and HTC one, both are ergonomic, aluminium can be shaped to whatever you want. Granted it does take more time and money though.
Main advantages of plastic over aluminium is flexibility and shock absorption as you said (although many phones have some form of shock absorption on the insides anyway).
However, the GS 3 isn't durable at all despite being plastic, since the glass front extends right to the edge so when dropped, the screen will shatter, more easily than the majority of phones.
I dropped my one S the other week on concrete from waist height and the screen is in perfect condition, just a few nicks on the MAO finish (not dents), if it had been the GS 3, I am pretty sure that the screen would have been cracked and if it had been the GS 2, there wouldn't have been a single mark most likely
And indeed! If they are going to be keeping that awful button, they better make sure that it matches the rest of the casing!
Hard home button is great as it means it won't have the stupid black bar on the screen for buttons like the Nexus devices etc.
Also plastic doesn't bother me, it will be in a case anyway! Rather have plastic than glass or metal anyway I think as it's much more durable - glass breaks and metal dints where as plastic will just flex and if it does break it's cheaper and easier to replace.
S3 battery life is fantastic, my housemates S3 LTE seems pretty decent anyway, much better than my S2 with extended battery.
The S3 looks good to me and pretty much everyone I know agrees, don't get what all the hate on here is about!
The reason the black bar on the screen for the nexus devices is due to the buttons being part of the screen, Samsung can loose the hard home button and make it a capacitive touch sensitive button like the other 2 buttons.
It comes down to preference in the end really but in my eyes, the gs 3 is just awful looking, things I hate about it:
- hard home button, which doesn't look quite right (GS 2 it looked fine)
- corners/edges are far too curvy/rounded especially the bottom
- glossy brushed plastic just does not work
- the speaker/flash/camera design area, looks like they have just been stuck on with glue
- hard home button not having the hyperglaze finish so it looks even more out of place
Battery life is great on the gs3, however, for their next gen phone, it should be improved, especially as the htc one should have better battery life than the gs 3 by a good bit! (going by the DNA and one XL and specs etc. of the one)
And you should be happy it comes off so you can get a replacement battery and micro sd card in there!
And dropping a plastic phone is a much nicer experience than dropping an iPhone or Nexus 4 trust me!
They could do it in such a way so you don't need to remove the back cover in order to insert a SD card, many phones out there that have the SD slot on the side, just like the SIM card slot these days. iirc did HTC not have uni-body phones were you could still access the battery etc.?
And as above, there is more to how durable a phone is rather than just what material is used. If the glass screen extends right to the edge of the phone again like the GS 3, then it is going to be just as easy to break as any other fragile phone out there, probably more so depending on what you compare it to.
I just find it disappointing that they make a superb phone in terms of hardware that is going to cost £500+ and then stick it in a cheap feeling plastic chassis, which in turn just makes the phone feel like a child's toy imo.
Besides it isn't so "much" that plastic is being used as has been shown with the one X and nokia lumia phones, plastic can feel and look great if done right (still pales in comparison to aluminium uni-body though
). It is just I know that Samsung aren't going to loose that crappy nature artistic approach
a kick out at apple.
