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Galaxy S3 Watering Hole

My wife and I just switched from S3's to the ZTE Zmax and are really pleased so far.

As far as the Patriots stuff... IDK, I think Goodell is an overreaching and inconsistent leader but I do think that people should pay a price for cheating and that these things pretty much ruin the integrity of the game. It's funny how few people seem to care about honesty and real sportsmanship these days.

It's like all that matters is your team winning and NO one cares how this happens.
 
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As my tenure with the Galaxy S3 is coming to an end, I would like to say a few words about it. I actually didn't intend to buy the Galaxy S3, 3 and a half years ago. I was quite happy with my HTC Desire Z save for the battery. The battery was swelling and was failing to hold a charge. I ordered a new battery from Bell, my carrier. I kept checking for weeks and they still do not have one available yet. Then the day before I was to go on vacation, they said they could not find a battery. As I was short on time, I decided to pull the trigger and get the Galaxy S3.

I was not disappointed. It was a great phone and excellent upgrade over my HTC Desire Z. It was blindingly fast compared to the DZ. That's the thing with phones that have physical keyboards. Manufacturers put these keyboards on crappier versions of phones. I've occasionally fired up my old DZ to test out some things and it was like a slug.

The Galaxy S3 was very snappy. I found that for many things it was quite convenient to use it instead of my PC. It actually made my Transformer tablet obsolete. The Transformer had a great physical keyboard, but it was just too slow and buggy. I got the Transformer as a near PC replacement and my Galaxy S3 ended up fitting that role better. Although I couldn't replace my PC completely, the convenience of the phone and its great performance allow me to do many things around the house without having to run to my PC.

Going from a 3.7" phone to a 4.8" wasn't a difficult adjustment. It took a few weeks and I got used to the new size.

I wasn't satisfied with the battery life with the phone. The nice thing about the GS3 was that it has a removable battery. I bought an extended third party battery. It comes with its own special back plate to fit the 3500 mAh battery. This doubled the thickness of the phone. I actually like the extra thickness as the camera module is now raised away from the table it is resting on. I just don't get this race to make a phone thin enough to slice tomatoes. I use an iPhone 5S for work and I don't see any advantage of it being thinner.

What was a big adjustment was going from a landscape slider physical keyboard to a touch screen keyboard. My first smartphone was the Nokia N97. I loved that keyboard. The DZ was OK. Switching to typing on a touchscreen was something that I hated. I never used autocorrect with my N97 or DZ. I tried in vain to type without autocorrect on a touchscreen. My ultimate conclusion was that touchscreen keyboards suck. I had to ultimately use autocorrect in order to type with any reasonable degree of accuracy. SwiftKey was pretty good and allowed me to type with a decent amount of speed and accuracy. I use Swype now as it had the advantage with one-handed use. I still think that autocorrect is a poor solution. It changes correctly typed words to something else too often for me to find satisfactory.

This pass several months, I find that I've had to reboot my phone every week or so. I've had to do that because either the GPS had difficulty locking onto my location or the music would stutter occasionally. I often drive using Waze and streaming music via the BT audio in my car. I also have two cracks on the chassis on the top right and bottom left corners. The phone still works, but I feel that it could fail in the not too distant future. I was hoping for it to last another year when the Project Ara phone may become commercially available. Alas, I would rather have the piece of mind of a reliable phone at this time.

I just received notification that my new phone has been shipped. It should be here in a couple of weeks.
 
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My ultimate conclusion was that touchscreen keyboards suck. I had to ultimately use autocorrect in order to type with any reasonable degree of accuracy. SwiftKey was pretty good and allowed me to type with a decent amount of speed and accuracy. I use Swype now as it had the advantage with one-handed use. I still think that autocorrect is a poor solution. It changes correctly typed words to something else too often for me to find satisfactory.

My wife saw a quote in the paper this morning ... "I wish I was as confident as my phone's autocorrect." ;)

I told her she'd be right half the time, too. :D
 
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My wife saw a quote in the paper this morning ... "I wish I was as confident as my phone's autocorrect." ;)

I told her she'd be right half the time, too. :D

When I used a physical keyboard, I did make mistakes. These mistakes are not so glaring that it changes the entire context of the message I am sending. With autocorrect, it can potentially change the entire context of the message. I see those "Damn you autocorrect" posts and articles from time to time. I don't see anything similar for typos on any type of physical keyboard.
 
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