This is a not so good review of the Samsung Galaxy S III cellphone. I bought one Saturday and I’m probably going to return it later today for a refund and reactivate my Motorola Droid X. Maybe some of you can talk me out of it. The interesting thing is that the Samsung Galaxy S3 gets glowing reviews everywhere and I will say up front, ALL THE STUFF IN THE GLOWING REVIEWS ARE TRUE.
So – you are asking – if this is such a great phone, why am I thinking about returning it?
It has to do with what I use my phone for and what I need it to do. I have been generally happy with my droid X but it’s not a 4G phone so I can’t talk and be on the Internet at the same time. The GPS is somewhat flaky and at times GPS stops working for some unknown reason. And a faster processor with more memory would be nice. So I’m interested in upgrading. But the upgrade has to do all the stuff my DroidX does and more.
The Galaxy S3 had all the specs I was looking for and then some. Assisted GPS works far better than the DroidX, the screen was bigger, faster processor, more memory, talk and surf at the same time, front facing camera, Android 4.0x ice cream sandwich. I thought – this is the phone for me. I very much wanted for this phone to be something I liked and was highly motivated to make it work.
But – after buying it I came to realize it had flaws that I just can’t live with and am about to wipe it to factory setting and send it back. Here’s why:
The DroidX has real buttons at the bottom for Back and Menu. The Galaxy S3 has touch buttons that are far too sensitive. And the real buttons are far too easy to push. So you can pick up the phone or hand it to anyone without accidentally pushing things that you don’t intend to push.
The phone is also thin and slippery and hard to pick up and when you do pick it up you find yourself pushing the side buttons accidentally. I did buy a cheap plastic case protector to put it in and that did help a little and maybe if I got a better one that would help solve that problem.
The next big item is that I use my phone in the car a lot. I live in the San Francisco Bay area and GPS navigation is a must and Samsung has no car dock for this phone. Tried some generic docs but just not the same. With my DroidX it just snaps in and I have power and it brings up the vehicle menu and it just works. After fooling around with a number of options I eventually realized that I was never going to get the car functionality from the Galaxy S3 that I needed.
Unlike Microsoft Windows which is about the same no matter what brand you get the Android phones are very different from brand to brand and Motorola gets the details right on usability. It generally just works. Samsung doesn’t pay that much attention to detail. I think the difference is that perhaps Motorola actually tests with real users and perhaps Samsung doesn’t or they would realize their problems.
It’s just a lot of little things. When I pair the Bluetooth with my 2012 Honda CRV the music player starts automatically. When I push the button on the dash to stop the music it doesn’t work. So I have to dig through the menus to stop the music when I get into the car. The DroidX auto launches the car app as soon as I mount it. The S3 doesn’t. So I have to unlock the screen and start a car app manually.The DroidX also would display the song title on the Honda screen, the S# doesn’t. I though the music player would be more compatible, not less.
Rotation is also annoying on the S3. This is a software issue but the damn thing is always flipping between portrait and landscape modes in an annoying way. Just enough to drive me nuts and makes me hate this phone. Generally I want it in portrait mode unless I turn it all the way on its side. Actually the DroidX flips too often for me as well but the Galaxy S3 is worse.
All the ring tones that come with the unit suck.
The S-Voice feature sucks as well. They are trying to clone Siri and Siri is just a gimmick. What I’d like to see is Google voice search get a few more useful commands and hold off on the nonsense until they get the AI really good.
The larger screen is nice but actually because it is larger it doesn’t fit in my hand as well. I’m not seeing as much benefit as I had hoped and Android is written for a smaller screen. So I’m beginning to think that 4.3 inches is actually the sweet spot for screen sizes.
The battery is larger than most 4G phones but you really need 2500 mah minimum for a 4G phone and battery like on the DroidX still seems better. Because of the larger screen this phone should have 3300 like the Razr Maxx. If they did it would make the phone a little thicker and easier to pick up.
The phone dialer is lame compared to the DroidX which shown more options. Much easier to redial.
Overall, this phone’s software needs a lot of work. There are just a lot of little things that should work that either don’t or don’t work right as compared to my DroidX. I think Samsung just doesn’t get it when it comes to doing it right.
So I’m about to take it back unless someone can talk me out of it. Feel free to comment. I’m thinking I’m going to hold out until someone comes out with a better phone than a DroidX.
Ahh… this turned into Android vs Apple ios.
Anyway, iPhone has a cult following. Even if they put out junk, people will buy them. But iPhones are not junk, they are actually good phones. But the Apple philosophy is if you do things they way Apple wants you to do things, then everything works flawlessly. If you are not a techy tinker person, and just want a phone that works well, then iPhone is the one for you. My girlfriend has iPhone, I would not recommend her to get an Android. She’s not the type that would find tweaking your phone interesting.
Android phone are like the wild west. Each android phone looks and behaves differently. It’s up to you to tweak it. And tweaking it is fun for some people. Some people like very deep levels of customization to make the phone uniquely theirs. If you’re into that, that’s android.
You can do stuff like if you buy a $5 OTG cable, you can plug in your PS3 controller and play games on your phone with it. If you plug in a mouse, a mouse pointer would appear on your phone and you can use your mouse to do precision drawing or whatever. Plug in a USB Ethernet dongle, and voila, you have wired Ethernet connection. If in addition you get a powered hub, you can plug in your USB external HD and have your phone access it.
I like Android because I want my phone to be a portable Linux computer. Not quite there yet, but getting closer.
Now if you don’t think this is cool or you say… I don’t know all that stuff you just said… then you probably would find iPhone a better user experience.
Anyway, to Marc, you can buy those NFC sticker tags, stick one in your favorite universal car cellphone holder. Set your S3 to start car mode when that tag is detected. Done. In fact, if you get the tasker app, you can make it automatically do a bunch of other things… play a sound file that says “Welcome to your vehicle Emperor Marc”, show a picture of a hot naked chick, whatever you want. Only downside is you’ll still have to manually plug in the power with a cable, but, you get to use any car holder you like that fits the phone.
And that in essense, is android. You can do things your way, but it’s not 100% perfect.
And your bluetooth problem may not go away with an iPhone or any newer cell phones. I think you should try updating the bluetooth firmware on your car like one of the posters suggested. Unless of course, you think Droid X is the best phone ever and you want to use it for the rest of the life of your car. Which is a valid opinion. It’s good to know what you want.
I totally agree with your comments on the s3. I am not much of an apple lover so i tried the s3 for a change. I just need tobxhange this phone and i think i am foing back to blaxkberry. I just hate the phone software in this phone, the dial pad, the bottoms sensitiviy level, i had to block the turn around function as it is always moving around. The phone is very slow…i have to wait everytime i go to contacts or try to dial a phone number. The word is slow. This phone was made for kids that want to play or watch a movie….but it isbuseless for work. Dial a phone number you get 10 questions before actually dialing it. It freezes. Battery lasts 6 hors at the most… the screen turns black when talking and when you finish it doesnt come back so you cant hang up. The dial screen is terrible no way you can write withiut typos.. . At the beginning i though that at least the camera was good….but that is not true either…colors are intense and nice but strangely i have never been able to capture a pretty miment. I think i am gojng back to blackberry….frustrated….