Samsung Galaxy SIII - In Depth Review.

Originally Posted by E36Eric

On ICS, isn't there a way to disable the bloatware? It's still going to be there but it just wont run in the background, I think. I've done this to a couple of apps in the settings of my phone. I'm not sure if it does anything or if it saves battery. Its good to hear that the S3 is more effecient in power management than the Rezound. When I was on ginger bread, I was able to choose "economy" mode, now ICS doesn't have that and I have to tweak the animation scale and lower the display brightness a lot so that the screen doesn't hog up all the power. The S3 is just sitting here looking pretty and I really want to activate it now. I'm still waiting for the protective case I ordered before I use it. This phone looks so thin and fragile compared to my rezound with the fat extended battery pack. I'm going to run the S3 for a few days and see how the battery is but I'm definitely interested in the extended battery for it.

I'm not sure about freezing apps without root access.

I was most impressed that the S3 didn't have all that much bloat to begin with. I got mine at launch, so I don't know if they are shipping them with more, but I didn't have but maybe 1 or 2 Verizon branded apps on my device fresh out of the box.

Activate it! You will NEVER look back.

Originally Posted by E36Eric

Its good to hear that the S3 is more effecient in power management than the Rezound. When I was on ginger bread, I was able to choose "economy" mode, now ICS doesn't have that and I have to tweak the animation scale and lower the display brightness a lot so that the screen doesn't hog up all the power.

One tip i've been using to save battery power on AMOLED phones is to set a black wallpaper (I think the option is "no background" or something).

On AMOLEDs, any pixel that is black uses no power at all. Zero. So having a lot of black pixels on your homescreens means the screen uses a lot less power.

Also, you can set bimmerapp to "dark" mode, and in some roms you can even invert the colors in your text messages/inbox so the background is black and text is white.

I can't remember the exact percentage change in the screen's power usage, but it has made a noticeable difference. No to mention it will prolong the life of your screen, which is a bigger concern as of now for AMOLEDs than LCDs.

The link for the double capacity battery

Reviewed on XDA

Originally Posted by E36Eric

On ICS, isn't there a way to disable the bloatware? It's still going to be there but it just wont run in the background, I think. I've done this to a couple of apps in the settings of my phone. I'm not sure if it does anything or if it saves battery. Its good to hear that the S3 is more effecient in power management than the Rezound. When I was on ginger bread, I was able to choose "economy" mode, now ICS doesn't have that and I have to tweak the animation scale and lower the display brightness a lot so that the screen doesn't hog up all the power. The S3 is just sitting here looking pretty and I really want to activate it now. I'm still waiting for the protective case I ordered before I use it. This phone looks so thin and fragile compared to my rezound with the fat extended battery pack. I'm going to run the S3 for a few days and see how the battery is but I'm definitely interested in the extended battery for it.

To disable an application you go into settings>application manager> all and choose the app you want to disable. It will be an option next to the force close option. You will have to uninstall all the updates first before you can disable it. HTH

I've had my s3 for over a month now and I love it. Came from an iphone 4s and I dont think I can ever go back to iOS. Love being able to customize nearly every aspect of the phone to my preference and the hardware is awesome. Its like carrying a handheld laptop in your pocket.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Bimmer App

Originally Posted by SuperFan86

The link for the double capacity battery

Reviewed on XDA

4200mAh wtf

Man, some people use their phones a lot.

Originally Posted by jeffro3000

One tip i've been using to save battery power on AMOLED phones is to set a black wallpaper (I think the option is "no background" or something).

On AMOLEDs, any pixel that is black uses no power at all. Zero. So having a lot of black pixels on your homescreens means the screen uses a lot less power.

Also, you can set bimmerapp to "dark" mode, and in some roms you can even invert the colors in your text messages/inbox so the background is black and text is white.

I can't remember the exact percentage change in the screen's power usage, but it has made a noticeable difference. No to mention it will prolong the life of your screen, which is a bigger concern as of now for AMOLEDs than LCDs.

Thanks, good to know. I've been doing this with all my previous droids and I'm gonna do the same with the S3. Besides, I think it looks better with the black background.

Originally Posted by SuperFan86

The link for the double capacity battery

Reviewed on XDA

Sweet! That looks like it'll triple the girth of the phone. Thanks for the link.

Originally Posted by xxilikericexx

To disable an application you go into settings>application manager> all and choose the app you want to disable. It will be an option next to the force close option. You will have to uninstall all the updates first before you can disable it. HTH

I've had my s3 for over a month now and I love it. Came from an iphone 4s and I dont think I can ever go back to iOS. Love being able to customize nearly every aspect of the phone to my preference and the hardware is awesome. Its like carrying a handheld laptop in your pocket.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Bimmer App

I have done that on my rezound but I didn't know about uninstalling all the updates first. Thanks for the tip.

Originally Posted by Don Nguyen

Man, some people use their phones a lot.

I'm on my phone a lot. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting cross eyed. My optometrist buddy told me that this smart phone era is giving him more business.

Originally Posted by E36Eric

Just received mines but I'm not sure if I want to resell it or not. Had to use my upgrade on another phone and they gave me $75 off. I still love my Rezound but the S3 looks so sleek. Anyone having problems? Has the battery sleep issue been solved? How long is the battery lasting for some of you?

Any updates?

I've been meaning to write this mini-review for people thinking about switching from iphone, i know there are a ton of you, so here goes:

Background - I've been on iPhone for over four years now. I had two, one provided for my job, one for personal life. My company allows me to use my business phone for almost anything, so I decided I wanted to try something new out.

Data plan (at&t)/price - something important for me was keeping my old unlimited plan. They allowed me to, no extra fees or charges. Sweet. Bill stays exactly the same! At $200, I felt a little hesitant. Not because its $200, but because the comparable One X was priced at $99. After I saw the two face to face, I decided I liked the S3 more. Plus, as a casual audio enthusiast, most "beats by dre" stuff is over hyped and under delivers. Decided the sound stuff wasn't important to me. Either phone seemed like a great option tho.




Pros

Screen - I freaking love the huge screen. At first, it seems insanely huge, like almost a negative. But, after using it for only about an hour, I started seeing how insanely small iphone really is. For browsing the web, it makes sense you'd want something a little bigger. It still fits in my pockets comfortably.

App store - here's one of the bigger surprises I had, I love the app store. There are an insane number of apps, although some are useless. So many useful free apps as well. I'm not a huge app guy, but if you dream up the need, there's probably a FREE app for that on this phone.

Google - almost all my online stuff is with them, and syncing this phone to google took me about 30 seconds. Awesome. The free turn-by-turn navigation is better than the top rated PAID iphone app (which I use). Can't stress big of a difference here.

Computer power/speed - holy sh!t, this thing flies. LTE is going to be turned on in my area before the end of the year, but even without it, i load pages incredibly faster. No comparison here, internet/facebook browsing is much, much, much better. This is what I use my phone for the majority of the time.

Design - love it overall. Holding it is comfortable, maybe not if you have small hands. One "gripe", see below.

Cons

Battery life - after many reviews, I was really looking forward to incredible battery life. I was really disappointed, to the point of almost returning the phone. Luckily, I did a little research. Turned off auto adjust lighting and using "juice defender (free)", my phone easily makes it through the day now. iPhone's battery life is still amazing, but with a little tweaking on s3, its no longer an issue.

Voice commands - truly something to be desired here, and I believe it will be addressed. Or I hope. The voice commands do work, but they tend to be a bit slower than I'd like. Comparing to Siri, its much slower and tends to get thrown off easier. Give it an overall "C" grade, its nice, but def not a selling point as siri is.

Texting - if you text a lot, i absolutely hated "t9" and turned it off instantly. Despite what I said above about voice commands, speech-to-text works pretty well! I actually like it! But, the predictive/auto correct is something I'm not yet use to, and with iPhone i really liked...

Design - the "lock" button is on the side. Normally not an issue, but the opposite side is the volume. So, naturally if you are trying to lock one side, you will be pushing against the other. So many times I try to lock my phone, but actually just adjust the volume.



Overall, I can't believe I waited this long to change from iPhone! I love how custom you can make this phone. If you have any kind of technical capability, you will never miss your iphone. If you don't, you probably will not appreciate the capabilities. I think a lot of buyers are missing this great phone because, lets face it, iPhone is trendy and the "it" phone. But when it comes down to it, stray from iphone and you'll see how much better a phone can be. That's not a shot at iPhone at all, but so far, i love the s3.

Originally Posted by wrighterjw10

Voice commands - truly something to be desired here, and I believe it will be addressed. Or I hope. The voice commands do work, but they tend to be a bit slower than I'd like. Comparing to Siri, its much slower and tends to get thrown off easier. Give it an overall "C" grade, its nice, but def not a selling point as siri is.

Hmm, I've heard the exact opposite pretty consistently.

Most of the reviews say, in a nutshell: Google's voice commands are faster/more accurate than Siri in the things it can do, but Siri can perform a bigger variety of tasks.

My personal experience with voice commands is that it's very fast and accurate. Siri v2.0 will probably bring some major improvements though.

I think Google's main advantage here is that their speech-to-text engine runs locally on the phone, rather than on servers far away.

EDIT - Wait i see now, you are probably using S-Voice.

I'm using the new Jelly Bean voice commands. My bad, totally different things. Yea, Siri blows Samsung's S-Voice away. You are correct, lol.

Originally Posted by jeffro3000

Hmm, I've heard the exact opposite pretty consistently.

Most of the reviews say, in a nutshell: Google's voice commands are faster/more accurate than Siri in the things it can do, but Siri can perform a bigger variety of tasks.

My personal experience with voice commands is that it's very fast and accurate. Siri v2.0 will probably bring some major improvements though.

I think Google's main advantage here is that their speech-to-text engine runs locally on the phone, rather than on servers far away.

EDIT - Wait i see now, you are probably using S-Voice.

I'm using the new Jelly Bean voice commands. My bad, totally different things. Yea, Siri blows Samsung's S-Voice away. You are correct, lol.

i read that...and got really confused. i knew it was just a coincidence that every time i was in an area with poor reception, voice got shitter.

are voice commands with all jelly bean updates? s3 should get jelly bean shortly...

Originally Posted by wrighterjw10

I've been meaning to write this mini-review for people thinking about switching from iphone, i know there are a ton of you, so here goes:

Background - I've been on iPhone for over four years now. I had two, one provided for my job, one for personal life. My company allows me to use my business phone for almost anything, so I decided I wanted to try something new out.

Data plan (at&t)/price - something important for me was keeping my old unlimited plan. They allowed me to, no extra fees or charges. Sweet. Bill stays exactly the same! At $200, I felt a little hesitant. Not because its $200, but because the comparable One X was priced at $99. After I saw the two face to face, I decided I liked the S3 more. Plus, as a casual audio enthusiast, most "beats by dre" stuff is over hyped and under delivers. Decided the sound stuff wasn't important to me. Either phone seemed like a great option tho.




Pros

Screen - I freaking love the huge screen. At first, it seems insanely huge, like almost a negative. But, after using it for only about an hour, I started seeing how insanely small iphone really is. For browsing the web, it makes sense you'd want something a little bigger. It still fits in my pockets comfortably.

App store - here's one of the bigger surprises I had, I love the app store. There are an insane number of apps, although some are useless. So many useful free apps as well. I'm not a huge app guy, but if you dream up the need, there's probably a FREE app for that on this phone.

Google - almost all my online stuff is with them, and syncing this phone to google took me about 30 seconds. Awesome. The free turn-by-turn navigation is better than the top rated PAID iphone app (which I use). Can't stress big of a difference here.

Computer power/speed - holy sh!t, this thing flies. LTE is going to be turned on in my area before the end of the year, but even without it, i load pages incredibly faster. No comparison here, internet/facebook browsing is much, much, much better. This is what I use my phone for the majority of the time.

Design - love it overall. Holding it is comfortable, maybe not if you have small hands. One "gripe", see below.

Cons

Battery life - after many reviews, I was really looking forward to incredible battery life. I was really disappointed, to the point of almost returning the phone. Luckily, I did a little research. Turned off auto adjust lighting and using "juice defender (free)", my phone easily makes it through the day now. iPhone's battery life is still amazing, but with a little tweaking on s3, its no longer an issue.

Voice commands - truly something to be desired here, and I believe it will be addressed. Or I hope. The voice commands do work, but they tend to be a bit slower than I'd like. Comparing to Siri, its much slower and tends to get thrown off easier. Give it an overall "C" grade, its nice, but def not a selling point as siri is.

Texting - if you text a lot, i absolutely hated "t9" and turned it off instantly. Despite what I said above about voice commands, speech-to-text works pretty well! I actually like it! But, the predictive/auto correct is something I'm not yet use to, and with iPhone i really liked...

Design - the "lock" button is on the side. Normally not an issue, but the opposite side is the volume. So, naturally if you are trying to lock one side, you will be pushing against the other. So many times I try to lock my phone, but actually just adjust the volume.



Overall, I can't believe I waited this long to change from iPhone! I love how custom you can make this phone. If you have any kind of technical capability, you will never miss your iphone. If you don't, you probably will not appreciate the capabilities. I think a lot of buyers are missing this great phone because, lets face it, iPhone is trendy and the "it" phone. But when it comes down to it, stray from iphone and you'll see how much better a phone can be. That's not a shot at iPhone at all, but so far, i love the s3.

Wow, thanks for that review. Can't wait to use my phone now. Just need to stop by a Verizon store tomorrow to pick up a new sim card. They let me keep my unlimited data, too.

Is it just me or does the camera suck at night? I never had a iPhone, only droids/blackberry but have used many iphone 4s before and the camera on those things are much better..... ESP at night.

how is reception? i hear that the antenna sucks

Originally Posted by Five_seveN

how is reception? i hear that the antenna sucks

The 4g reception is the best of out of the 3 4g devices I have used. I travel through some back road areas about 2x a month and usually drop service in the same places I have for years, so I wouldn't say that the antenna is any worse. I will, however, admit that my G/F's Verizon Iphone 4 gets slightly better 3g service in some areas, but only by maybe 1 bar or less.

To the OP: go to the accessories page on XDA. They have tons of reviews of aftermakret batteries ranging from 2700 mAh on up to the massive 4200 mAh. They also review anything else that you could possibly want and deals show up there all the time.

For those of you who want to unlock and root your Verizon GS3....

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...5#post30274025

In case some of you haven't seen it.... devs finally were able to unlock the bootloader.

Are there any tethering apps without having to root? I read that last post on how to root and it sounds way too complicated. I jail broke a few iPhones and iPads but those were really easy.

Originally Posted by wrighterjw10

i read that...and got really confused. i knew it was just a coincidence that every time i was in an area with poor reception, voice got shitter.

are voice commands with all jelly bean updates? s3 should get jelly bean shortly...

Yea in jelly bean the speech to text works exactly the same whether you have a data connection or not, since it's on device.

I'd assume the new voice commands would be included in all JB updates. I did hear a rumor once that Samsung or other companies may rush an update out the door quickly but sacrifice some of the new features to do so. I doubt this though.

Hopefully the S3's JB update will come by this fall so it can keep up with the new phones that will be shipping with it.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Bimmer App

Originally Posted by E36Eric

Are there any tethering apps without having to root? I read that last post on how to root and it sounds way too complicated. I jail broke a few iPhones and iPads but those were really easy.

Foxfi seems to be a very good one.

Originally Posted by SuperFan86

The 4g reception is the best of out of the 3 4g devices I have used. I travel through some back road areas about 2x a month and usually drop service in the same places I have for years, so I wouldn't say that the antenna is any worse. I will, however, admit that my G/F's Verizon Iphone 4 gets slightly better 3g service in some areas, but only by maybe 1 bar or less.

To the OP: go to the accessories page on XDA. They have tons of reviews of aftermakret batteries ranging from 2700 mAh on up to the massive 4200 mAh. They also review anything else that you could possibly want and deals show up there all the time.

thanks. gonna be switching to verizon next month and this phone is a contender. really the only things i care about are reception and battery life. reception seems to be good, but battery life

Reception is awful on 3G. I get 4G at my house but the town I live in does not really have 4G yet....so I get 3G around town and its awful. My old Droid X2 and HTC Incredible 2 got much better 3G service.