Need help from EVO LTE owners!

[Darthgrady]

HELP Need advice!

I got my Samsung Galaxy SIII last Thursday, and activated it last Friday. I have been having connectivity issues with this phone that I never had with my previous phone (HTC EVO 3D). With the SIII I can't send text messages while in my office, although I can receive them. They just show as undelivered, and I have to manually resend them later. With the 3D I could easily send/receive in that same room. Also, the SIII seems to roam and miss calls a lot more than my 3D did. I love the SIII as a device, but as a phone I'm pretty dissapointed. I went to the Sprint store today, and the rep changed some settings around for me while I was there, updated the profile and PRL, and restarted, but it did not fix the texting issue.

The Sprint rep says I can return it within 2 weeks of shipping (which was last Wednesday), so I have until next Wednesday to decide if I am going to keep it or switch it out for an EVO LTE. I would appreciate any advice or suggestions. I have always been a long time HTC fan, I only got the SIII this time because I hate the idea of the EVO's sealed-in battery. But I guess I could deal with it if it functions better as a phone. Anyone dealt with this, or have any ideas?

 

[kbp08tls]

As more and more people are starting to get S3's in their hands, the old Samsung radio issues are starting to come out of the woodwork. I don't know where you are geographically, but if you were affected by the storm last week (midwest to mid-atlantic), keep in mind that Sprint had some major issues and is just now getting back to normal, at least where I live.

You owe it to yourself to at least give the EVO a shot. I was apprehensive about the sealed battery as well, but after living with it since May 24, it is a complete non-issue for me. There may be some issues with the EVO, but they are in software, so they can be worked around or fixed. The hardware itself is impeccable, and the difference in quality is apparent when you hold the two side by side. If you look through the threads here, there are a few incidents of folks having WiFi or proximity sensor issues. Those seem to be manufacturing defects of individual phones rather than an indication of weak hardware.

Overall, I don't think you'll find many that are disappointed with the EVO as a phone. Take your S3 back and give the EVO some run time. I don't think you'll regret it.

 

[Darthgrady]

As more and more people are starting to get S3's in their hands, the old Samsung radio issues are starting to come out of the woodwork. I don't know where you are geographically, but if you were affected by the storm last week (midwest to mid-atlantic), keep in mind that Sprint had some major issues and is just now getting back to normal, at least where I live.

You owe it to yourself to at least give the EVO a shot. I was apprehensive about the sealed battery as well, but after living with it since May 24, it is a complete non-issue for me. There may be some issues with the EVO, but they are in software, so they can be worked around or fixed. The hardware itself is impeccable, and the difference in quality is apparent when you hold the two side by side. If you look through the threads here, there are a few incidents of folks having WiFi or proximity sensor issues. Those seem to be manufacturing defects of individual phones rather than an indication of weak hardware.

Overall, I don't think you'll find many that are disappointed with the EVO as a phone. Take your S3 back and give the EVO some run time. I don't think you'll regret it.

Thanks for the detailed response!

I'm in Central Florida. We got TS Debbie through here, but she was just a big rain maker. There really shouldn't be any difference with the network now versus last week when I was still running the EVO 3D.

 

[f1nzup]

I just switched out today from the SG3 to the LTE, and it was exactly because of the slow data. My 3D was pretty fast, but the SG3 is very frustrating. Other than the slow data problems it's a great phone, but I use my phone for data too often to deal with the speed difference.

My wife still has the SG3, and in side-by-side tests, I was downloading apps at the same time, and EVERY single time the SG3 took twice as long to download the same app as the LTE. Every single time.

And I too was reluctant to get the LTE because of the battery issue, but I am hopeful with a portable charger that I won't have any problems.

Now with the LTE, I am disappointed that it's not nearly as snappy as the SG3. The SG3 is very smooth while the LTE is for lack of a better word, clunky.

I have time to play with it a little longer before I have to ultimately decide. Still not sure which direction I will go, which includes going back to my 3D and waiting until next year to upgrade. Hope that helps.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

[RyDawgBoston]

So weird, everyone says the gs3 is faster at 3g. I don't see the Evo as being clunky. It does have other issues though.

I'm actually jumping ship from Sprint without an ETF, II just don't know what phone to get on AT&T...

 

[kbp08tls]

Now with the LTE, I am disappointed that it's not nearly as snappy as the SG3. The SG3 is very smooth while the LTE is for lack of a better word, clunky.

Sense is admittedly "clunky." It eats up a lot of resources with all of its fancy animations and widgets. If you scroll between screens slowly, you can see all of the animation going on with the 3D effects, especially the clock widget. Quite unnecessary IMO.
I personally use Nova launcher. It's extremely snappy, especially if you set transition speed to Nova or faster than light. There are numerous widgets available on the market to replace Sense widgets, so there's really nothing lost. It also has a smaller memory footprint, so reloads are greatly reduced.

 

[Kinolay]

I can't speak to Samsung hardware other than my cursory experience with a friend's Epic. His cell signal was consistently bad, and his GPS performance was abysmal. Coming from the OG EVO, I will tell you that the battery life is amazing. As for performance, the phone operates like butter. I would recommend it, but I don't have any experience with the SG III.

 

[Darthgrady]

f1nzup, were you having any issues with texts not sending, or poor cell reception? Those are the two big problems I'm having.

 

[w5cyc]

Is there a battery issue with the EVO?

 

[slackerjack]

There's been a ton of these, so rather than summize...let me sum up:

Build quality - Evo by a mile

Multi tasking - Galaxy s3 by a mile

Microsd card - wash

UI - subjective...but sense is more ics and less Samsung....by a mile

Onboard storage - wash...and yes there are more options for galaxy s 3 but the price doesn't justify the extra expense...I wouldn't consider spending 50$ on a 16gb USB stick would u?

Screen - Evo by a mile. There will be those that argue "deep blacks" this and "vivid colors" that...but you can't argue that the display on the galaxy S3 is in any way superior to the Evo LTE

Antennas - i can't comment on LTE yet since its not on....but the wifi antenna on the Evo is vastly superior and you can see that in side by side testing

GPS - wash? I'm guessing since I haven't seen a mass of complaints about it from GS3 owners

Update speed and potential - HTC by a long flame trailed mile...as evidence by how many galaxy S2 owners there are here in the states without ICS....not to mention galaxy tabs, galaxy s 1 owners not on even gingerbread...I can go on and on about this all day.

Cameras - another wash...Samsung would have this in the bag if you were guarenteed the Wolfson sensor.. but there's reports of multiple solutions out there in the wild

Dev community- Samsung by a mile...the Evo late is one device on one carrier....the galaxy s 3 existist almost consistently across all four carriers plus some little guys.

Hope that helps!

Jack



Sent from my Evo LTE using 3g...because Sprint needs to get their collective asses in gear

 

[Darthgrady]

I'm still curious about whether the EVO has been having the same messaging and cellular problems. I don't want to go to the trouble of setting up the EVO, only to find out its having the same issues as the Sammy.

Also, will the RAM difference between them make any difference in performance?

 

[Mophomania]

As far as data issues, I've had the EVO since it first shipped out for pre orders. I'm in Fort Worth TX. Data connection is frustrating at best. I can't honestly tell you its the phone. Full bars and no data. It jumps around all day. Sometimes its super fast at pulling downloads, othertimes it just sits there looking like its doing something without anything really downloading. My wife just got her SGSIII today, so ill be looking over her shoulder and seeing how the two compare. Your mileage may vary based on geographical location. AS far as the phone goes, I'm rooted and this thing is simply a beast. LONG battery life, smooth as butter, and overall a great phone. (after fixing HTC's answer to apple, and minor adjustments to memory management) I haven't found a real complaint with the phone itself. Network...well, that's still an issue. Just hope LTE really does help. Hopefully they made the LTE pipes FAT. Seems like current towers are just way too overloaded. Anytime between 1 am and 5 am download speeds are awesome. After that, I have a hard tume pulling better than 300kbps.

Sent from my EVO using Android Central Forums

 

[kbp08tls]

Is there a battery issue with the EVO?

No

Dev community- Samsung by a mile...the Evo late is one device on one carrier....the galaxy s 3 existist almost consistently across all four carriers plus some little guys.

100% agree with you on everything but this.
Not sure how you can make a judgment on dev support yet. The dev community is fire for the EVO. You could almost say there are too many ROMs and mods out there. People keep saying that the S3 is the same across all the carriers so it will be so easy to port ROMs, but the reality is that there about as different from each other as the HTC ONE/EVO line phones are from each other. There are always some carrier specific things under the hood that the devs need to account for. Now it makes intuitive sense to say that S3 dev support will be great due to shear numbers, but I would not say EVO is lacking in any way whatsoever.

I'm still curious about whether the EVO has been having the same messaging and cellular problems. I don't want to go to the trouble of setting up the EVO, only to find out its having the same issues as the Sammy.

Also, will the RAM difference between them make any difference in performance?

No messaging or cellular problems with me, except when we got slammed with that storm last weekend.

The extra RAM will only make itself known when you have several memory-hungry apps going at the same time. Contrary to popular belief, it will not make the phone faster, and the benchmark numbers bear that out. A little bit of tweaking on the EVO makes it a moot point however.


I'm guessing that the poster from Ft Worth's data issues may be related to the LTE turnover there.


Sent from my EVO using Android Central Forums

 

[slackerjack]

100% agree with you on everything but this.
Not sure how you can make a judgment on dev support yet. The dev community is fire for the EVO. You could almost say there are too many ROMs and mods out there. People keep saying that the S3 is the same across all the carriers so it will be so easy to port ROMs, but the reality is that there about as different from each other as the HTC ONE/EVO line phones are from each other. There are always some carrier specific things under the hood that the devs need to account for. Now it makes intuitive sense to say that S3 dev support will be great due to shear numbers, but I would not say EVO is lacking in any way whatsoever.

I'm not saying Evo lte dev support is lacking. I just think the S3 will end up with a larger community, to your point, because of the shear number of users.

Sent from my Evo LTE using 3g...because Sprint needs to get their collective asses in gear

 

[Shadnic]

I'm still curious about whether the EVO has been having the same messaging and cellular problems. I don't want to go to the trouble of setting up the EVO, only to find out its having the same issues as the Sammy.

Also, will the RAM difference between them make any difference in performance?

I can't compare the GS3 radios to the Evo's, but I can tell you that the evo "does" have great radios in it. My old phone was the Samsung Epic 4G, and it was essentially a wifi-only device. If I went into a building I lost all signal. If I was outside, I had 2 bars at best. If I was anywhere away from the center of a town, I'd go down to one bar if not worse. I could never use it in the grocery store to check something. I couldn't pull off the road and look something up on a roadtrip. Nada. It just simply wouldn't get a good signal and it would kill its own battery attempting to. This is just how I got used to things being.

Then I got the Evo. Now I have full bars outside, at least 3-4 bars in buildings. I get service when I drive out of town. I can google things without having to run to a store and find wifi. I can do searches in the grocery store. It's magical. I was never able to do any of that before. At least not without waiting for a long time and feeling my phone overheat...

From what I've heard from reviewers and seen in benchmarks, the RAM doesn't make any noticeable difference except that multitasking simply works better. Multitasking on this phone vs the GS3 are built entirely differently so it's hard to compare, but without a doubt the GS3 is better. It probably would be with only 1 gb of RAM too just because of the way HTC designed it.

 

[Darthgrady]

Thanks to all who posted. I ended up switching to the EVO. I can now text from the office, so that problem is solved! This phone still isn't getting as good of reception as I feel it should, but it is better than the S3. The wifi and 3G data speeds also seem better. I will miss the S3's extra storage and RAM, but I do like Sense better than Touchwiz, and I also think the EVO has the nicer (albeit smaller) screen.