Updated: Love the phone, but... April 9, 2013

Reviewer:  Vanessa Williams 

Update April 14, 2013: I still love the phone, but not as much. I compare it to loving someone with something incurable, because you feel limited in the amount of love you can give it. In this case, the something incurable is the data/wifi coverage. It doesn't pick up my wifi signal strongly enough, even my disconnected phone still picks up my wifi and I use that for the internet when I can. The 4G? You can forget about it, because you'll drain the battery even faster as it searches for it. The 3G? We all know it's slow and also a battery eater, but most times I have to click on a link a few times just for the page to load. I get a lot of problem loading page errors. I have all of my bars too btw. Then the phone overheats. I've called Sprint and they did "refreshes" but I think that is about as useful as the button you push to cross the street, it's more of a feel good that someone is attempting to do something than the issue being resolved. I still have time and I'm glad I ran into these problems early enough I can send the phone back in hopes that I do not get a worse phone. Same model of course. Another issue is the video quality. Beautiful. But I can't send those (unless I bluetooth it) because a 30 sec video will be 35MB!! I tried the MMS friendly video captures, but they're horrible. Video quality of the first video phone. I just don't get it. And for these issues, I bring the rating from a 4 star to a 3 star. I'm not happy.

...the battery life sucks for it to be a high end phone. It overheats just from browsing the internet more than 10 minutes and with moderate use my battery will take me through the day. It's not terrible, but I feel like I am limited in how much I can use my phone as I was with my Samsung Replenish. Sometimes pictures do take a while to come through if I'm not actively on my phone.

Other than that, the phone is awesome. Simple to use, I like being able to disable all the crap I don't use that came with the phone. Picture/video quality is amazing. No reception issues. It may scratch easily, but the phone itself is durable. Though I am iffy about the battery back after a year of taking it on and off, it's flimsy. Overall, great phone and not at all complicated. Oh and I got it in like two days.

Great phone! November 24, 2012

Reviewer:  Steven Shumaker 

The phones sound quality is crisp and clear when talking to people. The sound quality is great with ear buds that come with the phone or when used with computer speakers. Added some extras to the phone to help make it an even better phone. Added a "Onite 4500mAh Extended Capacity Battery for Samsung Galaxy SIII S3 i9300, with Custom Made Pebbles Blue Cover" and a "Hyperion Samsung Galaxy S III Extended Battery HoneyComb TPU Case -Black". This will let you enjoy using the phone features all day. Also added a "SanDisk Ultra 64 GB microSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card 30MB/s with Adapter SDSDQUA-064G-U46A" to place my 700+ cd collection on the phone. It is nice to be able to listen to songs at work, at home or in the car and not bring any cd's and still have room to add more songs or photos if needed on the micro sd card.

Sleek little beastie! September 21, 2012

Reviewer:  Wix  (PA United States) -

This is my first Android with a cell plan. It is my second Samsung product and my third ICS device. After this week, it is now my hands down favorite "toy" and I can hardly put it down!

Pros:
Very fast processor. Tasks that make my 2 tablets hesitate, this thing chews them up. That little circle that says "loading"? Still looking for it.
Display is a beauty. I love the crisp, saturated display and the stock jellyfish screen saver so far is my favorite. Watching Netflix is nice. This is where the 5 display really shows off the advantage. Having three kids, this was a selling point.
Charges really fast, and has a decent battery life. Charged mine at 9am and it is 8pm, I still have 26% battery. I have made a half hour worth of phone calls, taken several photographs, surfed on the web, downloaded and personalized apps on my phone - etc.
The camera is nice. Very little lag on the shutter. Pics are crisp and in focus.

Cons:
I don't particularly care for the home button, however I think I can live with it.
The cell signal seems a bit weak, in areas I should have had service I got only roaming. This is standing side by side with a fellow sprint customer holding an iPhone.
The body of the phone could have been a little nicer, IMHO. The little android Galaxy Player 5 I have feels more substantial. But the upside is this device feels light as a feather.
USB cable, again this feels more flimsy than the SGP5 that I have. Could have been a bit thicker.

So I currently have it in an Otterbox defender case and am loving it! I was teetering between the SG2 and the SG# and don't regret spending the extra 98.99 at all.

Beyond my expectations! September 8, 2012

Reviewer:  Genn  (Orlando, FL) -

I can say I have tried almost every there there is, I am a formal iphone user, then used bb then switch to the amaze, and I have to say by far this is the best phone I have ever owner! I love the design, its features, its processor is superfast, the colors are soo bright, its HD super Amoled! The sound is very very good, and can get very loud too and thats is just great. Wow is all I can say about the camera 8mp, this phone shoots better pictures than my own canon camera! It is a super smartphone. Its soo light, although i am afraid to lose it and not even realize it, thats how light it is. I am completely in love with this phone...some flaws are the battery life, although its double the amaze, i was expecting a little better life time, however i still got 7 hours of heavy use so that is not bad at all, and I would have liked it to be a bit smaller, but again no one is 100% satisfied with anything. In general, the best phone I have ever owner, highly recommend to any power user or just any user!

Blew the iPhone out of the water! October 29, 2012

Reviewer:  nbm 

So first thing's first: I am a HUGE Apple fan! I have a macbook, I have the iPad, which is amazing. I have 2 iPod touch devices. When it came to buying my cell phone, I had my sights on the iPhone. It's the phone I had wanted for so long. I was so excited just thinking about it.

But then I saw the Samsung Galaxy S3. I fell in love right away. It has a bigger screen, better resolution (in my opinion) than the iPhone. It has all the same functions the iPhone has AND more. It's also a more powerful phone, with more memory and more storage capacity than the iPhone. Plus, the Android market has many free and low priced apps. Apple CANNOT compare! Plus, I found a few areas here in my city where 4g is available, and the phone is just flawless with it. I'm really happy with my purchase so far. However, I feel that Android is not nearly as user friendly as Apple's products. It kind of took me a bit to learn about the phone, but I'm getting the hang of it. Mind you, I'm a techie sort of person. It's easy to use once you figure it out, and it's even more comfy than iOS6, but I don't think it's as easy as iOS6. Also, battery life is AMAZING! I love it! I tried a little experiment where I charged the phone once in a day. The phone passed the test! It last nearly 26 hours without getting recharged. Definitely better than my blackberry! I love how I don't have to worry about charging the phone all the time, it's definitely good to know it can a whole day without me having to charge it.

I highly recommend this phone! It is worth the money! You're getting more phone for the same or less than an iPhone 4S/5.

This is all I have to say July 24, 2012

Reviewer:  Dee M. Gardner "Management Heretic"  (Austin, TX) -

I've had this phone for a month now. I like the phone. Most of what the other people said it true, good and bad. But the best part is pulling this out and comparing it with the iphones. The phone doesn't seem that big, but put it up to the iphone.... and well... the iphone owners want to hide their little phone. They all give me that same embarrassed look as they smile, and say with their faces, "But it's an iphone."

Glass breaks WAY too easily. Flimsy. January 23, 2013

Reviewer:  Zachary Adams 

There are many great things about this phone. Trust me, I immensely enjoyed it for the first few months I had it. However, imagine this: I had it in my pocket and was casually leaning against a wall. I get it out of my pocket and there is an inch long crack that magically appeared. Now recently, it slipped out of my hands when I was sitting down onto carpet and now I had a spiderweb crack. I rarely drop my phone, and really, I've had an iPhone and iTouches and those things are DURABLE. This is not, the Gorilla Glass 2.0 is extremely weak. If you research this issue, there are tons of people who were screwed over by this defect.

So, hopefully this warns you to get the insurance if you're going to drop that much money on this phone.

love the phone May 19, 2013

Reviewer:  charles 

this phone have everything i was looking for in a phone its nice and slim not bocky like my other phone i had

great phone May 16, 2013

Reviewer:  J. A. Fernandez "doglady joolz"  (Mesa AZ) -

nice big screen easy to see and use, great camera and tons of storage. A little confused by all the apps it comes with some seem redundant

Great phone, bad company April 29, 2013

Reviewer:  evilmaniac 

Although the phone is advertised with 4G capabilities; as of now, Sprint does not have 4G access in the majority of areas it provides service. Their 3G capabilities are not even up to par with the world standard and will not allow you to download at speeds greater than 100KB/s most of the time. For such bad service, purchasing a phone such as this will be nothing more but a waste of money unless you have WiFi access most of the time. The phone will also come with an assorted barrage of bloatware pre-installed from Sprint and Samsung (stuff you can not remove without rooting the phone).

Its just ok April 28, 2013

Reviewer:  Bobby 

I upgraded from an HTC Evo 4G (the original Evo) and after a few days with the SGS3 I've run into a few things that make me a little disappointed.

1. The home button is mechanical instead of haptic. This makes it more difficult to use the phone one handed as the phone is very big and getting my thumb all the way down there to press on the mechanical button is awkward.

2. Only three buttons. The Evo has a fourth button dedicated to google search. This makes it incredibly easy to find whatever I'm looking for. A short press on the search button and the Google Search app is ready for input. A long press and Voice search opens. On the SGS3 I can double click on the mechanical button (somethign I've already noted as a weakness of the phone), and while that shouldn't really be a bad thing...

3. The S Voice feature in touch wiz is absolutely horrific. When the app loads it asks me what I want to do and I should be able to issue a number of different presets ("Search" or "call" or "message", etc, etc) but the software has really poor voice recognition. And any background noise renders it completely useless, as it responds to everything with "Say 'Hello Galaxy' to wake me up!"... Ahh... what? Why is that even the default instead of "I can't understand you."? I believe this issue stems from the fact that S Voice is doing all the processing locally on the phone. Which brings up the question, why don't they just tap into Google's own "voice recognition in the cloud" offloading. If you use Google Search's own voice recognition, on the SGS3 it works perfectly. You would think I would just program my SGS3 so that Googe Voice Search came up with a home button double click, however...

4. TouchWiz has practically NO customization options what-so-ever. I can change the wallpaper and I can move buttons around and that is about it. I can't even get rid of the TouchWiz home screen indicator that tells you what home screen you're on and consumes a whopping 1/5th of the phone's screen. Yes, its a big screen but come on. Why waste so much space on such a tiny platform with something so trivial?

5. The bloatware can't be uninstalled. I've encountered this before on other phones (including my venerable Evo) however the bloat on the SGS3 isn't just (annoyingly) present on the phone. Its obtuse and intrussive. Oh, you're trying to make a phone call? Let me push a pop up over the dialer app so I can tell you how you should buy Dropbox to save all your mobile stuff that you already save with Google Drive, even though you've already checked the box telling me never to tell you this again... 5 times... in the last hour...and you're stuck with me because the app is embedded in the OS and can't be uninstalled.

And these are just the biggest issues I have with the phone. There are many other gripes I have already encountered with the design and the software. With the exception of the mechanical button, most of these issues are surmountable, simply by rooting the phone and installing Cyanogen Mod however, the camera doesn't work in CM10 or 10.1. Its apparently a known issue that affects some, but not all, SGS3s. Lucky me. So I'm back to using TouchWiz just so I can get the camera working. And I hate it. I really hate it.

So, with that all said, there are some good things. The phone is fast, like REALLY fast. The screen is stunningly beautiful. Full screen video with the Netflix app is excellent. The pair of headphones they give you with the phone are actually pretty nice. My cell reception is better with the SGS3. Battery life is great (2 full days of heavy use on a full charge, something unheard of on my Evo even on day one). And LTE is very fast. As far as the hardware is concerned, the device is sound. TouchWiz... not so much.

Nice Android Experience, Unpratical Battery Life April 28, 2013

Reviewer:  MedGDGT 

I have had this phone for roughly 4 days. I don't play any games. I just check email, respond to afew text messages, check the news, and receive a small number of phone calls. My battery life on this phone has been roughly 10 hours and then it dies on me. I was really excited about this phone, but I need a smartphone that will be last close to 18 to 24 hours. My last phone the HTC Arrive had no problem with that. I do wish Sprint gets another windows phone soon. Android is popular, but not practical for many of us.

So happy I chose this phone. April 28, 2013

Reviewer:  NY Shopper  (New York) -

As someone who never used his old phone that much, actually hardly at all I wasn't sure why I wanted to upgrade to a newer model. Honestly it took me months of debating with myself before before I finally made the decision to purchase this phone. And because I was an existing Sprint customer I was able to buy it from Amazon at a great price. I thought the phone would be hard to learn, it wasn't. I thought it would be confusing, not at all. Now that I own it you can bet I'm using it on a daily basis. One of the best uses I have for it personally is when I'm sitting in the doctors waiting room ( I have four doctors) and instead of thumbing through the magazines I can now use my phone to keep myself entertained. Even when I'm called into the examining room, where as we all know you spend another fifteen minutes or so of waiting I still use my phone for games until the doc finally walks in. The built cameras are very nice and easy to work as is every other function of this phone. Sure my monthly bill is more now but like every thing else you have to pay for what you want. And if you want a new phone then get this one and use it for your own reasons just as I do with mine.

Buyer Beware March 19, 2013

Reviewer:  G. Camel "That Camel"  (Mineral Springs, NC) -

Know that when you buy through Amazon the plan starts when you ORDER and NOT when THE PHONES ARRIVE!! This is beneficial if you think you will have to return your phone. The SG3 on Sprint is not the same exact animal as the Verizon SG3.

The phone offers a lot of features that make it easier to use for mature, new to smartphone users. The font can be changed to larger text for the visually impaired. With S-Voice and Google text to speech it is easy to compose text messages, IM and emails. The contact list is probably one of the cleanest looking compared to HTC and LG.

Great phone, good service March 14, 2013

Reviewer:  R. Waldrop "Tech-head in Coventry"  (NC USA) -

I have had this phone about a month and except for battery life, which I knew was a challenge, I am very pleased. I like the large display, and while LTE is not fully available in my area yet, I have had no issues even on 3G. I have used the phone as a GPS, and it works great- the directions were clear and easy to understand.

Coming from a blackberry, the android operating system took a little getting used to but I found it intuitive and actually easier to use than the Blackberry was. Distinguishing between apps and widgets took a little getting used to.

I am hearing about issues with the phone but restarting has solved every problem I have had.

how to buy from wireless? March 2, 2013

Reviewer:  grandi "elfakih" 

hi all i want to ask u ..... i want to buy a new phone samsung galaxy s 3 .........& i found this device on wireless.amazon & i didn,t knew how to buy one with a new contract
I need this phone for my little brother he is outside of united states & iknow its locked to at&t that's ok because he just want play with games & browse web on wi-fi

please contact me if you could help me ...thanx ... elfakih90@gmail.com

WE LOVE THEM!!! February 18, 2013

Reviewer:  king 

I bought a pair of these for my wife and I. We both upgraded from EVO. These phones are great! They share everything just by kissing them together...contacts, pictures, apps, websites, videos. Face to face chat works great. The camera takes high quality pictures and video, the sound quality is excellent in recording. The phone screen quality is outstanding. No call quality or signal issues. We are both very pleased with these phones! For $100 each what a bargain, too.

Great Galaxy SIII Phone January 9, 2013

Reviewer:  Diana Enderle 

I purchased this phone Nov.l,2012 and love everything about it. It does so much and does it well. I love the voice texting among all the other features. I haven't learned that much about using it but enjoy each feature as I learn it - this is my first smart phone. The blue color is pleasing and it's SO LIGHT to hold. It's simple to figure out, but I decided to download and print the entire manual from the net and put it into a binder so I can read thru it whenever I have time and have learned so much more about it's functions that way. I don't always have access to the net when I'm out so I carry the binder with me so I can look thru it at my convience. Don't think anyone can go wrong with it on the Sprint network.

wonderful phone bad sound quality January 4, 2013

Reviewer:  Rev1 

I really like the phone, but the music sound quality is the worse I have ever heard. I have had HTC and Blackberry both puts this Samsung S3 to shame when it comes to sound quality and the head phones that comes with it you should put in the trash it's that bad. Now other then that the phone is wonderful I really like it, there's so many things you can do with it, also the picture quality is wonderful matter of fact everything else bout the phone is wonderful,but the sound quality is the very worse I mean worse and I say again worse I have ever heard in my life and I'm 57 y/o. Now if you like music as I do there is a fix. The fix is PlayerPro Music player which you get from the Android market, now is cost a few dollars but it's well worth the money, that's if you like your music to sound true stereophonic. PlayerPro music app is the best , you set up the sound quality to what you like. It really makes a difference. Someone need to tell the people who created this phone to fix their music sound quality cause it's sucks. I'm so thankful for the people who created PlayerPro.

Best phone I've bought yet. Good luck w/4G LTE. None in my area yet December 7, 2012

Reviewer:  Ratboy55  (South San Francisco, CA) -

So I finally gave in and upgraded from the first gen HTC EVO 4G to this phone. After being exposed to Android 2.3 for so long, running on 4.1 seems like a glorious find. I actually nabbed this phone along with my contract extension discount for only $29.99 on Black Friday (oh snap, what a STEAL). It's quick. Very snappy. The phone/call quality is very good. I currently own a Google Nexus 7 tablet and my Samsung Galaxy S3 nearly runs just as quickly and runs practically all the same apps. My only gripe is that the volume rocker is on the left side (most phones and tablets have it on the right side). The display could use an extra brightness boost but I can't seem to get it go brighter than its maximum state. And 4G LTE for Sprint is still in its early stages. I had to actually get used to 3G since there is almost no 4G LTE in the San Francisco Bay Area that I can spot so far. Other than that, the phone is great. The screen is gorgeous and I really can't complain. It's quite an awesome phone.