So Iphone 5 has a good build quality because it survives the drop test, but Iphone 4s has a good build quality because?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elKxgsrJFhw

I admire the RDF you guys use.

GS1-2 had really good built qualities. Infact I used to drop the phone everyday just to show people how durable it was. And here is another drop test performed by Cnet: http://cnettv.cnet.com/8301-33814_53-57468819-10391737.html

It is obvious that because of the increased screen size GS3 might be inferior to GS1-2 in durability but I am sure that it is still more durable than 95% of the phones out there today.

They are US variants. I don't care about them but obviously some might do so fair enough.

It has nothing to do with fragmentation. The SOC on the international model is incompatible with the LTE network hence the SOC change. They all run the same apps and the performance difference between them is negligible to the user. Check the reviews of US variants, pretty much every reviewer said that you'll be hard pressed to find a meaningful difference between them. And because of the benchmarking difference between them Samsung threw in a 2GB RAM.  

I am tired of this fragmentation argument. All Android phones run the same apps with a few exceptions as long as they are powerful enough. Sure there are problems here and there but it doesn't really mean much. I think Apple fragmentation is worse because Apple intentionally prevents older users from getting new features, not because those phones aren't capable but because to promote new phones.

And I'm tired of *this* argument. Apple "withholds" some features, yes. But they generally do it for hardware reasons. Siri isn't on the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 because of hardware... The company added on board hardware to deal specifically with the background noise requirements of Siri and they haven't added voice activation to any product that does not have that hardware. Flyover probably doesn't work on older hardware because the software is demanding. It's not terribly surprising to see a company remove features that could seriously tax the hardware after going through the iPhone 3G/iOS4 slowdown fiasco.

Android's fragmentation isn't a serious problem... Yet. But it IS a looming issue that needs to be resolved. You can't expect developers to support 500 hardware configurations, 50 different skins, AND five different operating systems, especially when those customers spend about 1/4 of the money on apps that their iOS counterparts spend. By allowing too much freedom with their OS, Google could very well be backing themselves into a corner as everyone goes off in different directions with their software. Google has to work to streamline their OS for developers or those developers will turn to the friendlier confines of the App Store or Windows Store.

When did "durability" become synonymous with "build quality"? The two have little to do with one another. A Faberge egg is terribly fragile but I don't think anyone would claim that its "build quality" is low. Personally, I think Apple made a mistake with the glass-backed 4/4S because it suffered from a functionality standpoint... The phone should survive at least a nominal drop. But that doesn't mean its build quality was low. It was a very well built phone that had some design choices I didn't agree with at the time (and still don't).

The SII/SIII are fine phones with good build quality. Hell, I almost bought an SIII before deciding to wait for the new iPhone 5 instead (screen size and my frustrations with my current Android phone were the main reasons). But if you hold an SIII next to a top of the line Apple or Nokia, its build quality suffers by comparison if only because it uses cheaper components in its construction.

Oh sure, dude. A 50% speed boost in browsing is no big deal, a 50% speed boost in 3D rendering is hardly noticable, nobody cares if one phone can load in twice the software of the other, and changing out the baseband chip requires changing out every single other component of an SoC, obviously. Glad you cleared that up for me.

And you accuse others of living in an RDF field.

Just because one of them performs significantly better than other in a certain test doesn't mean it will always perform better in real life stiuations. If you really think that international model can have 50% percent advantage in browsing speed and 3D rendering over the US variants I have nothing else to say to you. They are very close SOCs in performance actually. For example, Sony Xperia T has the Snapdragon S4 as well but actually performs better than the international GS3. I think there may be something wrong with Samsung's implementation of SS4 if the test results are that much different. And benchmarks actually doesn't mean much, sure they can be used as a tool but the results cannot always be trusted. Just an example, my benchmarks was significantly lower after the Jelly Bean update. However, the UI was much, much better, games and other apps were much faster.

My point wasn't even that by the way. The initial claim was they perform differently because of Android fragmentation. I pointed out that it has nothing to do with that. It is just because the SOC isn't compatible. I've just added that they perform close in real life situations. Sure there are differences, but it has nothing to do wih fragmentation.

FWIW, I've heard there isn't much real-world difference between the US and international SIII. The international is a little faster (obviously) but it's not a big deal in actual use. That's just what I've heard from people who have used both.

While the concept of the test is interesting, the approach is pretty terrible ... They should have created a dropping rig that would drop the devices in a consistent fashion and used multiple phones.

I understand why they didn't do this (after all that would be expensive) but it means that I wouldn't really trust their findings like I would trust the work of an organization like Consumer Reports.

Yeah, it's not scientific.  But you can find plenty of such tests on youtube, and they all end up with the same result.  Which is that the iPhone 5 is a more resistant phone.

I  think durability is one of the most important aspects of design. Apple got that right in Iphone 5 it seems, but Iphone 4/4S was bad. And seriously what components in Iphone is expensive compared to a Galaxy? Actually a GS3 cost significantly more to produce. Almost half percent of the components in an Apple device (excluding the Iphone 5) are produced by Samsung. The rest is mostly aluminum and glass and they  are not that musch expensive. Samsung can use aluminum of course, but then GS3 would probably weigh more than  200 grams. Nokia uses the same plastic and their phone weigh 185 grams, I don't know how they achieve that.

In my opinion, the reason why people think that Galaxy phones are inferior in build quality is that their designs are not that good. I am not fancy of GS3 design either, while N9 is great in that department. They should really do something about that in GS4.