The Galaxy S3 is a great phone, probably one of the best I've ever put in my hands.
Completely mod-able, virtually unbrickable, yet I find a few drawbacks.
The drawbacks are that I compared to the Razr Maxx - own that too - switching sim card between phones.
Yet they may not be drawbacks. I'll explain.
I am so familiar and comfortable with Motorola / Android phones - especially the mobility features - cardock, audio interface for car, speakerphone that is made for in-car use, moto cast, that it almost ruined the experience with the GS3 - almost.
No, I do not own a GS3 anymore. I purchased one full retail, to kick the tires on it for a week or so. Financially it was not viable to keep the unit, yet I must say, with the exception of the lack of mobility [in-car] features, it still stands to be the best phone I've ever used - to date.
Now, fairly, the in-car features are important to me - and that was a big deal in my decision to return it, but for all purposes that could have been solved by investing in blue-tooth. However, I did not want to go that route with the GS3.
The Razr [or any motorola model from the atrix forward] becomes a different device when cradled into the car dock. It positions itself to be a GPS and multimedia unit first, phone second. That is it's greatest attribute...
Performace and Feature wise - the GS3 wins overall. After flashing the synergy rom [although hated to lose visual voicemail app - yet loved the gain of the native call recorder feature] it made the GS3 more pleasurable to work with.
The GPS section of the GS3 kicks the crap out ofg the Razr*. The base audio software of the GS3 kicks the crap out of the Razrs audio software, and for the fact that the GS3 has so many features hand-over-fist compared to the Razr - it makes it a much more pleasurable phone to deal with - customizing it to your needs. And to boot, the GS3 is so much faster than the Razr - but that is to be expected. I use to think that 200 - 300 Mhz would not make a difference in a phone, but it makes all the difference...
* The Razr was the second phone - in motorola's line to harbor sGPS (syncronous GPS), and signal acquisition was hands down the fastest over any phone I've ever seen, yet with the ICS upgrade, even with a cleared cache / dalvik, it drastically changed, moving from a 6 second acquisition to well over a minute - and lower signal in most cases - horrible. However, I will go to say that a mfr-factory ICS install on the Razr seems to be way way better, and the GPS acts like it did - fast aquisition, stronger signals etc.
Battery-wise, I do not think anyone can argue with 3300 mAh in the razr, but using the GS3 and baby-sitting the battery a bit was not that bad - it would be expected for a phone of that caliber [as it would any phone with a small battery]. It did not add any dissapointment to the experience - IMO...
So, do not let any comments regarding mobility affect your decision in buying a GS3 - unless you find that in-car feature as important as I do. The kit to me makes the all difference - and how the Razr phone metamorphs into a different unit.
The next Razr phone [HD] is rumoured to have NFC, same processor / speed as the GS3, a larger screen, better graphics etc, and it is a move I will probably make - as the larger screen is so much a desireable attribute. And I suspect it will have the same car-kit features which will nail it down for me better - decisionwise. But if any of that changes, I would be so tempted to rebuy the GS3 and get a blue tooth headset and deal with it.
I am on my 5th razr, as I have bricked 4 of them, and could not seem to brick the GS3 - not that I wanted to of course, but it was SO MUCH EASIER modding the GS3 - and the abillity to restore it to complete stock - for return purposes, that verizon did not care that I had altered the OS as long as the phone was returned in original state...
The 4 brickings were attempts to mod beyond simple rooting and adjusting some db settings - my fault of course as I do not know what I'm doing in an android world - but I must say that modding a GS3 is so simple - I like the fact that Samsung makes modding a feature almost - in the sense that they do not lock bootloaders as opposed to Motorola. If Motorola followed samsung's footsteps the razr [and alike] would not suffer that many bricks and returns from guys like me, I think they'd get more sales...
and so it goes...
Anyone care to comment...
Completely mod-able, virtually unbrickable, yet I find a few drawbacks.
The drawbacks are that I compared to the Razr Maxx - own that too - switching sim card between phones.
Yet they may not be drawbacks. I'll explain.
I am so familiar and comfortable with Motorola / Android phones - especially the mobility features - cardock, audio interface for car, speakerphone that is made for in-car use, moto cast, that it almost ruined the experience with the GS3 - almost.
No, I do not own a GS3 anymore. I purchased one full retail, to kick the tires on it for a week or so. Financially it was not viable to keep the unit, yet I must say, with the exception of the lack of mobility [in-car] features, it still stands to be the best phone I've ever used - to date.
Now, fairly, the in-car features are important to me - and that was a big deal in my decision to return it, but for all purposes that could have been solved by investing in blue-tooth. However, I did not want to go that route with the GS3.
The Razr [or any motorola model from the atrix forward] becomes a different device when cradled into the car dock. It positions itself to be a GPS and multimedia unit first, phone second. That is it's greatest attribute...
Performace and Feature wise - the GS3 wins overall. After flashing the synergy rom [although hated to lose visual voicemail app - yet loved the gain of the native call recorder feature] it made the GS3 more pleasurable to work with.
The GPS section of the GS3 kicks the crap out ofg the Razr*. The base audio software of the GS3 kicks the crap out of the Razrs audio software, and for the fact that the GS3 has so many features hand-over-fist compared to the Razr - it makes it a much more pleasurable phone to deal with - customizing it to your needs. And to boot, the GS3 is so much faster than the Razr - but that is to be expected. I use to think that 200 - 300 Mhz would not make a difference in a phone, but it makes all the difference...
* The Razr was the second phone - in motorola's line to harbor sGPS (syncronous GPS), and signal acquisition was hands down the fastest over any phone I've ever seen, yet with the ICS upgrade, even with a cleared cache / dalvik, it drastically changed, moving from a 6 second acquisition to well over a minute - and lower signal in most cases - horrible. However, I will go to say that a mfr-factory ICS install on the Razr seems to be way way better, and the GPS acts like it did - fast aquisition, stronger signals etc.
Battery-wise, I do not think anyone can argue with 3300 mAh in the razr, but using the GS3 and baby-sitting the battery a bit was not that bad - it would be expected for a phone of that caliber [as it would any phone with a small battery]. It did not add any dissapointment to the experience - IMO...
So, do not let any comments regarding mobility affect your decision in buying a GS3 - unless you find that in-car feature as important as I do. The kit to me makes the all difference - and how the Razr phone metamorphs into a different unit.
The next Razr phone [HD] is rumoured to have NFC, same processor / speed as the GS3, a larger screen, better graphics etc, and it is a move I will probably make - as the larger screen is so much a desireable attribute. And I suspect it will have the same car-kit features which will nail it down for me better - decisionwise. But if any of that changes, I would be so tempted to rebuy the GS3 and get a blue tooth headset and deal with it.
I am on my 5th razr, as I have bricked 4 of them, and could not seem to brick the GS3 - not that I wanted to of course, but it was SO MUCH EASIER modding the GS3 - and the abillity to restore it to complete stock - for return purposes, that verizon did not care that I had altered the OS as long as the phone was returned in original state...
The 4 brickings were attempts to mod beyond simple rooting and adjusting some db settings - my fault of course as I do not know what I'm doing in an android world - but I must say that modding a GS3 is so simple - I like the fact that Samsung makes modding a feature almost - in the sense that they do not lock bootloaders as opposed to Motorola. If Motorola followed samsung's footsteps the razr [and alike] would not suffer that many bricks and returns from guys like me, I think they'd get more sales...
and so it goes...
Anyone care to comment...
Last edited:
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