Samsung Galaxy S3 whos getting one?

[Clubber Lang]

Anyone got theirs yet? First impressions? Still can't decide if I am gonna get one. Went to the 3 store and played with one for a bit. Quite a bit bigger than my 4S, looked pretty slick. Just want persuading. Will the 3 phones come locked?

[maltloaf]

Seems DPD have decided that I'm not allowed mine today, probably meaning I won't see it until next Wednesday

[DejaVu]

I've been seriously impressed with my Galaxy S2, but the opportunity has presented itself that I could upgrade to the S3 - so long a Three get them back in stock soon.
I'm not keen on the white or even the pebble blue and am hoping the black one materialises.

But, is the S3 a worthy upgrade from my, what I consider to be perfect, S2?

[Billhouse]

I got mine today. The Marble White colour is quite nice. Looks better than on the Note or S2. More similar to the white on the iPhone 4/4S. In terms of build quality it does feel better than the S2 and on par with the Galaxy Nexus, but that battery door as usual looks very flimsy.

Despite its size (4.8 inch screen) its surprisingly comfortable to hold. Better than both the Nexus and the HTC One X.

Moving onto the screen, despite it being Pentile and of a similar tech to the Nexus I have found it visibly superior. Whites are produced better on this screen, there is no graininess to the grey colours and the overall brightness seems to be higher. Its a beautiful display but I think the HTC One X trumps it in this regard.

Finally the actual software on board has been somewhat of a pleasant surprise. Im far more comfortable with the latest edition of TouchWiz then I was with Sense 4.0. I have installed Nova Launcher Prime but I'm not actually using it. TouchWiz is incredibly fluid, with quick screen transitions and animations. Its probably the smoothest Android phone I have used and is easily on par with the OS experience you would receive on an iPhone 4S or even an iPad 3.

With all the little touches such as the large removable 2100mAh battery, MicroSD support, 50GB of Dropbox space and an LED notification light amongst other things, I personally think that this is the best Android phone on the market at the moment and this is coming from someone who has owned a Nexus One, Nexus S, Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note, HTC One X and a Galaxy Nexus.

[Billhouse]

Now to find a 32GB MicroSD card.

Also does anyone know how to root the S3 on a Mac? All the tutorials so far are for Windows.

[maltloaf]

if it's a root using an odin flash then I haven't found a way of doing them on a mac natively. Seems to work just fine in a virtual machine via parallels desktop though.

[Billhouse]

Yeah I believe its through Odin. Looks like I will need to visit a mate.

[maltloaf]

I'm gutted mine's not coming today. I was supposed to get a text of a delivery slot when they scanned it out for delivery but nothing arrived (neither via text nor at the door). Really happy about the 50GB of dropbox, I want to try cloud-ing my music but not via one of the established services and that will be perfect.

[Billhouse]

Its pretty nice to have so much storage. I have 73.2GB on Dropbox and then the usual 5GB on Google Drive but I prefer to always have the option of local storage via MicroSD.

[maltloaf]

same here.

[_Belial]

I've been tinkering with mine all day. Originally I ordered the blue one from P4U last week, but then changed the order to a white yesterday afternoon and it was shipped yesterday too so hats off to them there. I wasn't really that fussed about colour, just though blue looked a bit nicer, but not bothered enough to want to wait weeks for it.

Anyway, i've tried various android handsets in the past (SGS2, Desire(+HD), Xperia Play, Hero, Orange San Fran) and tbh have always gone back to iOS, so it could be early days yet and in a week I'll be back again, but certainly initial impressions have wowed me. I was starting to get bored of iOS tbh and really wanted a bigger screen (so again, may end up going back to iPhone if the big screen rumours are true) and the screen on this doesn't disappoint, I'd actually say it's more readable in this bright sunlight than my 4S was (auto brightness currently set to ON). I don't know what the fuss is over this pentile stuff tbh, screen looks lovely to me, nice vivid colours, top mark. I've got a screen protector on there already and a crappy silicon case (I'm a bit anal about protecting my phones as I tend to sell them on when I get bored every few months) and even with the protector on it looks superb.

The phone itself is really rapid, can't say i've noticed any slowdown at all yet on games or general use, web browsing is so much nicer on this than on the 4S, they are leagues apart in that respect, the camera's pretty decent, i'd say quicker to use than the 4S, but I would say the image quality on the 4S trumps the SGS3. Call quality wasn't bad, no real difference between the 4S and this for my ear, the sound from the speakers is good, louder than 4S.

The phone feels soo light as well, I'll probably have to start wearing pants with larger pockets to accommodate the size but it doesn't feel too uncomfortable to hold, and it really is so light and slim (or was until I put the crap case on it ).

Battery life, well i'll find out over the coming week, I've not put it down since I got it today, think it arrived at about 70% charge and i'm down to 10% already, but I've been tinkering with it non-stop all day. Oh and GPS works a treat on it, I've had GPS problems with several android phones in the past, but this picked up a full signal in runkeeper within 10 seconds of leaving the house.

So from an iOS devotee, I've got to say, I'm impressed. Will it keep me this impressed for the weeks to come, who knows, but certainly, initial impressions are good.

Ooh you android boys can hopefully help, how on earth do I remove all the crappy bloatware I don't want? It won't let me remove them from the application settings page?

Ta

[_Belial]

ooh one other query, I've enabled that swipey keyboard option where I can slide my finger to make words, works a treat in some text boxes but not in others? Any way to force it for all?

ta

[Geko]

Ooh you android boys can hopefully help, how on earth do I remove all the crappy bloatware I don't want? It won't let me remove them from the application settings page?

Ta

You'll have to root it and find a custom ROM for it. Samsung always fill their phones with bloat.

ooh one other query, I've enabled that swipey keyboard option where I can slide my finger to make words, works a treat in some text boxes but not in others? Any way to force it for all?

ta

Should work in all text boxes. I don't know why it wouldn't.... Is the default keyboard set to Swype?

[maltloaf]

You can remove whatever you like once rooted. I do it to all my phones, you can either do it manually in root explorer or there are tools on the market like bloat freezer and similar.

[maltloaf]

Well, had a bit of a run in with three today over my order. Tweeted their support twitter account this morning as to why mine never arrived Friday. Their initial reply was that it was delivered and signed for on 25th April. Quite some feat since I didn't order it until 30th May !

They then said they couldn't find my order and then finally 'found' it but told me that due to the bank holiday, my delivery date was actually going to be 8th June.

Oh well, another few days of the S2

[maltloaf]

Just been looking at some video reviews and the pop up video feature really impresses me. What I've not been able to find out though is what codecs it'll handle out of the box ? Cheers

[digidude]

Considering what the s2 does there wont be anything it cant do. I hope theres a easy way to stream video from a wireless home server because I aint sussed out how to do it on the s2 yet.

[maltloaf]

Considering what the s2 does there wont be anything it cant do. I hope theres a easy way to stream video from a wireless home server because I aint sussed out how to do it on the s2 yet.

I have. Dice player does it. I can watch petty much anything on my lan's shared directories.

I'd still like to see a list of what codecs the s3 handles on a hardware level though. If that pop up video works with mkv,x264 etc and various sound codecs then I'll be a very happy boy

[Geko]

Very good DAC in the S3. Similar, possibly even superior, to what was in the original ipods... I better invest in a larger SD card for all the FLAC files I will be sticking on the device.


http://jonchoo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/0...lfson-dac.html

[maltloaf]

There's no doubt the hardware is there, it's wether the software is up to it. For example, the s2 can happily hardware decode ac3 but the standard video player can't do it...

Dice player added it in, however