Samsung Galaxy Iii Verizon Wireless Survey The GS3's sexy specs and glossy good looks (particularly in pebble blue) won me over. On launch day, I swapped my beloved Droid Razr Maxx, for the Samsung Galaxy S3. Prior to the Maxx, I briefly owned the Verizon version of the GNexus (which I can't recommend at all). Before I get into the nitty gritty details, with pro's, con's and comparisons, at the time of this review, this is the phone you have been waiting for--the phone that will make you use that upgrade or cause you to sign a ridiculous contract with Verizon. After spending ten minutes with the phone, it's an obvious step up from the Razr Maxx and Galaxy Nexus--the former top tier Android phones on Big Red's network. Performance As much as I loved my Razr Maxx (and its marathon 2-3 solid days of battery life), after spending a few minutes with the GS3, the performance leap is very noticeable. The GS3 is silky smooth, with no lagginess at all. Apps (particulary heavy duty games like GTA III) launch quickly and are game play is flawless. I know many of you aren't going to play anything requiring more than the occasional fling of a few angry birds, but the GS3's ability to handle hardcore mobile games with ease is a sure fire indicator that it will be able to run 99. 9% of the apps out there in two years. In other words, this phone has the chops to allow you to make it through your contract without starting a countdown for your next upgrade. How about some real world examples of the GS3's muscle? The Qualcomm S4 chipset with an industry leading 2gb of Ram can cut through 1080p video files like butter. Surprisingly, it was able to play back a 23. 5 mbps AVCHD file using hardware decoding decoding!!! I was even able to take play back the file with the video in screen, while I did a couple of google searches. The average $400 laptop would have a tough time handling that! The GS3 doesn't disappoint on the audio side either. While HTC touts its Beats Audio Technology, that's nothing more than a brand name equilizer setting with limited value-- unless you're spend $100 or more on a beats headphones (which I personally don't care for). Sammy, on the other hand, dropped in two Wolfson digital to analog converters, which allows the GS3 to pump out lossless high bit rate music with ease. Using a pair of Etyotic HF3 IEM earphones, sound quality was crisp and clean for music playback. Even lossy tracks streaming from Amazon Cloud sounded surprisingly full. Much more so than on some other phones that I own. In terms of music playback, the GS3 is every bit the equal of the iPhone and possibly a little better. The Screen The's GS3's 4. 8", 720p HD screen is a stunner! The Super AMOLED panel provides rich color saturation and outstanding contrast. The panel used to make the screen is beautifully fabricated. the slight curve in the design makes it a pleasure to touch. Text is crisp and I see no issue with this most recent implementation of pentile technology. The fuzziness from Galaxy S, GNexus and Fascinate is a thing of the past. Watching videos on the GS3 is a treat. All is, however, not perfect with the GSIII's screen. While the contrast and color saturation are strong points for the phone, if you like natural color tones, the pumped up saturation levels may bother you. Personally, I would dial back the saturation level if I could. The GS2 had a settings menu that allowed users to tweak brightness, contrast, tint and saturation. For reasons I don't understand, that great feature was some how left behind on this next gen phone, which is a real pity. While saturation is a matter of taste, the real issue with the screen though is brightness. Even cranked to 100%, the screen still seems to be a few nits behind the curve. I would love to be able to dial up to 120%. The maximum brightness is noticeably less bright than the screen on the Maxx (which Motorola sourced from Sammy). So, what gives? I am not sure, but my best guess is that in the interest of improving battery life and to compensate for the size of the screen (and the power that size screen will suck), Sammy choose to put a software restriction that limits the ability of users to pump of the brightness. Hopefully, this can be cured by a future firmware update. While the brightness could use a boost, this deficiency is further amplified by awful auto-brightness implementation. When auto-brightness is turned on, the phone makes sudden and drastic adjustments in brightness even in a consistently well lit setting. It seems as if the software has only 3 settings for brightness when it is set to auto--low, medium and high (which isn't that high to begin with). The phone will drop from high to low suddenly, leaving the
screen unreadably dark. Until Sammy sends out a software update to fix the problem, I have disabled the auto-brightness feature. Software Implementation The user interface for this latest version of touchwiz is really very nice. This phone provides IOS levels of comfort and ease of use to a smartphone beg The Galaxy S3 is a 4. 0. 3 Android ICS 4. 8" AMOLEDHD 720P 2GB of RAM, fantastic device. The features that this phone has are top-tier and the gesture control (while gimmicky) is amazing to show off. I still keep a few on cuz they come in handy. The device is also incredible fast and smooth, and the screen looks perfect. People will complain that this has a PENTILE display, which has faced very harsh reviews on other phones. However, due to the high-resolution display there are so many pixels that the PENTILE isn't noticable at all. The saturation really adds to the screen and all of the colors pop. The quickness is partially due to Verizon, but mostly due to the S4 processor inside which easily matches the Tegra 3 quad-cores in tablets and the overseas version of this. In short, for $200 you won't find a better new phone. The speaker on the back is loud, the sound is amazing, the earbuds this comes with are actually pretty good, the processing power is phenominal. The camera is also the best of any phone. . . its essentially the iPhone 4S's camera. . . that Samsung made for them. . . but tweaked to use more cool features. The front camera works wonders with Tango and Google+. . . both are Android/Google's "Facetime" and work with anyone who has a front camera, unlike Facetime, which requires iOS. The people that give this bad reviews are doing so because of Verizon, not the phone itself. Verizon decided to opt out of a lot of things that people want this phone for: 1) NFC. . . payments made from the phone using a wireless connection and Google Wallet were switched off by Verizon, all other carriers get it. 2)Dropbox--a cloud based storage system. This phone comes with 50GB of dropbox storage. . . 25GB on some carriers. . . Verizon's gets 0GB 3) The bootloader, or way to easily root the device and get inside to tweak everything about the device (what Android is best for since everything is open-source) is locked and encrypted. . . Verizon is the only one refusing to open it. 4) Onboard apps--Verizon's tools like backup wifi detection always turn on and interupt what I'm doing. In fact, when opening ANY app that uses data, Verizon has a big pop up that asks you to switch to an open wifi so you dont use their data. . . you have to physically hit the "no" every single time. . . even when checking facebook you have to. It's sooooo anoying. So, in summary, this is the best phone in the world. . no exaggeration, literally every website, including Mac World, rave about this thing. . . Verizon's version is severly limited due to them being greedy, arrogant, idiotic. . . well you get the idea. If you want easy access to rooting, hacking(which is encouraged with android devices. . . google even awards people who hack into their devices to improve them. . . the Nexus Q being the best example. . . during the reveal of the device at their conference they stopped to tell people how hackable it is). . . get the Galaxy Nexus or wait until this Christmas when the next "Nexus" device is out. I for one, was just tired of waiting and this device was the last one to allow me my unlimited data. If you have questions, ask. This review is for the 16GB, blue, Verizon S3. Owned for 5 days now, and played with extensively, but not rooted. Fantastic upgrade from my Droid X. ICS by itself is worth the price ($199 from the Verizon store, btw). Hardware seems plenty fast despite not being the quad-core international version. 16 GB + a 32 GB sd card gives me plenty of storage. 4G LTE is blazing fast at my location (SE Michigan). ICS, how do I love thee? I can finally disable all the annoying Verizon (& Samsung) apps w/o rooting (though you need to root to fully uninstall them). Multitasking is greatly improved (hint: long-press home button). Stock apps are almost good enough to stick with (almost, not quite, esp. the keyboard & browser). Hardware: good camera, fantastic AMOLED display. Pentile, sure, but can you really tell? HD movies look gorgeous and play smoothly. Decent speaker for speakerphone or listening to podcasts. The display is huge, and the phone is a bit big for one-handed operations, but it's also thin and fits in your pocket no problem. Oh, and it looks great. Almost a shame to put a case on it. Good battery life. I've been going a full day on a single charge with medium-heavy usage with plenty to spare. Not watching movies or anything that requires the LCD to be on for hours at a time, obviously, but for most usage, you should be fine just plugging in
at night. Nitpicks: Major 1 - Power button placement on the right, usb port on the bottom. I'm hitting the volume keys on the left far too often when turning on/off the phone. Could just be personal preference as I'm used to the power button on top on the Droid. USB port on the bottom makes no sense though. Major 2 - No MSC (Mass Storage Control) transfer, only MTP & PTP. Less flexibility in dragging & dropping files, folders, etc from your computer. Sure, there are ways around this, but is annoying nonetheless. Minor - so, yeah, big display, and if you have small-ish hands, 1-handed operations are risky, esp w/the somewhat slippery case. I don't actually mind the plastic construction--doesn't feel "cheap" to me at all--but I'll likely get a TPU case for the grippiness. Shortcuts on your lockscreen is a great feature! Except you have to unlock the phone to actually launch the apps. Why can't I turn on my flashlight or calculator (zero security risks) on demand? No ring/vibrate switch from the lockscreen either. Anyway, plenty of software nits that can be fixed by downloading replacement apps or rooting. Really, it's the MSC & power button that might tempt me to leave the G3 a 4* review, but honestly, I just love the phone to death right now, which is kind of the bottom line. Maybe it was just the degree of upgrade after 2 years, but whatever, it's a fantastic phone that I was happy to pay full price for at launch, instead of waiting a month or two for it to get discounted. Edit: 7/26. Added thoughts after 2 weeks of ownership and experience of travel (air & driving) with the phone (because this review wasn't long enough!). Pro - GPS locks very quickly. The DX took a long time to lock onto GPS signals, but the SG3 is almost instantaneous when outdoors (or inside of a car that is outdoors). Gets rid of a huge peeve for my previous phone. Pro Camera features work well, esp. the Best Shot mode. Took some very nice pictures at a wedding. Con - Button placement redux (see Major 1 above). I asked many people to take pictures for me, and they invariably hit the volume button by accident which operates the digital zoom. Very natural to place your left thumb there in landscape mode. A good case might alleviate this. Semi-con - This is 100% on me, but don't get too cocky about the Gorilla Glass 2. I managed to scratch it a tiny bit in the 2 weeks thinking it was invincible, and it's not. Keys & coins may be fine, but rough kitchen surfaces are not (granite, sandstone, etc). Buy a protector. I really was not liking the options with the SGIII at first. Let me enumerate this a bit for you. 1. The automatic WiFi pop-up was a little tough to swallow. In case you haven't heard, even with the WiFi turned completely off and having gone through the advanced options to make sure it doesn't come on, it actually is still on and scanning. If you've attached to a wireless network in the past, it remembers that connection and pops-up a dialog asking if you want to connect to it to save on your 4G data usage. Super annoying at first. But then I thought why wouldn't I want it to connect. Generally speaking, it's going to be just as fast (maybe faster if you've connected to an N router) so let it auto-connect. Saves on battery and it is fairly seamless. I just wouldn't connect it to a coffee shop network. Stick to the 4G for that. 2. You can't download/install/move applications to your SD card. It all goes to the on-board system memory. To some, myself included, this is a problem. If I have an application on my phone and it goes bad, I want to be assured that the data is still retrievable on the SD card. Luckily, most of my applications have an auto backup feature. If my phone does die I don't have to worry a great deal. It's being backed up on-the-fly. Default your music and photos to be stored on the SD card and you're golden. Those are the big space-wasters anyway. Still, you should consider the pros and cons of the 16GB vs the 32GB GSIII. 3. OK, it's a petty complaint, but this whole white cell phone thing that Apple started is dumb. The only other option is the "Pebble Blue", which is really an odd shade of purple. I dislike white and I don't want a blue phone. I figured a case would solve most of that. I know, I know. . . it's a dumb complaint, but I like my black and gun metal gray. *shrug* 4. The camera is really nice! The bad part is that there are no built-in features for editing your photos save an option to crop. This is still a thorn in my side, but if I must download yet another app, I suppose I will. 5. I was skeptical on the battery size and usage time. My Droid X (after customizations) would get about 12-14 hours on a single charge. That's going easy on texts, emails, browsing the web and Bluetooth usage. None-the-less, it was a decent amount of time for the 2nd-ish generation of Android smart phones. Especially when you compare it to the paperweight HTC Incredible. Happily the SGIII battery stands up to many hours of Bluetooth, texting, browsing and what-not with the same 12-14 hours. So I have really gained a
considerable amount of usage time with the SGIII over the "X. " 6. There is no skepticism on this one; the screen is a-mazing! It truly blows me away every time I look at a picture or video. I've had the SGIII for one week and had zero issues with it. I would fall in love with my Droid X twice a week. Leaving behind all I had come to know and love about the "X" was tough. I've come to the understanding that comparing the tech in the SGIII with your outdated phone is night and day. Yes, you may like some of the features of your old phones' capability, but all-in-all you're going to really like the SGIII. Keep an open mind about it. Parenthetically, to those that are comparing this to the iPhone - stop. You either like apples or robots. If the iPhone works better for you, go get one and stop the bias commentary. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is without a doubt the best phone for ME. Before you purchase this phone I urge you to really think about your needs, and stack them against this review. This review is based on an unrooted phone on Verizon Wireless. If you don't feel like reading all of the specifics, skip down to the end and just check out the pros and cons. Feel/Design The body of the Verizon Galaxy S3 is very smooth and fits well in your hand; it is a plastic build which allows the phone to remain light. I personally am terrified of dropping it due to the case. I purchased a silicone case just to keep the back scratch free and provide a little cushion in case dropped. The power button is located on the right side of the phone near the top, and a volume rocker is located on the left side near the top. There is a home button on the front of the screen near the bottom on the center. Very simple. One small complaint is the battery cover: you have to somewhat pry it off starting with a little slip on top center of the phone. Directly left of that is the headphone input. Another disappointment to me is the way the speaker is placed; it's on the rear of the phone and if you have the phone on a flat table, it muffles the sound from the speaker. Screen You're going to be working with a 4. 8-inch Super AMOLED HD display. It's an amazing display. Much more bright than my wife's iPhone 4S. It seems to have a more crisp look. If you aren't used to a large screen, the S3 will take a little getting used to. Coming from an original Motorola Droid, I was a little offput by the large size of this phone. In the month that I've had it I've gotten so used to it that now when I pick up my iPod touch, my immediate reaction is, "why did they design this screen so small?" It is also worth noting that the screen is made from Gorilla Glass 2 Performance 1. 5 GHz S4 processor and 2GB of RAM? Yes please. I have never had so much as a hiccup with this phone, despite running as many memory intensive programs and games as I can. The home screens run smoothly even using Go Launcher as a home replacement. I haven't found a thing that my S3 can't run flawlessly. Connectivity (Signal Strength) I'm currently in San Diego, CA. The only time I do not get 4G is when I'm on the island of Coronado, and even then it just cuts in and out. Everywhere else I have been in San Diego, I get exceptional service. Doing a speed test, I routinely get around 12 Mbps; that is as fast as my home internet connection. Battery Life 2100 mAh battery. Doing a looped video test, I can squeeze about 9 hours 15 minutes out of my phone. The only time my battery life isn't wonderful is when the phone is maxed out searching for signal on Coronado. Moderate use: playing games, making calls, using Tapatalk, checking my Google+, Twitter, Flipboard, and reading other news articles, I can usually get a good 16 hours of battery life. OS I could write several pages just on how much better ICS is than any other Android build I've used, but I'm going to leave it to you to research this. The ability to customize my phone is invaluable to me, which is why I always choose Android over Apple. Camera 8-megapixel rear camera, 1. 9-megapixel front camera. One of the biggest reasons I wanted a phone upgrade was the camera. The Motorola Droid camera was so slow that it made capturing unique moments nearly impossible. The speed on the S3 camera is stellar. The dual-core cpu does a great job at giving great speed and performance with virtually no lag. The quality of the pictures is also fantastic. My S3 outperforms my wife's iPhone 4S in picture quality by far. Gimmicks S Voice - The microphone picks up too much ambient noise, especially when driving. When in quiet places, I generally have a pretty good success rate when using S Voice, but I'm really hoping when Jellybean gets pushed to the S3 that Google Now will really pick up the slack. Pop Up Play - I've never used it, as I see no practical use in it. Share Shot - would be a great feature if the only phone in the world was the S3 Pros Beautiful screen Gorilla Glass 2 Smooth running OS Speedy, high quality camera 4G Robust customization options Fast GPS lock (I didn't
mention this in the review, but the GPS lock on this phone is incredibly fast) Cons Locked Bootloader (Verizon only) No Google Wallet (such a horrible move on Verizon's part) Battery cover hard to remove (minor complaint but still worth noting especially if you ever need to change your battery) Speaker placement Conclusion: You would be a wise man indeed to purchase a Samsung Galaxy S3. The only reason to not buy an S3 is if you're an Apple Fanboy.
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