I've had one of these for a couple of months on Vodafone, and under all the glitches, bugs, irritating little quirks, it's a very nice phone. Having said that, getting under said frustrations to use the phone properly can be extremely frustrating. I had an S3 before this and I loved it, hands down the best phone I've ever owned and I like having the best. I've had Xperias, HTCs, an iPhone, and a few others over the years but this Note 3, the phone which should spank all those handsets with ease, has one too many bugs to make it a pleasant experience.
Here are my gripes with it:
Loses connection - I don't know if it's Vodafone or the handset, but I never had this issue with my S3. It just drops connection completely for a few moments every now and then. Although this never happens in a call, it's happened quite a few times where I've been trying to call someone and it'll just cut out and I have to wait for it to reconnect.
Loses WiFi - As above, it'll be connected perfectly fine for a while, then just drop everything. Mobile signal, Wifi, the lot. When you're in the middle of something, like typing up a post on a forum and you lose all your typing because the phone suddenly loses connection, this is extremely frustrating and not something I find tolerable on a flagship phone.
Unable to download videos - Bit of an oddball this one. I used to be able to load up almost any video on my S3, and use the built in Internet app to download it. Great for travel, I'd catch a bus in the morning, download a vid on the way to my tube station, and have a video ready to go for when I'm on the tube. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but it was great and a brilliant feature of the S3. I've tried a few apps but none of them are able to replicate the ease of which I was able to do this with the S3.
Unable to play video - Again, something which is very intermittent but always seems to happen at the worst of times. I load up a video on a site which I frequently visit, and rarely have issues on, and suddenly the handset has forgotten how to play the video. I reboot the device, which has a 50/50 chance of it working, but sometimes I just have to forget what I was doing and try again later whilst my phone does whatever it does to figure out how to play a film.
Camera - Wow, this camera is amazing. I haven't fiddled with it too much so this could well be a user error, but on the auto setting, I sometimes take a photo and the phone will make the sound and whatnot, but then it'll say "processing". This is when it's actually taking the photo, not when the sound is made. So if I snap, hear the sound and move the phone away, I end up with a blurry mess. I have to snap, wait for the sound, then hold the phone still for another 5 seconds before it actually has the image saved. I'm used to it now, but how hard would it have been to make the phone wait until the image is properly saved before making the camera sound?
Screen issues - I have the Samsung cover which changes the screen when I open or shut the cover. Great when it works, but on the odd occasion it gets stuck and I have to wait for it to sort itself out. I'd also like the option to change what I see on the small screen. The default options on there are fairly pointless apart from the music player controls. If it had a dialler, it'd be much better. As it stands now, I have to open the cover to make a call which isn't a bad thing at all, I just think that if Samsung implements something as nifty as the small screen, they could've made it a bit more customizable.
There are a few more things to add to this list, but these are the ones that spring to mind. As said this is an awesome phone and although these issues are all little niggles, they quickly add up to create what can often only be described as frustrating. having sid that, when it works as intended, it's a brilliant piece of kit which has a few small areas that could do with some improving.
I give it a 7. It'd be a solid 10 if Samsung were to realease an update which resolved some of these issues.
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