No Reader: Safari has a feature known as "Reader" which removes all ads from a web page article and places it full screen with larger text. It automatically wraps text around so there's no need to scroll from side to side or shrink the page to fit when reading an article. But this is not a feature that my Galaxy S3 has and I really miss it.
Download a different browser...Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, and Boat Browser all do text reflow which rewraps the text in a paragraph depending on how far you zoom in. Meaning, you don't have to hit a reader button and increase the font size like on the iPhone, all you do is pinch to zoom on the text and it automatically reformats that text to fit your screen. You can zoom in so far that you can read it from across the room if you wanted to.
Battery life seems to suffer dramatically if you turn up the brightness..
I've compared side by side...with both my S3 and iPhone 5 at around the same brightness, the battery life is only slightly better on the iPhone 5...but still, better is better
Extra buttons get in the way: The S3's home button has two capacitor-style neighbors: a "back" button to the right and a "Menu" button to the left. As you would expect, the back button lets you return to previous screens within apps while the menu button avails app-specific actions. Too often I am accidentally pressing these buttons, especially when turning to landscape mode, or while using in landscape mode. It is an extra large pain when pressing the back button. And even when I actually do want to use these buttons, I find they are in an inconvenient position. Something that might solve both of these problems would be to place these buttons on the sides of the device in the same way the power and volume buttons are. That would be an advantage over Apple's soft back-button solution (usually appearing conveniently at the top of the screen), but as things stand now, these extra capacitor buttons are a disadvantage..
Personal preference....I actually feel it's more intuitive to have a back button next to your thumb rather than all the way at the top of the screen on the other side
Notification widgets: I miss the built in weather and Stock ticker that appears in the iOS notification center. I am still new to the Android platform so maybe I just dont know how to add one in, but it seems to me that there should just be one by default.
I've got weather in my notification center...all i did was download weatherbug, but accuweather and others do the same and it gives the same information as iOS does. I don't deal with stocks, but a simple widget placed on the screen would be easy, and there may even be an app that does the same as the weather by placing it in the notification center
S-voice: Though I am in the minority, I used Siri daily on my iPhone 4S. Having watched many side-by side comparisons with S-voice I expected it to be an adequate replacement for Siri. Boy was I wrong. I am trying to keep this post short so suffice it to say S-voice does not even come close to Siri's speech recognition/comprehension capabilities (ICS).
This one I wholeheartedly agree with you on...Siri is the main reason I might keep the iPhone, but with google now and updated voice search coming in Jelly Bean that will change. Only question is when I would get it. There are other options, but the only one I've found that even comes sort of close is AIVC...it looks and works almost exactly like siri, just still not as good.
My favorite apps are not available for android. iTeleport. StreamToMe. And after 3 weeks I have not found adequate substitutes. The apps seem to be much better done on iOS.
Works both ways...there are apps on my S3 I can't find on the iPhone. Just part of it
Predictive text on the S3 is a horrible experience. I tried for 4 weeks to live with it. but it just ended up costing me more time. I have since turned it off.
There are COUNTLESS replacement keyboards in the play store...swiftkey 3 is widely accepted as probably the best touchscreen keyboard, iPhone included. Swype is loved by many, but not me. There are several available replacements...Jelly Bean stock keyboard is pretty close to iOS keyboard actually. I use Swiftkey 3, I'd say i can type equally fast on that or the iPhone 5.
Hi,
Can you help me out? What should I download to remedy my complaints about the S3?
I intended to try out the S3 for longer, but I was missing my iOS features too much.
Obviously the problems with the S3 screen quality, and size can't be helped.
But if there is a way to tweak the software, then I would be willing to hold on to it a little longer.
In particular...
-I really wish someone would port iTeleport and StreamToMe to android. I have found some VNC and streaming clients but they just aren't as good as I am used to on iOS.
-predictive text on the S3 really is a disaster for me. A couple of times I have managed to send some hilariously inappropriate messages.
-A Stock Widget and Weather widget in the notification center. Is it possible to get it in there? I really miss those.
Any other tips would be appreciated!
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It all comes down to preference....for me I'm still deciding, but leaning towards returning the iPhone 5.
S3- big screen, as fast or faster than the iPhone 5, text reflow in the browser makes for much easier reading
iPhone 5- more comfortable to hold, Siri is a big plus, slightly better battery, slightly better camera
BOTH of them "just work", at least in my experience...so the reliability argument is pointless on me