Gadgetory

so the same thing kind of always happens when a new phone is announced the media gets the device ahead of time maybe a couple days a couple weeks if we're lucky and we get to use it while we're preparing our review then the date and time of the press embargo arrives the embargo lifts everybody posts their review at once and it is a giant big frenzy of activity there's commenters going nuts and defenders and attackers and it's just a huge explosion for about a day and then everything disappears ensure there's follow-up coverage and stuff as people find bugs people have other stuff to say about the devices they wear a man over the course of a day or so but really nobody ever goes back and revisits these devices after that initial blast of review to see how they feel after a couple weeks so let's do something about it let's take a look at a smartphone that while it's still setting the market on fire it still isn't exactly a newborn anymore I'm Michael Fisher with pocketnow.com this is the Samsung Galaxy s3 and this is episode 7 of after the buzz the next big thing is here Samsung's marketing tagline kicking off the launch of the Galaxy s3 was bombastic but quite accurate you can still see the banners and commercials everywhere you look so it's tempting to say that the Galaxy s3 isn't yet ready for and after the buzz segment but it launched longer ago than you think 29 May 2012 which means it'll soon be creeping up on middle age for a flagship Android smartphone the galaxy s3 sold more than 20 million units in its first 100 days of availability smashing records and flooding the globe with the biggest non phablet smartphone ever so how's it holding up so far well let's check the hardware of my Verizon branded Samsung Galaxy s3 to see how its held up under a few months worth of daily use in short pretty well honestly better than I anticipated you'll recall I've never been a huge fan of samsung's design direction with the galaxy s3 and at emphasis on lightweight and glossy flimsy material if you're like me and you don't like protective cases the Galaxy s3 is build quality might have given you pause when you first took the device out of the box no matter how strong the Gorilla Glass up front or the polycarbonate around back fortunately the device has held up much better than I expected the plastic you feel is annoying on humid days and the hyper glaze coating on the battery door shows more than its fair share of scratches even despite careful handling but the white coloring on my unit covers up those pretty well from a distance also that same glossy coat has prevented the white polycarbonate from staining or color transfer from jeans or other sources from far enough away the unit looks a lot like it did when it first came out of the box I still don't like the physical home button which forces me to interrupt my tap swipe and flick interaction so I can mash a big key with my thumb it's clumsy and stupid a departure from the new UX principles that ICS tried to introduce also the capacitive keys flanking it are invisible when not illuminated and their position close to the edge of the device makes them very easy to activate accidentally especially when you're passing the phone to someone to take a picture it's annoying touching on one last positive bit of the hardware experience though the device spends most of its out-of-pocket time resting on the protruding camera module the lens isn't scratched in the slightest which was a welcome surprise I still wouldn't trust the galaxy s3s build enough to put it through any significant physical stress but for daily use in its caseless naked state the galaxy s3 holds up well oh and PS we've never fallen out of love with its big bright notification LED either but as we know hardware isn't the only thing that degrades over time in the world of smartphones like many galaxy s3 users I'm still stuck running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich how does that hold up in a world increasingly dominated by jelly beans not as bad as you might think sure a few days with the Galaxy Note 2 got me used to the enhanced notifications and Google now support baked into androids latest but as I mentioned in that review I didn't really feel the performance enhancements of project butter because the UI is already so smooth on the galaxy s3 running Android 4.4 Samsung worked some real magic with the nature UX iteration of TouchWiz transforming the much-maligned Android skin from a laggy mess to a real value add useful elements like the toggle bar in the notification shade the information dense widgets and extensive customization options have all served to make the Android experience more convenient my devices app launcher shows that I've downloaded 49 apps that camera tells me I've got close to 700 pictures onboard and there's over 2,000 songs loaded into memory that's on a removable 32 gigabyte card and even taking read/write times into account the device is still snappy as anything sure it bogs down at times no device is perfect Chrome in particular seems to strain the s GS threes resources at times and it's possible to get some UI lag going if you have a busy widget menu also a lot of the fancy Samsung software customizations don't serve much use once you get past the novelty stage particularly s-voice which is still just awful but other features like smart stay continued to prove their worth and the phone's core features continue to shine even under the fine layer of dust that's gathered since launch the camera is still one of the best smartphone shooters out there battery life is still better than many similarly spec devices on the market and it even makes phone calls pretty well if you're into that kind of thing part of the reason we started the after the buzz series is because over time smartphone devices tend to bog down their real errors don't float to the surface until after weeks or months of use on Android that sometimes tends to mean a lag year experience with jittery UI performance and general grumpiness until it's no longer the Droid you're looking for that hasn't happened on the galaxy s3 but granted this is the US version with different processor and RAM loadout than the global variants and other models and we have no idea what's going to happen when the next few iterations of Android make their way to this device but considering the Polish Samsung's brought with this model the massive ad blitz surrounding it and it's impressive sales numbers thus far sgs3 owners now constitute a hugely important sector of Samsung's customer base and the company is probably going to do all it can to support this halo device for quite a while maybe more so than other flagship devices from other companies which haven't enjoyed the same media exposure more than four months post-launch if we were a financial firm we'd still give the Samsung Galaxy s3 a strong buy recommendation guys this has been episode 7 of after the buzz we hope you enjoyed it leave us a thumbs up here on YouTube if so leave a comment leave a comment on the post at pocketnow.com and we'll get back to you there are six other episodes of after the buzz you can find them here on our youtube channel or you can find them at pocket now with the after the buzz tag you can also hear from us weekly on the PocketNow weekly podcast that's pocket now weekly and follow us on twitter pocket now tweets is the official account my account is capped in two phones that's Captain the number two phones please keep it locked to pocketnow.com for a whole bunch of new content every day - the days weeks months and years ahead stay tuned for the next episode of after the buzz coming very soon and once again thank you for watching we'll see you next time on our YouTube channel you can also hear Us Weekly on the PocketNow weekly podcast I knew that was gonna happen I hate not turning off my ringtone