[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Serinety:
This is exactly what I am talking about. Everything you said is spot on with my experience between Samsung and HTC. There is no doubt that samsung makes good phones. But they really need to work on radio performance. As we speak, my GS3 has 1 bar of wifi while I sit at my desk, and the rezound shows full bars. You can say "bars don't mean anything" but clearly they do, when for no reason at all my GS3 will drop my wifi and switch to 3g, thinking that there is no wifi around.

That just does not happen on the rezound. For people that claim that their GS3 has great reception, congrats, you must live in a good signal area, or you have just never used an HTC device concurrently with your Samsung device and done a non-biased comparison.

I use the gs3, I love the gs3, I put my mom and my dad into a gs3.. My dad was using a DINC2, he is one of those "ill keep my phone until it falls apart" kind of guys. He doesn't "get" smartphones. The only reason he wanted to switch is his eyes suck, and the larger screen helped him, he also really liked the camera when I showed it working on my phone.

not 2 days after having the phone, he calls me up and says "I cannot get any reception anymore!" At his house (we live in Sacramento, hardly a "fringe" area, but there are dead/low spots) he never had a problem with his DINC2, when I went to visit him, I never had a problem with my rezound. I went over to look at this phone, and sure as ****.. my gs3 was struggling to hold on to signal, my wife's rezound (which used to be my rezound :) ) was bouncing between 3 and 4 bars of 4g. To test this, I turned on wifi tether on the rezzy, connected my laptop and downloaded some files off of MSDN. no problem, I was able to download 2 ~300MB files with no problem at 4g speeds. I repeated the same test with both my dads gs3, and my gs3.. I was able to get 4g to lock if I toggled airplane mode, 1 to 2 bars. Turn on wifi tether and attempted to download the same files. It started out good, I got about 20mb in and it hung, I looked at the phone and it showed bars , but the "3g" or "4g" label was missing (im sure you have all seen this). after a few seconds it switched to 3g. I toggled airplane mode again, got 4g back.. We played this game for about 20 min, I was never able to download those files using either gs3.

Considering he said he had the problem on 4 SG3's and he is also getting a credit from vzw, I think its safe to rule out a bad phone. I have a friend who is just like us (phone nerd) and him and I always get the same phones. We both had rezounds the day they came out, then we got GS3s the say they came out, we both notice the exact same thing, ****ty reception compared to the rezound. Notice I said "compared to the rezound". Most of the time (by most, I do mean most) I get very usable reception on my phone. There are times when I am on a phone call while in my house that I need to go outside, as the person I am talking to says "you are breaking up, I cannot hear anything", So I walk outside and all is well, but I never had to do that with my rezound. Is it a big deal? no.. not really. But in a discussion about radio performance, I have to say that my experience and the experience of others who have used both brands extensively leads me to say that HTC makes better radios.

You say "works pretty well to me", you are right, Im sure it does work well to you. And If I lived there with you, I would probably agree that it works pretty well. But when we use an HTC device in the exact same places in the exact same way, you will notice that the HTC device is stronger in all areas related to reception.

Conclusion.

The debate is not whether or not your phone works well for you or not, as all of that is subjective and depends on your experience with other devices, in all sorts of areas, doing many different tasks. If you feel your phone works well for you, then awesome! Nobody is going to tell you that you are wrong, and your phone does in fact NOT work well for you. We are simply saying that HTCs have better radios. That conclusion is not drawn based on bias or preference, its simply an observation based on my personal experience, and the collaboration of others, and that observation appears to have merit.

I suppose its possible that all of us on the "htc has better radios" side of the fence are all using defective phones. However I feel that is unlikely.

In the end, does it matter? Well that depends I suppose. I use a GS3, and i LOVE it. To me, the decreased radio performance does not outweigh the benefits. The rezound was a great phone, but its become dated (please remember, I am a "got to have the latest device" kinda of guy, and we may not share the same definition of "dated") and I prefer to have the latest thing. But I cannot deny that HTC wins the radio category.

As far as build quality .. totally personal preference. I cannot tell anyone else that they are wrong about their definition of build quality, as each of us has a different opinion of quality. For me, the Rezound feels like a higher quality device, because , to me, it feels more solid. To quote a saying from Jurassic Park - "Are they heavy?" , "yes", "Then they are expensive, put them down". In my opinion, heavy = solid = quality. You may not share that opinion and that's totally fine.

As far as battery life goes, again, totally subjective. We have different usages. I spend most of my time reading articles and playing angry birds, I also make a crap ton of phone calls, my monthly usage is somewhere in the area of 2000 min per month. I also navigate everywhere I go. For me, and that particular kind of usage, I have noticed that the rezound has slightly better battery life. For example, my wife and I both leave for work around the same time and get home around the same time. When I had the rezound, I would get home with about 15 to 20% battery life, her usage is differnt, and she gets home with 50 to 60% battery life. My gs3 needs to be recharged on my lunch break to make it the entire day. I suspect this is related to the reception issue, not a big deal, but its something I noticed, and it appears others have noticed it as well.

Everyone's opinion on this matter is valid, however it seems that people who have used both phones for a significant amount of time (I should say brands, not phones.. as I feel this is a manufacturer related issue) agree on the general notion that HTC has better radios. Battery life and build quality are really things we can't measure, test, and compare as they change from person to person.

anyway, sorry its so long, my ADD kicked in and I went into hyper focus, Now if only I could put this much time into my circuit designs...