[Fascinate General] Crawshayi:
Okay guys, I've decided to return the S4 tomorrow. As much as I love this thing, I also hate it and a big reason for that is how my Fascinate has NO compromises where as this thing has a long way to go. If anyone is on the fence about this phone let me break down how I've felt over the past week of owning it:

What I love:

1) The screen. Holy crap, the screen. This thing is drop dead gorgeous and EVERYTHING you do on it looks stunning. 5" is also a perfect display size for me, not too big (Note 2) and not too small (HTC One).

2) The camera. Using the camera was an absolute breeze. Not only was it fast and full of features, but it did the main thing it was supposed to do right- and that is take beautiful pictures. Pretty much every single thing I've taken a picture of has been incredibly detailed and has very accurate colors. I don't feel like I'd ever need any other camera after owning this phone honestly. It's that good.

3) How light it is. This phone is, believe it or not, LIGHTER THAN THE FASCINATE. I don't know how the engineers pulled it off, but they somehow packed all that tech into a featherweight frame. Some people might not like how light it is, but I love it.

4) Battery life. No, it's not as good as the Note 2, but it's way better than what you would expect. I can get a full day of heavy use out of it easily. Pulled it off the charger at 6:30am and got home at 4:30pm with moderate use and still had 75% left. Boss.

5) Charging time. This thing can go from nearly empty to fully charged in less than 2 hours. No seriously, this thing charges quick as hell. It's really nice.

Okay, so now, here's some of the reasons why I finally decided to return it. All of the above was just not enough to justify keeping it unfortunately.

What I hate about this phone:

1) LAG. Yes, LAG. There are other phones on the market right now that have bloatware and don't lag (HTC One), so don't tell me it's just a fact of life. A phone with these monster specs should not ever lag, and yet it constantly stutters during day-to-day use, from simple things like switching apps to pressing the home button. I was using Nova too, so it would have probably been worse on stock launcher. They will probably release an update to address this issue, but until then, it's not acceptable. Shame on you, Samsung.

2) Touchwiz. This sorta relates to the lag issue seeing as it makes a ton of processes run in the background, but still deserves a separate remark. I realize some people may like how Touchwiz looks and feels, but I'm not one of them and I despise not having a choice but to have it running. Installing Nova is not enough to distract me, either.

3) Development not mature. It's obviously a new phone, so it'll take some time to get good stable roms going, but as many of you can understand once you go with a custom rom, you can't go back to stock. With the S4 'Nexus' around the corner, it pretty much guarantees some killer AOSP roms will be hitting for this phone... in the future. For right now, the user experience is complete garbage in my eyes.

4) Build quality issues. The first 2 phones I got handed had faulty volume rockers, and the 3rd one (that I have now) has a sticky home button. Let this be a lesson to you, never buy anything from the first shipment. They most likely have problems that need to get addressed.

And that's that. I'm going to go back to loving my Fascinate again, and wait out the storm and give time for developers to make this phone into a true flagship, and not the rushed crap Samsung delivered (talking software here, not hardware). I plan to re-purchase the phone in hopefully 3-4 months if I decide that enough development has happened to warrant it. Oh, and if the Note 3 looks too good to pass up... well, I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.

Hopefully this was somewhat insightful to anyone on the fence about this phone, and I'll update it if I decide to re-purchase it later on. In the meantime, the Fascinate lives on :victory: