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Samsung Galaxy S III (new flagship Android phone from Samsung)

Davidion

Member
Galaxy SIII vs Galaxy Nexus? Which would you guys choose?

I just went SIII after considering the nexus. It's a bit of an indulgence, but I figure it was worth it at the end of the day.

Nexus: Cheap, faster firmware updates
SIII: just about everything else
 
My first Galaxy SIII was very very fucked.

Camera had a dead spot on the CCD in the bottom right hand corner, giving every photo + video a black splodge.

That plus Orange (UK) broke something in the firmware when they branded it, yeah not the nicest thing to see when you bring your brand new phone home, an ugly Orange logo splash screen on the phone. Then finding out the phone would laaaaag whenever hitting home button. I'm talking a full 2-3 seconds before the widgets and menu bar would load. Wi-Fi would also drop out every time the phone when to sleep, would only reconnect when you turn it off and on again. Audio was also broken, would glitch every 10 seconds during calls, giving a digital squeak.

Took it back to Orange and got it replaced 2 days later. Immediately flashed it with stock unbranded ROM. Had it for a week now and it's fixed everything.

Moral of the story, if you got a branded phone, unbrand it. Plus check your camera for dead spots. I have found zero other results of this online, however you never know.

Phone is nice though, makes my old Galaxy S1 feel like a brick and my iPod Classic look like a cartoon bulbous toy. Still a slight bit of lag in returning to home-screen, however it's less than a second. I imagine this will be eradicated with Jelly Bean (god praying it comes soon).
 

Bruiserk

Member
I just went SIII after considering the nexus. It's a bit of an indulgence, but I figure it was worth it at the end of the day.

Nexus: Cheap, faster firmware updates
SIII: just about everything else

Right, that was one of the big issues I asked about in my last post. (Which was the last post on the last page so I'm going to quote it)

Bruiserk said:
I guess the two big issues are of course:

- Timely updates (with the Nexus being the winner here)
- Feel of the touchwiz OS from Samsung. Does it feel cluttered/bloated? Nexus seems to have a bit more of a minimalist feel.

Any comment on the touchwiz OS?
 

Toki767

Member
Phone is nice though, makes my old Galaxy S1 feel like a brick and my iPod Classic look like a cartoon bulbous toy. Still a slight bit of lag in returning to home-screen, however it's less than a second. I imagine this will be eradicated with Jelly Bean (god praying it comes soon).
The lag when pressing the home button can be fixed by going into the settings for S Voice and disabling the double press home button to launch option.
 

StuBurns

Banned
I don't think the OS is clustered at all, once you've made the home screen/s you desire, it's minimal if that's what you prefer.
 

Seanbob11

Member
Does anyone know if there's the Samsung Stock ROM anywhere online? I wanna go back to stock and get rid of the stupid carrier splash screen on startup.
 
Has anyone had experience getting their GS3 unlocked?

I'm thinking about getting it outright from Rogers then unlocking it so I can use it on Fido.

last resort I'm buying the international version, but I'd really like 2gb of ram though...
 

Davidion

Member
Right, that was one of the big issues I asked about in my last post. (Which was the last post on the last page so I'm going to quote it)



Any comment on the touchwiz OS?

Keep in mind that I've only used it for a few hours. The OS is...nothing special, but also nothing horrendously bad. It is a bit far away from being minimal per se, but it's reasonably close to stock android and not entirely horrible.

I am replacing it with a stock rom and another launcher at first chance, mind. There seems to be roms on xda which I'm looking into.
 

scoobs

Member
Verizon still hasn't charged me for my order thats supposed to ship on the 11th, hoping everythings okay w/ my order
 

atomsk

Party Pooper
torontoml said:
Does anyone have one of the flip cases? Just wondering if it is a worth while substitution to a stick on screen protector.

I bought a $12 knock-off on amazon, and I'm really enjoying it thus far. Though I suppose it may be an acquired taste

Any comment on the touchwiz OS?

I managed to somehow crash it today. Opened a youtube link from text message, watched video, went back to type reply text... no text showing up. Gives me a "touchwiz has crashed" message, and it restarts it fairly quickly

Other than that, I've found it perfectly serviceable.
 

scoobs

Member
is it totally insane to not get a case, i really like the look of this thing... what are u guys going with?
 
I literally have the shittest gel cover and screen protector which I'll live with for the first few weeks, just to mainly keep it clean as it's always on a desk or table.
 
what is the screen protector for?

I dunno, peace of mind really. I'm not on contract and I've paid over £400 for it and even though it's insured with my bank, it's just something I do for the first few weeks to ensure I don't drop or scratch it.

Also, I do like the design of it, but sometimes it does feel like a thin curved bar of soap and it has slipped out of my hand a few times.
 
So, I want to root the phone when I get it. Are there any tutorials online? I've never done it before, and I don't want to accidentally brick it.
 

glaurung

Member
I messed around with the S III at a local dealership for a while and I like it a lot. The design is a bit off, but the features more than make up for it. If I had some loose cash, I'd definitely consider getting the white model for myself and retire my weary iPhone 4 (non-S).

But then I happened to see a TV ad for the S III and I laughed my ass off. It looks like an ad for a tampon or hemorrhoid cream. There is nothing that makes me want the phone when I see that ad. Who the hell is it even aimed at?
 

Yoshiya

Member
Does any US carrier actually have the quad core CPU soc?

Kinda sucks how euro land gets to keep quad core....

Better single-threaded performance is vastly preferable in Android devices, even if that isn't reflected in all benchmarks. PCs barely make effective use of performance spread across 4+ threads, I doubt the Android scheduler or apps themselves do much better.
 

Kotoko

Banned
I messed around with the S III at a local dealership for a while and I like it a lot. The design is a bit off, but the features more than make up for it. If I had some loose cash, I'd definitely consider getting the white model for myself and retire my weary iPhone 4 (non-S).

But then I happened to see a TV ad for the S III and I laughed my ass off. It looks like an ad for a tampon or hemorrhoid cream. There is nothing that makes me want the phone when I see that ad. Who the hell is it even aimed at?

Unfortunately it's rare to see a mobile phone ad that is actually good.
 
Does any US carrier actually have the quad core CPU soc?

Kinda sucks how euro land gets to keep quad core....

dat 2G ram really helps the north american version. Currently, I don't know there's any 4-threaded apps that really uses the quadcores, some are dual, which reflected in the benchmarks of S4 versus T3 versions.

i guess you could say, quad core may be more future proof, slightly. I would gladly exchange the 2 extra cores with dat extra 1G of ram.
 

Davidion

Member
Beware of versions when using the various root methods out there!

Yes that's a very good point. Don't go trying to flash roms meant for the international version for the US versions or anything like that. The tool that I linked to should make distinctions when you run it, but when all else fails, be careful.
 
I dunno, peace of mind really. I'm not on contract and I've paid over £400 for it and even though it's insured with my bank, it's just something I do for the first few weeks to ensure I don't drop or scratch it.

Heh, don't worry about it. It's Gorilla Glass. If the scratch is hard enough, it will go through the protector too. Also, that will never keep it from breaking.
 

Toki767

Member
My GMail isn't syncing right away for some reason. Anyone know what the cause could be? I've tried removing my Google account and readding it but it doesn't seem to work. It used to be instant (many times before) when I receive a new e-mail in GMail's web client.
 
Heh, don't worry about it. It's Gorilla Glass. If the scratch is hard enough, it will go through the protector too. Also, that will never keep it from breaking.

Urm no.

Screen protectors protect against scratches, ie if you accidentally rub your screen against something harder than your glass. Pressure doesn't really matter, if you accidentally press your phone screen against a brick or something incredibly hard and coarse, it'll scratch it.

Gorilla Glass, while hardened to an extent, is designed mainly to be tough. It'll still scratch against a brick. However you drop it on the floor it, hopefully, won't shatter.

Screen protectors are a very good idea. They're practically invisible, cheap and will protect your phone screen from potential scratches.
 

SpecX

Member
Has Verizon started charging anyone yet for their orders or do they plan to wait till the day they ship to charge?
 

Seanbob11

Member
Sorry was going to reply to you.

http://www.samfirmware.com/

This website is a repository for all of Samsung's phones firmwares. It should have stock roms for every country, branded and unbranded.

Thank you good sir.

Edit: I found several firmwares for the S3 in the UK. What happens if I don't download the carrier specific firmware. There's one that's just UK and the rest are carriers I'm not with.
 
Ok... so my SIII has stopped being recognised by my computer (running Windows 7). This is not ideal. Googling around it seems similar issues have occurred with the SII and other samsung phones and the proposed solutions for those have so far produced no joy :/
 

Anno

Member
I know this isn't exactly the place for this question, but I figure someone will know the answer. I'm looking to get one of the unlocked Galaxy Nexus devices from the Play store. If I did is it as simple as throwing my AT&T sim card into the phone and hitting go? I've never bought a phone off contract before.
 

DrFunk

not licensed in your state
I know this isn't exactly the place for this question, but I figure someone will know the answer. I'm looking to get one of the unlocked Galaxy Nexus devices from the Play store. If I did is it as simple as throwing my AT&T sim card into the phone and hitting go? I've never bought a phone off contract before.

yes, it really is that simple
 
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