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The good: The Samsung Galaxy S3 comes absolutely loaded with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, 4G LTE/HSPA+ 42 capability, a active dual-core processor, and a able 8-megapixel camera. S Axle is an accomplished software enhancement, and the handset's amount is right.
The bad: The Galaxy S3's awning is too dim, and Samsung's Siri competitor, S Voice, disappointed.
The basal line: Pumped with high-performing accouterments and artistic software features, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is an excellent, top-end buzz that's abutting and abutting with the HTC One X.
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Set amount alert
With the Samsung Galaxy S III (S3), Samsung has done it again. For the third afterwards year, its flagship Galaxy buzz is a tidy amalgamation of top-flight specs, attainable design, abiding performance, and acute pricing. Starting its U.S. sales admission with bristles carriers -- Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular -- makes this smartphone about ubiquitous. Samsung's advancing administration activity gives it a leg up adjoin its arch Android rival, the HTC One X, but it fails to ambit HTC's finest, and Apple admirers will belittle at Samsung's apery Siri.
That isn't to say that the Galaxy S III (henceforth additionally accepted as the GS3) does not impress. From the alfresco in, it has a large, active HD display; Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich; a aciculate 8-megapixel camera; 4G LTE or HSPA+ support; a active dual-core processor; and bags of centralized anamnesis and 2GB RAM. The $199.99 amount tag for the 16GB adaptation is awful competitive, and that, forth with its carrier spread, makes the GS3 priced to sell.
Some accept airtight Samsung for formulaic specs and design, and to some extent, the critics are correct. Samsung isn't ambience accouterments standards with new creations, and the GS3's software additions, while absorbing and useful, mostly anatomy off absolute Android capabilities. Regardless, Samsung has connected to aftermath stronger consecutive models than its aboriginal Galaxy S home run. There's a acumen why the Galaxy S II awash over 50 actor units worldwide, and why the GS3's preorder sales burst U.K. records. Samsung acutely has its blueprint formed out for authoritative higher-end appearance familiar, expected, and calmly aural ability -- and in the all-around accomplished Galaxy S3, it shows.
Up abutting and claimed with the Samsung Galaxy S III (pictures)
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Pricing and availability
I don't usually alpha a analysis with appraisement information, but in this case, it's account the bird's-eye appearance of which carrier offers which accommodation of anniversary blush when, and for how much.

Design
It won't wow you with neon colors or evocative, automated design; it doesn't accept the sharpest awning on the market; and its anatomy isn't ancient from ceramic, glass, or micro-arc breakable aluminum. That said, the Galaxy S3 is about the nicest artificial buzz I've anytime seen. Acceptable annoyed of audition complaints about how cheap-feeling Samsung phones can be, the aggregation absitively to focus instead on authoritative the contours added exceptional -- afterwards giving up its light, inexpensive, and adamantine absolute of choice.

Samsung Galaxy S III
The Samsung Galaxy S III looks and feels smooth, glossy, and far added luxe than antecedent Galaxy handsets.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Peer carefully at the buzz (it comes in bowl white, bedrock blue, and afterwards a red adumbration absolute to AT&T) and you'll see that Samsung has angled the edges and corners to attain bland spines and trim pieces all around. The buzz designers additionally carefully abiding the abetment to accord the buzz added of a unibody feel.
Samsung doesn't shy abroad from aerial appearance and burnish in either white or dejected models and somehow, it all works. The pebble-blue array has lighter dejected spines than its animate gray-blue backing, and I like the brushed-metal atom to its uncompromisingly artificial finish. In addition, the buzz has acquainted acceptable in my duke every time I've best it up aback CTIA. It's ablaze and touchable, and seems to balmy to the touch, which gives it the faculty that it's befitting to your grip. Though smooth, the GS3 isn't slippery, and although adequately ablaze (at 4.7 ounces, aloof a tad added than the One X), it doesn't feel like it's missing a array or added capital components. The handset's awful cogitating surfaces are its best above architecture flaw.
When it comes to size, the GS3 is a big device. At 5.4 inches alpine and 2.8 inches wide, it's hardly above and thicker than the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Samsung seems to adore blame the envelope aback it comes to creating smartphone displays that bound on minitablet area (the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note alike became a band hit, with about 7 actor all-around sales.) Yet, the handset's abbreviate 0.34-inch width, contoured sides, and ablaze blanket add up to that adequate handhold.
My easily are adequately small, so I anesthetized the buzz about to see what others thought, behindhand of their claimed buzz choice. Best initially begin the GS3 large, but broiled up to it as they played around. Those with abate easily than abundance about anticipation it too big. About all of them commented on the ablaze weight. My colleagues additionally ashore the GS3 in front, back, shirt, and anorak pockets; anybody begin a way they said they'd backpack it (which absolutely alone proves that CNET editors are a able bunch.)
Samsung Galaxy S III
Press and authority the GS3's home button to apparent your contempo apps. Double-press to barrage S Voice.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Above the awning are the adjacency and ambient ablaze sensors, the indicator LED, and a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera. Below it is a concrete home button, which Samsung managed to accumulate in this handset, as against to the archetypal soft-touch aeronautics buttons we generally see in Android phones. In general, I can get abaft this affectionate of button, but the GS3's is hardly beneath comfortable in its squashed and attenuated anatomy than if it were a above rectangle or a square. Flanking this button are the aback key and the agenda key, which achromatize afterwards a few abnormal of use. It's absorbing that Samsung kept its agenda button rather than the absence recent-apps tab in Ice Cream Sandwich. You can still appearance contempo applications by captivation bottomward the Home button.
On the appropriate aback is the ability button, and on the larboard you'll acquisition the aggregate rocker. You'll allegation through a Micro-USB ability button on the bottom, and accept to audio through the 3.5mm angle jack up top. The 8-megapixel camera lens and axle are on the rear, with the microSD agenda aperture and Near-Field Advice (NFC)-capable array abaft the aback cover. The Galaxy S III takes a Micro-SIM card.
All about the screen: In agreement of awning size, the Galaxy S III's 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED affectation (with a 1,280x720-pixel resolution) fits appropriate amid the Galaxy Nexus (4.65 inches) and the Galaxy Note (5.3 inches), both of them honkers on their own. It's about identical to the HTC One X (4.7 inches.) How abundant you like the admeasurement depends on your alternative for large-screen phones. If you like 'em on the abate side, you'll acquisition this excessive. If you adore accepting added awning absolute acreage for account and watching videos, you'll acceptable approve.
Samsung Galaxy S3
The HD Super AMOLED awning on the Galaxy S3 (center) was dimmer beside added top smartphones, the HTC One X (top) and iPhone 4S (bottom).

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Samsung's new flagship buzz is one of the aboriginal handsets to use Corning's Gorilla Bottle 2, a thinner, lighter, added acknowledging awning bottle absolute that the two companies additionally say lets colors flash brighter. I absolutely noticed the screen's sensitivity; at times I almost had to besom the affectation for a response. Colors looked ablaze and active with the buzz in a aphotic setting, but accelerate to abounding accuracy and the awning sometimes seemed dark, abnormally aback compared with added phones at abounding throttle.
Like archetypal AMOLED displays, the GS3 overdoes it on the greens, which angle out added than on phones with LCD screens, or aback you appearance photos you took yourself. I downloaded a high-res angel with capricious contrasts and colors on bristles phones, additionally at aiguille accuracy -- the GS3, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, iPhone 4S, and HTC One X. The Galaxy Note's resolution was a little looser than that of the added four because of its lower pixel density. The GS3 showed a abundant dimmer account than the Galaxy Nexus did. Colors on the HTC One X and iPhone 4S were ablaze and looked truer to life. Blacks looked blacker on the Nexus' AMOLED screen, but there was far added detail throughout the images on the One X and iPhone 4S, which both use LCD screens with in-plane switching (IPS.) From there, affection was a tossup, with some appearance of the angel attractive bigger on the iPhone, and some attractive bigger on the One X.
Don't get me amiss -- the GS3's awning is still admirable aback you aren't analytical at it ancillary by ancillary with accession screen, but the allusive angel black is a little disappointing, and was abnormally apparent in my sunny-day photo and video shoots. Part of the awning billow botheration is that some apps, like the browser, were absolutely beneath ablaze by default. Alike aback I afflicted arrangement settings to abounding blast, the browser remained dimmer until I afflicted its alone accuracy setting. In general, I acknowledge Samsung's power-saving checks and balances, but blockage settings throughout the buzz was confusing.
Interface and OS
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich looks abundant on the GS3, abnormally because Samsung acclimated a lighter duke with its TouchWiz interface than on antecedent versions. That said, Samsung hasn't absolutely adopted all of Google's beheld cues, like the ICS agenda (I alone absence this interface touch.) With TouchWiz, Samsung is able to add things like gestures and systems ascendancy admission in the notifications pull-down. There are additionally the altered additions that Samsung tacked on to Android Beam.
Samsung Galaxy S3
Android Axle gets a accession in S Beam, which can allotment videos and photos with a tap.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Not every one of the GS3's appropriate additions is essential, and some, like administration agreeable through AllShare Comedy and GroupCast, are unnecessarily complicated to set up and use. While Samsung deserves acclaim for brainstorming and implementing these features, barter will affliction added about all-embracing camera achievement than the adequacy to tag friends' faces in photos.
S Beam: Built on top of Android Axle for Ice Cream Sandwich, the Samsung-only S Axle wields NFC and Wi-Fi Direct to "beam" larger-file photos, videos, and abstracts -- that's in accession to Android Beam's adequacy of administration URLs, maps, and acquaintance information. Abaft the scenes, NFC initiates the handshake, and the Wi-Fi Direct agreement takes over for above files. The aggregate isn't groundbreaking, perhaps, but Samsung deserves acclaim for packing it up in one seamless action. As with Beam, you won't accept to do added than columnist the backs of the phones together, affirm the beam, and cull the phones apart. The above the file, the best it usually takes for the alteration abracadabra to happen.
S Axle formed flawlessly every time I approved it. Samsung absolutely does get a high-five for this addition, which goes above simple ability to absolute usefulness.
S Voice: And again there's S Voice. Samsung's acknowledgment to Apple's Siri, S Articulation is a claimed abettor that plumps up Android's congenital Articulation Actions into the added claimed architecture that Apple affected with Siri. Vlingo admiral S Articulation on the alert and estimation advanced (Siri uses Nuance), and sources answers from databases like Wolfram Alpha. You barrage S Articulation by double-pressing the home button, and can deathwatch up S Articulation in amid commands by saying, "Hello, Galaxy" (this is alternative and drains the array faster.)
Samsung Galaxy S3
You can do a lot with S Articulation (left), but alone if it understands you (right.)
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
S Articulation can barrage apps and turn-by-turn navigation; about-face into active mode; voice-dial; tweet; get the weather; compose a memo; chase contacts; and agenda tasks. It can additionally booty a photo, abode and acknowledgment calls, chase the Web, acclimatize the volume, accelerate e-mail and argument messages, almanac voices, and barrage the built-in music player. It additionally ties into Android 4.0's lock awning security, so you can use your articulation to alleviate the phone. As a bonus, you can affairs four of your own articulation commands to accessible the camera, almanac your voice, and analysis for absent calls and messages.
S Articulation sounds abundant in theory, but it didn't assignment well. Sometimes it didn't assignment at all. Throughout my testing period, I acclimated S Articulation extensively, allurement the buzz to accomplish the abounding ambit of tasks. Sometimes it delivered what I capital immediately, like active admonition or axis Wi-Fi on and off. Added times, it charge accept blimp affection in its agenda aerial and again broken or blanked on what I wanted. My admired was aback it knew absolutely what I said, again my command (you can accept articulation acknowledgment in accession to text,) and again did nothing. There was additionally the time that S Articulation adjourned on deleting an alarm, again abandoned my consecutive appeal to accomplishment the aboriginal one.
Samsung Galaxy S3
S Articulation is Samsung's broken acknowledgment to Apple's Siri.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
On the whole, S Articulation is added adamant than Siri about syntax and the software takes a while to process. Unless I'm active or contrarily hands-free, I acquisition it faster and beneath arresting to set your own alarm, or about-face on active admonition afore agreeable the ignition. Siri additionally has its allotment of slowness and estimation issues, but it's performed added consistently for me in my tests appropriately far. Stay acquainted for a added abundant allegory with Siri, and in the concurrently analysis out our CNET UK editor's test, in which S Articulation acutely won alone one out of 15 articulation analysis scenarios, a poor assuming that makes S Articulation assume added like a beta artefact than a Siri substitute. I'll amend this analysis with a agnate showdown.
Sharing software: Multimedia administration is a Galaxy S3 emphasis, with four capital agency to allotment your being through altered means, like DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct protocols.
AllShare Comedy uses DLNA to allotment multimedia beyond your Samsung TVs, tablets, and phones, so you can comedy a video you attempt on your buzz on the TV, and do things like ascendancy the aggregate from your handset. A Web accumulator aspect has you admission agreeable on your added accessories by borer into a third-party client, SugarSync.
Samsung Galaxy S3
Face acceptance software prompts you to tag yourself and your friends, alike on photos taken with the front-facing camera, like this one.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
GroupCast, which you can use as a presentation service, uses AllShare Play. It takes seven accomplish (including a countersign and PIN number) to set up the share, but already you do, you can allotment a binder -- like slides or photos -- beyond all phones you've arrive into the GroupCast. Any accessory can ascendancy the screens, and comment with pen acclamation that achromatize afterwards a few seconds. Samsung should let the GroupCast baton lock it down.
Buddy Photo Allotment is a accurate alternative in-camera affection that can e-mail or argument a afresh attempt photo to the being you tag in it. Photos appearance up in a "received" binder in the recipient's gallery.
ShareShot is a camera cutting approach that uses Wi-Fi Direct in the accomplishments to automatically accelerate photos to your accompany as you shoot them, instead of e-mailing them afterwards the fact. Multiple bodies can get in on the accord -- so continued as they're aural about 100 yards, about the breadth of a football field. Photos additionally arise in the gallery. You lose ShareShot aback you about-face cutting modes.
My botheration with these accoutrement is that some of them accept unintuitive and aimless user experiences. It isn't consistently accessible how to get to a feature, how to assurance others up, and how to acquisition your aggregate agreeable afterward.
Features
An Android Ice Cream Sandwich buzz through and through, the GS3 is absolutely loaded with all the Google goodies, and again some. There are the Google apps and services, like Gmail, Maps with turn-by-turn articulation navigation, a music player, and YouTube, to name aloof a few. Wi-Fi, GPS, Wi-Fi Direct, and Bluetooth 4.0 are added advice features, forth with NFC (which admiral being you can do with TecTiles and Google Wallet.)

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WHO: Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon
WHAT: A rental house in the Hamptons
WHERE: North Haven, NY
HOW BIG: 7,500 square feet, 6 bedrooms 6.5 bathrooms
HOW MUCH: Beaucoup bucks

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: International mega-star Mariah Carey owns (at least) three multi-million dollar residences—in Los Angeles, the Bahamas and The Big Apple—but she's a long-time renter in the Hamptons, that traffic-choked but none-the-less drooled over sliver of sand at the far eastern end of New York's Long Island where the rich, the famous and those that hang with (and on to) the rich and famous flock in droves each summer to see and be seen on the casually dressed but relentlessly paced summertime social scene.

Miz Carey—whose admittedly impressive vocal acrobatics are completely lost on Your Mama—is blessed with bank accounts that seem to know no limits when it comes to livin' life high on the real estate hog. In summer 2008 Madame Butterfly (allegedly and reportedly) shelled out $125,000 for a one week stay at Stone Meadow Farm, a land-locked, 8-acre spread in East Hampton that offered the high-maintenance lady an 18,000 square foot main mansion with 10 bedrooms and 12.5 bathrooms plus two additional cottages to house her retinue of weave mistresses, toenail clippers, purse toters and angry-looking body guards.

The summer before that Mimi & Co. reportedly dropped around $350,000 to shack up for a month in retail clothing tycoon Tommy Hilfiger's 5 bedroom and 5.5 bathroom ocean front residence on East Hampton's much-coveted, astronomically expensive, and celebrity-lined Further Lane. Mister Hilfiger has since sold the property.

Some rather clever sleuthing by an informant we call Chatty Charlie indicates (but does not exactly prove) the multi-platinum Grammy winner, her variety show host husband Nick Cannon and their 1 year old twins have settled this summer into The Peninsula, a private, 1.9-acre bay front estate with 650-feet of water frontage in the wooded North Haven area of the Hamptons near Sag Harbor.*

*Mister Cannon tweeted several photos of himself lounging by the pool in what is, to anyone with eyeballs, quite obviously the back yard of The Peninsula property in North Haven.

The length and financial terms of their (alleged) Hamptons rental are unknown—at least to Your Mama—but listing information we juiced up out of the interweb reveals the swank spread was last listed for lease at $125,000 for just the month of July and $150,000 for the month of August (through Labor Day).

Remote-controlled gates open to a driveway that splits and s-curves up the front of the approximately 7,500 square foot cedar shingled mansion and swoops around to and attached, side entry 3-car garage luxuriously equipped with radiant heated floors. We don't know it to be but would any of the children be at all surprised to learn the garage was also air conditioned? No, of course not.

A double-height foyer and circular vestibule lead to the main living/entertaining areas that include a "formal" living room with French doors that allow for a sweeping view over the backyard, through the trees, and over the bay towards Shelter Island; a formal dining room (with big ol' butler's pantry); a den with built-in bookshelves, entertainment center, fireplace and more French doors; and a colossal, center island eat-in kitchen finished with miles of Shaker-style cabinetry (some with glass doors), acres of thick slab marble counter tops and the full complement of top-grade, commercial-style appliances. A shallow archway connects the family- and chef-friendly kitchen and breakfast area to a somewhat compact, window-lined family room with fireplace and even more French doors that open to the backyard.

There are 5 family/guest bedrooms, one on the main floor and four on the second. Each family/guest bedroom has a private pooper and two second floor suites have French doors that lead to private, water side terraces. The extensive, second floor master suite encompasses an entry vestibule, large bedroom with private water side terrace, separate, essentially octagonal sitting room with fireplace, and a walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom plus a separate dressing room. The attached bathroom is slathered in marble and mirrors and features dual sinks, giant jetted bathtub with water view, a cubby for the crappy (and bidet) and a separate multi-head (steam) shower.

The finished basement, according to one listing we perused, is outfitted with a movie theater, a wine cellar and—natch—staff quarters.

The back of the house opens to a Balinese resort-style complex with a massive, 60' x 30' negative edge swimming pool and party-sized spa flanked by a pair sunbathing decks that appear to float on the shimmering surface of the water. Photos tweeted (and captioned) by Mister Cannon show a very déclassé chain link fence was installed around the swimming pool and spa, presumably to keep the Carey-Cannon twins from crawling across the yard and falling into the water.

Although The Peninsula estate is just about entirely surrounded by water, there isn't any actual beach, at least not one that's easily accessible. There is, we note in aerial images available online, a gorgeous and secluded sandbar where (we imagine) nude sunbathing would hardly be noticed by anyone but only the most intrepid beach seekers would bother to tramp through the marshy woods that surround the landscaped areas immediately around the house, swim or boat across a slender creek, and traverse a scrubby dune to get there.

Should Mister and Missus Carey decide they really dig it, The Peninsula property is currently for sale with an asking price of $14,995,000, reduced from $16,900,000. Property records show The Peninsula is owned by a New York City-based real estate investor who also owns a trio of contiguous apartments in an architecturally festooned but dour, 35-foot wide townhouse supremely situated on East 78th Street just off Fifth Avenue and designed in 1900 by renowned high society architect C.P.H. Gilbert. The three third floor units were on the market until late May (2012) with an asking price of $8,750,000, reduced from its original $8,900,000 price tag.

Anyhoo, as mention at the outset, Miz Carey and Mister Cannon maintain (at least) three multi-million dollar residences: A fortified, hilltop mansion above Bel Air in Los Angeles, CA formerly owned by Farrah Fawcett and bought in 2009 for around $7,000,000; a titanic triplex penthouse in New York City's TriBeCa nabe opulently done up by Mario Buatta, a man who never met a chintz that didn't make him sweat with decorative desire; and an ocean front compound in the Bahamas scooped up sometime in 2008 for somewhere near $5,000,000.

listing photos: Corcoran and Prudential Douglas Elliman