Compare, contrast, opinions: GSIII vs EVO 4G LTE / Sprint-CDMA-S4 only

EarlyMon said:

After it appeared that he cleared ram, he then went over and S-voice was still running, eating 28 MB. Not sure that's doing what you think, or if he really pressed it.

Try this - on your present phone, try Quick System Info PRO, it's free, and click on the processes tab. How much memory are essential services using under your various Android apps? (And please let me know what phone and OS.) If you've never done that sort of thing on a phone, it may prove revealing.

Anyone with an SGS2 want to take the Quick System Info PRO challenge and feedback what the usual memory load is for various processes under TouchWiz? With Gingerbread is fine.

Click to expand...

Ok, i have 299mb free, 84 being used by Android system apps, the rest are my various other widgets and apps. Galaxy nexus 4.0.4

rivera02 said:

Ok, i have 299mb free, 84 being used by Android system apps, the rest are my various other widgets and apps. Galaxy nexus 4.0.4

Click to expand...

Pretty reasonable.

So, between hardware functions and ICS and a spot of normal use, you've used 700 MB of 1 GB ram - and that's on a Nexus, without Sense or TouchWiz.

This is why I don't believe that that indicator was for ~620 MB free and only 160 used to run a basic stack - it makes far more sense to me that that was for 160 MB free, with only one app running.

I could be wrong, I am often am, but that's why I believe what I do.

Thought this was interesting, because it shows a realistic drop test of S3. S3 Gorilla glass2 ?

Samsung Galaxy S3 vs. iPhone 4s: Drop, Kid, Car Test. - YouTube

Similar drop test of LTEVO:

HTC Evo 4g Lte | with Gorilla Glass 2 | Scratch & Drop Test - YouTube

I am reminded of the OneX dryer demo Not many LTEVO drop test vids. Plenty of SGSIII though?

Eh, it's not transparent aluminum, just a tough glass.

It's not if, it's when, every forum for every phone with Gorilla Glass gets a breakage report.

It hits just the right way on a drop, the energy gets transferred just the right way into a corner, and it breaks like the glass it is. You hit it other ways, it seems pretty amazing and tough being glass.

Exactly why I have a Defender case on my phone - I'm a big believer in soft, rubbery case for any phone the way I roll, while others can carry anything naked in confidence and never have a lick of worry.

I don't think that these popular vids ever prove what they suggest, except that Gorilla Glass (one or two) is harder than common metal. For some of us, that's plenty, but for others it's not enough.

Personally, I don't get impressed by these vids. The SGS3 is going to outsell the One X types and the LTEvo. If they were truly El Cheapo, word would get out and sales would drop.

I would be really surprised if Sammy screwed up so badly.

WifiMaxed said:

Thought this was interesting, because it shows a realistic drop test of S3. S3 Gorilla glass2 ?

Samsung Galaxy S3 vs. iPhone 4s: Drop, Kid, Car Test. - YouTube

Similar drop test of LTEVO:

HTC Evo 4g Lte | with Gorilla Glass 2 | Scratch & Drop Test - YouTube

I am reminded of the OneX dryer demo Not many LTEVO drop test vids. Plenty of SGSIII though?

Click to expand...

The GS3 drop test is not really a test, its a Squaretrade commercial. I'm not saying that the phone would hold up in these tests, but this a commercial for Squaretrade. If it didn't break, how could they convince you to buy their insurance?

EarlyMon said:

Yeah, no. Take a good look at 2:47 - that's not 617 MB free, that's 617 MB used, right? By scrolling tabs by 2:51, that took a short pop up to 628 MB used.

The phone showed that S-voice was the only user task available to the user to kill. Not at all different than the HTC task manager in that regard - the phone was running in the background, messaging, the laucher, all sorts of other goodies and the operating system services on top of that.

Having an even extra 100 MB available on the international SGS3 is great, no doubt about it, but if I'm right about the memory allocations for the S4, you won't be getting 780 for the user out of 1 gig, you'll be getting closer to what the LTEvo has.

So, if true, then idling S-voice and no other apps would put you at about 628/680 MB, or let's say 60 to 100 MB free. I can eat that much opening several tabs of this site in Boat Browser. (I have been exceeding 100 MB of ram use just for web pages nearly every day for nearly a year.)

Hence, when running large software stacks, more ram is better.

Again, I'm not knocking the Sammy for needing more ram.

Android is no different than any other PC - as the OS advances, as apps advance, as the devices include more features, you need more memory.

I'm wishing that HTC would have provided more as Sammy did, it's the smart play. Meanwhile, if I'm keeping the LTEvo, I'm debloating it - no choice for the way I use things.

PS - SK Telecom’s Galaxy S III merges quad-core CPU and 2GB RAM

Click to expand...

Maybe I'm tired, but it did look like he cleared the memory, except Touch Wiz will load whatever it wants again. It's the same as HTC Sense. It seems the vid shows 625 of 780 MB of space available.

Watching the vids, much of the CPU is used so often for just simple tasks like menu and the scrolling of shortcuts by swiping down notifications. It's meant to look slick and busy all the time. I doubt there's any way to disable that either.

It's very busy and it's very smart of Samsung to include 2 GB of RAM. If the U.S. version is lucky, they will get 625 MB + 1 GB of RAM. They will need it since Touch Wiz is expected to have so many apps (their processes) and services running. Don't forget more RAM to be consume due to carrier bloatware running.

Unless users are extremely Internet browsing, they won't notice the performance increase. The same goes for LTEvo. I doubt many will notice until they get way into multitasking with memory hogging apps. In the meantime, majority of Android apps have a reasonably small foot print in terms of RAM.

mak916 said:

The GS3 drop test is not really a test, its a Squaretrade commercial. I'm not saying that the phone would hold up in these tests, but this a commercial for Squaretrade. If it didn't break, how could they convince you to buy their insurance?

Click to expand...

Very true, and to echo what EM said above - if a phone lands just the right way, it's going to get damaged. The videos are interesting to watch though - I admit I've been tempted to drop my phone to see how well the TPU case protects it but I'm afraid something bad would happen.... so I won't try it

Newbie here after lurking around and finally buying the LTEVO based on a lot of info found here. Thanks everyone!

Besides the obvious (and not so obvious) differences in S3 and LTEVO, what does everyone think about the future dev support?

The S3 is probably going to be the most popular android phone (in the world?) and launching in the US to all major carriers. While the LTEVO and OneX brethren may have a decent following, I would think most of the attention (and dev support) would focus on the S3 and TouchWiz.

I'm happy with my LTEVO, but this is really making me think twice. Any thoughts?

nycken said:

Newbie here after lurking around and finally buying the LTEVO based on a lot of info found here. Thanks everyone!

Besides the obvious (and not so obvious) differences in S3 and LTEVO, what does everyone think about the future dev support?

The S3 is probably going to be the most popular android phone (in the world?) and launching in the US to all major carriers. While the LTEVO and OneX brethren may have a decent following, I would think most of the attention (and dev support) would focus on the S3 and TouchWiz.

I'm happy with my LTEVO, but this is really making me think twice. Any thoughts?

Click to expand...

this is my butt in seat feeling...
past htc phones have been better supported by both oem and dev.

but this new GS3 is to be kept the same on all carriers.. so a devs work would be used across.

htc One series was to be kept the same throughout too..
but LTevo turned out to be a very custom One X. which means it will be a very small subset of the total.

this may keep the development small for the LTevo. but the changes are great improvements over the standard One. I hope that will attract more .

nycken said:

Newbie here after lurking around and finally buying the LTEVO based on a lot of info found here. Thanks everyone!

Besides the obvious (and not so obvious) differences in S3 and LTEVO, what does everyone think about the future dev support?

The S3 is probably going to be the most popular android phone (in the world?) and launching in the US to all major carriers. While the LTEVO and OneX brethren may have a decent following, I would think most of the attention (and dev support) would focus on the S3 and TouchWiz.

I'm happy with my LTEVO, but this is really making me think twice. Any thoughts?

Click to expand...

I think you will have good developer support. HTC has a great developer community. I'm not sure how much internally the LTEvo is different from the One X, but I think that you will be ok.

PattiCakeUS said:

Very true, and to echo what EM said above - if a phone lands just the right way, it's going to get damaged. The videos are interesting to watch though - I admit I've been tempted to drop my phone to see how well the TPU case protects it but I'm afraid something bad would happen.... so I won't try it

Click to expand...

I have different cases for different occasions. I don't really like the big thick cases, but I know there times when I will need them so I have at least one. Even with the best case on, I am always careful not to drop my phone. I could never try one of these "tests" with my phone.

dan330 said:

this is my butt in seat feeling...
past htc phones have been better supported by both oem and dev.

but this new GS3 is to be kept the same on all carriers.. so a devs work would be used across.

htc One series was to be kept the same throughout too..
but LTevo turned out to be a very custom One X. which means it will be a very small subset of the total.

this may keep the development small for the LTevo. but the changes are great improvements over the standard One. I hope that will attract more .

Click to expand...

I didn't realize the LTevo is that different from the OneX. And Verizon has a different version as well. That makes my point even more!

How was dev support for the Evo3D compared to the GS2? I can already see devs modding the GS3 (6x5 launcher grid is pretty cool), which I assume will just work for the US models when they come out. Even if similar mods come out on the One X, what if it doesn't work quite right for the LTevo.

As much as I like the LTevo, this is really making me lean towards the GS3.

nycken said:

I didn't realize the LTevo is that different from the OneX. And Verizon has a different version as well. That makes my point even more!

How was dev support for the Evo3D compared to the GS2? I can already see devs modding the GS3 (6x5 launcher grid is pretty cool), which I assume will just work for the US models when they come out. Even if similar mods come out on the One X, what if it doesn't work quite right for the LTevo.

As much as I like the LTevo, this is really making me lean towards the GS3.

Click to expand...

Ok, time for a whoa here compadre.

The SGS3 and the One X are not models - they are classes of phones.

Each carrier gets a variant and sometimes even the international model gets sub-classes (Japan, Australia (I *think*) and Korea (definitely)) are getting different versions of the SGS3 from the international one.

The dev community that you care about will be for your model because there will be definitely rom variations between the various variants based on kernel (attaching to hardware, like processor and radios), the software version of the original used as a base (varies by carrier).

So - the fracturing you're concerned about is there and has always been there.

That said - the various devs tend to play off of one another and will cross carriers and sometimes countries for their offerings (we've already seen international One X tweaks succcessfully adopted by the LTEvo dev community).

The Evo 3D had good dev support, but the original Evo had spectacular support - it was a give-away at the Google I/O 2010 developers conference, after all.

The LTEvo is already well-supported by a number of the top devs out there (flipz Fresh rom, viper, freeza, Team Chameleon, TWRP, koush CWM) - and it's been out for only a week. You can flash radios, kernels and roms on the LTEvo in the present root state and choose between two recoveries.

Both the LTEvo and SGS3 will be extremely well supported because both platforms are attractive to developers.

And whatever that thing is on Verizon, it's in no way, shape or form a One X.

Welcome to the forums, nycken!

Do you guys think the LTE needs to be rooted? I would like to have a phone I didn't root this time around.

i.have.droid said:

Do you guys think the LTE needs to be rooted? I would like to have a phone I didn't root this time around.

Click to expand...

I just rooted mine today - I wanted to give some time and give stock a chance.

Personally, I was ready to either root or replace the stock launcher as others have recommended (as an alternative to rooting) to free up some memory.

If you just do this or that, it's fine (actually, it's great) - if you like to run lots of apps, or memory intensive apps, and would like to do something about their button choices in Sense4/ICS/LTEvo, then you're going to sign up for root.

The smoothness is there out of the box, no question - but like always, it can be improved.

Sorry, but there it is.

EarlyMon said:

I just rooted mine today - I wanted to give some time and give stock a chance.

Personally, I was ready to either root or replace the stock launcher as others have recommended (as an alternative to rooting) to free up some memory.

If you just do this or that, it's fine (actually, it's great) - if you like to run lots of apps, or memory intensive apps, and would like to do something about their button choices in Sense4/ICS/LTEvo, then you're going to sign up for root.

The smoothness is there out of the box, no question - but like always, it can be improved.

Sorry, but there it is.

Click to expand...

What method did you use Early?

EarlyMon said:

Ok, time for a whoa here compadre.

The SGS3 and the One X are not models - they are classes of phones.

Each carrier gets a variant and sometimes even the international model gets sub-classes (Japan, Australia (I *think*) and Korea (definitely)) are getting different versions of the SGS3 from the international one.

The dev community that you care about will be for your model because there will be definitely rom variations between the various variants based on kernel (attaching to hardware, like processor and radios), the software version of the original used as a base (varies by carrier).

So - the fracturing you're concerned about is there and has always been there.

That said - the various devs tend to play off of one another and will cross carriers and sometimes countries for their offerings (we've already seen international One X tweaks succcessfully adopted by the LTEvo dev community).

The Evo 3D had good dev support, but the original Evo had spectacular support - it was a give-away at the Google I/O 2010 developers conference, after all.

The LTEvo is already well-supported by a number of the top devs out there (flipz Fresh rom, viper, freeza, Team Chameleon, TWRP, koush CWM) - and it's been out for only a week. You can flash radios, kernels and roms on the LTEvo in the present root state and choose between two recoveries.

Both the LTEvo and SGS3 will be extremely well supported because both platforms are attractive to developers.

And whatever that thing is on Verizon, it's in no way, shape or form a One X.

Welcome to the forums, nycken!

Click to expand...

It's not that I believe LTEvo wont be supported by top devs, but my assumption is the SGS3 is bound to have way more just based on the predicted number of users and preorders.

Plus like you said, the Verizon "variant" of the One X is so different. Whereas the SGS3 variants for Sprint and Verizon are likely to be pretty close (Verizon's will be a world phone?), and I would imagine make it easier for devs to make things work for both CDMA phones.

Earlymon - big fan. Your responses are always informative and helpful!

Thank you early. I can't believe how long I have held out on getting a new phone so far, but I kind of feel like Kramer driving on E right now, so it's getting easier to see how these phones progress. Also a testament to the og EVO, which still is hanging in there for me, even with the subpar battery.

I hate the sense screen so replacing the launcher would make sense. Is there a more raw ICS launcher that is easier on the memory as well? That would probably be my go to. I also don't use a ton of apps..I try and keep everything clean and minimal. I want a good fast browser ( web browsing on ogEVO is subpar to me) good talk time, gps that works, very good voice to text translation and battery life that lasts me all day and night before needing a charge.

caborobo said:

What method did you use Early?

Click to expand...

This is absolutely the way to go - http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-lte-all-things-root/559456-regaw-mod-one-click-root.html

Unlock, root, install TWRP recovery (the one you want, trust me) - it's truly all you need, contacts htc-dev for the unlock, the whole bit.

nycken said:

It's not that I believe LTEvo wont be supported by top devs, but my assumption is the SGS3 is bound to have way more just based on the predicted number of users and preorders.

Plus like you said, the Verizon "variant" of the One X is so different. Whereas the SGS3 variants for Sprint and Verizon are likely to be pretty close (Verizon's will be a world phone?), and I would imagine make it easier for devs to make things work for both CDMA phones.

Earlymon - big fan. Your responses are always informative and helpful!

Click to expand...

Hey, many thanks!

Yeah, I see where you're going there - that devs will go where there's the biggest audience, and the biggest audience will go with the biggest carrier.

I guess it might work that way a little bit, but really, not so much.

Case in point, Verizon never got the SGS2, and the Sprint Epic 4G Touch crowd (the Sprint SGS2) crowd was none the worse for wear.

HTC devs gravitate to phones that interest them, and the One X, and now the LTEvo, is getting a lot of dev interest.

Unlock is the key, and with the phone only being officially out for a week and a day, the unlock we have lets us flash kernels from recovery as well as roms (thanks to TWRP) and we can flash radios and anything else - pretty much unheard of for a phone with s-on (encryption method for the bootloader, we can discuss more in the rooting section).

And when you can flash anything, and the phone is interesting, and holds the title of Evo successor, devs will follow.

And that Verizon thing is the odd man out, it won't apply, it's really it's own model.

I'm running a rom dev'd for the international One X, _everything works_ and it has exactly the tweaks I was looking for (plus or minus ongoing experiments on my part for memory management).

i.have.droid said:

Thank you early. I can't believe how long I have held out on getting a new phone so far, but I kind of feel like Kramer driving on E right now, so it's getting easier to see how these phones progress. Also a testament to the og EVO, which still is hanging in there for me, even with the subpar battery.

I hate the sense screen so replacing the launcher would make sense. Is there a more raw ICS launcher that is easier on the memory as well? That would probably be my go to. I also don't use a ton of apps..I try and keep everything clean and minimal. I want a good fast browser ( web browsing on ogEVO is subpar to me) good talk time, gps that works, very good voice to text translation and battery life that lasts me all day and night before needing a charge.

Click to expand...

Here's a great wrap-up, it includes the link to the Team Syndicate ICS Launcher -

http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g-lte/529695-what-3rd-party-launcher-use-ics.html

I've spent a day playing with the Nova launcher myself - sleek and plenty fast, I got on to the idea for it here -

http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g-lte/555765-any-issues-multitasking-htc-evo-4g-lte.html

For a good browser, my personal favorite is Boat Browser. You can add a host of add-ons with Dolphin HD, so it has a lot of fans, and many prefer X-Scope (also pretty good), but for me, it's Boat.

OK - hope that helps!

Sauske - the Apple/Sammy war is interesting, so I moved it to here -

http://androidforums.com/lounge/560927-apple-files-another-lawsuit-against-htc.html

I think that folks there will enjoy the story.

EarlyMon said:

I just rooted mine today - I wanted to give some time and give stock a chance.

Personally, I was ready to either root or replace the stock launcher as others have recommended (as an alternative to rooting) to free up some memory.

If you just do this or that, it's fine (actually, it's great) - if you like to run lots of apps, or memory intensive apps, and would like to do something about their button choices in Sense4/ICS/LTEvo, then you're going to sign up for root.

The smoothness is there out of the box, no question - but like always, it can be improved.

Sorry, but there it is.

Click to expand...

So they have S-off!? I just read the link above and saw that you don't have S-Off! My question to you EarlyMon; I thought you had to have S-Off to flash roms!?

nycken said:

It's not that I believe LTEvo wont be supported by top devs, but my assumption is the SGS3 is bound to have way more just based on the predicted number of users and preorders.

Plus like you said, the Verizon "variant" of the One X is so different. Whereas the SGS3 variants for Sprint and Verizon are likely to be pretty close (Verizon's will be a world phone?), and I would imagine make it easier for devs to make things work for both CDMA phones.

Earlymon - big fan. Your responses are always informative and helpful!

Click to expand...

Verizon opted out of the One Series! They have the Incredible 4G LTE with a dual 1.2 processor...This is not a One X variant!

EarlyMon said:

This is absolutely the way to go - http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-lte-all-things-root/559456-regaw-mod-one-click-root.html

Unlock, root, install TWRP recovery (the one you want, trust me) - it's truly all you need, contacts htc-dev for the unlock, the whole bit.



Hey, many thanks!

Yeah, I see where you're going there - that devs will go where there's the biggest audience, and the biggest audience will go with the biggest carrier.

I guess it might work that way a little bit, but really, not so much.

Case in point, Verizon never got the SGS2, and the Sprint Epic 4G Touch crowd (the Sprint SGS2) crowd was none the worse for wear.

HTC devs gravitate to phones that interest them, and the One X, and now the LTEvo, is getting a lot of dev interest.

Unlock is the key, and with the phone only being officially out for a week and a day, the unlock we have lets us flash kernels from recovery as well as roms (thanks to TWRP) and we can flash radios and anything else - pretty much unheard of for a phone with s-on (encryption method for the bootloader, we can discuss more in the rooting section).

And when you can flash anything, and the phone is interesting, and holds the title of Evo successor, devs will follow.

And that Verizon thing is the odd man out, it won't apply, it's really it's own model.

I'm running a rom dev'd for the international One X, _everything works_ and it has exactly the tweaks I was looking for (plus or minus ongoing experiments on my part for memory management).



Here's a great wrap-up, it includes the link to the Team Syndicate ICS Launcher -

http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g-lte/529695-what-3rd-party-launcher-use-ics.html

I've spent a day playing with the Nova launcher myself - sleek and plenty fast, I got on to the idea for it here -

http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g-lte/555765-any-issues-multitasking-htc-evo-4g-lte.html

For a good browser, my personal favorite is Boat Browser. You can add a host of add-ons with Dolphin HD, so it has a lot of fans, and many prefer X-Scope (also pretty good), but for me, it's Boat.

OK - hope that helps!

Sauske - the Apple/Sammy war is interesting, so I moved it to here -

http://androidforums.com/lounge/560927-apple-files-another-lawsuit-against-htc.html

I think that folks there will enjoy the story.

Click to expand...

I apologize for the partial skimming because I just read that part in bold! This is a legendary feat! That's the reason I didn't root in the first place, because I thought (Which I was right) you couldn't flash roms without S-Off, but the successor to the OG Evo is living up to it's name! Hail LTEvo!

We are still s-on. You could flash roms but most flashing was difficult and many believed that we wouldn't get past the limitations, but they have. You need to fastboot flash radios (edit - nope, we can do that from recovery now as well), but that's something that you will do infrequently if at all.

EarlyMon said:

Sauske - the Apple/Sammy war is interesting, so I moved it to here -

http://androidforums.com/lounge/560927-apple-files-another-lawsuit-against-htc.html

I think that folks there will enjoy the story.

Click to expand...

Uh, I can't stand Apple and their stinking lawsuits. I bought my sister a 4S yesterday because her OG Evo (I bought her) was too complicated? Anyways, the screen is so tiny, I had to squint to look at it. Even she had to hold it much closer to her face to look at it.


Took another look at the LTEVO yesterday as well, still think Sense is all mixed up and has lost it's simplicity. Like they just changed stuff to change it. I see why you rooted it, this is the worst Sense launcher of any EVO IMO.

Radios seem great though, still way faster at loading the same video on youtube than my Epic Touch, though didn't compare it to my 3D.

If the SGS3 radios are weak, I don't know if I can put up with two weak radio'd Samsung phones (I carry two phones). So I will have a dilemma which will likely end up with me having the LTEVO and SGS3.

GS3... rumored to be unlockable to a world phone on verizon. I hope it can be the same on Sprint. I dont travel outside usa much, but the option being there is great!

more to weight in