hi - great post id say go for it! - i started off with wanamlite and am now on codec 10.1 which is a themed rom - very nice

 

:-D no idea sorry as not sure what nexus looks like. I suspect that this codec one might be a bit like it. but check in the xda s3 dev section for more

 

There's not really a stable "Nexus style" (usually called 'AOSP') ROM at the moment. When I was looking into rooting, this is what I wanted originally - but I went with Wanamlite and flashed a few mods on top of it to make it look like stock Jelly Bean (aka. AOSP). That was all courtesy of SUroot's & Shotgun's help in this thread.

Although I have some TouchWiz features, I don't have any Samsung bloatware running. No S-Voice or any of that useless stuff. TouchWiz camera and TouchWiz multi-tasking is pretty much all I notice. The rest is "Nexus style" AOSP. Here's some screenshots, and links to the mods, of my setup (click on the show button): http://androidforums.com/5380681-post116.html

I've been told that CM10.1 is a reasonable ROM - but it's not "stable", as classified by the developers. It's being developed fast though. You'd want to use the top one on this page, if you wanted to try it: CyanogenMod Downloads

 

No probs mate. Let us know when/if you find one. I'd be interested in trying it, especially JB 4.2+

 

I'd imagine it'll be a long time. Perhaps some cutting-edge games might lag a little in a year or two, but for most regular "apps" (Twitter, Facebook and the likes), I can't imagine the S3 struggling until it gets left behind in a few years due to hardware/software advancement. That's the way it goes, phones, computers, tablets - all the same.

I'm not massively knowledgeable about phone hardware and where bottlenecks might be apparent - but I'd imagine the 1GB RAM the original i9300 has (mine and yours) will begin to bottleneck the phone's performance before the processor. If true, that should only effect very large applications (or heavy multi-tasking). Be interesting to see if anyone else agrees/disagrees?

Either way, it's going to last you until you buy your next phone...and then some. You may think this is the best phone ever, but when the next generation of high-end smartphones come around, you're going to want more!

I bought my S3 with the intention of waiting for the iPhone 5S/6 in 12 months from when I bought the S3. However, unless iOS changes dramatically, I think I'm hooked on Android - courtesy of SUroot on this forum.