***The Official Samsung Galaxy S III Thread***
- Thread starter uvarvu
- Start date
Soldato
11hrs on battery today with mostly browsing (50% screen on 36% cell standby) via wifi used 40% of my battery. I've got a spare though so don't mind hammering a battery flat in a day as i can just swap them over in 30 seconds and put the flat one on charge while i discharge the fresh one. (It does help that where i work is dimly lit so i don't need to have the brightness turned up)
Soldato
I went from Tom Tom on my WM6 phone to Co-pilot but it was not a patch on Tom Tom. Decided to use Google Navigation and it's been great.
Wouldn't pay for a sat nav now, even the small price of Co-pilot.
Soldato
I picked up an S3 about a month ago having had every iPhone since release as I fancied a change. I've given it time now and honestly I'm finding it very hard to like the s3 and this isn't due to any Apple allegiance believe me, I just can't seem to understand what makes the s3 so great?
Battery life - even with battery saving apps I can't get more than 12 hours before totally flat, even with light use. Today I'm at 40% after 6 hours having barely touched it. The phone won't even make it overnight from 100%. For reference my 4S standby at my house lasts almost a week and certainly during use, lasts a lot longer than 10 hours.
Screen - nice but awful brightness sensor that when holding the phone landscape often becomes obscured and dims it to such a level it's unreadable.
UI - feels sluggish and often locks up on me and the email client is absolutely abysmal when dealing with IMAP, sometimes I can delete a message 3 or 4 times before it actually syncs. Standard keyboard was bad for me, so I replaced it with Swiftkey which is better but still takes up far too much room on screen in landscape mode so you can't see what you're writing.
Finally having to use an app or just to conserve battery life, having to turn off mobile data prevents most of my important apps from working. All of my security systems notify me when the phone turns on mobile data, so I get them way after the event. This is equally true with visual voicemail as unless you have mobile data, not wifi, you can't receive visual voicemails at all.
I do want to like the phone but as much as I dislike Apple's lack of innovation and business practices, I fail to see how anyone can say the S3 is a superior phone.
Does anyone have any tips on how to improve this relationship before it gets handed down and replaced?
Battery life - even with battery saving apps I can't get more than 12 hours before totally flat, even with light use. Today I'm at 40% after 6 hours having barely touched it. The phone won't even make it overnight from 100%. For reference my 4S standby at my house lasts almost a week and certainly during use, lasts a lot longer than 10 hours.
Screen - nice but awful brightness sensor that when holding the phone landscape often becomes obscured and dims it to such a level it's unreadable.
UI - feels sluggish and often locks up on me and the email client is absolutely abysmal when dealing with IMAP, sometimes I can delete a message 3 or 4 times before it actually syncs. Standard keyboard was bad for me, so I replaced it with Swiftkey which is better but still takes up far too much room on screen in landscape mode so you can't see what you're writing.
Finally having to use an app or just to conserve battery life, having to turn off mobile data prevents most of my important apps from working. All of my security systems notify me when the phone turns on mobile data, so I get them way after the event. This is equally true with visual voicemail as unless you have mobile data, not wifi, you can't receive visual voicemails at all.
I do want to like the phone but as much as I dislike Apple's lack of innovation and business practices, I fail to see how anyone can say the S3 is a superior phone.
Does anyone have any tips on how to improve this relationship before it gets handed down and replaced?
I'm at 13 hours without charging at 68%, I was at college today and my phone got used a lot, music, Facebook, twitter, streaming radio over 3G and 100% brightness as it was sunny as hell.
Everything you have said above seems like a lie to me, but meh.
Everything you have said above seems like a lie to me, but meh.
Soldato
After running one of the worlds largest hardware review sites, I made it my mission to exaggerate and fabricate things while losing my objective viewpoint....
If I had battery life like you, I wouldn't have posted. Fact is, after a month it is still terrible and I cannot live with a phone that won't make it overnight from full battery, let alone a full shift in the hospital.
The lock ups aren't frequent but happen usually once every few days, mostly just apps not responding but touch wiz has crashed several times too. I will try another battery but I'm not overly confident.
Soldato
I have a US version with AT&T. I have wifi connectivity pretty much all day too so I rarely use the LTE.
Man of Honour
Iceman doesn't have the same S3 we have remember, I have no idea what the US dual core version feels like to use 
Soldato
Anyone got TitaniumBackup to sync with dropbox?
Everything installed and accounts setup I just can't get it to start syncing with dropbox?
Edit: OK had to go to schedule and allow access to dropbox and we're away
Mart
Everything installed and accounts setup I just can't get it to start syncing with dropbox?
Edit: OK had to go to schedule and allow access to dropbox and we're away
Mart
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A lock up once every few days isn't really uncommon with Android, it depends what you're doing.
You could install BetterBatteryStats and that will tell you exactly what is draining your battery. Free from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809
Also post up your battery usage screens (settings > battery), the overall one, the screen time (press screen) and the graph (press the graph at the top). Home + Power to take a screenshot.
It's the S4 Snapdragon isn't it? Considering everyone is raving about it, it should be at least as good.
You could install BetterBatteryStats and that will tell you exactly what is draining your battery. Free from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809
Also post up your battery usage screens (settings > battery), the overall one, the screen time (press screen) and the graph (press the graph at the top). Home + Power to take a screenshot.
Iceman doesn't have the same S3 we have remember, I have no idea what the US dual core version feels like to use
It's the S4 Snapdragon isn't it? Considering everyone is raving about it, it should be at least as good.
Soldato
I will upload a pic later but currently 34% remaining, 7:11 on battery, 1:07 screen time.
I'm hoping Jelly Bean may cure some of my reservations too but only time will tell there.
I'm hoping Jelly Bean may cure some of my reservations too but only time will tell there.
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Yup, it is the S4 chipset, which is used in the one s, XL etc.
So in theory he should be seeing better battery life and better performance than the international GS 3, due to the S4, however, iirc Samsung did a poor job with touchwiz with regards to optimization for the S4 chipset, well compared to sense on the XL anyway
But he should be getting much better results than that!
So in theory he should be seeing better battery life and better performance than the international GS 3, due to the S4, however, iirc Samsung did a poor job with touchwiz with regards to optimization for the S4 chipset, well compared to sense on the XL anyway
But he should be getting much better results than that!
Soldato
I must be lucky as mine hasn't crashed or locked up once in the 3 weeks i've had it and if i leave it overnight it barely looses more than 5%. I had an iphone 4 for a week not long before i went for the samsung and enjoyed using it, but i find the samsung miles ahead for what i need. 2 biggest plus points for me were micro SD expansion and interchangeable batteries, but having now used both, i find the samsung just as easy to use if not easier due to the screen size.
The screen! That's the main thing really.