Galaxy S3 owner. Had it for 4 months and haven’t had any problems, so far. 
Have you tried Rocket Player? I’ve been pleased with it.
I’m happily posting this from my Captivate. Psst–Andromeda is a cool ROM; Cyanogenmod is even cooler, but a little trickier to install.
Galaxy S III user, no problems.
I say it may be operator error.
The custom ROM I mentioned I used to run was CyanogenMod 10.1. All other things aside it’s probably my favorite ROM so far; I only gave it up because it didn’t allow me to run my system profile and PRL updates.
Thanks, I’ll give it a shot.
I have no doubt that the crash-and-forced-restart rate is much higher among Android users.
And that’s partially just a function of an open-source system that can be tinkered with by all kinds of parties, from the cellular service provider to app developers, etc… It’s also a function of a system with more user-controllable aspects. The less locked-down a system is, the more that can go wrong, because there’s just more complexity.
I stick with the iPhone because the cost isn’t that much greater, and their tech support is absolutely stellar. Plus I live within driving distance of an Apple store, which is pretty huge in those rare cases where something goes really wrong and you need it fixed SOON.
Stock updates to the Android OS are typically rolled out by the service provider for specific device models and it does sometimes happen that they release a clunker of an update.
I think this notion came from a time when many more Android devices were much more limited in their ability than is typically the case today. If you have one of the bottom-end Android devices you pretty much have to tinker a bit–mainly rooting and finding a leaner ROM to flash because that saves you more of the limited processing power you have. We’re talking like 250M usable internal storage, 0.5G RAM, and no internal SD card supplied. I don’t know if this type of device is even being offered anymore.
Same here. No problems with my Galaxy SIII Progre since I got it in January.
IPhone user here. Tried an Android phone about a year ago after having an iPhone 3s for a couple of years. Found the Android very clunky to use. Don’t really recall specific frustrations, as I only kept it about two weeks. Returned it and traded for a iPhone 4s.
I don’t really get the “digging and digging” criticism that is being leveled at iPhones. Mail (both personal and corporate) are one tap away. Calendar is one touch away. Music is no more than two taps away, maybe one, depending on where I left it last time I used it. Almost every thing I want to do is one or two taps away. The one thing that is a little buried is the wifi network control, I wish there was an app to pull that right to the front page.
iWork with an Android fan. We razz each other about our chosen weapons. I’ve never lost a “get to” race with him. As in “pull up this calendar invite. Go”. We both start at our home screen. We’ve tied a few times, but mostly I beat him to it.
Maybe my problem was a clunker of a phone - don’t know, don’t care; I’m back with iPhone - between my wife and I we’ve had EIGHT iPhones and have had zero problems with any of them. None, zero, zilch. Two handsets left behind when we moved overseas. Two stolen when we had a break-in, one broken display after being dropped, I have one now, she has one now, and we still have an older iPhone around that our son plays with (still works just fine).
I enjoy tinkering with things - one of the reasons I decided to try an Android phone to begin with. This wasn’t user error, it was a crappy phone, and I’m not interested in finding out if it was a crappy handset or crappy O/S, not when I have had a 100% success rate with the other major option available.
Open-source is a great concept for a lot of things. My handset isn’t one of them.
This is my biggest complaint about Android. I had a voicemail message for two weeks before I noticed it. I must have dismissed the notification by accident, and it only popped back up when I rebooted. I never had that problem with iOS.
I’m even using a few apps which, together, put those little number indicators on the icons a la iOS… but if you open the app and then close it, that indicator is automatically dismissed. It’s just far too easy to dismiss a notification.
I’m also having problems with accessories. The car stereos in our two cars both have USB inputs which worked just fine for iOS, but they’re not supported at all by AndroidOS. And if you want more choices in headphones, you’re SOL- 99% of the OEM headphones only work well with iOS. Sure, you can listen to music, but you can’t change the volume or use the microphone unless you’re using the Samsung headphones.
I love that I can change damn near everything on my S3. But iOS is far, far easier to work with.
This. I loved my Evo 4G, but it was an unbelievable battery hog (even with a fat-back extended battery) and the memory was tight enough that by the second year I had to have sessions where I would load the apps I would need for the next week and delete those I didn’t. (I’m not sure that earlier iPhones were not much the same in this regard.)
My S3 and now my Note II… I have my entire music library loaded and only delete apps when I really dislike them or when I feel like doing a little cleanup of stuff I don’t use. I don’t think I’ve filled a third of the storage.
If iPhone users really like the “take it out of the box and use it” model that Apple promotes through careful optimization of the user interface setup for the vast range of users, they’re welcome to it. All of my Androids have needed a few hours of setup and rearranging and dumping maker gritware and loading apps I wanted and so forth… time I was happy to put in to make the phone EXACTLY what I wanted it to be.
There are two product lines for a reason. All I can say to the OP is that bashing an Android because you may or may not have selected the right model (a nonexistent problem in Apple Stores) and not taken the time to customize it right (a very low priority with iOS devices) and no time to learn the difference between iOS and Android operation (differences - largely not superior/inferior issues)… bashing Android phones is pretty narrow-minded.
I used to have problems with photos disappearing from my HTC Insight phone, but a few months ago I got a Galaxy III and I love it. None of the problems the OP describes. In fact I have it set up with three separate email accounts and it tracks them all beautifully. I even was able to sync it up with my Microsoft Lync application at work so I can be connected (or not) to the office whenever I want; for example I can make calls from my Galaxy that look like they’re coming from my desk at work.
After being a person who made fun of Apple products for years and years due to their dumbed-down user interfaces and lack of ability to really “hack” the code…I got an iPhone 5.
It was my first smart phone ever - my prior phone was a 2000-year Motorola which had the saving grace that with its pull-out antenna, I got a signal anywhere and everywhere, even in power plants when people told me “oh, that won’t work here, nobody’s do” - and I would have 4 bars of signal.
I really wanted an Android phone, and I “test drove” about a dozen. I really didn’t want an Apple.
But as I tested the phones side by side, I found that the Apple just worked, and everything was easy to do. It was intuitive to me, a brand new user of smartphones, and several times I couldn’t make the Android phone do the same thing. It was odd seeing the Verizon people pass the Galaxy 3 around and say to each other “huh…I know the iPhone can do this, how do you do it on this? Look under this icon, no that one, OK, maybe we need to upgrade the phone…”
Yeah, whatever. I’m sure there were things on the Apple they couldn’t find, the point is, for me, a clueless newbie, within a couple of minutes I was doing some neat stuff, and the Android seemed frustrating.
That was 75% of the selling point. The other 25% was the retina display - everything just looked sharp and clear to my eyes. The salespeople kept showing me Android phones (they were REALLY pushing Android over the iPhone) saying “this has a higher res display than iPhone, it looks better.” No, it didn’t, regardless of what the pixel count was, the iPhone just looked sharper.
Since that time, I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of crap. In the real world, since getting my phone I’ve never once seen another iPhone user talk down to an Android user or tell them their phone is crap. But I have had numerous people come to me and out of the blue start laying into how my phone is inferior to their Android phone, etc. It even spoiled a nice meal out with an old friend, when 10 minutes into the meal I showed him some photos of me on my iPhone, and was treated to a 5-minute Festivus of everything that sucked about Apple, capping it off with “I thought you were an engineer Una. You’re supposed to be smart. Why did you waste your money on an Apple? Or did all that estrogen make you just another stupid girl?” It escalated from there, with us separating with rancor - because he couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut and wanted to gloat about his Android phone.
My iPhone still does what I want it to, and I don’t think about it. There is no app on an Android I need, no special thing that it does, I just grab it and use it. Yes I wish it had a larger screen, but then it’s a trade-off - when do you just throw up your hands and say “it’s not a phone” and get a mini tablet? I don’t know.
I switched from my iPhone 4S to a Galaxy S4 instead of the iPhone 5 after being unimpressed with the changes, and everything I’ve read or heard about the iPhone 5S suggested that it wouldn’t arrive until the fall and not change in any of the core ways that’d make it more attractive to me than the iPhone 5. And by that time I was pretty familiar with the iPhone 5, too: my wife had had one for 5 months before my time came up to upgrade.
Frankly, my default action would have been to stick with the iPhone line as well, what with all the apps we share (I still have an iPad, and our two daughters also had iPhone 4S’s). But after playing with the Galaxy S4 in the AT&T store, I decided to give The Other Side a try. Here are my personal observations after two months of using an S4.
Long story short, I’m glad I got the S4 over the iPhone 5, but if the “iPhone 6” were to come out next fall (when my 18 months are up) with a screen size comparable to the S4 and at least 64GB of storage (maybe 128GB?), I would probably switch back to the iPhone. The first four “minuses” I list below (mostly camera related, also mute-function related) just about balance out most of the pluses to me; the larger screen still tips the scales, but it seems to me sooner or later Apple has to make an “iPhone XL” and that will likely win me back. The camera functionality of my phone is a major piece of what I want it to do, so any relative weakness there to me is nearly critical, versus the merely inconvenient aspects of having to use iTunes or external power packs.
Unless, of course, Android or Samsung comes out with a configuration restorer and a faster phone camera and “Tap Tap Tap” ports Camera+ to Android.
Things I like better about the Galaxy S4 over the iPhone 5:
The larger screen. This was the first thing that attracted me to the GS4. After holding it and playing with it at the AT&T store while considering my upgrade options, even the iPhone 5 felt like a tiny little thing to me. I do a lot of text reading on my phone - NY Times, Tapatalk for forums - and also a lot of photo viewing or video playback on my phone, all of which are tremendously improved for me with the larger screen. I have no problems holding the phone in my hand, either, but I have long-fingered hands.
A File System Device instead of iTunes. I no longer have to use iTunes syncing to put things on or taking stuff off of my phone, I can see it as a file system on my USB hub and just copy, move or delete the files I want to copy, move or delete. Imagine that.
The removable battery. No more running out of power or bulky “juice packs” or dangling USB batteries to recharge my iPhone. I just carry one or even two extra fully charged batteries in the “fob pocket” of my pants (I’ve been thinking of getting a “cash belt” for this as well, the kind of leather belt with a zippered inside lining for keeping valuables hidden).
The removable storage. I have well over 64GB of music and ripped movies or TV Shows. I dislike using “cloud storage” for listening to music or watching videos because I am often in places without free WiFi or LTE network connectivity, and I’ve found that (say) watching 2 episodes of “Futurama” on LTE can be a huge hit on my monthly data use. With my iPhone, I had to pay $$$ for the largest capacity 64GB model, which could store my entire ripped music collection but still leave me having to shuffle around my videos. With the GS4’s removable Micro SD card, I just have 2 separate cards - one with music, which is 90% of my multimedia use, and one with my videos - and swap as needed. Easy peasy.
Swype as a text input interface. This is a total game changer for me in terms of inputting text from my phone. It’s so much faster and more natural than tip-tip-tapping on a tiny screen keyboard. I do get a new world of AutoCorrect type mistakes, but no more so than with the iPhone, and much easier to type the 90% of the text that doesn’t need fixing.
The “status bar” on the top that shows me what’s running, and any updates from key apps: if I have messages, email, a WWF move to make, etc. Much bettter than having to notice a given app icon has a little numeral next to it on the iPhone.
The “slide from top of screen to bottom” feature that pulls down quick adjustments to key settings: screen brightness, volume setting (mute/vibrate), and more detailed status updates. I adjust my screen brightness all the time, keeping it dim indoors (which is most of the time for me) but brighter to view outdoors in during daylight. Screen brightness in particular is a pain to adjust on the iPhone, it’s like three icon and menu taps to go to Settings -> General -> Brightness. This is so much easier.
(It’s easy to do on my iPad, where I can double-click on the home button to bring up the tray of icons on the bottom and then slide to the left to get to both brightness and volume sliders, but for some reason on the iPhone only volume is there, not brightness.)
The “back” button on the lower right is used very well in the apps I use a lot, to “pop back” a level to where I was or what I was doing one step before.
The headphone jack is on the TOP of the phone, where God Meant It To Be. Why the heck the iPhone 5 moved it to the bottom is beyond me.
Things I dislike about the GS4 compared to the iPhone:
The camera is, in my opinion, better on the iPhone 4S (much less the iPhone 5) than on the GS4. The picture quality can be just as good on the S4, but the shutter lag is the biggest problem here. The GS4 is noticeably more laggy than even my 4S was.
The camera software available for Android is not as good. I’ve yet to find a camera app as good as “Camera+” was on the iPhone, one that does tap-to-spot-meter white balancing separately from tap-to-focus. I’m using “Aviary” on the S4 as one that does most of everything else I want to do as a post-process (cropping, color adjustment/filter application, text labeling, adding a frame), but even there I’ve been frustrated with how easy it is to lose a picture completely - hit the wrong button at the wrong time (like that back button I said I liked on the lower right), and it just discards the photo with no “Are You Sure? confirmation”. Plus the time the app crashed while I was saving it and I lost the picture, something that had never happened to me, ever, using Camera+ on the iPhone.
The location of the power button on the iPhone is on top, Where God Meant It To Be. On the S4, the power button is on the right - directly opposite the volume buttons. When gripping the phone with one hand, the natural inclination is to leverage the opposite side of the phone when pressing a physical button - to grip the right side tighter when pressing a button on the left, to hold firm on the bottom when pressing a button on the top. So every time I adjust the volume, I have to be careful not to trigger the power button, and vice versa.
The volume-down button on the S4 makes the phone go from Vibrate to Mute. This ties in with the above. If I set my phone on Vibrate, I want it to STAY on Vibrate mode - to notify me of incoming calls or messages without playing a sound, not to go dead silent. But if I turn my phone on to glance at the screen, then press the power button on the right to turn the display off (to save power), very often I inadvertently also brush the volume control on the left while doing so. And even if I bump the volume down while on Mute, the phone switches it to “Volume level 0 = Silent”, so that I no longer get notified of incoming calls or messages.
The multiplicity of built-in apps that do the same thing. I have at least three web browsers and messaging apps on my phone - the base Android one, the Samsung one, sometimes another AT&T one, and possibly yet another one that I downloaded separately because I didn’t like any of the other choices (like “Go SMS” for messaging in a way that supports seeing and using Emoji with my kids’ iPhones). I cannot disable or uninstall the other ones, only choose to ignore them.
Setup configuration is not restorable! I was very used to upgrading an iPhone, or replacing one with the same model, as being a painless operation: just sync and restore and my new phone was basically just like the old one. All my apps were installed, icons arranged the same way, the screen wallpaper and lock screen and password, the network settings there too (stored WiFi passwords), etc., etc. I am deeply unnerved to find that no Android device can store its configuration settings in a way that can be restored - not even to the exact same device. If I lost or damaged my S4 and got a replacement one under my insurance coverage, I’d have to re-do the roughly 4-6 hours I spent arranging icons on the desired screens in a completely manual process. Never mind the idea that Samsung would want to make it painless to upgrade to the Galaxy S5 or something.
Loss of the peer-to-peer features of iOS (Where the rest of my family firmly remains). I didn’t realize how much I liked using Find My Friends to Find My Kids, or Find My Phone to, well, find my phone (which can make it play a tone even when set on Vibrate mode). I haven’t found a cross-platform equivalent yet to FMF, though I read about one coming out a few weeks ago, and AT&T is trying to charge me a monthly fee for the non-iOS version of both FMF/FMP.
Hm, still using the moto droid I got on my birthday 10/09. It still has the original 16g SD card, and I never did any tweaking on it. I have aldiko for reading ebooks - I have 984 ebooks loaded and have no problems with aldiko hanging and needing to be force closed. I still use the original navigate for my GPS needs, and have ghost radar for giggles. I don’t play any games on it though I do have bubbles and a collection of solitaire, a mahjong tile matching game and it came with some games that I have never bothered with. I checked, and everything seems to be being kept updated just fine. I power down and restart maybe 3 times a year mainly because mrAru says I should [he used to work tech service for Verizon, how handy is that, they are our provider…:p]
Really, I have had surprisingly few issues though I forgot the damned password for the gmail account I was more or less forced to make when I got the phone, but since I rarely want to put on an app, it doesn’t really matter as I don’t use the gmail account for anything. Well, and I have noticed the battery becoming less efficient, but then again it is 3 years old. I probably should get a new battery.
This may be a YMMV thing. My Galaxy Note II has never crashed, or forced a restart.
I told this story before, but I think it is relevant: One of my colleagues’ iphone stopped working a few years ago. It simply wouldn’t start up. She called Apple who, after attempting and failing to diagnose her issue over the phone, told her she could either send the phone in or take it to the Apple store. Not wanting to be without her phone, she brought it over to her nearest Apple store.
Initially they told her the phone just needed to be recharged, however after a few more minutes they realized that wasn’t the case and ultimately told her the phone needed to be sent out for repair. They offered her a loaner, which I admit I was impressed by, until she was advised that the loaner was not free, and opted not to rent it, so she left the Apple store without a phone at all. She received a call from Apple two days later advising that the issue was the battery, which needed to be replaced.
She received her phone a few days later, which was once again functioning normally. She was, however, pissed that she was without her phone for almost a week simply because the battery died. It was at that moment I decided I would never own an iPhone. I hear that a malfunctioning battery in an iPhone is very rare but who cares. A malfunctioning battery is rare in any phone but they all provide the ability to change the battery (except for the Droid Razr X for some crazy reason). Why not give iPhone users the ability to change the battery without having to send the entire phone in for repair? Yes, yes, I know, the less they allow end users to futz around with the less things break. But not being able to change the battery? That’s ridiculous in my view.
Shoot. I forgot how much the camera software pisses me off. robardin’s post just reminded me.
The thing that really ticks me off about it is that it loves to jump back to the home screen just as I am getting my shot ready. I am holding the camera steady, wait for the light & focus to kick in, then just as I am about to push the button the is all “hey! mind if I go back to the home screen?”
“Nooooo!”