Anyone actually have a good working S3

[NZtechfreak]

Mine is near-perfect. The tiny flaws are nothing more (and generally less) than you'll find on any other smartphone.

 

[ImpulsebuyerNy]

Mine is near perfect as well, battery runs circles around every phone ive ever owned as well as the camera/video recording quality too! Everything else is just an added bonus -

Some things i dont care for - the stock keyboard is terrible (easily fixed), the google instant search on the stock browser will not fill in your sentence which is annoying, and your cannot do wide wallpapers (well with another home app you can) but all stock we are talking here - other than those minor issues this maybe the phone that finally keeps me content until my real upgrade (2 yrs from now)

 

[craighwk]

I love the S3. All phones have their little quirks, but nothing is preventing me from enjoying all the phone has to offer. Best Android device so far, in my eyes.

 

[Ballymoss]

Samsung have sold somewhere in excess of 10 million GS3's. I suppose what we really need is a forum for people who are happy with their phones and can't be bothered to comment on forums?

 

[mikes1]

Yep mine is fine. Verizon GS3. I like it a lot, but it is what it is. Electronics are never going to be 100% perfect. And by that I just mean the whole batch isn't going to be. Maybe out of 100, 99 are perfect and 1 just didn't come out right. And it could be the smallest thing. That's what the warranty is for. Don't be discouraged if you get a bad one. Just get it replaced.

 

[rushmore]

The title and premise of the OP seems a tad general to lump and assume some people having issues or percieving them as such is the standard for all and people not having a good experience are the exception.....

By that very convention, we can assume all devices suck and just a few lucky people actually get good devices.

 

[liteon163]

Based on my experience with forums, I always assumed I was extremely fortunate to have gotten three flawless smartphones in a row between my HTC DROID Incredible, LG Spectrum, and now this Samsung Galaxy SIII.

I AM fortunate, but moreso because these forums help me with whatever questions I have. And they allow me to help others as well.

Get the phone and don't worry. We're here to help, whether it be with problem solving or troubleshooting.

 

[herdroid]

Nice!!! thank you everyone for the fast replies

I am very familiar with how forums work and know that most people come here only to get help, not to praise the device, but it seems there are overwhelming amount of threads pointing to different issues, thats what scares me, I do expect issues with any phone that is released whether be android, windows, or (sorry for mentioning the name) Apple, but it seems this S3 thread has a ton of different issues so i was wondering if it's just a fluke from user to user based on a small amount of phones or its a solid issue that any of us would have if we bought the phone, for example

black spots on screen
wifi signal strength issues
poor verizon signal strength compared to Motorola devices

and so on

Please know I am not here in a negative way, I unfortunately have a iPhone 4 and desperately want to get rid of this boring, same os for 5 years, device. The S3 seems like the phone to make me a happy droid user, again, just seeing some threads pushes ya away, just need some re-assurance I guess, LOL

thanks again guys

I have had my phone since July 9. I have had issues only because I did not know how to do something. This forum has helped a lot! I have Verizon and have had no problems with reception or wifi connectivity. I learn something new everyday and will continue to monitor this forum to see what others have learned. I love my S3!

 

[SUroot]

The title and premise of the OP seems a tad general to lump and assume some people having issues or percieving them as such is the standard for all and people

Indeed, but we have already addressed this in the thread

 

[mikefla]

great phone! I love it!!! Like he said above this is the place you come with problems, not many people come on when everything is working perfect, like 99% probably are!

 

[rsarno]

hello OP!

First of all, EarlyMom .. fantastic post. Thanks for "sticking up" or however you want to look at it. I wish we saw more of that.

OP .. I am VERRRRYYYY picky about devices! I am almost always an early-adapter. BB Storm, HTC Incredible, iPhone (all versions), my TF201 tablet (lord help me with that one!) and now this phone.

With that said, I am using my device steadily and heavily for the last 5 days and cannot find a flaw to write about, other than Predictive text which sucks donkey butt, for real its THAT bad! But swap out the keyboard and its a non-issue.

The "Cell Standby" glitch is definitely a bug, but it doesnt effect anything. If you never look at your battery stats, you'd never even know it was there.

I really cant think of 1 single negative thing to harp on, outside of the predictive text.

Okay if you forced me, id say the stock ringtones and wallpapers are really terrible. It forces the need to download Zedge or some other alternative. But is that really SO bad? ha

Just buy the phone, it is really speedy, beautiful, lightweight, buttery smooth, and most of all enjoyable

 

[osutuffy]

I haven't had a single problem with my phone. My posts have only been to ask how do I do something. I love my phone and it's flawless as far as I am concerned. I've read through and while I have seen people post problems, some of them you have to take with a grain of salt...could be user error, or they are expecting the phone to do something their old phone did, since the S3 can't do it the same way their old phone did, the S3 must be broken. Not saying that all or even most of these threads fit that scenario, but keep in mind that some of them do. Verizon also did a software update, I believe, and some of these posts probably were fixed with that. You will often see a lot of 'broken phone' threads when a phone is new, these are usually quick fixes and then we're all happy.

But I haven't had a problem with mine and I am one of the ones that have been playing with their new toy instead of posting

I just read through the rest of the thread and saw your three concerns.

First, I have verizon, and I live out in the sticks...signal is the same (sometimes a bar better) than my droid incredible (the original one). My phone quickly connects to wi-fi (faster than my tablet or laptop) when I am at home. It notifies me when there is a wifi network and quickly connects to it when I give it the ok. I love how easy it is and reliable it is on wifi at home. I always had problems on my incredible, and lots of apps didn't work at home or it would lag. I ended up disabling wi-fi. With this phone, it works so well, I leave it on all the time. I download 800 songs onto it over wi-fi in a matter of minutes.....way faster than my laptop did with the same songs on the same network.

I have no screen spots, and never read about them except on this forum. I read a lot of reviews before deciding on this phone.

As for the buttons, I don't have loose buttons. I can't tell you about scratching the screen or casing of the phone. I had a screen protector and case delivered the day after I got my phone. I love it so much that I wanted to take care of it and I am a notorious phone dropper.

Between what it can do and how fast it is, I will put it up against any phone out there. There will always be phones that win in one category or another, but all in all this one wins a lot of points.

Find the thread titled 'what's your favorite app' and you'll find happy people. Speaking of apps, I have spent the day deleting apps that automatically downloaded from the market, because I no longer need them, stock apps cover a lot of bases for me. I've also been able to install a lot of apps that were ICS only and allowed me to clear out other apps.

I'm getting off my soapbox now....going to play with my phone.

 

[THE W]

there's maybe 4,000 people reporting issues with the phone out of 10 million people who bought it which means you have a .04% chance of having a problem. all new technology is gonna have some glitches in their first batches which is why they have firmware updates to fix things. even the alledged almighty iphone has people complaining about various things not working right.

forums like these are helpful in letting developers know what problems need to be fixed.

buy with confidence.

 

[Doit2it]

The camera takes very good pics all around. Very sharp colorful pics is what you should expect from this phone. I was very surprised that this phone is right about on par with the iphone 4s.

Major WiFi issues is what I've experienced, even with a hard reset. My phone will just drop the connection out of nowhere, never had this issue with my last 2 phones, the Galaxy note, and Iphone 4 s....not a single hiccup.

The battery drain from standby is ridiculous. Standby just rears it's ugly head and puts a real drain on my battery on a daily basis. It's been well documented that this is a big problem with this phone.

I personally think the camera could be better. But I'm NEVER satisfied with cameras on phones apparently.

I haven't had an WiFi issues myself. And I use a cheapo TrendNet wireless router at home. No issues at other family homes either. Sorry Sean's having issues, hope you figure them out.

The Standby showing such high drain is ONLY a reporting issue, and is NOT a drain issue. Samsung mistakenly entered a figure that REPORTS 10 times the actual drain. If you are not getting 15 to 18 hours average on a charge with your S3, some other app is draining the battery. I consistently get 17 hours with 2.5 hours screen time daily.

Many complain about the fragility of the phone. I've got a chepo gel case on mine and dropped it 6 feet to a metal stair then it bounced another 1.5 foot to concrete and slid across the floor. NOT A SCRATCH! Thank goodness!

As others have say, this is a support forum. The majority of posts are "How do I" posts vs "My phone won't" posts. And many of the "My phone won't" posts turn out to be settings issues so they fall back to the "How do I". This is such a high tech piece of kit, it's difficult to find every setting to get it "like you like it".

I've had no major issues with my S3 (except what Verizon has imposed) and would happily upgrade again from my previous Droid X.

 

[IPahwa]

Nice!!! thank you everyone for the fast replies

I am very familiar with how forums work and know that most people come here only to get help, not to praise the device, but it seems there are overwhelming amount of threads pointing to different issues, thats what scares me, I do expect issues with any phone that is released whether be android, windows, or (sorry for mentioning the name) Apple, but it seems this S3 thread has a ton of different issues so i was wondering if it's just a fluke from user to user based on a small amount of phones or its a solid issue that any of us would have if we bought the phone, for example

black spots on screen
wifi signal strength issues
poor verizon signal strength compared to Motorola devices

and so on

Please know I am not here in a negative way, I unfortunately have a iPhone 4 and desperately want to get rid of this boring, same os for 5 years, device. The S3 seems like the phone to make me a happy droid user, again, just seeing some threads pushes ya away, just need some re-assurance I guess, LOL

thanks again guys

Hi,
I am newbie to Android System and switched from iPhone OS after 5 years. I probably will get some 'beatings' for writing this but want you to make an informed decision:
1. IMO, build quality of S3 is not as great as my iphone 4S especially the back cover. Screen on the other hand is gorgeous on S3
2. There is some learning curve like any other device. I personally did not find Android OS of my taste. I have Windows OS, iOS, and ICS phones in the household, it may come as a shocker but I do find the current WM OS to be the smoothest. It's hard to describe all the differences here but mainly I did not get the 'tight integration' feel between OS, applications, and the user experience.
3. I have more fun on iphone 4S ONCE jailbreak process was completed. IMO, quality of themes available is much better than the Android.
4. On the other hand, on my second day of acquiring S3, I was able to root it (jailbreak).
All in all, its a great phone and I am not planning to stop using it. Some little annoying things like on S3, sammy decided to call external SD card as ExtSD card instead of usual SD card. Now, many applications such as backup applications do not even recognize the actual SD card. On S3, SD card refers to internal memory. Is this a deal breaker? Absolutely not! Is it annoying, yes! Oh, I do not have any call quality issues on AT&T network and any other quality issues that you mentioned.
I hope it helps you little bit. Thanks.

 

[substring]

My GS3 is working perfectly! It is like 10 times better than my iPhone 4S, except maybe the camera. My iPhone still take better snapshots. Other than that, the GS3 is the best smart phone on this planet as of this moment.

 

[Blacklight82]

Got a perfectly working phone here. Best phone to date. I go through phones like crazy but this one is in for the long haul.

 

[brichi]

hey guys, once again thanks for all the feedback, I did go to my local Verizon store today and picked up the 16gb white, loving it so far, we shall see how it goes

 

[lennydude]

Hope things work out for you

I am a cell phone junkie. I have had just about all the top level phones over the years and i really think Samsung has a winner with the S3. This coming from a person who had nothing but negative issues with the Galaxy Nexus, both VZW and GSM.

As for "now" this is without a doubt the best phone i have owned. Boot loader is unlock able, Has both a removable battery and a SD card. Has a beautiful HD screen, is the perfect size (for me), on and on....................

BTW.............check out something called a USB OTG cable................if that doesn't open your eyes i don't know what will

 

[sean76]

Hope things work out for you

I am a cell phone junkie. I have had just about all the top level phones over the years and i really think Samsung has a winner with the S3. This coming from a person who had nothing but negative issues with the Galaxy Nexus, both VZW and GSM.

As for "now" this is without a doubt the best phone i have owned. Boot loader is unlock able, Has both a removable battery and a SD card. Has a beautiful HD screen, is the perfect size (for me), on and on....................

BTW.............check out something called a USB OTG cable................if that doesn't open your eyes i don't know what will

What issues did you have with the Unlocked GSM model of the Nexus? And what provider where u running it on?

 

[lennydude]

I was one of the first to get the VZW version. Did not have any luck at all especially no connectivity
I really thought the GSM version on AT&T would be a winner. I had the HTC One X and it was getting great results. The Nexus once again was really bad even though AT&T is strong around my area.
I forget the exact numbers but i had like an average of 300 to 500 "k"bps download and with the One X i get 5000 to 6000 "m"bps down. Same with my S3.
It is a great piece but just will not work at all in my area. I blame it on the radio it has but really have no idea. Sure wish it would work.
BTW...............the S3 has a bootloader that can be unlocked and i am enjoying everything i need the Nexus to do

 

[djcage69]

I come here to check out some threads before possibly getting the phone and there just seems to be issue after issue with this thing, Is this phone really that bad based on these threads? the first couple of pages of the S3 forum are nothing but problems from what I see

Yes I do. Everything works as advertised. There are Lemons out there just like everything else.

 

[sergey]

I come here to check out some threads before possibly getting the phone and there just seems to be issue after issue with this thing, Is this phone really that bad based on these threads? the first couple of pages of the S3 forum are nothing but problems from what I see

I had an iPhone 4 too.
I checked out these forums to get info on the S3, like you.
And I freaked out about thread after thread about problems like you.
I also had my doubts about the S3, like you.

But I decided to take the plunge- worst case scenario, I would just return it. I'm on Verizon and it's been fantastic. The only issue I have is that where my iPhone would connect with the 3G network and ALWAYS use data and ALWAYS sound like I was calling from a landline, now it's like 99% of the time it does this. I had one call where it dropped and a few where the fuzzy sound a la an AT&T iPhone in NYC. Data works 99%. I had one issue where it would not work and a restart of the phone fixed it. I was really pissed, because of my PTSD from AT&T, but really it's been fantastic. No complaints and if you are not waiting for the iPhone 5, then this trumps anything out there.

Oh, any all those people complaining about Android being laggy? Not at all. If anything, this is smoother than my iPhone 4. How things changed...

Quality and issues aside, the last remaining thing is getting used to Android coming over from iOS. Some things are better, some are worse. It's just different.