Samsung Galaxy SIII Sim Free Smartphone - Pebble Blue

I've had this phone for a couple of months now so I feel I know it well enough to write a few words about this. Prior to this I had a HTC Desire, A Google G1, A Sony w880i, A Motorola RAZR V3 and countless other `dumb' phones. So far my experience of the phone has been very positive and I've had absolutely no issues with it whatsoever. It's worked perfectly every day and I've not had any crashes, the interface is very smooth and so far every app and game I've tried runs like a dream. This is my first Samsung Phone so I've no brand loyalty (Only the tenuous link of Android OS). In comparison my girlfriend has a Samsung Galaxy S Advanced which is not so impressive or reliable - but I digress.The phone itself is very sleek and the blue pebble colouring and shine is very nice. Build quality is good - everything feels very solid. Not quite as solid as say the iPhone 4 - but I wouldn't want to drop either to see which is the sturdiest! Every expensive smart phone should be in a tough case with a screen protector!Although many people comment on it's size I really like the extra screen real estate and have had no problems navigating with my thumb. The display is fantastic and so far I've not noticed any of the blue-tint many reviews have commented on. The colours are all vibrant and the high resolution yields plenty of detail. Videos and Youtube look brilliant and it's possible to read many web pages without zooming in.Battery life is okay as far as Smartphones go - the last phone I had with amazing battery life had big buttons and a monochrome screen. Every smartphone owner I know has to charge their phones daily unless they only use it to look at the time. Despite the extra processing power and bigger screen the battery easily outlasts what my old HTC Desire and G1 ever did. And although I was sceptical at first I tried a battery app that automatically switches WiFi and data off when you're not using it and I noticed a big difference.I'm not overly impressed with the 16Gb Storage, I was hoping I could store Apps on SD like a lot of android phones but it's still a massive step up from my HTC Desire (Galaxy S3 Free space out of the box is about 11GB, the Desire was about 70 Mb!). All of my usefull apps are quite small but the games nowadays seem to take up a couple of Gb for the big ones. Although the Apps do not save to SD it's still very handy to have a decent size MicroSD card to keep all your music files, videos and photos on. I've never been sold on using my phone as my main music player - I've been using iPods for a few years so my audio equipment all has the (old) iPod dock connector. All my iTunes music has been matched on the cloud and is DRM free AAC - I've put it straight on my S3's MicroSD and it plays perfectly with no conversion necessary. I have heard that you can get software to make your S3 sync directly with iTunes but I've not had the need to try that yet. I've noticed the sound quality isn't quite as good as my iPod either through earphones or my car stereo, but that's why I have a separate phone and audio device. The built in speaker on the phone isn't the best either, the one my work colleagues with their iPhone 4s's have over the S3. But hands down the S3 is a better overall experience when it comes to functionality and versatility.The internet over HSPA+ is quite nippy when you've got full signal. 4G is probably a long way off from being countrywide so I'm not too bothered about that. Over WiFi the phone is as fast as the actual line speed - I've found myself using the phone for more and more tasks that I used to use my computer for such as Facebook and on-line browsing and shopping. I use Google Drive a fair bit and the apps work okay in that if you want basic word processing and spreadsheets.There are plenty of great games available on the Google Play store and they're getting more and more like fully fledged console games. Shadowrun, N.O.V.A. 3 Reckless Racing 2 and Asphalt 7 all feature amazing graphics and I've never noticed any of them drop a frame yet. GTA 3 is pretty much how I remember the PS2 version to be - amazing to think you can play the entire game on your phone! I'm not completely sold on the phones as gaming devices yet though, the touch screen experience for these type of games is far behind the comfort of a joypad. I found myself enjoying more games that were made with mobiles with touch screens in mind such as Angry Birds and Temple Run. Needless to say the S3 has handled every big game I've tried on it with no problems whatsoever.One more thing I should add about this phone is the durability. I accidentally dropped mine into water. I made sure I knocked it off and dried as much of it as I could straight away before putting it into an airtight container full of rice overnight. I'm not recommending that you try this with your phone but it's good to know it can at least survive a few seconds of complete submersion!

I've had this phone for just over a month now. It's a great phone, superfast, looks great and the screen looks the best I've seen on a phone. Got this instead of the One X because of the expandable storage and you can remove the battery so you can carry a spare; though I was surprised how long the battery lasts even when the screen brightness is turned onto full. Can get a few days out of it with moderate to low usage but I haven't watched many video files on it yet.I also love how the screen doesn't turn off when your looking at it thanks to facial recognition using the front camera. That's a piece of design genius right there that eliminates something that's annoyed me with other phones. What isn't a piece of design genius though is the glass covered front of the phone that sits on top of the screen and runs right to the edge of the phone. This may be super hard gorilla glass that has been marketed to us as something that's hard to break but its still glass and gorilla or not, it can't get around the law of physics. Its very thin compared to its large surface area and therefore very brittle.So a warning to anyone who has bought or is thinking of buying this phone never put it face down on anything that isn't level as I found out last week. Uneven weight distribution, and the fact that the front of the phone is pretty much frictionless caused it to slip really easily off my lap when I was sitting down; it landed right onto the corner of the screen causing the glass front to semi-shatter putting many big cracks throughout the whole front of the glass. It looks pretty bad but everything still works. So I check online about just replacing the glass "lens" on the phone where I run into another design flaw (or a way to make money); the glass surface on the phone can't be replaced without replacing the whole screen (amoled bit, touch digitizer and "broken" glass lens); as they are all stuck together and can't be separated without destroying the whole screen. Price £150... My advice don't take the phone out of its case because it looks better. Anyway given the fact that this device cost so much I really thought it would have been made better. It didn't have far to fall and it damaged it pretty extensively (and new cracks are appearing every day from continued use of the screen). A classic case of looks getting in the way of a sturdy design. Though admittedly, it did look pretty damn good for a month or so...