I've had my 4G version S3 for just two months now and its pretty gone to the dogs already. Its an expensive phone so I've pretty much had it in bubble wrap, but I really don't see the value in it as a phone.
Here are some of the problems I've experienced:
- Phone has no sound in call 50% of the time despite the volume being turned full way up and the bar reflecting this. After a while I just get a "Phone has stopped working" message
- Camera works about 50% of the time. Rest of the time I get a nice black screen and "Camera has stopped working" message
- Alarm simply will no longer go off (no sound or vibrate) no message, just no alarm
- Pulling outrageous data. After the latest factory reset with no data syncing, somehow according to my provider its consumed 1GB data in a week. Yet the phones logs show just 250 KB of usage ... I haven't even been web browsing with it. Completely baffled.
Worst of all, its not like these are smartphone problems, they are all BASIC phone functions that you'd expect on any communications device.
Restarting the phone sometimes fixes these issues temporarily.
When I do a factory reset the issues keep coming back.
Samsung have released no firmware updates or fixes since I bought it.
I contacted Samsung support and they say I have to hard reset the device. I'm not really sure how this is different from a factory reset, but I'll give it a try. Hopefully it makes the phone functional again ... fingers crossed but I'm not holding my breath.
I've been an Android user for many years now and I've owned other phones in the Galaxy series, but its specifically been my experience to date with the S3 that makes me feel like going back to a prepaid dumb phone or maybe turning to the dark side and iPhone 5.