The iPhone 5 as expected featured a larger screen, a faster processor with improved camera. One of the high end devices that could be compared with the iPhone 5, especially when it comes to performance, is Samsung's Galaxy S3, which happens to be the best-selling Android handset of the year. But the real question is - which one should you buy, the iPhone 5 or the Samsung Galaxy S3?

Design

iPhone 5 is 7.6mm thick with a uniformed metal casing and a non-removable battery while the Samsung Galaxy S3 is 8.6mm thick, plastic casing with removable battery.

Apple took aggressive measures to make the iPhone 5 as thin as possible. The rear layer of glass has been evidently diminished, the phone uses a thinner Nano-SIM and the screen technology merges its constituent layers to squish everything down as far as possible. As a result, it's just 7.6mm thick, a full millimetre less than the 8.6mm thick Samsung Galaxy S3.

Apple has also tweaked the design of the iPhone 5 making it extremely handy, despite being mega-thin. Its edges are slightly bevelled, rather than stepped as it was on its predecessor, which further makes the device hand-friendly.

Crucially, the new etched aluminium back of the iPhone 5 is much less slippery than previous versions and body build quality is exceptional, compared with Galaxy S3's all-plastic finish that uses a flimsy, ultra-thin back cover thus making it look practically less tough.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 is also significantly larger than the iPhone 5. The ginormous 4.8in screen of the S3 adds to its 71mm width, while the iPhone 5 is around 58mm wide. Some could find the Galaxy S3 a bit too big for comfort but it kind of offers a larger view centre.

Screen

iPhone 5 has a 4 inches IPS (In-Plane Switching technology) display panel with 1,136 by 640 resolution whereas Samsung's Galaxy S3 sets in a larger 4.8 inches Super AMOLED, 1,280 by 720 resolution. Super AMOLEDs offer superb black response and vivid colours, but IPS screens tend to look a little more natural.

Apple deviated from her same size screen size tradition for every generation of iPhone since its inception of the original iPhone in 2007 by giving the iPhone 5 a 4-inch up with wider landscape screen view without making the phone any wider. Although its Pixel density is the same as the iPhone 4S but with improved aspect ratio, it will make it much better to watch movies on.

Power and Processing

iPhone 5 braces with 1GB RAM on A6 processor with power TBC, although S3 has same 1GB RAM but Exynos Quad-core 1.4GHz powers its processing. The figures from the processing analysis from both core revealed that the Exynos quad-core did a little better. iPhone 5 is twice faster than the dual-core 1GHz CPU and PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics processing chip on the iPhone 4S.

Cameras

The Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5 are both equipped with an 8 mega pixel and LED flash. Although, many elements of the iPhone 5 have been improved hugely over its predecessor, the camera has only been given a slight upgrade.

The S3's camera features include image stabilization, touch-focus and 1080p video capture which did better than the iPhone 4S.

However, iPhone 5's upgraded camera offers an impressive panorama mode with automatically tap-to-pan image creator which also keeps the full size image and gives you up to 28 megapixel images.