Unbiased, amateur review of the GS3....

[chadrob30]

I've had the phone for about 3 months now, and here is a quick, unabashed review from my experience. Your mileage may vary.

1) Call quality- sucks. Most of the time I cannot understand the other party when in a call. Sometimes I can catch just enough of a conversation to know what is going on. I usually have to go outside and stand in the "special spot" in the driveway to get good enough signal to use the phone as intended. Fail.

2) Ease of use- I came from an Apple iPhone 4S, so the learning curve was a bit steep, although this wasn't my first Android ordeal. (I had an Incredible a couple years ago). Once I got comfortable with the layout, back button, menu, settings, etc everything was cool. Pass

3)SMS/MMS- good. With all the aftermarket apps in the Play Store the messaging on this phone is top notch. I rarely use the stock app, but the MMS Slideshow crap when one photo is sent to me is kind of goofy, but for the most part they got this part right.

4) Screen- excellent.

5) Camera- so-so. Some pics are great, some suck. Video camera sucks, and cannot seem to stay in focus long enough to finish whatever short clips I am trying to capture.

6) Battery- sucks. I bought an extended battery so I can make it through a day.

If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have bought this phone. For being a top of the line phone I sure am disappointed. Maybe if/when Jelly Bean shows up for Verizon it will get better. In the mean time I will be saving up for a HTC DNA.

Overall I give this phone a 4/10.

EDIT= as a matter of coincidence, the JB update is out now, lol.

 

[madsdad928]

Ive had a gs3 for about the same amount of time and could only be hapier if i actually had 4g (sprint). Everything i wanted my blackberry to do thisphone can actually do. I unplug my phone @6am and its good til bedtime most days. Sucks you are having a bad experience but the gs3 is the best selling smartphone on the planetfor a reason.
I think alot of your problems are carrier related. I have sprint, thier high level of suck is wel documented but the bloatware was pretty light.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Android Central Forums

 

[FuzzyB]

Yeah, i also am very pleased with this device. The phone quality as mentioned above was one of my biggest concerns coming in and quite frankly, i am astonished how well it works.

So far i cant really find anything that i dont like (have it a month). At this point i would have to give it a 9.5 or 10....it's that good.

 

[AndroidGod]

The review is good, but I wouldn't rate the phone so poorly. I LOVE my gs3. The screen is amazing, and the hardware is amazing, and and almost everything else is amazing from my experience. Call quality is alright, but I didn't as horrible quality as you. I happen to live in a good signal area since I'm in New York so call quality is perfectly alright. Plus even if the quality sucked I wouldn't even care. I mostly text and do cross platform chat anyway. And of course, the the battery is average. It's better than the thunderbolt, but it still isn't great. I have the extended anyway so it really isn't a issue. I would definitely have chosen this phone again if I knew what I did now, and as many of the issues are minor for me and can be fixed or forgotten. 9.5 out of 10.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Android Central Forums

 

[LegalAmerican]

Wow that's a sucky review. When someone says the S3 camera is so-so, they instantly lose credibility.

This phone certainly isn't perfect, but when every tech review website gives it "Best of 2012", I'm going to assume they know better than someone saying it gets 4/10. Unless you give the iPhone 4s a 2/10 and a iPhone 5 a 3/10. In that case, yes a 4 would be a decent, accurate score.

Thank heavens everyone can't just publish reviews.

Sent from my Galaxy S3

 

[chadrob30]

So, "LegalAmerican", you are saying you believe the rest of my review but think the phone has a great camera? LOL. Thank heavens everyone can't just publish reviews. Wait....if everyone COULD publish reviews then maybe more people wouldn't get suckered into buying "the next big thing" like I did. When it takes 4-5 seconds to take a picture because it doesn't want to focus, and taking a video is impossible because it cannot get focused, there is an issue. But haters gonna hate and fanbois gonna be fanbois.

 

[MikeLip]

Wow that's a sucky review. When someone says the S3 camera is so-so, they instantly lose credibility.

This phone certainly isn't perfect, but when every tech review website gives it "Best of 2012", I'm going to assume they know better than someone saying it gets 4/10. Unless you give the iPhone 4s a 2/10 and a iPhone 5 a 3/10. In that case, yes a 4 would be a decent, accurate score.

Thank heavens everyone can't just publish reviews.

Sent from my Galaxy S3

Well, he's right. Compared to the iPhone camera, the G3 is not that good. I have an iPod 5 and the GS3 camera doesn't even match that. It's slow to focus, doesn't capture focus well,and it's noisy as hell in low light. Apple did a wonderful job on their camera. And why should it be a bad thing that anyone can write reviews? If he had a bad experience with GS3 then he has every right to state that.

Oh, btw - just because a tech blog says it, doesn't make it right. Especially if it's Gizmodo, the Weekly World News of tech. Most of the time they don't bother with fact checking, or it's a blatant ripoff of a manufacturer press release. Andandtech and BGR are OK, but I'd go by user experience from an unbiased source first.

 

[makaroni]

#Sheesh a 4 out of 10? Good lawd and I thought I had a good phone. This phone is awesome to me taking a step up from an Evo 3D. That's just me though. So if this phone is a 4, then which phone would you rate higher than the S3 besides everyone's obvious Note 2 choice?

My GS3 sleeps in the bed and I make my girlfriend sleep on the couch

 

[hossman12]

I have to say I disagree wholeheartedly with mostly all of your review. I get excellent call quality and love the camera, as well as how the phones functions and performs in general. I'm also curious to know what you'd rate high on your "scale" if you'd give the GS3 a 4.

Sent from my MetroPCS GS3

 

[HalizDad]

Yep...amateur at best, troll at worst.

 

[worwig]

But haters gonna hate and fanbois gonna be fanbois.

So it is OK for you to post your opinion, but if someone has a different view, you call them haters and fanbois!

Look up the definition of hypocrite, or maybe troll.

 

[MikeLip]

The review is good, but I wouldn't rate the phone so poorly. I LOVE my gs3. The screen is amazing, and the hardware is amazing, and and almost everything else is amazing from my experience. Call quality is alright, but I didn't as horrible quality as you. I happen to live in a good signal area since I'm in New York so call quality is perfectly alright. Plus even if the quality sucked I wouldn't even care. I mostly text and do cross platform chat anyway. And of course, the the battery is average. It's better than the thunderbolt, but it still isn't great. I have the extended anyway so it really isn't a issue. I would definitely have chosen this phone again if I knew what I did now, and as many of the issues are minor for me and can be fixed or forgotten. 9.5 out of 10.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Android Central Forums

Sucky call quality would be all right??? On a PHONE??? Especially a high-end phone? Why don't you just get a telegraph key and have done?

My take on this phone - excellent call quality. So-so camera. Good response. Excellent screen. Average speaker phone. OK battery life (got an extended battery). The phone becomes excellent with a different launcher and light flow except for the camera. Camera Zoom FX helps with that, but doesn't fix it.

 

[zapfrog]

I've had the phone for about 3 months now, and here is a quick, unabashed review from my experience. Your mileage may vary.

1) Call quality- sucks. Most of the time I cannot understand the other party when in a call. Sometimes I can catch just enough of a conversation to know what is going on. I usually have to go outside and stand in the "special spot" in the driveway to get good enough signal to use the phone as intended. Fail.

2) Ease of use- I came from an Apple iPhone 4S, so the learning curve was a bit steep, although this wasn't my first Android ordeal. (I had an Incredible a couple years ago). Once I got comfortable with the layout, back button, menu, settings, etc everything was cool. Pass

3)SMS/MMS- good. With all the aftermarket apps in the Play Store the messaging on this phone is top notch. I rarely use the stock app, but the MMS Slideshow crap when one photo is sent to me is kind of goofy, but for the most part they got this part right.

4) Screen- excellent.

5) Camera- so-so. Some pics are great, some suck. Video camera sucks, and cannot seem to stay in focus long enough to finish whatever short clips I am trying to capture.

6) Battery- sucks. I bought an extended battery so I can make it through a day.

If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have bought this phone. For being a top of the line phone I sure am disappointed. Maybe if/when Jelly Bean shows up for Verizon it will get better. In the mean time I will be saving up for a HTC DNA.

Overall I give this phone a 4/10.

EDIT= as a matter of coincidence, the JB update is out now, lol.

Odd but maybe it's Verizon or a defective phone because my S3 on att is far superior for call quality than any iPhone I've ever had. Battery life was meh u til I changed some settings and now with heavy use I get 4-5 hours. Oh and JB rocks!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Android Central Forums

 

[chadrob30]

Yep...amateur at best, troll at worst.

Definitely not a troll.

- - - Updated - - -

So it is OK for you to post your opinion, but if someone has a different view, you call them haters and fanbois!

Look up the definition of hypocrite, or maybe troll.

ROFLMAO

 

[rvhighway]

Come on guys, including the op, stop with the name calling. I happen to disagree with the op on quite a few things, but not all. Yet, I've found my S3 a very good phone that does it's job very well.

Would I rate the S3 camera a 10? Heck no. However, I wouldn't rate any phone camera a 10, including the one on all iphones. When I want great photos, I go to the DSLR. As far as I'm concerned, a camera on a phone is a convenience only. With that said, I've found that the S3 camera is better than any other point and shoot I've ever used . . . and that's more than I should expect.

The op also appears to be comparing the last generation iphone's battery life to the S3's battery life. There's no comparison. The old iphone is a 3G phone while the S3 is a 4G phone. In fact, the comparison can't be made. Any 3G phone uses less juice than 4G phones. It's the way it is, so a 3G phone should have better battery life with everything else being equal. A more accurate comparison would be the iphone5 to the S3, but all factors would need to be taken into account . . . like features that are running, widgets that are or are not using juice for the convenience of the owner vs. no widgets available, etc.

As for call quailty, what's the problem? It works for me. It sounds fine and other people can hear me. It links to my bluetooth earpeice and it sounds great. It links to my car's blue tooth speaker and sounds no worse than should be expected. It's limited by the performance of the car's system, not the phone. I don't see the problem.

After those few issues, I did do something that increased the usability and performance for me. I dumped all of the VZW junk and tweaked the settings to make it work better. You know the story, unlock, root and install a ROM. It's actually made an improvement to the phone for me. It's not improving what Samsung made. It's improving what VZW messed-up. As a result, the phone lasts me all day.

Of course, I could do things with the phone and empty the battery much faster than I've described, but I have a life so I don't need to spend it glued to my phone for hours on end. I just get my emails, browse the web from time to time, read RSS feeds from time to time, make and answer calls as needed and listen to podcasts while I'm working in the yard for around 4 straight hours every so often. In all cases, it's lasting from 8 am to 10-ish pm with room to spare.

The answer is to set-up the phone properly and to root/ROM it to make things better. Those are things that can't be done with the iphone. It's a take it or leave it proposition on that phone, even if it's not set up for the way the owner likes to work or use it.

So, if the op want's to live the iphone way, he's more than able to do so. It sounds like it was a pleasureable experience for him. However, if he wants to make his S3 work for him, it will take some effort on his part. That's not a fault of Android, it's what Android is all about - making it your own rather than making the way you work a clone of another company's decision. Does that need to inlcude rooting and ROMing it? No. There's things that can be done with the standard VZW setup. However, by taking the second step by leaving VZWs garbage behind will only optimize the phone and make it what it was designed to be.

So, like it or hate it, that's my opinion and here's my advice to the op: Learn how to use the S3 and put the time into setting it up properly. Read past threads to see what you can do and then do it. Consider rooting and ROMing to improve things, including the camera performance, but if you don't want to do it, that's okay. You'll get better performance once you do the basic stuff.

Oh yes, one last thing . . . remember, it's just a phone - not a life.

 

[LegalAmerican]

Actually OP, I disagree with 90% of your review. The camera was just the dumbest thing you said so that's what i pointed out.

I'm okay with you having your opinion, but don't call it "unbiased" when you clearly aren't. No one who is unbiased would say the best phone of 2012 gets a 4 out of ten.

And I've used the iPhone camera. While it IS better than the S3's, it's not THAT much better and the S3 is pretty close to having the best non Apple camera out there. The only one that's probably better is the HTC one X series.

I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, I'm just laughing at how horrible that biased review was. I just will put more stock into CNET and Android Central's reviews.

Sent from my Galaxy S3

 

[LegalAmerican]

And why should it be a bad thing that anyone can write reviews? If he had a bad experience with GS3 then he has every right to state that.

Oh, btw - just because a tech blog says it, doesn't make it right. Especially if it's Gizmodo, the Weekly World News of tech. Most of the time they don't bother with fact checking, or it's a blatant ripoff of a manufacturer press release. Andandtech and BGR are OK, but I'd go by user experience from an unbiased source first.

User reviews are great. As long as they are at least a little subjective. Calling it unbiased and then spouting nonsense won't be helpful to anyone. Like he said, haters gonna hate. And that's exactly what he's doing. And if you guys are upset with this camera, chances are you won't be happy with any non iPhone camera. So might I recommend a $1500.00 Nikon for your professional photography. For basic, on the go shots, the S3 is far above average.

Sent from my Galaxy S3

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

So, "LegalAmerican", you are saying you believe the rest of my review but think the phone has a great camera? LOL. Thank heavens everyone can't just publish reviews. Wait....if everyone COULD publish reviews then maybe more people wouldn't get suckered into buying "the next big thing" like I did. When it takes 4-5 seconds to take a picture because it doesn't want to focus, and taking a video is impossible because it cannot get focused, there is an issue. But haters gonna hate and fanbois gonna be fanbois.

I actually think the phone quality is better or on par with any device I've ever owned. I'm my office where I normally work, I BARELY get a cell signal -- I'm normally running on 2 or 3 bars of "1X" while there -- doing any data activities is almost impossible, yet phone calls always come in loud and clear and rarely get dropped. Maybe there's a specific issue with your device?

So, "LegalAmerican", you are saying you believe the rest of my review but think the phone has a great camera? LOL. Thank heavens everyone can't just publish reviews. Wait....if everyone COULD publish reviews then maybe more people wouldn't get suckered into buying "the next big thing" like I did. When it takes 4-5 seconds to take a picture because it doesn't want to focus, and taking a video is impossible because it cannot get focused, there is an issue. But haters gonna hate and fanbois gonna be fanbois.

Here again I'm a bit shocked. When I first got this phone (and was running stock ICS), I remember being at a football game trying to take a picture...I was getting upset because I kept hitting the button, but the pic wouldn't take...until I realized that I had snapped about 15 pics without knowing it. I was so used to phones taking a second or two to focus, process the command and actually snap the pic that I didn't even notice the phone was taking pictures so instantly that I just assumed it wasn't working. Are you sure you haven't changed a setting somewhere that's causing it to focus longer?

Also, I'm running stock battery, and think battery life is great. Granted, as I mentioned above, when at work my signal sucks, so that drains battery quickly, but when I'm in a good signal area, battery is superb. A few weeks ago I was at a Redskins/Ravens game with 4 other friends, all of which have iPhone 5s. We were all using our phones throughout the day, but the end of the day, all my friends had less than 10% battery left, but my S3 had around 60%...so I was able to stream NFL mobile for while we waited to get out of the parking lot, and then was able to pull up Google maps nav to find us an alternate route home when we hit traffic. They were all amazed that I still had so much juice.

EDIT: Regarding the comments on the camera, I'm assuming you have the flash turned off...because that will always delay the picture.

 

[chadrob30]

Thanks for the laughs fellas. Nowhere in my original or subsequent posts did I compare this phone to another. I simply stated what phone I came from and what phone I own now. I clearly touched a nerve, and it is fine to defend your device of choice. Opinions are like a-holes, and there are a few here obviously. On a brighter note, since I updated to JB the battery life seems better, and I was hoping the phone portion of the phone would improve, but alas, I still have to go outside to talk.

 

[jlibis]

Honestly this is silly, everybody's device will run differently and act differently. I've never had a problem with anything in the OP really, but whose to say it doesn't on their own device. I've watched and read tons of reviews on this phone before and after, and the feedback is 85% positive while the other is mainly complaints on build quality which is understandable.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Android Central Forums