Android phone advice

[Southrop]

I kept wondering who the hell would ever want a Note, I guess maybe there is a market.
Interesting.

I've read that it's a bit of a cult hit. I mean it's a little bigger than a cell phone but still way smaller than one of those tablets so you can fit it into your pocket (probably?). I don't see what's not to like. If you can give me some cons, I'll take those into consideration.

You've read, I've witnessed. Samsung phones (S2, S3 and Note) have matched the iPhone, if not exceeded it, in terms of popularity in HK. Every where I go, look around, there is always a Samsung phone visible. You wouldn't believe how many Notes I see :\

[metro.]

Well, it's HK. To be expected.

The cons for me are the size, it doesn't comfortably fit in my pocket, I've tried. And the battery life is atrocious, or so I've been told.

[deadskin]

Well, it's HK. To be expected.

The cons for me are the size, it doesn't comfortably fit in my pocket, I've tried. And the battery life is atrocious, or so I've been told.

Trying to fit a SG Note in your pocket? Really now? That's like asking for discomfort.

[deadskin]

Final Fantasy III and GTA3 recently came out on the app market. Actual full console games are being added to the market now.

I can run both FFIII and GTA3 fine on my 2 year old Captivate. What demanding apps are you referring to?

Aww, forgot to edit my first post, sorry

[xShadow]

Alright well it's been a while, but: Best Buy had the S3 for 50 dollars off yesterday and since it was my birthday my parents offered to cover the cost. I had enough but what the hell, free shit is free shit.

Anyway, word of warning to anyone that's thinking of getting one:
At first I loved everything about it but then I figured something out really fast: its wifi connectivity is complete shit. I've had it sitting right beside my iPhone 3GS and my Laptop and watched as it could barely get 25-50% of its max signal (it won't even function at 25% btw), while my 3GS and Laptop were at max bars or close. I thought it might just be my phone but I looked around on the internet and this doesn't seem to be anything new.

Honestly, this is the last motherfucking thing I expected a phone to be unable to accomplish these days. Seriously, Wifi? Three year old 3GS has better wifi than this monster of an Android phone? I think that's intentional. I've looked around and it doesn't seem like this is the only Android with wifi issues. I wonder if the carriers have some kind of under-the-table bargain with manufacturers to fuck over their wifi just enough to make it inconvenient to use so that people will resort to a more expensive data plan.


*Takes off tinfoil h--... well not really it honestly sounds plausible enough to me, and I wouldn't put it past them. >_>

Anyway:

So, I'm thinking of returning it and getting something else. I'm trying to gather data as to what I should replace it with right now. I've started asking around other places. Features I'm looking for:

0. WIFI THAT ISN'T WORSE THAN A THREE YEAR OLD iPHONE MODEL (3GS)
1. Around 720p screen (good for viewing manga without zooming in, good enough for anime)
1a. Powerful enough processor to decode MKV's.
And preferably:
2. SD slot.
3. Removable battery.

That's all. If anyone's got some ideas, give them to me.

[metro.]

SGNote II is coming out soon xShadow.
I would suggest that, if you're not willing to wait.

I don't know the specs of phones coming out in Oct-Nov, but there should be a fairly large release of phones around that time, as people gear up for the holiday season.

[deadskin]

Alright well it's been a while, but: Best Buy had the S3 for 50 dollars off yesterday and since it was my birthday my parents offered to cover the cost. I had enough but what the hell, free shit is free shit.

Anyway, word of warning to anyone that's thinking of getting one:
At first I loved everything about it but then I figured something out really fast: its wifi connectivity is complete shit. I've had it sitting right beside my iPhone 3GS and my Laptop and watched as it could barely get 25-50% of its max signal (it won't even function at 25% btw), while my 3GS and Laptop were at max bars or close. I thought it might just be my phone but I looked around on the internet and this doesn't seem to be anything new.

Honestly, this is the last motherfucking thing I expected a phone to be unable to accomplish these days. Seriously, Wifi? Three year old 3GS has better wifi than this monster of an Android phone? I think that's intentional. I've looked around and it doesn't seem like this is the only Android with wifi issues. I wonder if the carriers have some kind of under-the-table bargain with manufacturers to fuck over their wifi just enough to make it inconvenient to use so that people will resort to a more expensive data plan.

Are you accesing a public hotspot? Or is it a home network?

Try this for now:

1. Go to your phone dialer
2. Dial *#0011#
3. When you see the "ServiceMode" screen, press the left menu button
4. Select "WiFi"
5. See that "Wifi Power Save Mode" button that is "ON" - well turn it "OFF"
6. Exit this menu, turn off your Wifi and turn it back on. If you already entered all your wifi credentials, forget your network info (remove it) and re-enter it again.

[xShadow]

SGNote II is coming out soon xShadow.
I would suggest that, if you're not willing to wait.

I don't know the specs of phones coming out in Oct-Nov, but there should be a fairly large release of phones around that time, as people gear up for the holiday season.

I realized I dont need anything as large as the Note. Surprisingly even things running at <720p resolutions did just fine at displaying manga in portrait without zooming in. The picture quality for horriblesubs encodes was also amazing. Though, the amount of codecs available for the mx player is bad. horriblesubs is the only mkv encode that would work in it. Commie and other Jinrui encodes would not play with hw acceleration.

Alright well it's been a while, but: Best Buy had the S3 for 50 dollars off yesterday and since it was my birthday my parents offered to cover the cost. I had enough but what the hell, free shit is free shit.

Anyway, word of warning to anyone that's thinking of getting one:
At first I loved everything about it but then I figured something out really fast: its wifi connectivity is complete shit. I've had it sitting right beside my iPhone 3GS and my Laptop and watched as it could barely get 25-50% of its max signal (it won't even function at 25% btw), while my 3GS and Laptop were at max bars or close. I thought it might just be my phone but I looked around on the internet and this doesn't seem to be anything new.

Honestly, this is the last motherfucking thing I expected a phone to be unable to accomplish these days. Seriously, Wifi? Three year old 3GS has better wifi than this monster of an Android phone? I think that's intentional. I've looked around and it doesn't seem like this is the only Android with wifi issues. I wonder if the carriers have some kind of under-the-table bargain with manufacturers to fuck over their wifi just enough to make it inconvenient to use so that people will resort to a more expensive data plan.

Are you accesing a public hotspot? Or is it a home network?

Try this for now:

1. Go to your phone dialer
2. Dial *#0011#
3. When you see the "ServiceMode" screen, press the left menu button
4. Select "WiFi"
5. See that "Wifi Power Save Mode" button that is "ON" - well turn it "OFF"
6. Exit this menu, turn off your Wifi and turn it back on. If you already entered all your wifi credentials, forget your network info (remove it) and re-enter it again.

Yeah I didn't know I had to do that at every startup (tried it before). I'll see if it makes a difference over the course of this week; I thought all it did was make it so the wifi at least wouldn't randomly stop working entirely. I did do a speed test with 2/4 bars and got this result: http://www.speedtest.net/android/259290827.png

I'm actually posting this from the S3. >_>

[Freedom Kira]

I wonder if your wifi antenna connection is loose. I've seen it happen before, just not on the S3 in particular.

[xShadow]

Dunno. After doing the power savings mode fix it's at least bearable. Just not ideal. The issue is that I notice it gets worse the more of my hands are covering it. As in, the wifi actually NOTICEABLY drops when I have my hands holding it in certain places (the more the worse). Right now, it's bearable, but what happens when I get an Otter Box case for it? Hard to tell, but it worries me. It's a seriously very noticeable drop in signal with my hands on it.

I'm at quite a quandary here because the apps and amazing screen have started to grow on me, but its problems are also annoying. Ugh. I would have to test it out with an Otter Box on and all this other shit before deciding... =_=;

[Slysoft]

Digital D is coming up soon, and there are lots of speculations that google will announce it's newest nexus phone, which honestly depending on how it turns out I'd go with that hands down. Nexus devices have almost always been the best phones around (unless you're into gimmicks, android overlays, slow updates, and features being blocked so the carrier can charge for it)

[Southrop]

Digital D is coming up soon, and there are lots of speculations that google will announce it's newest nexus phone

Some rumors say that there will be 3 of them. One from LG, one from Samsung and one from Sony. In any case, I'm waiting for the announcements. Looking to get a Nexus phone to replace my Desire since the Galaxy Nexus has been discontinued in both HK and UK :\

[metro.]

There's supposed to be a line of 5 nexus phones afaik.
And they're supposed to have wireless charging, which is a bit cool.

[Southrop]

Did that rumor actually specify phones? I remember reading it was devices as opposed to phones. Given there's a Nexus 7 already and a rumored Nexus 10, another 3 phones fits the rumor perfectly.

[metro.]

Guh, I can't find the article again, sorry about that.

[Southrop]

One of the articles I read originally was this one, saying Samsung, LG and Sony were doing phones. But I just did some more searching. There seems to be substantial stuff for Samsung Galaxy Nexus 2/Plus, Sony Xperia Nexus and LG Optimus Nexus. But there's also a rumor going around that the HTC One X 5 might be a Nexus device too. Though if they're waiting for KLP, that may not necessarily come out this year I guess.

Then there's the Nexus 10 rumors and of course, the new Nexus 7 rumors too. Just a day after I bought one =_=

[xShadow]

After more thorough testing, I have to say that the all of the features it has are growing on me. I had a bit of a run-in with battery draining issues, but after thoroughly raping Allshare and also turning off the mobile data (which I don't need since I use Wifi), I've solved those (mostly). I have to say that the phone's feature set is growing on me, and so is the awesome screen. Nothing beats using tTorrent to download 720p anime that you can watch right on the device, anywhere. Pretty convenient. The Wifi I have found to be decent enough at most spots. Even at 1-2 bars it registers bearable speeds.

It's just stupid how I had to do all this shit to get it working optimally; iPhone 3GS just worked great out of the box and never had any issues... ever. And even after all I did, the S3 still has its hiccups, such as:

• The headset play/pause button randomly not working at all (have to restart phone), in any music player.
• The default music player on the device is really bad (glitches out after like 2 fucking songs). Winamp is good, though. It hasn't given me any issues.
• Well, this is a bit more obscure but apparently if you start taping a video in portrait format, even if you immediately flip the phone over, it's still registers the entire thing as portrait mode; it's really awkward. I took a video of a little robot me and a lab partner programmed, and then when I uploaded it to youtube the entire thing was in 1080p... vertically. Still watchable since if you put it on 1080p it was still there... just that like 70% of the video space was unused because it was one giant fucking column in the middle.

... Well that being said the fact that you can just tape something and immediately upload it to youtube is convenient enough. It made designing our mbed cookbook page so much easier. I think my initial assessment was a bit too scathing.

[Slysoft]

• Well, this is a bit more obscure but apparently if you start taping a video in portrait format, even if you immediately flip the phone over, it's still registers the entire thing as portrait mode; it's really awkward. I took a video of a little robot me and a lab partner programmed, and then when I uploaded it to youtube the entire thing was in 1080p... vertically. Still watchable since if you put it on 1080p it was still there... just that like 70% of the video space was unused because it was one giant fucking column in the middle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA

Those other two problems are probably due to the fact that the S3 has terrible build quality.

[metro.]

It's just stupid how I had to do all this shit to get it working optimally; iPhone 3GS just worked great out of the box and never had any issues... ever.

Oh look, we now know why Apple sells phones.

[MyonMyon]

I know it's been 3 weeks since the last post, but I REALLY recommend rooting your phone and installing a custom rom. It does wonders to your battery, overall performance and stability. After Installing a custom ROM on my Galaxy S2 I experienced a big boost in my battery time and I wouldn't get any odd bugs/crashes with youtube/browser/videos any more. A custom ROM can also help with your connection because they have different radios (the software controlling your 3G/WiFi receiver chip), some of which receive signals better. A custom ROM with a good kernel can also increase your CPU/GPU performance by a margin due to better coding/optimizing. And of course rooting allows you to get rid of all those bundled-in useless bloatware programs which keep starting and drain your battery.

Just google a guide or go to http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1563 for the best resources on everything concerning your phone. Rooting may seem a tedious thing to do at first but it isn't really that hard at all and should only take a hour or two even for a first-timer. (If I had to root again it would probably take about 15 minutes)

And if you're already rooted and running a good ROM, just ignore this post. I just got the impression you are new with androids.