[Galaxy S III General] Skellig86:
Had my S3 for 3 days now

So, I have my S3 for 3 days now and I thought it was high time I shared my impressions.

First things first:

I pre-ordered my Pebble Blue S3 from Amazon.co.uk on the 10th of May. The dispatch for was on the 8th of June and the phone arrived on the 11th of June. I received an email on the 9th of June about the dispatch.

[Also, apologies for the low resolution photobucket pictures...]

I also had a few things delivered as well before that time :D

Let's get the aesthetics out of the way

Now I always thought that the S3 was a good looking phone. Not HTC One X (White) pretty but a good looking phone nonetheless. Unfortunately, Samsung just decided on White or Blue. My first choice would have been black so I settled for blue. I actually think the Marble White Galaxy S3 looks better than the Pebble Blue. I still do. But my electronics are all black and I'd like to keep it that way.

My main complaint is that the rim looks pretty poor in comparison with the rest of the phone which, in my mind, does look fairly premium and certainly feels it:

And frankly, Samsung could have done better. Especially when you compare it to their flashy 830 SSD which is going to be inside a bloody laptop/PC

However, compared to my old phone (a Motorola Milestone/Droid) the difference is night and day. In looks and performance.

To sum up. I think the phone looks good. There are prettier phones but I do think the S3 is a worthy flagship holder in the looks departments.

Form and usability

I had used my brother's Galaxy S2 quite a bit so I was somewhat prepared for the big screen and size. However, it's still incredibly impressive. I find the S3 superbly comfortable to hold. A little slippery but so so smooth. Thin, light and slick. Very nice. Sadly, like the S2, it's difficult to handle using one hand. Especially with smallish hands like mine. Not saying it's impossible, but you are balancing the phone on fingers and shift your thumb to stretch more than it's particularly comfortable to do so.

Because it's so light, however, I did find it just much more comfortable to watch shows on versus my old Milestone. Funnily, I found typing a bit cramp - I'm used to having a wide sliding qwerty + full screen real estate before. Now I have to settle of extremely small screen estate for message reading and typing and my thumbs have to work on a smaller area. I am learning to swype however...

The screen

720p Super AMOLED looks awesome. No question. But I don't think it's as good as the HTC One X IPS LCD. The difference is noticeable when viewing them side by side. At work, my team thought the HTC One X had a better screen whilst viewing both phones side by side playing the same sample of Planet Earth in 720p. Oddly, the owner of the One X (my boss and friend) thought they both looked great/equal. I was bemused by that but she didn't think there was much of a difference between them. The rest of colleagues are mostly iPhone users/owners by the way.

Personally, I think that's a testament of the One X. The S3 has an amazing screen. The One X is just better. Bravo HTC all the way!

Battery

Amazing. Truly amazing.

To rank battery life:

Most other smart phones --- iPhone 4S --- HTC One X ------- Galaxy S3 ------------- RAZR Maxx

:eek: Yes, that's an energy consuming live wallpaper you see and yes I have data, wifi and gps on. And yes, I control the brightness manually ranging from 50% to 100%. Anything lower is just too dim and I think 65% is the sweet spot.

So a phone that basically started the day at 70% needs to get me through work...

To quote the film Babe: "That'll do pig. That'll do." :D

And here's my breakdown annotated:

Over 4 friggin' hours screen on time with my moderate-heavy usage! Good job Samsung!

Touchwiz

My brothers Galaxy S2 last two nights before I ROM'd it for him. He spent a night with that ROM before deciding to use another one. I'm waiting for CM really so I don't think it's polite of me to really go in depth with Touchwiz. It's alright. But I demand more. Thankfully it's Android so I can still customize loads before really getting down to the guts. At least I'm not on iOS. Oh, the pain before jailbreaking! I'm genuinely surprised I haven't even rooted this S3 yet...

Some positives:

- I like eye tracking.

- I like NFC.

- Like the idea of S-Beam but annoyed Samsung doesn't share it with others.

- I like the lockscreen *ripple* *ripple* :) - will be sad when I change it

- Thankfully Touchwiz has drop down quick access to toggle stuff

- I like how Samsung themed ICS mostly

- Love 50gb Dropbox storage free for 2 years!

Some negatives:

- I've noticed some stutters/lag at odd occasions. Annoying but I reckon it's a Touchwiz fault. Haven't even changed my launcher yet!

- S-Voice is a huge gimmick like any other voice apps, Siri included.

- Motion usage could have been done better and expanded upon.

- Don't like the screen on delay

- One of my old apps doesn't seem to work (SimpleLED) - which I want on my lockscreen

Conclusion

Loving the phone. Will definitely miss having a sliding qwerty keyboard. Can't wait to see what the XDA community can bring to the table for this beast. End.

Hope the rest of you enjoy your phone or get it very soon!