Okay, long story short, I have some comments and some issues. First off, I'll summarize my story: I had an iPhone 4 for more than 2 years, and I loved it. It came time to get the new iPhone, and due to supply issues, I wasn't going to get one anywhere near launch, despite preordering it. I had seen the Galaxy S3 in action, and was enticed by it, but had been really turned off by how aggressive the Android fan base was against the iPhone 5 launch. They were, to me, without a doubt more vocal, judgemental, and self-righteous than any Apple fans I had seen for years. Nonetheless, Best Buy put the S3 on sale, so I figured I'd try it out. That was 3 weeks ago. Today, I really love and am going to keep my S3, but it is not without its flaws...not by a longshot. I have a laundry list of pros-cons between the iOS and Android, but I won't get into that here. I will only say that as someone who has made a successful switch, Android is not, to me, the superior OS; it has great merits but may not be right for many people, and the Android community should be better about understanding that. I know it is likely a small minority of very aggressive people, but the rest of you should try to reign them in a bit, because it's severely off-putting to see people so delusional about their own perspectives yet calling the other side "mindless" and "ignorant." You catch more flies with honey, badgering people into getting rid of their iPhones is ill-conceived.
Those are my comments, which lead me to my issues. I'm trying to see the extent to which other people are having these issues, and whether or not that means I may have received a faulty unit and should request a replacement. First issue was battery drain, which has since been resolved. I had to go through about 4-5 tweaks to the system to stop it from draining my battery from literally 100 to 15% in about 9 hours, and though I eventually figured them all out, this definitely goes into the "con" category for my Android experience thus far. A user with no real experience tweaking software settings would be completely lost and have a phone that gets maybe a full days worth of use out of it before being completely drained. My next issue, which has not been resolved, is overheating: I've been working with computer hardware for years, so am very aware of heat issues, but am also relatively new to the tablet and smartphone designs. With my iPhone 4, I only experienced real "warmth" on the device (as opposed to "heat") a few times, mostly when I was running Maps for long periods of time, or watching lenghty streaming videos. This never really alarmed me at all, and if it did once or twice, I would stop what I was doing and the phone would cool down. With the S3, however, using 4G LTE and GPS seems to cause to phone to get what I was describe as "very warm" near the bottom of the device, on the back. I can even feel it through the (albeit thin) case I have on the phone. I would be lying if I said it didn't concern me, as I've never felt a device get this warm besides a laptop battery. To say it is "OVERheating" is aggressive, but it's definitely on the very high end of "warm" and almost "hot." I'm wondering how many others have had this problem, and if it's something that only certain units have.
Second, I feel as though the phone is not as fast as I thought it would be. This may be due to heightened expectations (due almost exclusively to the rave reviews among Apple-haters, claiming the S3 was light-years beyond the iPhone 5 in every way, despite never having even used an iPhone 5 yet), but I feel like the phone is zippy at times, but shows signs of slowing down in certain apps and uses. The main issue for me is in Maps, as I have had extremely disappointing results with it thus far. It seems to take a solid couple of minutes for the phone to "get used" to Maps being open, and if I try to zoom in to an area at all within the first 30 seconds, the app runs unbearably slow, stuttering along while it loads street names. Eventually, it seems the system is able to cache the resources the app needs and it runs pretty well, but I will say that it is definitely not as quick to settle in as my iPhone 4 even was. This was strange to me, as Maps is proprietary to Google and I thought it would work flawlessly in Android, coupled with the hardware capabilities of the S3. It's been disappointing. I've also had serious framerate issues running Angry Birds Space, and recent attempts to watch 2 different online videos from 2 different sites has resulted in unacceptable levels of slowdown, loading, and framerates in not only Dolphin Browser, but also Chrome. Is anyone else experiencing these issues?
I also find my phone taking a good deal of time to actually connect to a 4G LTE data connection, especially when riding the DC Metro and going in-out of signal. On my iPhone 4, my phone would slow down drastically during these periods of rapid disconnection-reconnection, but the actual connections were relatively swift (e.g. once you enter a station, it connects). I've sat at stations for decent periods of time, unable to connect to the data network before the train left again, something that the iPhone 4 could frequently manage. Is that a result of the phone, software, or the 4G LTE network (being a different band and requiring a different antennae from the 3G network)?
Thanks for any comments or help with these issues, I appreciate the feedback.
Those are my comments, which lead me to my issues. I'm trying to see the extent to which other people are having these issues, and whether or not that means I may have received a faulty unit and should request a replacement. First issue was battery drain, which has since been resolved. I had to go through about 4-5 tweaks to the system to stop it from draining my battery from literally 100 to 15% in about 9 hours, and though I eventually figured them all out, this definitely goes into the "con" category for my Android experience thus far. A user with no real experience tweaking software settings would be completely lost and have a phone that gets maybe a full days worth of use out of it before being completely drained. My next issue, which has not been resolved, is overheating: I've been working with computer hardware for years, so am very aware of heat issues, but am also relatively new to the tablet and smartphone designs. With my iPhone 4, I only experienced real "warmth" on the device (as opposed to "heat") a few times, mostly when I was running Maps for long periods of time, or watching lenghty streaming videos. This never really alarmed me at all, and if it did once or twice, I would stop what I was doing and the phone would cool down. With the S3, however, using 4G LTE and GPS seems to cause to phone to get what I was describe as "very warm" near the bottom of the device, on the back. I can even feel it through the (albeit thin) case I have on the phone. I would be lying if I said it didn't concern me, as I've never felt a device get this warm besides a laptop battery. To say it is "OVERheating" is aggressive, but it's definitely on the very high end of "warm" and almost "hot." I'm wondering how many others have had this problem, and if it's something that only certain units have.
Second, I feel as though the phone is not as fast as I thought it would be. This may be due to heightened expectations (due almost exclusively to the rave reviews among Apple-haters, claiming the S3 was light-years beyond the iPhone 5 in every way, despite never having even used an iPhone 5 yet), but I feel like the phone is zippy at times, but shows signs of slowing down in certain apps and uses. The main issue for me is in Maps, as I have had extremely disappointing results with it thus far. It seems to take a solid couple of minutes for the phone to "get used" to Maps being open, and if I try to zoom in to an area at all within the first 30 seconds, the app runs unbearably slow, stuttering along while it loads street names. Eventually, it seems the system is able to cache the resources the app needs and it runs pretty well, but I will say that it is definitely not as quick to settle in as my iPhone 4 even was. This was strange to me, as Maps is proprietary to Google and I thought it would work flawlessly in Android, coupled with the hardware capabilities of the S3. It's been disappointing. I've also had serious framerate issues running Angry Birds Space, and recent attempts to watch 2 different online videos from 2 different sites has resulted in unacceptable levels of slowdown, loading, and framerates in not only Dolphin Browser, but also Chrome. Is anyone else experiencing these issues?
I also find my phone taking a good deal of time to actually connect to a 4G LTE data connection, especially when riding the DC Metro and going in-out of signal. On my iPhone 4, my phone would slow down drastically during these periods of rapid disconnection-reconnection, but the actual connections were relatively swift (e.g. once you enter a station, it connects). I've sat at stations for decent periods of time, unable to connect to the data network before the train left again, something that the iPhone 4 could frequently manage. Is that a result of the phone, software, or the 4G LTE network (being a different band and requiring a different antennae from the 3G network)?
Thanks for any comments or help with these issues, I appreciate the feedback.
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