[Sprint HTC EVO 4G LTE] freeza:
Don't let anyone fool you with their biased opinion towards HTC. I have owned and ultimately returned the EVO LTE. I have had every single flagship HTC smartphone on Sprint since the PPC-6700, so when I tell you why I choose the Galaxy S 3 over the EVO LTE, it will have nothing to do with company loyalty.

The Samsung Galaxy S 3 was my very first experience with a Samsung smartphone so I was kind of hesitant to leave my comfortable HTC life. I was used to their software, used to their BS concerning bootloaders, root, and their general attitude towards the development community. So going with Samsung was quite a step into uncharted territory and way out of my comfort zone. You have to ask yourself what would make a person jump ship like that when they've been a devoted "fan" of HTC products. It's not because of 2GB of RAM, although that was one of the reasons. It was because of the Samsung community. Times have changed and it seems as though each phone model that passes, HTC loses sight of what made them great in the beginning and they keep losing momentum to Samsung. Let's face it, as much as you love HTC, the EVO LTE--while being a very good phone for the average person-- just doesn't satisfy what a true 'power user' needs in a device. Multitasking issues, non-removable batteries, locked bootloaders, having to scramble to find exploits; it's all so 2010ish. Android has evolved to the point where OEMs need to take Samsung like initiative and make their devices developer friendly, not average Joe child proof friendly. Nobody wants to wait for our very talented developers here at XDA to scramble together looking for holes that will undoubtedly be plugged up in later software versions just to get our phones the way we want them.

The true power user can't be bothered having apps like Terminal Emulator suddenly close because you decided to open a webpage. It's absolutely ridiculous that we should have to deal with such issues while HTC turns a blind eye and even go as far as to say it's part of their software strategy and that they won't be doing anything about it. Way to slap us in the face with a statement like that HTC.

I decided to get out of my comfort zone simply because the Galaxy had more to offer. I didn't have to break my neck with instructions and big bold letters telling me that this may brick my device just to root. It is as simple as flashing a recovery in Odin as well as superuser and you're done. Period. Yes Touchwiz may not be as polished as Sense, but let's be real here, Sense is very limited in what can be customized. Sorry, but customizing the order of tabs at the bottom just doesn't cut it. Samsung's approach with their CSC engine far surpasses HTC's Sense software in what can be changed, modified, customized, whatever. You don't have to go scouring through smali code just to figure out how to enable something as simple as adding message/call blacklist.

While I'm not bashing the EVO LTE as a device, I'm simply fed up in HTC's increasingly simplistic view of how a smartphone should be. Now let's get to a few points that have been falsely brushed aside by the EVO LTE community:

-2GB of RAM: While you guys continue to suffer with multitasking issues, having the extra gigabyte of RAM does actually make a difference. You will NOT have the same free RAM available on both phones. This is a myth and an absolute lie. The EVO LTE will have anywhere between 100-175MB of free RAM while the GS3 will consistently have over 500 MB with average usage. This leads to a much better experience and you will not have to worry about your applications randomly shutting down even overnight.

-Touchwiz VS Sense: I for one can admit that Sense is more polished. However, that's about as far as I'll go. Sense is much more integrated with the Android OS, much more bloated, and much more troublesome than Touchwiz. Touchwiz is like a diamond in the rough and is far more customizable. To be honest, they both suck from my view, but Touchwiz is much more flexible with AOSP elements and is less likely to break when wanting to port something from AOSP over. Whether or not you keep the awful launchers of both Touchwiz and Sense shows just how much of a 'power user' you really are and your opinion about which is better is just that, an opinion. I replace the launcher and widgets of both Touchwiz and Sense long before I ever use my phone long enough to care. After that all you have is framework and let me tell you, HTC's same look sense Eclair is getting old. Right out of the box you can enable battery percentages on your Galaxy, where as HTC still fools you with their battery trickery where you think you have 80% of your battery when you really only have 60% because they can't be bothered to make battery images that show true battery life.

-Camera: HTC's ImageSense is a step in the right direction and very good, but don't let anyone tell you the EVO LTE blows away Samsung's camera sensor. They are very similar and in some cases they both can be better looking than the other. HTC will undoubtedly perform better in low light, but Samsung will more likely than not perform better in well lit environments and camera recording. If you truly believe the camera on the EVO LTE far surpasses the GS3, I will challenge you to a test myself and we can let the people of the forum judge which is better. I'm saying they both are great cameras and you won't go wrong with either one in that department.

-Build quality: This is probably the most ridiculous topic talked about. I for one always have a case on my phone and let me tell you that through my experience with HTC products, they have ALWAYS had poor build quality, at least on Sprint. HTC PPC-6700 suffered from the analog stick having issues, the Mogul suffered from keyboard issues, the Touch Pro suffered from keyboard issues, the Touch Pro2 suffered from usb port issues, the EVO 4G suffered from kickstand/usb port/screen issues, and so on. That's not to say Samsung is any better, but to say the phone has terrible build quality when it hasn't even been out for a month yet here on Sprint is ridiculous. If I recall, the EVO LTE is already having chassis bending issues, which is pretty serious. Bottom line: Neither one can be said to have superior build quality at this point. Plastic or metal there are pros and cons to each, obviously we're seeing the cons right now with the EVO LTE.

-Screen quality: Again, another frequently brought up topic. Let me reiterate that I've had both phones and the display, while slightly better on the EVO LTE, will definitely not disappoint with the GS3. If anyone can really sit here and argue that you can see pixels at the 720p resolution that the GS3 has, you're probably just lying or are spending way too much energy trying to see what you want to with the display. It is a very good display and is only slightly less gorgeous than the EVO LTE's SLCD2. However, blacks are still better looking on the GS3. More to the point: In every day usage, one would NOT be able to tell the difference between the two unless you held both phones side by side and paid attention. Just doing every day things on your phone will be the same. The difference is not like LCD&AMOLED or LCD&SAMOLED. Not even close. They are very similar in quality.

I could touch on more but that's the gist of it.

If you can get past the brand loyalty and look at things purely from a blueprint point of view, the GS3 clearly comes out on top. By a large margin? Absolutely not, but on top nonetheless. In the end if you're an average user, you won't go wrong either way. If you're a power user, you will be happier with the GS3; that is, if you're not blind to brand loyalty and can look at things from a different perspective like I did.

PS: For the longest time I was an advocate of my EVO 3D. Even when the far superior GS2 came out, I refused to believe it could touch the EVO 3D. But once I stopped being naive, I came to terms with how much of a failure the EVO 3D was from a financial, marketing, and device view. Sprint even canned that device and it was just all kinds of bad. Maybe that's what some of you need to do, look past your love for HTC and look at things how they really are.