Saturday
Sep082012
Can you help David?
Saturday, September 8, 2012 at 2:30AM Once again, swayed by the LIM crowd, I have purchased my third samsung galaxy (having owned the previous SI and SII). Is anyone who reads LIM willing to write a nice piece on the must-have features of this phone that makes them crow about it so much here? After 2 weeks I am on the verge of throwing out my third successive samsung smartphone without managing to comprehend everyone's awe. David.
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Reader Comments (15)
Sell the Galaxy, and buy an iPhone instead. This is the first phone that doesn't make me look at other phones. Sorry couldn't make it any better than that...
Great music reproduction over BT. Fast at most things. Great screen for watching films. Okay selection of widgets. Wife with iphone 4s prefers S3
David it depends what you tend to use your phone for.
Stand-out features for me are the screen, the speed and Apt-X. Well, and the removable battery and microSD slot of course. If those things don't matter to you perhaps the S3 isn't for you, or perhaps there'll be other things that'll appeal to you.
If you tell us what you like to do on your phone, or what you'd like to do, then we might be able to give some pointers.
I'd like to hear this too, but from a different angle. Despite Apple's impending iPhone 5 announcement, and having had a 3G and (currently) a 4, I'm highly tempted by the SIII over the 5.
Where do I start. It does everything I want really well and more.
Phone calls. In call settings even have a sound equaliser to fine tune your hearing to the phone speaker. Superb calling functions. Option to use the hard keys to end calls etc. All use voice to answer call.
Texts. Get a text, lift phone and it calls person.
Fm radio with voice. Voice actions for camera, music player and phone app. That is voice control without pressing a button first. So camera. Say smile and it takes a picture.
Camera app. Amazing options and very handy. I have taken so brilliant photos with special effects.
Touchwiz is very good. So good xda have ported it. I use Apex Launcher pro and change themes a lot.
Some great themes. Android apps work really well on S3. SwiftKey keyboard is a must for fast entry.
Samsung have and are improving phone with ota updates.
Reliable. Powerful. Video is amazing and pop up player actually is useful.
Dnla and wifi direct features negate the need for an apple TV box with my Sony tv.
Looks more attractive than iphone 4. Even my wife wants one over her 3gs. She never liked the 4.
Smart cover. Not much protection but still I love it on mine.
Samsung extra software. Via the more Services app there is at least 15 apps to load if you want from compass, games, photo and video editors, office editing suite etc.
Samsung's apps like S Planner and S Memo are really good.
But it also the flow of the phone in use. So smooth. Sharing is much better than any iphone. Dropbox 50gb limit is free with s3.
If you want more I will detail all the little touches of which there are over 100.
Last one. The clock app. Alarms. It has option to wake you up slowly a few minutes before increasing the sound volume slowly. Or you can have a briefing alarm. This notifies you of the time, your meetings today, and weather and news headlines. Of course everything is adjustable to your preferences.
Adjusting to Android from Apple does take some patience initially.
Before I go and catch up on some sleep, my last few thoughts.
The S3 is fantastic android. Totally customisable if you want. Change any aspect, custom roms etc . But with the S3 it is excellent without needing to root (jailbreak). The official firmware is powerful enough. For me I use Apex Launcher instead of the default Touchwiz. But Touchwiz is surprisingly good. And that's my point. All the default apps by Samsung have options to fine tune the phone to work how you want. Apart from Apex and Swiftkey I haven't replaced any of the default apps with something else. I even use gmail app to work with my 3 other email accounts - hotmail, yahoo and gmail. So long as your gmail is setup on the pc correctly, everything else works neatly on the phone.
The S3 phone app really needs to be applauded. Check all the settings. So powerful. The same applies to all the other default apps. Loads of options in the settings.
The S3 has a high quality wolfson Audio Digital to Analogue chip. It produces high quality sound via headphones. The music app has a brilliant EQ and a super digital EQ. The S3 is also equipped with apt-x for very very high quality Bluetooth stereo sound.
The battery life is miles better than any phone I have owned yet.
The lock screen has so many options. I like my fav four shortcuts on screen. You can add a camera motion control too. Motion controls can do so much as can voice. S Voice is poor except for some things like launching apps, sending messages, or calling somebody. Always gets the weather right too.
GPS lock is very fast. Google Navigation looks lovely on large screen, as does copilot.
It's fast and very responsive. The screen can be adjusted to 4 different display types, movie, standard, natural and one more.
The smart stay option really is useful. I set a 30 second time out, but it always stays on longer if I am looking at screen.
The default web browser is excellent. Check lab settings for quick launch and full screen. Don't use full screen but quick launch is used a lot.
The S3 can play some crazy games.
Two weeks is not long enough to get to know your S3 btw IMO .
My last words - the S3 once setup and you understand how flows and functions, it just flows like water. Everything just does what you want , how you want. It's best in class at everything at the moment.
If the leaks on the iPhone 5 are true, I still think the S3 can hold its own against what we know so far.
I mentioned the camera. It has over 60 options at least. When filming you can take photos at the same time.
Over and out.
And one last thing. Look at this connectivity video as to what's possible with the S3. http://www.androidnz.net/2012/06/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-connectivity-demo.html
David, neither Android nor Samsung are for everyone. Don't force yourself to like something just because. If after really spending time with it you just don't like it, no worries. Get what suits you!
Second that. At the moment Samsung is my favourite but who knows what will be the position after Wednesday.
Also cost must be a consideration.
Gavin - the irony is you've summed up why it is I still find myself not getting rid of the iphone (even though I have an sgs3). There's too many options, I've found myself accidentally calling people, getting confused by the camera, etc.
BUT - the iphone has a crummy screen when doing media and gaming.
The result? I end up using both for different things (Grrr)
Apple's still going to have to pull something special out - I still feel I've not fully adopted the SGS3 more because I don't want the switch back if the 5 is worth it.
In a way, it'll be good if the 5 isn't so great, as I'll probably finally switch properly to android.
I really don't want more features etc, but I do want a few things improved (a bigger screen - happy with 4 - 4.3", and that'll allow extra case space for more battery hopefully.
@ Peter C - that is probably part of your problem. I think you really need to put down one phone and use the other exclusively for 2 or more weeks. I found that it has taken about 3 weeks to set up my S3 like I want it to be set up, and today I found out about another really useful feature (Alarm can sound then read out weather, news and calendar, and will then continue to sound - if you miss the daily brief - no prob as it also shows up on the lock screen when you go to cancel or snooze the alarm). There are so many little useful features like this - the Eye sensor to keep the screen on, however they all take an bit of time and you need to play with them a bit to see what you like and what you dont.
Taking the camera for example - it is easy to switch out and replace the shortcut options - took me about 3 days to decide on what I really wanted there, but since doing that I find the camera quicker and easier to use. Considered the voice option for taking pictures but decided against it. Biggest issue I have with the camera is holding the phone when taking landscape to ensure there isn't a finger over the lens or flash.
It takes time, and if you are switching and swapping phones around you will never find out whether you do or don't like the the phone, as when you find a roadblock you don't like, you will not properly check to see if there is an inbuilt option or one on the market that can resolve your issue, instead you will probably find yourself switching to the phone you already know is set up so you don't have that issue.
@ Peter C - Peter there is no way in the beginning you knew how to work your iPhone. You too would have had to learn its ways. My iPod Touch 2g was my first Apple device. It made moving to my first iPhone, the iPhone 4 a bit easier, but I still was learning little things over a year later about the iOS and some of its tricks. My wife has a 3GS and really only knows the basics and probably won't know much more. At work I noticed the ops manager, she had a S3. I asked her what she thought of it, answer absolutely brilliant and made a comment you could play battleships with another device via Bluetooth. No mention of other aspects.
I don't dislike the iPhone at all. I think it taught people that having a smartphone is normal. In reality you wouldnt need much of a struggle to manage the S3 but you would need to use it exclusively to avoid the trap of falling back into your known comfort zone with the iPhone.