My SG3 review / experience.

ChazUK said:

Great post but I must ask.....

Why are you using GS whilst watching a video and driving?

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asr10 user said:

Yes, 100 min is pretty low. I have not been doing voip at home, but thats the plan. So hopefully using that helps a bunch.

I will probably start paying either $40 or $50 a month for 200/300 minutes. Just need to get a feel of how the minutes go.

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asr10 user said:

I have owned my SG3 for about 12 days now and previously have owned nothing but Blackberries and iPhones for the last 7 years. Like many I was worried about actually owning a phone made by Samsung and leaving the very comfortable world of iOS.

I'll only slightly get into the pro's and con's of the SG3, but what everyone else says is pretty much how I feel. I will mostly talk about new things I have done on the SG3 that make my experience what it is.

Cool stuff:
Multitasking is great. I can actually do picture and picture video while still using the phone. Sounds cool and useless, until I started using this while the built in turn by turn navigation is running. Everyone who has seen this while in my car, simply cant lift their jaw off the floor. Imagine looking at a map while driving, while watching a small video and being able to click on either to maximize.

Navigation runs in the background so I can be playing music, streaming netflix,
doing whatever, and a voice will say 'turn left in .2 miles'. Using this thing in the car has changed everything for me.

Apps:
Of course apps for iOS are prettier. But almost every major app is the same, and lots are actually better on Android because they allow more sharing options, and great widget useablity. The Android exclusive apps which I use are just AMAZING. They allow me to do stuff that I could never ever imagine doing on a phone.

Poweramp: Music player which automatically downloads artwork, lyrics (karaoke in the car???) allows left to right swiping of songs, up and down swiping of albums.

Swiftkey: Alternate keyboard which has many cool features such as swipe left to delete word and learns your slang.

Tasker: The mother of all Android Apps. Basically lets you program your phone to do whatever you want. Needs its own post.

Car Home Ultra: Car dock app that allows you to set quick launch icons. Automatically starts when docked. Imagine XBMC or a 10 foot interface for your car.

Android OS/Touchwiz
I love touchwiz. I dont plan on rooting or doing a custom rom, I can do lots with touchwiz. I had an HP Touchpad running ICS so I was used to how Android works, so I didnt really have a learning curve like other new SG3 owners. At first the SG3 might be pretty clunky looking and confusing, but I had it down within an hour.

Touchwiz features are very nice. The built in briefing alarm is impressive, you can set an alarm to wake you up with a gradual white noise that gets louder for 3 minutes before the real alarm starts. The real alarm will verbally say 'its now xx time, the weather is x, the weather for the day is x, your appointments are x, the top story of the day is x' then your alarm tone will play. Wow. I use my calendar religiously so to wake up and have my alarm actually tell me whats planned for the day is a savior. And its built in.

I can go on lots more about touchwiz and features I like. But ill get to the stuff I dont like

Battery: Its not as great as the iPhone 4, but not too bad either.
Build quality: Yes it feels a bit cheap, it looks gorgeous from the front, but the back is horrendous. Its also very very light, which I personally dont like, but some do. Home button feels pretty crappy, I wish it was capacitive.
Stock dialer/phonebook/text apps: Very very bad compared to iOS. It takes about 3 pushes to call someone, and the text app is also pretty crappy. Luckily you can change all of these with 3rd party apps.

I sold my 32gb iphone 4 for $350, got the SG3 NIB for $400 (both on Craigslist), switched from paying monthly $110 on ATT to $30 on T-Mobile (!!!!) and all in all, I am very happy with my choice. I got tired of iOS, got tired of having the same phone as every hipster, female, and 8th grader. Was totally excited for the iPhone 5 until I saw iOS6.

I feel like me switching from iOS to Android is the same thing that happened when I went from Blackberry to iOS. One was stuck in its ways and was not forward thinking enough, the other allowed me to see the future.

I should end with I do love iOS and intend on buying an iPad for home. I have a few hundred $$ on iOS apps and have multiple Airplay setups at home. But now I love Android just as much.

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Diiiiips said:

What is so jaw dropping about watching video and getting navigation at the same time? Tomtom does the same thing. It will even fade the music down so you can just hear it, speak, and then fade it back up.

I have just Googled Tasker, however. That looks pretty awesome. I can believe there isn't something like that in Cydia.

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utl768 said:

is there an itunes like app for the mac i can use to put stuff on my s3?

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Vegastouch said:

TomTom is also $50

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Calidude said:

Actually, I'm thinking of going on the 1 year prepaid plan on Straight Talk for $495 which figures out to $41.50 a month. I've been saving a ton since I finally bought my Nexus to replace my iPhone and cancelled my ATT service, which I was paying 80 bucks a month for and is still pretty much the same thing as what I'm paying currently 45 bucks a month for.

Might wanna look into Straight Talk if you havent done so already.

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phillytim said:

One of my buddies went over to the S3, and he
does nothing but moan and complain about how he needed to reset his S3 and Android would not save ALL of his settings & apps unless he "rooted" it, which he didn't want to do. In iPhone-land, this is simple as pie to backup & restore your phone, should you really ever need to, with no loss of any settings or apps.

He complains that the stock Google apps should "be better".

He complains about the Bluetooth quality of calls sucking and is even to the point of unusable with his Toyota car.

He complains that his precious Galaxy S3 hangs on some apps and needs a reboot every so often.

He complains that TouchWiz causes an error and needs to restart every so often.

The grass is not always greener, and in the S3's case is DEFINITELY not greener. The 4S (and coming 5) are indeed the gold standard of communication devices.

Apple has spoiled us for all other phones, at least Android ones.

People should just appreciate & reward what we do have, and not reward other manufacturers for bad phones with Android being a cheap, imitation knock-off operating system that people need to tweak and fiddle with and reboot all the time!

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phillytim said:

One of my buddies went over to the S3, and he does nothing but moan and complain about how he needed to reset his S3 and Android would not save ALL of his settings & apps unless he "rooted" it, which he didn't want to do. In iPhone-land, this is simple as pie to backup & restore your phone, should you really ever need to, with no loss of any settings or apps.

He complains that the stock Google apps should "be better".

He complains about the Bluetooth quality of calls sucking and is even to the point of unusable with his Toyota car.

He complains that his precious Galaxy S3 hangs on some apps and needs a reboot every so often.

He complains that TouchWiz causes an error and needs to restart every so often.

The grass is not always greener, and in the S3's case is DEFINITELY not greener. The 4S (and coming 5) are indeed the gold standard of communication devices.

Apple has spoiled us for all other phones, at least Android ones.

People should just appreciate & reward what we do have, and not reward other manufacturers for bad phones with Android being a cheap, imitation knock-off operating system that people need to tweak and fiddle with and reboot all the time!

Click to expand...

phillytim said:

One of my buddies went over to the S3, and he does nothing but moan and complain about how he needed to reset his S3 and Android would not save ALL of his settings & apps unless he "rooted" it, which he didn't want to do. In iPhone-land, this is simple as pie to backup & restore your phone, should you really ever need to, with no loss of any settings or apps.

He complains that the stock Google apps should "be better".

He complains about the Bluetooth quality of calls sucking and is even to the point of unusable with his Toyota car.

He complains that his precious Galaxy S3 hangs on some apps and needs a reboot every so often.

He complains that TouchWiz causes an error and needs to restart every so often.

The grass is not always greener, and in the S3's case is DEFINITELY not greener. The 4S (and coming 5) are indeed the gold standard of communication devices.

Apple has spoiled us for all other phones, at least Android ones.

People should just appreciate & reward what we do have, and not reward other manufacturers for bad phones with Android being a cheap, imitation knock-off operating system that people need to tweak and fiddle with and reboot all the time!

Click to expand...

phillytim said:

One of my buddies went over to the S3, and he does nothing but moan and complain about how he needed to reset his S3 and Android would not save ALL of his settings & apps unless he "rooted" it, which he didn't want to do. In iPhone-land, this is simple as pie to backup & restore your phone, should you really ever need to, with no loss of any settings or apps.

He complains that the stock Google apps should "be better".

He complains about the Bluetooth quality of calls sucking and is even to the point of unusable with his Toyota car.

He complains that his precious Galaxy S3 hangs on some apps and needs a reboot every so often.

He complains that TouchWiz causes an error and needs to restart every so often.

The grass is not always greener, and in the S3's case is DEFINITELY not greener. The 4S (and coming 5) are indeed the gold standard of communication devices.

Apple has spoiled us for all other phones, at least Android ones.

People should just appreciate & reward what we do have, and not reward other manufacturers for bad phones with Android being a cheap, imitation knock-off operating system that people need to tweak and fiddle with and reboot all the time!

Click to expand...

phillytim said:

One of my buddies went over to the S3, and he does nothing but moan and complain about how he needed to reset his S3 and Android would not save ALL of his settings & apps unless he "rooted" it, which he didn't want to do. In iPhone-land, this is simple as pie to backup & restore your phone, should you really ever need to, with no loss of any settings or apps.

He complains that the stock Google apps should "be better".

He complains about the Bluetooth quality of calls sucking and is even to the point of unusable with his Toyota car.

He complains that his precious Galaxy S3 hangs on some apps and needs a reboot every so often.

He complains that TouchWiz causes an error and needs to restart every so often.

The grass is not always greener, and in the S3's case is DEFINITELY not greener. The 4S (and coming 5) are indeed the gold standard of communication devices.

Apple has spoiled us for all other phones, at least Android ones.

People should just appreciate & reward what we do have, and not reward other manufacturers for bad phones with Android being a cheap, imitation knock-off operating system that people need to tweak and fiddle with and reboot all the time!

Click to expand...

daveathall said:

I must admit that my experience differs greatly from your friends, I have not had any of the problems that he has, sounds like a faulty phone IMHO. I was open minded when I had the S3 and my iPhone 4S. I sold the 4S after using the Galaxy S3 for a month. I had the 4S for a year, a 4 before that and a 3GS before that. I regard the Samsung GS3 as the best phone I have owned so far.

I am hoping that the new iPhone will be even better than the S3 as I still have an upgrade pending, it will need to be really good for me to change though.

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AustinIllini said:

I had the S3 for 29 days, and on the last day I could replace it, I did. The S3 is absolutely fantastic and I enjoyed most of the experience, including 4G LTE. However, the one thing I was concerned about turned out to be a lot bigger than I had thought it would be. The problem for me was really the integration across devices. Everything got more annoying for me. My mac, my Apple TV, and my iPad either wouldn't talk to my iPhone or else I would have to trick the device.

What I can conclude is that android is, without a doubt, iOS's equal in every way, shape and form, and future android phones will continue to rival (and in many ways be better) than the iPhone. For the time being, I will take a lesser device in favor of cross product integration.

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