[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] katamari201:
I've been holding off buying the S3 for several months now, because I was sick of the galaxy line and Samsung in general. But each and every time I jumped to another boat, I would gravitate back. It's the grass is greener on the other side syndrome. There's a reason why Samsung is number one in the Android world right now. Since I am perpetually critical of things I buy, I would always fault my Samsung phones for their crappy build quality, gaudy colors, or some other thing. I would try out an HTC and find that the build quality was better, but it would introduce another problem, like extra heft and thickness or a scratchable delicate body. Or I would claim I really hate AMOLED, but find out all the IPS LCD phones from the iPhone to the Optimus G, had a backlight glow that irked me to no end or poor contrast in low brightness. It basically came down to having to settle with the least worst of a bunch of very flawed phones, and that would be the Samsung. I think I've tempered my expectations to where new phones don't excite me anymore, because I know there will be something wrong. I've already blown too much money switching around anyhow.

I was thinking of getting the Lumia 920, but after seeing its subpar camera, smallish screen, and super heavy and thick body, and almost no change in Windows Phone, I just gave up on it. The other thing I was looking at was the Nexus 4 and Optimus G. Are they better than the GS3 since they are newer and have a quad-core S4? Nope. I played with an Optimus G at the At&t store. The back felt really cheap and sticky. The Nexus 4 should have the same back. It's suppose to be glass, but not that premium cool, hard and slick glass, but the plasticky, kind of soft and high friction glass. I actually much prefer the much maligned hyperglaze coating which feels more solid (even though its not) to the LG. If you try out all these phones, you come to realize they are all using the same magnesium chassis underneath which provides most of the structure, and the same gorilla glass front. The shell outside is windows dressing and more for gripping and feel than integrity.

The Nexus 4/Optimus G also has a disappointing camera, and can't even get a full 30fps 1080p video goin, which is really sad for a quad-core S4 phone. The phone I tried out was buggy as hell. It froze up on every other action, and tapping home would not trigger most of the time since it was constantly stuck on something. The app drawer was also aggravating, since when you try to flick to the next page and there is no next page, it would launch one of the apps you flicked past instead. The screen was no better than any other IPS display already out there, regardless of all the marketing jargon LG throws out. Super unimpressed with the Optimus G and in extension the Nexus 4, which is the exact phone mostly. And even though the Nexus 4 is a pure Android phone unlike the Optimus G, what I can tell from the reviews and anecdotal stuff, as well as benchmarks, it does not perform as fast as it should and I'm thinking LG didn't work as closely with Google as Samsung did for the Galaxy Nexus, or LG's software engineers are less capable.

It's kind of disappointing, but the best phone for me right now seems to be the Galaxy S III.