Tech Swoon - Samsung Galaxy S III

Get ready, guys -- this is a long one!  Keep in mind I'm not writing this because anyone asked me to and no one's giving me anything cool to say these things.  Maybe one day... but that day is not today.


THE INTRODUCTION
Okay, so yeah, I love pretty new tech-y things.  Especially those that run Android.  I absolutely adore the customizability of the Android platform -- you have the opportunity to personalize your (expensive) purchase in almost every aspect imaginable, making it truly yours, truly unique, and truly fitting to your needs.  Why spend hundreds of dollars on something that, if you threw it in a line-up of other people's phones of the same model, you wouldn't be able to pick out right away and say "Mine!"?

I love the options that the Android platform offers it's end users.  Hell, it even goes beyond that, once you decide to get adventurous and root your phone -- then the possibilities stretch on even farther.  Independent developers spend time creating new "ROMs" for each individual phone -- think of it sort of as the grand UI of your phone, but created by someone other than, say, Samsung, HTC or LG.  They open up varieties of options and... well, I won't get into that.  But it's very cool.  You have options up the wazoo.  I digress.


THE BACK STORY
I had the first-ever Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, and was absolutely in love with it.  Android had me for life from the moment I popped open that Qwerty keyboard and started sending e-mails and text messages and status updates.  From there I went to the LG G2x, which was an awesome phone, despite it's unfortunate hardware malfunctions and ultimate demise (I was one of the lucky ones that didn't have any of those nasty random reboots).  The G2x took a spill in a sushi joint a couple weeks ago, and because I couldn't fathom having a phone with a cracked screen, I took to the world wide web and started researching the new line of Android-y options.


Enter:  The Samsung Galaxy S III.

I've never owned a Samsung phone before, and have only had the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet for a few months (happily!).  I do a *ton* of online research before I devote myself to a product (the G2x was a universal mistake, but I still hold that I was one of the lucky ones without all the hardware hassle!) and I obsessed with this for the whole week or so between the G2x hitting the floor and it's release date.  I was devouring forums, reviews from the UK release, various Twitter feeds... I get a little nutty when I decide on a gadget and have to wait to own it.


THE ACQUISITION
When release day came, I took the world's earliest lunch break from work, and booked down to a T-Mobile store who, the day previously, said they'd have 7 coming in so get there early!  I waited outside until about 10 minutes to opening, one of the employees popped his head out and said "They sent all of the devices in San Francisco to the store on Market.  If you hurry down there, you might get one!"


I *haul ass* over to the Market Street store, a good ten minutes of hustling and jaywalking (disclaimer: I do not promote breaking laws.  I just -- aw, screw it, I jaywalk).  I get there, and the store is open, but empty.  I was expecting a line of people around the corner!


Turns out, they had opened an hour earlier than the other store, and had just finished through the line of Android fanatics that had lined up for opening.  And they weren't sold out!    


The guy who sold me the phone gave me an awesome deal on it, and the only model they had was exactly the one I wanted (16gb Pebble Blue color, pictured above).  Oh, lucky day!


THE PHONE
It has a *beautiful* 4.8" high definition Super AMOLED screen, and is incredibly thin -- and so lightweight.  It almost worried me when I'd first picked it up... almost.  It's like paper! Coming from a heavier 4"-screened LG phone released just a year earlier, it blew my mind how quickly technology can advance.  And instead of getting smaller, it seems like things are getting bigger, but lighter and stronger at the same time (the SGS3 rocks the Gorilla Glass 2, which is another upgrade from the G2x, and makes me feel significantly better about the odds of destroying the screen).

WE ARE LIVING IN THE FUTURE, MY FRIENDS.

THE LIKES

The screen.  I touched on this above, but geez, is this screen bright and big!  The touch screen is so responsive, everything scrolls smoothly, it's clear and crisp and did I mention that it's huge?  These photos just do NOT do it justice.  

The size.  I didn't think I needed anything more than a 4" screen when I got the G2x; bigger just seemed like overkill.  When the Galaxy Note came out (the "phablet," or the phone/tablet, that monster of a phone with a 5.3" screen and a stylus) I thought that was pretty much bonkers and unnecessary... but now I kinda get it.  The 4.8" screen on the SGS3 seems to be just right for me, right on the brink of being too large but not going over that line.  Sure, my girly thumb can't scale the phone diagonally, but this is something I don't mind using two hands for.  (Also, that's what she said.)

The internal memory.  It's got 2 gigs of RAM (if you're in the US, 1 gig elsewhere) so apps run as smooth as butter, and it has either 16 or 32 gigs of on-board storage for apps, videos, photos, whatever you wanna store (64gb coming in the future!)... and it's expandable to up to an additional 64 gigabytes.  So essentially it's possible to have up to 128gb of storage with this thing.  That's ridiculous... and awesome.

The color.  Black's fine, white's alright, but those are just so... basic.  Okay, I'll say classic.  Pebble blue?  Who the f&$@ makes a phone in a color called "pebble blue?"  Samsung does, apparently, and it was seriously ballsy of them not to offer a straight-up black model [or any of those shades of grey].  Just "marble white" and "pebble blue" for now, with rumored limited-edition black and red models in the future (I'm gonna be brutally honest here and say that the red color sounds ugly).  And what you think of when you hear "pebble blue" doesn't really seem to capture the hue of it.  It's like a dark blue with almost-black and some purple tints... it's a really neat color, and I rather like it.  It's unique.  I'm into it.  Again, the pictures I took just do not do it justice.  :[

The buttons.  Samsung seems to understand KISS -- Keep It Simple, Stupid: you've got the hardware power button on the right side of the phone (much better than the top, like on my old G2x), the volume rocker on the left, the hardware home button on the front bottom in the center (not like the iPhone, guys!), and then... my favorite... the two disappearing capacitive buttons on either side of the home button: menu and back.  You don't even know they're there until you press them and they light up.  And then the light fades and you're like, "I can't even see them!" and it's awesome.  And obviously I am easy to please and amuse.

(they disappear!!!!)

Some other things I really like:

The free 50gb of Dropbox storage • the gorgeous 8mp camera • the calendar interface • the LED notification light (oh, how I've missed you!) • ANDROID 4.0.4 ICE CREAM SANDWICH, you good lookin' upgrade, you! • those nifty motion gestures, like swipe-to-screenshot, turn over to mute, and my favorite (albeit somewhat unreliable) camera quick launch gesture from the lock screen (press & hold anywhere on lockscreen > turn phone landscape > release > camera!) • the clean browser interface • the concept of tagging faces in photos/photo recognition, and auto-sending them the pictures (unlikely to use this feature, but for some reason it makes me happy that this is something that can happen) • the identical devices across all carriers, giving the SGS3 the opportunity to have a massive and crazy-active development community!  Let's root and ROM her and see what more she is capable of!

THE DISLIKES

Unfortunately, I've got 'em.  And they're mostly little gripes, like "man, this is kinda silly," things I can live with, but I've still gotta put them out there because otherwise this whole damn thing is a lie.  (This whole damn court is out of order!)

The pre-loaded ringtones and notification sounds.  Look, I know the whole theme of the Galaxy S III is "Designed for humans... inspired by nature," and that's cute and all because I'm a human and nature's pretty sweet.  But I am not going to hear the sound of a babbling brook when someone's calling me from inside my purse or in my butt pocket.  I hate classical guitar, especially when there are bird noises involved.  Flutes and oboes over a light rain?  Could do without 'em.  I'm not expecting ringtones of screaming robots on a phone that's "inspired by nature," but at least give me an option in there somewhere that doesn't feel like I'm taking a Bikram yoga class with Kenny G. 

(yep, went there)

Also, the droplet sounds any time you touch the screen?  Who thought that was a good idea?  Thank goodness you can turn that off.  To the trash with ya's!

The volume warning.  This one threw me off a *lot.*  It's so small, but it's extremely annoying.  So I'm on a loud BART train and I'm trying to listen to the most recent Nerdist podcast, and I have to turn the volume up because I can't hear what they're saying over the train noises, the suits talking about 401Ks, and the infuriating girls talking about how sad it is that her funny looking friend has to find a date on OK Cupid (true story).  So I'm turning up the volume, and I see this notification pop up once I'm nearing max volume-osity: "Loud music may harm your hearing if you listen to it for a long time."  ... Hm.  That's weird.  It's nice that they let you know, but I think we all know that by now. Let's try turning it down, and turning it back up again, maybe it's a 'we'll warn you once' type of thing.  "Loud music may harm your hearing if you listen to it for a long time."  Well, alright, maybe it's just in the music player.  Let's try Pandora.  "Loud music may harm your hearing" god damnit, I'm not twelve and/or stupid.

The browser's brightness settings.  I still don't entirely grasp why the browser alone has it's own brightness setting, but it does.  I don't normally roll at 100% brightness, it kills the battery and sometimes it's too bright.  50% about does it for me.  However, when the phone's overall brightness is set at 50%, and I open the browser, it's like the browser's brightness is at 0%.  I don't know if this is just a side product of the Power Saving option which I keep activated (ooh, let's add that to the list of things I like, by the way), but I have to go into the settings menu and readjust the browser brightness every time.  That's obnoxious. 

The warm battery.  This might just be due to the thin back cover for these phones, but my battery gets kinda warm pretty quick, even if I'm not doing anything all that CPU-intensive.  Like, warm enough for me to be like, "Uh, okay, let's see what the battery temperature is."  It doesn't get dangerously warm, but it's still slightly disconcerting, as I haven't experienced feeling a phone get this warm before.

The bloatware.  I am still not entirely sure what Kies is.  I haven't opened "Samsung Apps."  I don't think I'll ever use Chat On or S Beam or anything that requires the other person to have their own SGS3, because frankly, no one I know is as obsessive over new Android gadgets as I am. Odds are low that I'll want to stream anything to my TV, since I don't plan on taking much video.  You might ask why I got this phone in the first place, since these all seem to be high on the list of the phone's selling points... and to that I say feh!  Silly question!  But I also won't watch T-Mobile TV or any of that crapware, too.  Short of using Titanium Back-up to freeze the garbage, I like that Ice Cream Sandwich allows you to go in and hide apps from your app drawer without the aid of a 3rd party application.  Android UI: +1.  Samsung/T-Mobile bloat: -5.


Disappointment Runner-Up:  S Voice.  I know, I know, it's not Siri... but I've never played with Siri, and while I've seen videos of Siri saying funny things, I don't get why everyone is like "poo S Voice is so lame."  I mean, it's kind of a novelty as it is, and it's worked the handful of times for me when I gave it basic commands ("set timer for eighty minutes," "What is the weather like," "text Jordan 'balls'").  While it has no personality and may be a little hard of hearing, it's nothing I'll really use much at all, so meh.  It'll do.

THE CONCLUSION

This phone is pretty much the shit.  Super speedy, gorgeous to look at, feels good in my hand, worth every penny.  I'm glad my G2x took a dump when it did (and by "took a dump" I mean landed just right on my favorite sushi restaurant's unevenly-surfaced floor, resulting in the screen cracked to the extent where I just couldn't deal) and I moved on to this beast.  After a week or so in, I would recommend it to friends (and maybe if they'd liiiiisten to meeeee, S Beam might be uuuuuuseful...) and I'm still going gaga over it.  


Is anyone still reading?


If you're here, thanks for bearing with me while I nerd out.  Also go buy one of these phones and I'll beam you pictures of cats.


Just kidding.


Maybe.