k0nrad

Even factoring the price (of an unlocked device) in?

Anybody in their right mind will recognize the aesthetics have nothing to do with actual build quality. Nevertheless, the glossy finish, fake brushed metal look etc may exude the aura of ‘fakeness’, cheapness and inferior quality.

Which seems to be the case with SGSIII – I’m sure it’s rock solid, sturdy, rigid etc. It just looks a bit toyish, especially in blue…

This. My girlfriend got an SGSII about a year ago, which replaced some E-series Nokia AFAIR. She uses basically mail, browser, Talk, YouTube, Skype exclusively apart from basic phone functionality and camera. Maybe a couple of language-learning apps. She didn’t even bother to plug the phone in to upgrade to Android 4.0 so far… (it’s an international version)

There are some downsides to the prepaid plan on T-Mo vs. going with Verizon…
1. There’s no LTE
2. He has to shell out $399 up front, instead of $100.

If you can bear slower speeds of HSPA (which I’ve heard is pretty quick on T-Mobile) and paying more for a phone upfront though… You have a world phone instead of just CDMA/LTE locked-in Verizon version.

P an U haven’t got S3 chips – they have ST Ericsson NovaThor U8500, which is a 1GHz dual core Cortex-A9 processor and a single core Mali-400 GPU