S3 owners (Android 4.3): can you help me with lock screen issues?

I bought an S3 i9300 as a business phone, and I'm having problems with the lock screen. Running 4.3 stock.

The first thing is that it takes between 2 and 3 seconds for the screen to wake when I press the Home or Power buttons. This is considerably slower than my everyday-use iPhone 4S, which takes about 1 second. I don't know any other S3 owners, but this delay doesn't appear to be normal. I'm using a PIN lock screen. I tried disabling the personal message, but it didn't help. Any ideas?

Also, I can't seem to find a way to access the camera from Lock screen. It looks like the ability to use Swipe and PIN unlock together was removed between 4.1.2 and 4.3.

Anyone able to help me out here?

Heavy Fluid said:

Did you try to remove the PIN and just use swipe to unlock? See if that is it first.

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I don't see the point, tbh. PIN unlock is the lowest acceptable level of security I can use on this phone. I think I do recall the screen used to wake from sleep more quickly when Swipe was the chosen unlock method, just after I purchased the phone. But that doesn't help me any.

bkends35 said:

On 4.3 you have to swipe from the very right side of the screen because of the lockscreen widgets.

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I'm not sure what you mean by swiping. I tried swiping from both sides of the screen, and there's no response at all. Are you sure you're referring to a PIN lock screen?

bkends35 said:

As for the lag when unlocking that's normal on touchwiz. That's why I cannot stand touchwiz, it's extremely annoying and really cannot be fixed.

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Ouch. Really? That's rough.

Boy, I may seriously have to consider a custom ROM, even though I was trying to avoid that for warranty reasons. I really want to give Android a fair crack of the whip, but I'm not impressed so far. I've noticed walkthroughs on rooting etc. that claim not to trip the KNOX warranty trigger, but how trustworthy is that?

Heavy Fluid said:

OK - I had to get mine out and power it on. I have an SCH-I535 on Verizon Wireless as a back up phone. I set the screen lock to PIN (I had it on pattern) and swiping to the left and right does nothing. That works on the pattern lock but not the PIN.
[…]
When the PIN is enabled, it looks like shortcut widgets are disabled. If you set the pattern they are disabled as well. It appears that if you use any type of security on the device, widget shortcuts are disabled. That is probably some sort of a security feature.

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Yes, that's what I suspected. Well, thanks for confirming.

Heavy Fluid said:

OP - is there an update for your phone? I am on 4.4.2 currently. There is no lag when the screen goes dark and I hit the home or power button, the screen turns on immediately.

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Unfortunately I won't be updating to 4.4.2 because it removes access to the App Ops feature (unless you root, which voids warranty). The other thing is the SGH-i535 is quite a different phone, despite being marketed as an S3. You have a different CPU and GPU, and 2GB of RAM compared to my 1GB. Still, your CPU is actually slightly slower, so there's no reason I can think of why my phone should take longer to wake the display. I think I may go to the store where I purchased my phone to see if they can make a comparison with the models they have there.

mib1800 said:

Did you try to remove S-voice from using the double-home activation? I remembered seeing somewhere if you did this it will have less delay.

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This was one of the first hints I found when doing a search. It made no difference, unfortunately. Also, this delay only affects the Home button, whilst I'm seeing the lag with the Home and Power buttons.

Thanks for the advice guys.