Verizon Smartphone Users - Last Day to Retain Unlimited Data Plan

[Adam]

One minor disappointment is a lack of a "stay awake while charging" setting.

Which is odd. After reading that, I did a bit of searching. It appears that "Stay awake" is an option in the developer settings under ICS for at least some devices, but it's not on ours.

 

[sholling]

I agree the S3 is a HUGE improvement over my old Droid X. I'm not complaining at all now that the screen isn't shutting off when in the charging stand. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and it was annoying have to unlock the screen to pause a book. That was my only real problem.

I'm techie and have installed what's useful to me like folder organizer and wifi analyzer. Probably about 20 in total.

 

[Adam]

Last month, I used about 200MB of data. After four days on 4G, I've gone through 800MB. Okay, yeah...I'm glad that I snagged the unlimited data. I might just find out what it's like to get throttled. I hear that Verizon is better about that than AT&T, in that they don't throttle so bad if there isn't much traffic on the network - whereas AT&T effectively turns "unlimited" into a 3GB plan. Assuming that what I've heard is true.

 

[sholling]

Hopefully we'll get 4G before the phone is obsolete . Our little town is kind of out in the middle of nowhere so I'm not holding my breath. But since my cell phone is my main phone and my audiobook player and my portable audio player the S3 is well worth the money to me.

 

[Adam]

I finally broke down and ordered a Seidio belt holster (no case). I was waiting for Amazon to get them, but my patience couldn't hold out.

I'm also looking into buying a charging dock. After two years of having a cable hanging by my desk for the Droid, I'm willing to cough up ~$20 for a nice dock to put on my desk. The Kidigi dock for the S3 looks like a nice one, but it's not available many places that I can find.

 

[Hi Ho]

I finally broke down and ordered a Seidio belt holster (no case). I was waiting for Amazon to get them, but my patience couldn't hold out.

I'm also looking into buying a charging dock. After two years of having a cable hanging by my desk for the Droid, I'm willing to cough up ~$20 for a nice dock to put on my desk. The Kidigi dock for the S3 looks like a nice one, but it's not available many places that I can find.

I got a dock off ebay that actually is made for the SII but works great for the SIII.

item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=220809245316

I can't get Chrome to give me the desktop version of that link. I'm typing this on my SIII. Still loving it.

 

[Adam]

eBay is where I've got my eyes on the Kidigi. I was going to keep that under wraps until one of the auctions was over, but I'm not convinced that I want to win it. There are a lot of new ones being offered from a highly rated outfit in Hong Kong, so I'll probably grab one soon.

 

[Adam]

Hee, hee...someone outbid me on the local charger (which included other things). Now I can buy one of the others. Phew.

 

[Adam]

I just ordered this Kidigi charger. It was on Amazon recently, but I just found it today, and they don't have it anymore. So, I got it from eBay.

 

[Hi Ho]

I have one observation sitting here in the dark. Isn't OLED supposed to produce perfect black? My SIII certainly does not. In a totally dark room with a black screen or the bedside clock app I would swear it's an lcd because it glows a faint gray. It is completely impossible to see in just about any amount of light but I thought that he ability to COMPLETELY shut off pixels was a major advantage of OLED.

 

[sholling]

I wound up sidelining the Samasung case for now and went with the Aduro shell holster and case combo for $18. It's a tiny bit primitive and the kickstand is so stiff it's almost impossible to deploy without a tool but I like it. It's thin enough to let me use it with the official Samsung multimedia dock/charging cradle with the case still on. A thicker case would not fit which is why I didn't buy a Seidio Active case and holster. The dock also has 3.5mm audio jack for computer speakers. Finally I bought the spare battery and charger. The spare charger only charges the spare but it's come in handy once already when I forgot to charge my phone.

All in all I'm very happy and I've even snagged a couple of more apps that help me with common tasks.

 

[Adam]

The charger that I bought off of eBay that "shipped" on July 21 with a tracking number finally showed that it was picked up today. Hopefully that reflects that it arrived in the U.S. (shipped from Hong Kong) and is the USPS tracking update, although the eBay tracker says China Post. If not, I'll be asking the shipper what the heck happened. Two weeks is a long time between reporting shipment and bringing it to the post office.

 

[Adam]

Grrrrr. The eBay seller has acknowledged that they were out of stock, even though they were listed as in stock and reported it shipped two weeks before it did. Not cool.

 

[Rickster71]

How do you guys like your phones, after living with them awhile?
Do you notice better/worse reception from previous phones?

We're going to upgrade at some point, the S3 sounds like a good phone. I'm the holdout, my wife would've upgraded a year ago.

We have to get a booster for in the house, a Femtocell.
Been waiting for a Verizon cell tower that's to be built nearby, but hasn't been started yet.(was supposed to be last Nov.)
So it's $250 for the booster first.
We need it for when we work from home.
Thanks, any info appreciated.

 

[Hi Ho]

I'm still loving this phone! Battery life is stellar. I've been away from home just about every weekend since I got it and I can go a full weekend with pretty heavy use and only partially charging it with a car charger. I could never do that with my Evo.

Since I switched from Sprint I cannot directly compare signal strength but I have had reception everywhere I've been and I am constantly amazed at the all the places I get 4G. Call quality has been excellent and I have experienced no problems.

The phone has been rock solid. I haven't had to reboot it. It is super fast and silky smooth just like the day I got it.

The camera is awesome. I am very impressed:





The panorama mode is pretty cool and works amazingly well.

 

[sholling]

I'm liking the S3 a lot so far. My only quibbles are 1) the lack of an always on docked mode but Screebl is a decent workaround and a tool I like anyway. 2) It doesn't reconnect to my Plantronic Voyager HD Bluetooth headset automatically if I step out of range. My Droid X gave me a good minute to get back in range before giving up. I just reconnect (reconnect not re-pair) manually so no big deal. 3) Once in a great while it loses my wifi connection and I just turn wifi off and back on and it's fine. None of those are deal breakers and I'd buy it again.

I have customized of course. I replaced the clock with Beautiful Widgets and I'm using Folder Organizer to organize my application into neat groups, K-9 Mail to organize my all of my email accounts in a single inbox, and ES File Explorer to connect to my home server and NAS. WiFi Analyzer and Smart Tools come in handy for me and Car Locator gets me from the mall to my car with minimum wandering around with a confused look on my face.

 

[Adam]

Overall, I still like mine a lot. I'm disappointed that it doesn't work with my Fusion's Sync system as well as the Droid X did. For example, it won't receive text messages. Other than the car issues (which are a bummer for me), it's a real nice phone. Good ergonomics and nice screen size.

 

[Rickster71]

Thanks to Adam and Sholling for all the detailed info via PM.

 

[sholling]

I have found one incompatibility and it's between the S3 and a Plantronics Voyager HD Bluetooth headset. The headset works fine with other devices and the phone works fine with other headsets and Bluetooth device including the Plantronics Voyager Pro+. Plantronics replaced the Voyager HD (great service!!!) but the replacement has the same loud snap-crackle-pop static. For now I've gone back to the Voyager Pro+ which is still one of the best headsets I've ever owned but I'd hold off for a bit if you're thinking about using the HD with the S3. The HD just adds auto-answer/auto transfer from speaker to headset when you put the headset on. Plantronics is a great company and I'm sure they'll figure out something.

 

[Adam]

I have found one incompatibility and it's between the S3 and a Plantronics Voyager HD Bluetooth headset. The headset works fine with other devices and the phone works fine with other headsets and Bluetooth device including the Plantronics Voyager Pro+. Plantronics replaced the Voyager HD (great service!!!) but the replacement has the same loud snap-crackle-pop static. For now I've gone back to the Voyager Pro+ which is still one of the best headsets I've ever owned but I'd hold off for a bit if you're thinking about using the HD with the S3. The HD just adds auto-answer/auto transfer from speaker to headset when you put the headset on. Plantronics is a great company and I'm sure they'll figure out something.

Thanks for posting that. I've had connection issues with my Voyager Pro HD (which worked great with my Droid X), but I didn't even think that it might be a compatibility issue. The reception is just sort of choppy, and it doesn't have as good of a range as it had with my Droid X. I figured that my headset was going bad. My BackBeat 903+ headset still works just fine with the S3.