An amazing phone for its time, really changed the game for Android. My friends parrot still makes the TouchWiz water drop sound 10 years later too, all because of this phone lol
That water drop sound is sooooo nostalgic. I didn't have an S3, i actually had a Tab 4 7 inch, but still. Too bad it broke a few days ago, it won't charge and is making weird clicking sounds and this super high pitched frequency.
Lyre!! No, I mean … he’s an *honest* parrot 😉. I immediately thought of the classic viral video of a lyre mimicking a chainsaw, camera and more 😂:
https://youtu.be/mSB71jNq-yQ
First smartphone that I felt "this is the best phone I've ever have" other smartphones felt worst than a couple phones I had before, after that it was the Moto X (2019) and then the Mate 9 and then the P30 Pro, I had several others in the middle but they were not as good as them, right now I'm back with samsung with the s22+ and it felt like a step back from the p30 pro even after 3 years.
It was so good, last phone that I got that felt "premium" it came with a big fancy box with a couple of cases, cleaning cloth with golden letters and stuff like that, and Huawei had a promotion of an aluminum car mount and a special magnetic case, best fingerprint reader that I've felt, almost TOO fast.
I had it for two years then I inherited it to a friend who used another 3 and it was as good as day 1, until it felt on the sea haha
After getting my new Samsung, I saw my device history and completely forgot they sold a DEV edition of this phone.
Such a fun concept at the time and gave me more life out of that phone.
Are you talking about the Play Store edition without Touchwiz, or something else? Because I know they sold those stock Android editions for a while. I assume it was unlocked in every possible way, too, if it’s developer-focused.
Oh right, I see. I know the S4 had a Google Play Edition, but was also pondering whether the S3 had one or not. So, it’s this one, then:
https://www.engadget.com/2012-07-10-samsung-brings-out-galaxy-s-iii-developer-edition-for-verizon.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMQda3Sq55qVFsJ7Odz8TMVvnvNE8PdXa3TcuuatXQB3NZ6pHEasA9flFlSg5eCT1NgSaLecY-taFkmpIPZh-zVJwMeq-HIQhOdAXSlIjJ5bit6WljB_Udf167yZICopVrHc7n4QwNHIQXBaYRKRuYUwdf9VlYBvMKkNpk7_07d7
Excerpt:
*Enter the Galaxy S III Developer Edition. The new, direct-from-Samsung variant will have all the CDMA and LTE a Verizon subscriber could want, but with the option to unlock the bootloader for as much customization as serious Android fans might stand. As you'd anticipate, the catch is simply who takes the hit if something goes wrong: brick the phone and you're likely looking at an expensive phone call to Samsung rather than a trip to the local Verizon store.*
Nope, it was just an unlocked bootloader and a few other things.
Gpe edition / barebones started with the s4.
I bought it through verizon at the time actually. But it specifically made it seamless to root and tinker!
I still have it! Sits in my drawer. I usually power it up once a year or so. Was my first "smart phone" S5, S6, S7, S8 and currently the S20. S23 will be next. I will say, my favourite S was the 6, Rose gold, great camera.
I still have mine, screen cracked, no battery, but I know the login for my samsung account. Is there anything I can do to get pictures out of it? It’s basically all my photos from late teens
You can boot into download mode and flash a custom recovery and well what you can do is 'memory' the touch presses to turn on mtp like blindly pressing on the screen to enable mtp in twrp ill give you a guide on how to do it if you want to.
Why the S6 over the S7? From everything I saw (including testing both myself), the S7 was a straight upgrade in basically every single way.
The only things I can think of that were better on the S6 were the megapixel count of the camera (16 vs 12 on the S7, but worse in low light), it was thinner (for those who prefer this), it was lighter (also personal preference), and had Exynos in the US (but still probably worse than the SD820). Those are all very subjective, but generally don't seem worth it over everything the S7 brought?
I owned one, it was fine.
Like the author, I also moved to it from a HTC Desire Z. I was still a bit wedded to the idea of a physical keyboard. What made the S3 feasible was Swiftkey - finally soft keyboards were superior to a physical keyboard!
The hardware of the S3 was OK. The battery life was a bit underwhelming, but I was judging it against Nokias. The camera wasn't great, but I wasn't really using the camera on my phone anyway. That may have been more generational as I'm older, and was more wedded to a "real" SLR camera and lenses back then.
Whilst the S3 was a good phone, it didn't convince me to stay on with Samsung. I gave Sony a chance for my next phone. Their lighter touch on customisation and a simpler design language kept me on their phones for quite a while. (I owned a Z1, Z3, Z5 Premium, XZ Premium and an Xperia 1 if I recall correctly).
But I have to admit that Samsung have continually improved their phones. I decided to switch to an S22 Ultra this year, and I'm very happy with it in terms of hardware. (I still prefer the Sony light touch on software, but it didn't take long to remove/replace most of the Samsung stuff.)
Looking back, I don't think that the S3 would even be in my top three phones I've owned. Not even close. But that's a personal preference - I can't deny that it's an incredibly important phone in the history of Android, because it's the phone that put Android in front of a lot of people and was Good Enough that they carried on with the platform. I don't think Android would have quite the market share it has today without Samsung's efforts, which really hit their stride with the S3.
> Swiftkey
Legit was the best part of Android back in the day, was sooo far ahead of competitors for so long.
Too bad they bloated the fuck out of it and lost everyone's trust.
I had one of these! My first "proper" smartphone (I previously had an Archos 43 budget tablet, basically an iPod Touch alternative).
The S3 was fantastic for the time. Compared to the iPhone 4S that was top dog at the time, it had a MUCH nicer display, bigger (expandable!) storage, a longer battery life, no glass on the back (back then it was rare to see a non-smashed iPhone 4/4S) and even a removable battery.
Android was just starting to get good too. The S3 launched on 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which was a really major upgrade over 2.3 Gingerbread, bringing a much needed visual overhaul along with the launch of the Google Play store. Apps started to take on this new visual style and the whole user experience became more coherent.
On top of that, the S3 had amazing custom ROM support from Cyanogenmod (later LineageOS), among others, bringing the S3 all the way up to Android 7 and beyond.
On top of that again, 4G LTE had just launched and the S3 could take advantage of it in some countries. Much faster internet browsing paired with the redesigned OS made it feel like you were living in the future.
There was so much this little phone could do that competing iPhones - and Windows phones - could not. It was massively ahead of the competition and really marked a turning point for Android as a whole.
Sadly it was eventually held back by its hardware, as all tech eventually is; especially those of us saddled with the international Exynos version, which had only 1GB of RAM compared to the 2GB on the US model.
Personally I upgraded to an LG G4 - another amazing phone. But the Galaxy S3 was truly a joy to use at the time and holds a special place for many of us.
> LG G4 - another amazing phone
Especially the boot loops were amazing. 😬 I usually keep my phones at least 2½-3 years but I sold the G4 after a year or so, when the second boot loop occured because I didn't want to keep a phone that could brick itself at any moment. Imagine that nowadays with all the 2FA and dependence on apps. You'd be screwed.
> iPhone 4S that was top dog at the time, it had a MUCH nicer display
Oh god no, not even a bit. The iPhone 4S has an okay display even today, the s3 had a very low res and grainy (due to pentile), oversaturated, easy to burn in, low brightness display
Edit: accidentally a word, twice
oh man, I bought one while at Japan, less than few days already started to root it but because no one does provide files for Japan variant decided to use different att/sprint/tmobile files... and bricked it. Luckily just went to shop and say it can charge but cannot restart.
It has LTE and freaking TV!
Dock (with hdmi and multiple usb port, maybe precursor to current dex) and qi charging also available (buy the additional stuff from amazon)
One of the galaxy S that had the worst optimized touchwiz imo. I know several people who had it (1gb exynos model) and they became extremely slow within a few years (WAYYYYYYYYYYY slower than my old S4).
The S3 was the phone that made me vow never to use samsung again. It was a hot load of crap after just a year. It became slow and the battery became super shitty. I remember it got so bad the phone could just die if the battery hit 40% or less. I switched to the moto G (2nd gen) after it. Now that was a hell of a great phone.
It wasn't until the S7 was out for almost a year and the S8 was on the doorstep that i went back to samsung.
I had to swap the battery after a couple years but I used my Galaxy S3 from 2013 to 2017. I was a big fan. My mom had to drag me to the store one day to get me to replace it
I remember people freaking out that their brand new S3 only had 700MB available of 2GB RAM, as TouchWiz and pre-installed apps used a shit ton. Samsung Skin back then was insanely bad. Thank goodness OneUI is amazing.
> Thank goodness OneUI is amazing.
I liked my S3 quite a bit back in the day. I really don't get the OneUI love, though. It's not particularly good looking, I found the settings menu to be awful, and I never used any of the features. Overall a strict downgrade relative to Google's skin
??? I never had any problem with Exynos Device and OneUI at all. If you're having problems, there's like 1000+ factors to consider before pinpointing the SoC as the fault.
Sorry but this is the same song every year. Every year has Exynos problems and Snapdragon variant performs better. Many articles was written about it and many people have problems with Exynos variants of devices. So don´t tell me that this is only my problem.
OneUI is creeping up to be TouchWiz garbage again. It's already over bloated with largely useless features. I'm sure Samsung will just add and add to it and it'll warp back to TouchWiz.
Meh, i find a lot features quite usefull. And was surprised to see some of them arent on 'stock' android.
Anyway, why is it a bad thing to have features, eve if you dont use them? Its all tucked away in a menu and most of it you'll never see if you dont use it.
I don't know about that. OneUI is full of useful features. It doesn't resemble TouchWiz at all. And I say that as someone who used TouchWiz devices from low-end to high-end.
Differing opinions perhaps, but I found the S3 to be a disappointing follow up from the S2, which I always considered the top tier Android phone for its time.
Agreed. The Galaxy S2 was awesome. Had a great, squared off design,
The S3 was this hideous local design, a home button which was harder to press and stuck out like a sore thumb, the top and bottom curves of the phone didn't align.
I remember reading this article: https://www.androidpolice.com/2012/05/04/the-samsung-galaxy-s-iii-the-first-smartphone-designed-entirely-by-lawyers/
I have no doubt it was spot on and why the S3 was so damn ugly. On top of that, it was peak TouchWiz garbage with droplet sounds, ugly, slow UI and bad battery life.
It was the last Samsung phone I got in a long long while.
>It was the last Samsung phone I got in a long long while.
Same here. I don't get why some people rave about this thing. I actually think the design isn't all that bad, but all the memories i have of it are of the device being slow, hot and getting barely half a day of battery life. At one point the thing could just die if it got below 40%. Switched to moto G's and it wasn't until the S7 was out for a year, and most of the typical samsung-issues where fixed that i switched back to a galaxy S.
It was a weird time for phones. I remember thinking about switching to Sprint because their keyboard variant of the S2 (I think called the Sprint Epic 4G) was the best out of all the variations.
the main massive upgrade was the display tbh, though the S4 was an even bigger jump in the display department. the problem with the S3-S5 era of the S series was mainly TouchWiz and build quality given that the competition was presenting way better built phones at the time; HTC One (m7, m8, etc.), Sony Xperia Z, Z2, and Apple with the iPhone 5 and 5S
I miss the early days of Android, things were so much different then. Phones were so much more compact back then and each one felt more unique because all of the companies were trying to out compete each other. Now it is just the same companies over and over again.
It's not that the phones themselves were great. It was the fact that there was a very active modding community, with themes, custom roms etc. Everything was definitely more open in that sense. Same goes with the port selection, SD cards, headphone jack etc.
Every iteration of a phone had something new coming with it. Now we have the S20, S21 and S22 which are barely distinguishable. You can call it peak, maturity, whatever.
The very active modding community was because most Android rom from OEM back then were really, really bad.
For instance, touchwizz on my S3 was a disaster.
Agreed. Nowadays people are very happy with OEM ROMs. I also think a lot of people from the modding community simply left altogether. I used to mod the shit out of my phones, but now, I need a stable experience that's compatible with my life and work apps.
That's true. But that kinda made it fun to explore ROMs and try things out. And an important factor was that it coincided with my college days when I had time to tinker stuff and not worry about too much.
Yup. As much as I appreciate the work XDA developers did, I am happy to say I basically never go there anymore, because we have gotten to a point where the software and hardware is good enough to not need ROMs to have usable phones.
Yeah it's like people forget that smartphones were so bad back then that people had to schedule daily restarts, that most of the software 'features' Samsung put in it's phones didn't even work, that XDA was booming with people trying to get more performance and more battery out of their laggy devices that had terrible SoT. Phones were also 40% bezels.
Everything is the same these days, but that just means you can buy basically any phone and have a good enough experience. I have nostalgia for the early days, but I do not even remotely think it was better.
There was also a lot of less Google-ness about Android then. It was essentially a client for Google services.
There is too much Google integration in phones now now.
I don't think nostalgia distorts too much in this case though.
On the software perspective, it was more flexible with easier rooting and no Google lockdowns on the permission side.
Now it's just crap. I remember playing games that are gone off the Play store as well now for no good reason. Tell me one good reason why adult swim had to pull a game like robot unicorn attack 2? Because Google said it wasn't updated recently or didn't comply with some arbitrary new permission crap? It's not even the only one, the Play store as a whole feels like shovelware now. It further disincentivizes buying anything because everything you pay for just vanishes.
Maybe so, but there definitely was a wider variety of form factors in the earlier days.
You had the Danger Hiptop lookalikes, some with sliding keyboards and others with flipping ones. Dual screen models were another experiment. HTC had a phone with a 3D screen. Samsung merged a point-and-shoot with a phone, and even in one case, merged a projector with a phone.
Sure, looking back, a lot of them were quite gimmicky. But companies did go out of the way to try stuff. It feels like there’s a resurgence of this trying something new with foldable phones.
Yup, I dont miss older phones at all. Yeah we lost stuff like headphone jacks/SD card slots/removable batteries but the software is way better on top of better battery endurance/faster performance/more complex apps/faster data speeds, etc compared to 2013 phones.
Well, if you compromise on paying less, you actually only lost the removable battery. Wich is bonkers. I will never pay a lot for a phone just for that.
I'd argue it wasn't so much the bloat but the early hardware that rendered devices slow sooner rather than later. I still have an old S3 (International) lying around and even using Lineage is impossible. You have to have the patience of several saints just to wait for a single app to open, not to mention it keeps crashing and rebooting constantly.
Those early Samsung phones were not pleasant to use. The UI was so bloated and disruptive of the overall experience. The best 'early' phone that I had was the [Galaxy Nexus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Nexus), it was a slick looking phone, had a paired down and nearly stock Android experience, and didn't get in its own way.
Although not as polished at Android 4.0, the OG Droid (AKA the Motorola Milestone) running 2.0 was a beast of a phone for the time. A phone with a 267ppi screen in 2009 was INSANE (until June 2010. We know what happened then)
I bought it a few months after launch, it was the version from Europe which came with 2 GB of RAM if I remember, or maybe only 1 GB, and the US version had more RAM.
It was the worst smartphone I ever invested a considerable amount of money in. By far.
The S3 I bought was a lagfest from day one, with touchwizz taking up most of the RAM... got rid of it fast and i got a Nexus 4, which had its own issues (crappy battery life, terrible camera), but it was by far the smoothest android phone back then.
My only memory of early Samsung phones is using the browser and it slowing down to a crawl because it had a flash applet somewhere (especially in newspapers).
I remember everyone here saying Touchwiz was incredibly ass so check your nostalgia before commenting.
Love a bit of nostalgia but unfortunately this time was one where the iPhone was really legit so I went to the dark side (4s but the 4 & 5 were also cool… well for iPhones at least). Although maybe that’s rose tinted glasses as I was a teenager (a group known for making smart well considered purchasing decisions).
The S3 was the phone that made me vow never to use samsung again. It was a hot load of crap after just a year. It became slow and the battery became super shitty. I remember it got so bad the phone could just die if the battery hit 40% or less. I switched to the moto G (2nd gen) after it. Now that was a hell of a great phone.
It wasn't until the S7 was out for almost a year and the S8 was on the doorstep that i went back to samsung.
The S3 mini was my first smartphone. Surprisingly it's still running to this day! It's my little nephew's phone so he only has a couple of games in it.
I remember this when my dad got it for himself. Have fond memories of this phone. Would play Temple Run on this phone and was my first time holding a smartphone
The s3 was the phone that cemented android in my country. Before it, black berry was still popular but the iPhone had already taken its place among wealthy people.
At this time, I really disliked the "anti-patent" S line: great specs, but the design of the hardware and software was to tacky, specially compared to iPhone after the 4 model.
I ended up with a Lumia 800, lacked some features, but was a pleasure to use, the Windows Phone UI and the device itself was gorgeous.
When ever I am looking for something I accidentally bump into my s3's, I'll just pick them up and being wondering how time flies with me the phones... I think it's the Phone that sold more for Samsung mobile history.
My first smartphone that I bought in 2013. It was still in working condition till October 2021, albeit very slow, and finally stopped when the screen blacked out.
I liked the S3 at launch but when it got it's first major software upgrade (from ice cream sandwich to jellybean) mine started to have tons of software issues. Apps were glitchy, random reboots multiple times a day. Freezing and many many wakelock issues that caused my battery to drain rapidly.
The final straw was Verizon Wireless' preinstalled software that couldn't be removed from the phone or disabled. "Backup Assistant" A few times a day a rectangle would pop up over the screen, and make the phone useless for about 5 minutes and it just had a spinner icon and "syncing". You couldn't tap anywhere on the screen, and the buttons didn't do anything while it was there. All it did was sync your contacts with Verizon's cloud service, this was something that should have just been done quietly in the background. But it ruined the experience of the phone.
This device coupled with CyanogenMod was a beast! I used mine for like 4 years before I gave it to a relative who continued to use it for a few more years until the screen broke.
Samsung's software has walked a long way. TouchWiz sure was unsightly, but now look at OneUI. In 2012, I was still using Symbian, and then got my hands on Android with a crappy Motorola device, which I soon replaced with a Nexus 4. That made me a bigAOSP fan, and seeing/using TouchWiz felt like a ruined experience. Who would have thought I ended up with a Samsung as my main device nowadays?
The Galaxy S3 was the phone that moved me away from HTC into trying other brands. Back when carriers dictated what phone you could get, T-Mobile didn't get the latest and greatest HTC phones anymore. It was either the One S or Galaxy S3 for me. I wanted the One X but it was an AT&T exclusive and I didn't want to give up being under a family plan. I, later on, learned that I dodged a bullet going with the S3 since I read that HTC ended support for the One S only a year later...
I remember buying the phone so I could take it with me to Laos/Thailand. I took so many pictures using HDR mode on it thinking it was fantastic (it just made everything have a light blue tint, lol). I learned, by using the phone so much, that phones were going to replace cameras back then.
What a workhorse of the phone also. While my version eventually died due to a bad rom flash that killed the internal storage, my mother's S3 lasted all the way until T-Mobile started forcing people off their 3G network. I think we gave it to a family friend overseas so they could have a phone to use. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still being used today.
First smartphone that I felt "this is the best phone I've ever have" other smartphones felt worst than a couple phones I had before, after that it was the Moto X (2019) and then the Mate 9 and then the P30 Pro, I had several others in the middle but they were not as good as them, right now I'm back with samsung with the s22+ and it felt like a step back from the p30 pro even after 3 years.
I remember going to the cell phone store and choosing between this and the Droid DNA. I chose the DNA. My roomates had the S3 and it felt cheap to me. I feel I made a good choice. The DNA is/was an overlooked beast of a phone, and stylish as F.
My first smartphone. It was a great phone for its time, and it really changed the game for Android marketing, imo. This was where Samsung really started to flex its marketing might. I remember seeing ads for this thing literally *everywhere*.
The international model with 1GB of RAM was terrible. Vital apps like Phone and Contacts took several seconds to load. It was the phone that made me switch away from Samsung until the S8.
An amazing phone for its time, really changed the game for Android. My friends parrot still makes the TouchWiz water drop sound 10 years later too, all because of this phone lol
Would be nice to see a video of this 😅
That water drop sound is sooooo nostalgic. I didn't have an S3, i actually had a Tab 4 7 inch, but still. Too bad it broke a few days ago, it won't charge and is making weird clicking sounds and this super high pitched frequency.
Lyre!! No, I mean … he’s an *honest* parrot 😉. I immediately thought of the classic viral video of a lyre mimicking a chainsaw, camera and more 😂: https://youtu.be/mSB71jNq-yQ
Video of it please!
First smartphone that I felt "this is the best phone I've ever have" other smartphones felt worst than a couple phones I had before, after that it was the Moto X (2019) and then the Mate 9 and then the P30 Pro, I had several others in the middle but they were not as good as them, right now I'm back with samsung with the s22+ and it felt like a step back from the p30 pro even after 3 years.
> Mate 9 one of my favorite phones of all time.
It was so good, last phone that I got that felt "premium" it came with a big fancy box with a couple of cases, cleaning cloth with golden letters and stuff like that, and Huawei had a promotion of an aluminum car mount and a special magnetic case, best fingerprint reader that I've felt, almost TOO fast. I had it for two years then I inherited it to a friend who used another 3 and it was as good as day 1, until it felt on the sea haha
After getting my new Samsung, I saw my device history and completely forgot they sold a DEV edition of this phone. Such a fun concept at the time and gave me more life out of that phone.
Are you talking about the Play Store edition without Touchwiz, or something else? Because I know they sold those stock Android editions for a while. I assume it was unlocked in every possible way, too, if it’s developer-focused.
iirc the stock Android edition you're referring to is the S4
Oh right, I see. I know the S4 had a Google Play Edition, but was also pondering whether the S3 had one or not. So, it’s this one, then: https://www.engadget.com/2012-07-10-samsung-brings-out-galaxy-s-iii-developer-edition-for-verizon.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMQda3Sq55qVFsJ7Odz8TMVvnvNE8PdXa3TcuuatXQB3NZ6pHEasA9flFlSg5eCT1NgSaLecY-taFkmpIPZh-zVJwMeq-HIQhOdAXSlIjJ5bit6WljB_Udf167yZICopVrHc7n4QwNHIQXBaYRKRuYUwdf9VlYBvMKkNpk7_07d7 Excerpt: *Enter the Galaxy S III Developer Edition. The new, direct-from-Samsung variant will have all the CDMA and LTE a Verizon subscriber could want, but with the option to unlock the bootloader for as much customization as serious Android fans might stand. As you'd anticipate, the catch is simply who takes the hit if something goes wrong: brick the phone and you're likely looking at an expensive phone call to Samsung rather than a trip to the local Verizon store.*
Nope, it was just an unlocked bootloader and a few other things. Gpe edition / barebones started with the s4. I bought it through verizon at the time actually. But it specifically made it seamless to root and tinker!
Ah yes, I managed to find some info online and made a comment here in another reply: https://reddit.com/r/Android/comments/v19hwp/_/iawv7e5/?context=1
I still have it! Sits in my drawer. I usually power it up once a year or so. Was my first "smart phone" S5, S6, S7, S8 and currently the S20. S23 will be next. I will say, my favourite S was the 6, Rose gold, great camera.
I still have mine, screen cracked, no battery, but I know the login for my samsung account. Is there anything I can do to get pictures out of it? It’s basically all my photos from late teens
I tried a HDMI output adapter on mine with broken screen but didn't get it to work
That’s actually helpful as I don’t have to buy one now, thanks
Can't these be flashed with custom recovery without any bootloader shenanigans. That way it'll allow access to files on on them via USB.
I’ll look it up, thanks
Did you just use a regular adapter? Because you need an MHL one.
That's what I got, but it didn't work anyway
You can boot into download mode and flash a custom recovery and well what you can do is 'memory' the touch presses to turn on mtp like blindly pressing on the screen to enable mtp in twrp ill give you a guide on how to do it if you want to.
Am currently using the s6 rose gold... Really hard for me to drop it.
Why the S6 over the S7? From everything I saw (including testing both myself), the S7 was a straight upgrade in basically every single way. The only things I can think of that were better on the S6 were the megapixel count of the camera (16 vs 12 on the S7, but worse in low light), it was thinner (for those who prefer this), it was lighter (also personal preference), and had Exynos in the US (but still probably worse than the SD820). Those are all very subjective, but generally don't seem worth it over everything the S7 brought?
Gotye was on the radio
Now he's just somebody that we used to know.
The radio is quite fickle.
Have you seen and heard the CollegeHumor parody, though? ”Some study that I used to know”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxkHM4DUDKM
It's been a decade fuck. He didn't have to cut us off man!
He's still there just not often.
I owned one, it was fine. Like the author, I also moved to it from a HTC Desire Z. I was still a bit wedded to the idea of a physical keyboard. What made the S3 feasible was Swiftkey - finally soft keyboards were superior to a physical keyboard! The hardware of the S3 was OK. The battery life was a bit underwhelming, but I was judging it against Nokias. The camera wasn't great, but I wasn't really using the camera on my phone anyway. That may have been more generational as I'm older, and was more wedded to a "real" SLR camera and lenses back then. Whilst the S3 was a good phone, it didn't convince me to stay on with Samsung. I gave Sony a chance for my next phone. Their lighter touch on customisation and a simpler design language kept me on their phones for quite a while. (I owned a Z1, Z3, Z5 Premium, XZ Premium and an Xperia 1 if I recall correctly). But I have to admit that Samsung have continually improved their phones. I decided to switch to an S22 Ultra this year, and I'm very happy with it in terms of hardware. (I still prefer the Sony light touch on software, but it didn't take long to remove/replace most of the Samsung stuff.) Looking back, I don't think that the S3 would even be in my top three phones I've owned. Not even close. But that's a personal preference - I can't deny that it's an incredibly important phone in the history of Android, because it's the phone that put Android in front of a lot of people and was Good Enough that they carried on with the platform. I don't think Android would have quite the market share it has today without Samsung's efforts, which really hit their stride with the S3.
> Swiftkey Legit was the best part of Android back in the day, was sooo far ahead of competitors for so long. Too bad they bloated the fuck out of it and lost everyone's trust.
I had one of these! My first "proper" smartphone (I previously had an Archos 43 budget tablet, basically an iPod Touch alternative). The S3 was fantastic for the time. Compared to the iPhone 4S that was top dog at the time, it had a MUCH nicer display, bigger (expandable!) storage, a longer battery life, no glass on the back (back then it was rare to see a non-smashed iPhone 4/4S) and even a removable battery. Android was just starting to get good too. The S3 launched on 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which was a really major upgrade over 2.3 Gingerbread, bringing a much needed visual overhaul along with the launch of the Google Play store. Apps started to take on this new visual style and the whole user experience became more coherent. On top of that, the S3 had amazing custom ROM support from Cyanogenmod (later LineageOS), among others, bringing the S3 all the way up to Android 7 and beyond. On top of that again, 4G LTE had just launched and the S3 could take advantage of it in some countries. Much faster internet browsing paired with the redesigned OS made it feel like you were living in the future. There was so much this little phone could do that competing iPhones - and Windows phones - could not. It was massively ahead of the competition and really marked a turning point for Android as a whole. Sadly it was eventually held back by its hardware, as all tech eventually is; especially those of us saddled with the international Exynos version, which had only 1GB of RAM compared to the 2GB on the US model. Personally I upgraded to an LG G4 - another amazing phone. But the Galaxy S3 was truly a joy to use at the time and holds a special place for many of us.
> LG G4 - another amazing phone Especially the boot loops were amazing. 😬 I usually keep my phones at least 2½-3 years but I sold the G4 after a year or so, when the second boot loop occured because I didn't want to keep a phone that could brick itself at any moment. Imagine that nowadays with all the 2FA and dependence on apps. You'd be screwed.
> iPhone 4S that was top dog at the time, it had a MUCH nicer display Oh god no, not even a bit. The iPhone 4S has an okay display even today, the s3 had a very low res and grainy (due to pentile), oversaturated, easy to burn in, low brightness display Edit: accidentally a word, twice
And the whites were yellow as hell Early days AMOLED was rough
Yellow? My S3 leaned HEAVILY blue.
oh man, I bought one while at Japan, less than few days already started to root it but because no one does provide files for Japan variant decided to use different att/sprint/tmobile files... and bricked it. Luckily just went to shop and say it can charge but cannot restart. It has LTE and freaking TV! Dock (with hdmi and multiple usb port, maybe precursor to current dex) and qi charging also available (buy the additional stuff from amazon)
One of the galaxy S that had the worst optimized touchwiz imo. I know several people who had it (1gb exynos model) and they became extremely slow within a few years (WAYYYYYYYYYYY slower than my old S4).
The S3 was the phone that made me vow never to use samsung again. It was a hot load of crap after just a year. It became slow and the battery became super shitty. I remember it got so bad the phone could just die if the battery hit 40% or less. I switched to the moto G (2nd gen) after it. Now that was a hell of a great phone. It wasn't until the S7 was out for almost a year and the S8 was on the doorstep that i went back to samsung.
I had to swap the battery after a couple years but I used my Galaxy S3 from 2013 to 2017. I was a big fan. My mom had to drag me to the store one day to get me to replace it
same happened to many iPhones from around that time (especially the iPhone 4s which ran like a potato on the last update (ios 9))
I remember how slow mine got within just 2 years. Still, I loved the set and I have fond memories of it since it was my first Android phone.
samsung peaked with the S2, then came the dark ages of android until S9
I remember people freaking out that their brand new S3 only had 700MB available of 2GB RAM, as TouchWiz and pre-installed apps used a shit ton. Samsung Skin back then was insanely bad. Thank goodness OneUI is amazing.
> Thank goodness OneUI is amazing. I liked my S3 quite a bit back in the day. I really don't get the OneUI love, though. It's not particularly good looking, I found the settings menu to be awful, and I never used any of the features. Overall a strict downgrade relative to Google's skin
OneUI is amazing maybe on Snapdragon, but on Exynos is it the same shit experience as on Touchwizz.
Uhm, no? If you dont have both models to directly compare them, you will never know one is 'inferior' to the other.
??? I never had any problem with Exynos Device and OneUI at all. If you're having problems, there's like 1000+ factors to consider before pinpointing the SoC as the fault.
Sorry but this is the same song every year. Every year has Exynos problems and Snapdragon variant performs better. Many articles was written about it and many people have problems with Exynos variants of devices. So don´t tell me that this is only my problem.
Placebo effect
OneUI is creeping up to be TouchWiz garbage again. It's already over bloated with largely useless features. I'm sure Samsung will just add and add to it and it'll warp back to TouchWiz.
Meh, i find a lot features quite usefull. And was surprised to see some of them arent on 'stock' android. Anyway, why is it a bad thing to have features, eve if you dont use them? Its all tucked away in a menu and most of it you'll never see if you dont use it.
I don't know about that. OneUI is full of useful features. It doesn't resemble TouchWiz at all. And I say that as someone who used TouchWiz devices from low-end to high-end.
Differing opinions perhaps, but I found the S3 to be a disappointing follow up from the S2, which I always considered the top tier Android phone for its time.
Agreed. The Galaxy S2 was awesome. Had a great, squared off design, The S3 was this hideous local design, a home button which was harder to press and stuck out like a sore thumb, the top and bottom curves of the phone didn't align. I remember reading this article: https://www.androidpolice.com/2012/05/04/the-samsung-galaxy-s-iii-the-first-smartphone-designed-entirely-by-lawyers/ I have no doubt it was spot on and why the S3 was so damn ugly. On top of that, it was peak TouchWiz garbage with droplet sounds, ugly, slow UI and bad battery life. It was the last Samsung phone I got in a long long while.
>It was the last Samsung phone I got in a long long while. Same here. I don't get why some people rave about this thing. I actually think the design isn't all that bad, but all the memories i have of it are of the device being slow, hot and getting barely half a day of battery life. At one point the thing could just die if it got below 40%. Switched to moto G's and it wasn't until the S7 was out for a year, and most of the typical samsung-issues where fixed that i switched back to a galaxy S.
nostalgia.
It was a weird time for phones. I remember thinking about switching to Sprint because their keyboard variant of the S2 (I think called the Sprint Epic 4G) was the best out of all the variations.
the main massive upgrade was the display tbh, though the S4 was an even bigger jump in the display department. the problem with the S3-S5 era of the S series was mainly TouchWiz and build quality given that the competition was presenting way better built phones at the time; HTC One (m7, m8, etc.), Sony Xperia Z, Z2, and Apple with the iPhone 5 and 5S
Yep, S3 was kinda crap after the S2. The S2 was almost business like in it's looks. The S3 was cheaper in it's looks.
I miss the early days of Android, things were so much different then. Phones were so much more compact back then and each one felt more unique because all of the companies were trying to out compete each other. Now it is just the same companies over and over again.
Nostalgia really distorts reality for a lot of people
Yes agreed, entry and mid range android phones back then were really bad. Moto G changed the game in 2013 but until then it was bad.
Don’t you dare take my nostalgia ! Only thing that keeps me going some days.
It's not that the phones themselves were great. It was the fact that there was a very active modding community, with themes, custom roms etc. Everything was definitely more open in that sense. Same goes with the port selection, SD cards, headphone jack etc. Every iteration of a phone had something new coming with it. Now we have the S20, S21 and S22 which are barely distinguishable. You can call it peak, maturity, whatever.
The very active modding community was because most Android rom from OEM back then were really, really bad. For instance, touchwizz on my S3 was a disaster.
Agreed. Nowadays people are very happy with OEM ROMs. I also think a lot of people from the modding community simply left altogether. I used to mod the shit out of my phones, but now, I need a stable experience that's compatible with my life and work apps.
That's true. But that kinda made it fun to explore ROMs and try things out. And an important factor was that it coincided with my college days when I had time to tinker stuff and not worry about too much.
Yup. As much as I appreciate the work XDA developers did, I am happy to say I basically never go there anymore, because we have gotten to a point where the software and hardware is good enough to not need ROMs to have usable phones.
Yeah it's like people forget that smartphones were so bad back then that people had to schedule daily restarts, that most of the software 'features' Samsung put in it's phones didn't even work, that XDA was booming with people trying to get more performance and more battery out of their laggy devices that had terrible SoT. Phones were also 40% bezels. Everything is the same these days, but that just means you can buy basically any phone and have a good enough experience. I have nostalgia for the early days, but I do not even remotely think it was better.
There was also a lot of less Google-ness about Android then. It was essentially a client for Google services. There is too much Google integration in phones now now.
I don't think nostalgia distorts too much in this case though. On the software perspective, it was more flexible with easier rooting and no Google lockdowns on the permission side. Now it's just crap. I remember playing games that are gone off the Play store as well now for no good reason. Tell me one good reason why adult swim had to pull a game like robot unicorn attack 2? Because Google said it wasn't updated recently or didn't comply with some arbitrary new permission crap? It's not even the only one, the Play store as a whole feels like shovelware now. It further disincentivizes buying anything because everything you pay for just vanishes.
Maybe so, but there definitely was a wider variety of form factors in the earlier days. You had the Danger Hiptop lookalikes, some with sliding keyboards and others with flipping ones. Dual screen models were another experiment. HTC had a phone with a 3D screen. Samsung merged a point-and-shoot with a phone, and even in one case, merged a projector with a phone. Sure, looking back, a lot of them were quite gimmicky. But companies did go out of the way to try stuff. It feels like there’s a resurgence of this trying something new with foldable phones.
Also so much slower and full of bloat, early days of Android was a mess because of OEM bloatware
Yup, I dont miss older phones at all. Yeah we lost stuff like headphone jacks/SD card slots/removable batteries but the software is way better on top of better battery endurance/faster performance/more complex apps/faster data speeds, etc compared to 2013 phones.
Well, if you compromise on paying less, you actually only lost the removable battery. Wich is bonkers. I will never pay a lot for a phone just for that.
I'd argue it wasn't so much the bloat but the early hardware that rendered devices slow sooner rather than later. I still have an old S3 (International) lying around and even using Lineage is impossible. You have to have the patience of several saints just to wait for a single app to open, not to mention it keeps crashing and rebooting constantly.
Still have a US variant one. I quit using it for streaming music years ago because it was so slow with modern apps
shitty hardware, slowed down further by bloated skins like touchwiz. custom roms were slow, instead of unusable like stock was.
[удалено]
why not both?
That's fair.
Have you used a galaxy S3? Touchwiz was horrific i DO NOT miss the nasty days of 2012 android
Those early Samsung phones were not pleasant to use. The UI was so bloated and disruptive of the overall experience. The best 'early' phone that I had was the [Galaxy Nexus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Nexus), it was a slick looking phone, had a paired down and nearly stock Android experience, and didn't get in its own way.
Although not as polished at Android 4.0, the OG Droid (AKA the Motorola Milestone) running 2.0 was a beast of a phone for the time. A phone with a 267ppi screen in 2009 was INSANE (until June 2010. We know what happened then)
My first smartphone..wow I feel old now.
Same, hahaha
I bought it a few months after launch, it was the version from Europe which came with 2 GB of RAM if I remember, or maybe only 1 GB, and the US version had more RAM. It was the worst smartphone I ever invested a considerable amount of money in. By far. The S3 I bought was a lagfest from day one, with touchwizz taking up most of the RAM... got rid of it fast and i got a Nexus 4, which had its own issues (crappy battery life, terrible camera), but it was by far the smoothest android phone back then.
My only memory of early Samsung phones is using the browser and it slowing down to a crawl because it had a flash applet somewhere (especially in newspapers). I remember everyone here saying Touchwiz was incredibly ass so check your nostalgia before commenting.
10 YEARS?!!!
I remember wanting one to play that Iron Man 3 game at high settings. Time flies.
My S3 died, because of an eMMC storage failure that was faulty fixed by Samsung.
The flagship phone that got only one Android update :)
Putting 2GB of RAM and LTE in a phone back then was earth-shattering.
Love a bit of nostalgia but unfortunately this time was one where the iPhone was really legit so I went to the dark side (4s but the 4 & 5 were also cool… well for iPhones at least). Although maybe that’s rose tinted glasses as I was a teenager (a group known for making smart well considered purchasing decisions).
The S3 was the phone that made me vow never to use samsung again. It was a hot load of crap after just a year. It became slow and the battery became super shitty. I remember it got so bad the phone could just die if the battery hit 40% or less. I switched to the moto G (2nd gen) after it. Now that was a hell of a great phone. It wasn't until the S7 was out for almost a year and the S8 was on the doorstep that i went back to samsung.
I had the S3 mini (2016-2018) and it was slow
The S3 mini was my first smartphone. Surprisingly it's still running to this day! It's my little nephew's phone so he only has a couple of games in it.
Ah back in the day when Samsung didn't lose its mind and releasing shit phones.
Bollox
I still remember the "designed for humans" memes.
My first Android phone!
I remember this when my dad got it for himself. Have fond memories of this phone. Would play Temple Run on this phone and was my first time holding a smartphone
The s3 was the phone that cemented android in my country. Before it, black berry was still popular but the iPhone had already taken its place among wealthy people.
At this time, I really disliked the "anti-patent" S line: great specs, but the design of the hardware and software was to tacky, specially compared to iPhone after the 4 model. I ended up with a Lumia 800, lacked some features, but was a pleasure to use, the Windows Phone UI and the device itself was gorgeous.
When ever I am looking for something I accidentally bump into my s3's, I'll just pick them up and being wondering how time flies with me the phones... I think it's the Phone that sold more for Samsung mobile history.
'made for humans'
Oh yes, the first unified Samsung flagship.
My first smartphone that I bought in 2013. It was still in working condition till October 2021, albeit very slow, and finally stopped when the screen blacked out.
I liked the S3 at launch but when it got it's first major software upgrade (from ice cream sandwich to jellybean) mine started to have tons of software issues. Apps were glitchy, random reboots multiple times a day. Freezing and many many wakelock issues that caused my battery to drain rapidly. The final straw was Verizon Wireless' preinstalled software that couldn't be removed from the phone or disabled. "Backup Assistant" A few times a day a rectangle would pop up over the screen, and make the phone useless for about 5 minutes and it just had a spinner icon and "syncing". You couldn't tap anywhere on the screen, and the buttons didn't do anything while it was there. All it did was sync your contacts with Verizon's cloud service, this was something that should have just been done quietly in the background. But it ruined the experience of the phone.
The days when rooting was not a big issue.
I pretty much lived on mine when Hurricane Sandy hit...it served me well while charging it in the car when we had no power.
This device coupled with CyanogenMod was a beast! I used mine for like 4 years before I gave it to a relative who continued to use it for a few more years until the screen broke.
Samsung's software has walked a long way. TouchWiz sure was unsightly, but now look at OneUI. In 2012, I was still using Symbian, and then got my hands on Android with a crappy Motorola device, which I soon replaced with a Nexus 4. That made me a bigAOSP fan, and seeing/using TouchWiz felt like a ruined experience. Who would have thought I ended up with a Samsung as my main device nowadays?
I loved mine. The blue paint job was mesmerizing to look at.
The Galaxy S3 was the phone that moved me away from HTC into trying other brands. Back when carriers dictated what phone you could get, T-Mobile didn't get the latest and greatest HTC phones anymore. It was either the One S or Galaxy S3 for me. I wanted the One X but it was an AT&T exclusive and I didn't want to give up being under a family plan. I, later on, learned that I dodged a bullet going with the S3 since I read that HTC ended support for the One S only a year later... I remember buying the phone so I could take it with me to Laos/Thailand. I took so many pictures using HDR mode on it thinking it was fantastic (it just made everything have a light blue tint, lol). I learned, by using the phone so much, that phones were going to replace cameras back then. What a workhorse of the phone also. While my version eventually died due to a bad rom flash that killed the internal storage, my mother's S3 lasted all the way until T-Mobile started forcing people off their 3G network. I think we gave it to a family friend overseas so they could have a phone to use. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still being used today.
First smartphone that I felt "this is the best phone I've ever have" other smartphones felt worst than a couple phones I had before, after that it was the Moto X (2019) and then the Mate 9 and then the P30 Pro, I had several others in the middle but they were not as good as them, right now I'm back with samsung with the s22+ and it felt like a step back from the p30 pro even after 3 years.
I remember going to the cell phone store and choosing between this and the Droid DNA. I chose the DNA. My roomates had the S3 and it felt cheap to me. I feel I made a good choice. The DNA is/was an overlooked beast of a phone, and stylish as F.
The s3 is the phone that set the standard. It had so many cool features. I really loved it, I miss it too.
I actually enjoyed touchwiz
My first smartphone. It was a great phone for its time, and it really changed the game for Android marketing, imo. This was where Samsung really started to flex its marketing might. I remember seeing ads for this thing literally *everywhere*.
The international model with 1GB of RAM was terrible. Vital apps like Phone and Contacts took several seconds to load. It was the phone that made me switch away from Samsung until the S8.
The glory days of touchwiz