mercado79

Picked up LTE tonight in Watertown. Grove Street heading towards the river / Cambridge. Almost 8mb down. 2.8mb up. Also, down by the Garden/North Station. Only 2.8mb down, 1mb up. Either way, I'm excited!

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy S3

the patents got thrown out for the way in which they were transferred to htc. it was a legal technicality and did not mean that the patents were useless or invalid. there are specific rules about how someone (htc) can use patents they license / borrow from another entity (google).

let's hope google learned from their mistake.

I meant to post this last week and forgot. Took a trip to the Burlington Mall on Thursday and just before leaving to head back home, I remembered that there has been some LTE work done nearby. So, I put my new SGS3 into LTE mode and.... no LTE signal. However, a speedtest of the 3g signal was really good. around 1.6 down 0.9 up. Way better than I've come to expect over the last year. Yay NV! Can't wait until it arrives closer to home.

\

 

Don't show her this then......

 

http://www.monoprice...&seq=1&format=2

Is there a 22 month upgrade policy for spouses?

I've been married for almost 4 years and never got an upgrade... LMAO

 

Sent from my CM9 Toro using Forum Runner

LOL!

Sadly, she refuses to give up her Blackberry Curve.

My wife is holding on to her BB Bold for dear life. I can't imagine it lasting that much longer, at which point I'll have to convince/argue with her to go Android instead of iPhone. I am NOT looking forward to that! It'd be easier if there were some good sliders coming out as she's gotten used to having a physical keyboard.

Sent from my Touchpad

Lucky the old lady didn't break a hip being thrown to the floor. She would have probably gotten a Galaxy for life.

 

Well I completely forgot the event was yesterday,

 

so mercado, did you get there early?

 

As for the conversation with the Samsung rep about the HTC EVO's HD voice, sure, granted they will downplay the competitors stuff, but calling it a gimmick is false. I experienced the HD Voice on the EVO and wish all phones had it. So crystal clear that you can hear a pin drop. (Yeah i went there) So no, its not a gimmick at least to me. Its true you need another EVO to notice the difference but I still wouldn't call it a gimmick.

 

As for the power button on the right, I still haven't gotten use to that on my Note so i know I probably won't get used to it on a S3 either. I keep turning off the damn phone. lol

 

Even without HD Voice, I still feel that the S3 is a (very small and tiny) bit better than the EVO LTE, but not by much. Each has its highs and lows and each would do well in anyone's hands.

thanks for checking in man. i did not get there early. family stuff came up and so i got there about 20 minutes before they opened. but... there was no line at that time. just a big crowd outside. so, by the time someone came out and lined everyone up, i was only a few people back. i did do what you suggested and bee-lined it to a samsung rep. got a lot of alone time with him while everyone else was filing in, grabbing food and drinks, etc.

we had a good chat. he was a samsung rep in charge of "boston north". he mentioned that he worked for compusa back in the day and has always been a gadget geek, and now he spends his days messing with new or unreleased gadgets. not a bad deal! honestly, everyone last night was great. very responsive and friendly. i'd definitely attend another event.

Hadn't thought of it last night, but... for anyone that was at the event and held on to their pass, there's a Tectile sticker on there. I just downloaded the Tectile app from the market and was able to reprogram it. Pretty cool.

Well an anonymous user has deleted the bulk of the first question. in real time (I can almost here the 24 clock countdown)

 

fixed to the best of my recollection

Thanks man. I just logged on and reverted to an earlier version. I've also removed editing capabilities since the event's over.

Well guys, here's my recap of tonight's event:

Long story, short. I’m sold. Very glad I pre-ordered.

Positive impressions:

Appearance

The phone feels great in the hand. Yes, it is made of plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap or creaky. White looked great. Unfortunately, there were no blue versions available at all…and there were dozens of GS3’s in the room. A couple of reps I spoke to said they were planning to buy the blue for themselves. That textured/grain looked great in the demo videos and press materials found throughout the venue. Large phone. Very large screen. But it is extremely comfortable to hold and navigate. I have zero reservations about the size and I do not have large hands either.

Display

Speaking of the screen, it looks beautiful. Especially in dimly lit room tonight. I didn’t think the colors looked garishly oversaturated. Blacks look as great as we’ve come to expect from Samsung phones. I know that many people have complained about sub-pixels and screen quality, but to my untrained eyes, Super AMOLED HD was stunning.

Button Layout

The fact that the power button is on the right side makes way more sense on these big phones than having it located at the top of the phone (like the HTC One X or Evo). Very easy to activate.

Camera

Burst shot (8 to 20 photos) and best shot worked well. Face tracking was quick too. Taking pictures while recording a video is also a nice plus. Pinch to zoom or use the volume rocker. Front facing camera quality was much improved over my OG Evo and Nexus S.

Software

Using S Beam (Samsung’s customized NFC & Wifi Direct implementation) worked as expected. Files, including videos and photos, transferred surprisingly quickly. Just make sure that the phone is unlocked first. One rep mentioned that this will work with other NFC enabled phones, such as the Galaxy Nexus, but I’m skeptical.

Their demo of screen sharing / collaboration was kind of neat, though they only used an image as an example. Basically, one SGS3 had an image on its screen and a bunch of other phones were set up with access to it. You could write on the image, highlight words, etc. Apparently this will work with other types of files such as Word docs.

Accessories

The accessories they demoed looked great. That includes the media link stuff (picture quality on the displays was surprisingly good) and the cases. As you may have seen elsewhere, Samsung is selling a flip cover case. I may just pick one up. Hard cover over the screen without the bulk. We’ll see.

Negative Impressions:

Button Layout

The two capacitive keys are reversed in my opinion. Back is on the right and menu is on the left.

Software

Siri… I mean S-Voice, got in the way of a couple demos I saw, but I think that was user error more than anything. The rep got stuck on a menu and kept double tapping the menu button instead of hitting back or tapping the home button once.

Call Quality

The rep I asked about HD voice tried to work some marketing mumbo jumbo on me. It went something like this, “The Evo’s HD voice is a gimmick. It’s an unproven technology. Requires network upgrades that aren’t even available. Even the term, HD, is inaccurate. Samsung will be sure to look into it at a later date, but for now, it’s not something to be concerned about.” He asked me what I’d even need something like that for? Have I ever had issues with voice quality on a modern smart phone? To which I responded, “Yes, nearly every windy day when I’m walking outside or if I’m out at a bar and there’s loud music playing.” I told him that was the way HTC and Sprint had demoed HD voice in NYC. At that point he took out a notepad and jotted some of my words down. If HD voice comes out on the SGS4…you’ll know who to thank!

Miscellaneous

Lastly, and unrelated to the phone, prizes were given out at the end of the night based on points you collected from the various reps at different stations (S Beam, Burst shot, NFC “memory” game, etc.) as well as contests. It was kind of a rat race and stopped being fun after I noticed people cheating. I’m sorry, but if you’re a cute girl and just walk around asking reps for points and DO NOTHING FOR IT, that’s a little ridiculous. Or, if you’re in a group of people and decide to pool your points (have only one person in your group collect the points for everyone)…shady! Or if you cheat at musical chairs (yes, I’m talking about you man) by physically pushing people out of the way and blocking one chair at all times…that’s wrong. Yes…I’m hating the player, not hating the game.

On the other hand, girl that won the dance off, you deserved it. Way to shake what your mama gave you. Oh, and way to bring back the running man. You nailed it.

 

Put the phone in debug mode right next to an EVO LTE and compare the signal numbers.

 

Sent from my C64 w/Epyx FastLoad cartridge

Sorry, wasn't sure how to do this and don't have an EVO LTE.

Any early updates from the event?

I updated the document above. Got some answers for you. I'll write more once I'm home.

Sent from my Nexus S

Created a Google Doc (and will check it while I'm at the event in case anyone adds a question):

https://docs.google....PEpejU7Duc/edit

Feel free to add/edit the list

I know it's very last minute, but... I'll be heading to the event downtown in about an hour. Any questions you guys want answered? Don't hold me to it, but I'll see if I can get some answered.

So far, I have the following (some from the XDA Spring SGS3 thread):

1. Will the Sprint variant will include a Wolfson WM1811 DAC like the international version does.
   
2. Will Sprint be including a micro-SD card along with the device?
   
3. Will the Sprint variant be “world phone” ready?
   
4. Is simultaneous voice & data supported?
   

I'm pretty sure 3 & 4 have already been answered here (no for 3, yes for 4), but I'll ask again just in case.

Best Buy is only carrying 16gb versions and I have hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards burning a hole in my pocket. So... 16 gig it is (unfortunately).

Just read a bit of the Harrisburg thread and someone mentioned that abysmal download speeds might be indicative of sites being offline (or partially offline?) while upgrades are done. Now around Harvard Square, 3g speeds have been bad for almost a year; however, in the last week or so, I've had some horrible connection speeds. Like maxing out at 40k on 3G. Streaming stuttering, page timeouts. I sure hope something good is happening behind the scenes.

As an aside, I'm planning to attend the Sprint / Samsung event next Tuesday. How awesome would it be if LTE was lit up thereby allowing press / customers to properly try out the Galaxy S3! Wishful thinking, I know.