Help About to take my S3 back

[WasabiBomb]

I switched over to the GS3 from an iPhone 4, so I've had a bit of a learning curve. I love a lot of the features of the GS3, and I really like the fact that the OS is a lot more open for development than the iOS. I also really like Google Voice.

However...

I ride a motorcycle, so I use my phone a lot- for music and for navigation- over my bluetooth helmet. I also use bluetooth in my car, for handsfree and Pandora. Oh, and for my home phone- I've got a handheld which connects over bluetooth to my cell phone, so if I'm at home and get a call, it rings the home phone instead. And the Galaxy isn't doing those things too well.

1) Pandora isn't sending song info to my car stereo. Not a big deal, but I really got used to this feature with the iPhone. It'll send song info if I'm playing my own music, but I can't tell what song is playing over Pandora.

2) Sometimes the Galaxy seems to get confused- it'll connect to the head unit or my helmet and play music fine... but the microphone on the phone is still the one that's active. Needless to say, this makes it impossible to voice dial or control the phone- and on the motorcycle, I can't easily stop and do it manually. The only fix I've found for this is to turn bluetooth off and then on again.

3) In the house, it seems to work too well; the phone connects to the handset base, and will ring and answer just fine. But if I happen to have the Galaxy on me and I want to use it, the audio is still being piped to the handset- so if I try to call someone with the cell phone while in the house, they can't hear me and I can't hear them- I have to use the handset. The iPhone solved this by asking me which audio I wanted to use if I used it instead of the handset.

4) I've never been able to get the "listen to wake up" option to work- the only way I can get S Voice to work is to manually press the speaker button while in the app. And if I do get it to work, it still requires me to use the phone if it has any question as to what I want it to do; if I try to call my wife, it asks me which number I want to call- but it doesn't list them out, it expects me to use the screen to pick which one. This is impossible if I'm driving.

5) I almost always keep my phone on silent, with vibration. Or at least I did, on the iPhone. On the Galaxy, it's far too easy to accidentally hit the side volume buttons and turn the ringer back on. Annoying in a meeting, and really bad in the theater. I really wish it was possible to just completely lock the ringer to silent.

6) My favorite pair of earbuds don't seem to work. I can double click to go to the next song, but the volume controls don't do anything. And if I use the Galaxy's earbuds, I can't figure out how to make S Voice work- on the iPhone, all I had to do was hold down the button for a second and it'd ask me what I want- but on the Galaxy, it just seems to control the music player.

So... any ideas? Like I said, I love the Galaxy for all of its power... but unless it can do what I need, I'm going to have to return it.

 

[waremaster]

First off welcome to the forums from a fellow motorcycle rider.

I didn't see what motorcycle Bluetooth device you are using. I use a Scala G4 and love it. It works flawless with the Galaxy SIII.

 

[WasabiBomb]

First off welcome to the forums from a fellow motorcycle rider.

I didn't see what motorcycle Bluetooth device you are using. I use a Scala G4 and love it. It works flawless with the Galaxy SIII.

Yeah, I've got a Scala G9. The main problem I'm having with that particular bluetooth setup is that there are times I give it a command... and don't hear anything else. When I stop and pull the phone out of my pocket, it apparently needs more information (like which of my wife's numbers to call, or which Greene Turtle I wanted to drive to). There's no real feedback if it doesn't have enough information. On the iPhone, if it didn't know which number I wanted to call, it would ask me "Home, Work, or Mobile". Does yours do this?

Also, are you able to ask the time? I did that yesterday and got silence.

 

[waremaster]

Yeah, I've got a Scala G9. The main problem I'm having with that particular bluetooth setup is that there are times I give it a command... and don't hear anything else. When I stop and pull the phone out of my pocket, it apparently needs more information (like which of my wife's numbers to call, or which Greene Turtle I wanted to drive to). There's no real feedback if it doesn't have enough information. On the iPhone, if it didn't know which number I wanted to call, it would ask me "Home, Work, or Mobile". Does yours do this?

Also, are you able to ask the time? I did that yesterday and got silence.

I will test asking it the time. As far as dialing #'s I do know that I am used to say something like "Call Linda Home" and it dials Linda without issue.

 

[Stuntman]

3) In the house, it seems to work too well; the phone connects to the handset base, and will ring and answer just fine. But if I happen to have the Galaxy on me and I want to use it, the audio is still being piped to the handset- so if I try to call someone with the cell phone while in the house, they can't hear me and I can't hear them- I have to use the handset. The iPhone solved this by asking me which audio I wanted to use if I used it instead of the handset.

Android phones also give you the option of which device to take the call. Look at your screen when on a call. There should be a speaker icon. If you tap it, it gives you the option of using various devices.

 

[GFMDroid]

Yeah, I've got a Scala G9. The main problem I'm having with that particular bluetooth setup is that there are times I give it a command... and don't hear anything else. When I stop and pull the phone out of my pocket, it apparently needs more information (like which of my wife's numbers to call, or which Greene Turtle I wanted to drive to). There's no real feedback if it doesn't have enough information. On the iPhone, if it didn't know which number I wanted to call, it would ask me "Home, Work, or Mobile". Does yours do this?

Also, are you able to ask the time? I did that yesterday and got silence.

I'm having the exact same problem with my Galaxy S2 and Scala G4. Bummer, because I just dropped $400 on this phone because I DIDN'T want an iPhone.

Another big problem I have is I can't just say "navigate to Kyle's house." I found a program in the Play store that can do this, but then there's no voice command for closing or stopping navigation so I can give a different command. On top of that, once Navigation is open, the audio goes back to the phone instead of staying in my helmet =( let me know if you found any solutions.