Okay, I’m nearly done listening to the podcast and maaaan, all the lamenting annoys me.
Yes, the SGS3 isn’t a beauty, but it’s not ‘that’ ugly, IMHO. Vlad had it in his hands and thinks it feels cheap, that’s an opinion I welcome because he could touch it and definitely knows more about the haptics than me. I can certainly say I REALLY hate the colors – white gets dirty too quickly, I hate the color blue. And I think the display is the BIGGEST annoyance with the SGS3 because hardware-wise that thing is a MONSTER. Especially CPU and GPU, have a look at AnandTech what kind of beast that thing seems to be with about the same or even LESS power-consumption, if you believe Samsung about 20% less through the die shrink to 32nm. Yes, it’s A9, but Qualcomms S4 isn’t an A12 design, it’s their own design and like the Snapdragon CPUs, when a real A9 CPU came out, it was better than any of the Snapdragons.
Another thing I don’t really get is:
- The SGS2 didn’t introduce anything new, it introduced fluid software without any real hiccups, it was faster and more responsive than any other phone that was available (for example I think it was one of the first that had the 10 finger-recognition), but otherwise? I never used the hubs, I didn’t really care about them but otherwise, were there any real new stuff besides introducing the 4,3" displays with Super AMOLED+? I’m you would have said “Oh, it’s ugly as hell, but at least it has a non-pentile 720p display!”
- More important: Okay, what did the HTC One X introduce software-wise that it makes SO awesome? Yes, Sense 4 is much lighter than any iteration before it, but otherwise? Yes, the have the super awesome SLCD2 which I already have seen and really IS super awesome but at least the non-removable battery and no MicroSD card make that thing a deal breaker for me and a lot of friends. Especially you in the US who don’t have any unlimited plans should be worried that you get over your cap quickly if you listen to Spotify or access files on dropbox too much on the go. 16 GB is not enough, especially if you listen to a lot of podcasts, make a lot of photos or record family stuff on video or you have a few games that can be a few hundred MB big, 16GB isn’t enough in my opinion.
Can’t you ignore the stupid press conference and just have a look at the phone and how it performs when you make the review later this month? I read a lot that it feels very good in your hands – although the material isn’t made of any meteors falling from the sky. At least it introduced some more or less nice ‘gimmicks’ – I like the idea of Smart Stay, the “tip on the top of the device to get back to the top of the list” function and well, even somehow the Siri-clone. I won’t use it much, but it’s there. You haven’t talked about any of those features because you said they are a gimmick, a few of them are actually quite helpful like the two I mentioned.
What did HTC introduce with the One X? Would you have been more satisfied with the device if it hadn’t had any of that gimmicky stuff? At least they TRY to add some value to the normal stuff that Android already has without making the phone slow as a snail like HTC did in the past.
I’m definitely no fanboy, but man, it’s better than the SGS2, what else do you want? To cut some cheese or make the coffee for you? (I’m sure there will be some kind of smart coffee machine, but well, you know what I mean). I didn’t expect more and Samsung did what I expected.
