Samsung Galaxy S III, My Thoughts So Far

[Tony]

I'm sure by now you have read that I was having some issues with the SG3. This is supposed to be the phone of all phones. Out of the numerous people I have talked to and asked, they told me to go with this one over the iPhone 5. Everything about this phone was supposed to be better. So I headed to Best Buy and i picked it up.

One of the first things I noticed is just how much lighter this phone is compared to the iPhone 4 that I also have. That plus the expandable memory and replaceable battery were other reasons I decided to get this phone. When we got home I started playing with it and I could not find anything wrong with it. 4G LTE speeds, better signal than the IP4, doesn't lose signal when you palm the outside case like the IP4 and the screen is MUCH better. So far so good.

However when I got to work I started noticing issues. Not with the phone, but with the network. The phone, being an LTE phone, kept looking for an LTE signal. Well way out here where I work, there is only 4G, not 4G LTE. So every time it would look for the LTE signal, it would reset the signal and fall back to 4G. In this process it would lose signal about every 10 minutes. When you are trying to work on the internet, this is an issue.

I called tech support knowing that I would be talking to someone that couldn't pull a coin out of a coin return. Yeah, just dialing the number was pissing me off lmao. So I get ahold of this guy and he says this is a wifi issue. At this time, I didn't know it was a network issue, so I agreed. Gave him the number to call me on the base line and send an update to the phone. We disconnected and I went back to testing. And guess what, same issue.

So I started reading up on the net trying to figure this issue out. I found nothing. So the next day, I called tech support back. They said they had another update they could send to the phone. I said fine, we did the same thing as above and I started testing. Same issue. No waiting this time, I called them back. this time, I didn't hide being pissed off lol. I do remember telling the guy, after he started arguing with me that he wasn't intelligent enough to pull his own head out of his ass, then he hung up on me. Yeah, that was fun lol. But that was the last straw, I decided to take the phone back this friday.

When I came to work tonight I saw that I had a response to my blog and it was good ole Matt saying he had found some links on what could fix this. I searched for hours and didn't see these posts. the first is an app, and it does nothing but show you what your phone is doing at that time. The second link, so far, has worked out great. Unfortunately with this, I will lose LTE speeds at the house, but who cared, I'm on wifi there anyway.

All of the below, if you do this to your phone, is done at your own risk. Rc-Help.com nor I am responsible if/when you brick your phone. With that said, this is stupid simple and you can get it, I think lol.

All I had to do to fix this issue is get rid of the LTE signal and disable it, was first remove the back cover to expose the sim card. Leave the battery in and push down on the sim card to release it then pull it up. It won't come out because of the battery, but I didn't have to remove this. After a bit, you will get a warning and it will force you to reboot your phone. After the reboot, you just type into the keypad *#2263# and it will automatically come up with a very basic menu with different options.

In that menu you will see a list of different things and after ONE of them you will see (*). The one with that (*) symbol is the one that is selected. Default is Automatic. You want to select the one that says something like "WCDMA All" DO NOT CLICK INTO THE NEXT MENU'S AND CHANGE THE BAND!

After you do that, reboot the phone and it will stay on Edge (2g), 3g and 4g only. This will also allow voice calls and such but will not look for the LTE signal. So far, I have had this done to my phone for about 4 hours and it's working great, I have not lost signal yet. so far, that is the only issue I have found with this phone. But unlike apple, there IS a hack to figure it out and bypass it. With Apple, you are just stuck with what they give you.

So I may not be taking this phone back after all. There is so much that I can do with this thing. I have lost a lot of sleep just because I like playing with this thing lmao. Pisses the wife off lmao.

So if you have the SG3, let me know what you think about it.

 

[wolfman76]

good deal tony i have the sg2 and i love this phone too

 

[callsign4223]

Glad it worked for you Tony. I keep my iPhone because I am already so heavily invested in the app market and that's what my wife has also. It's nice not having to worry if we brought the right chargers on a trip, all of our devices use the same charger.

 

[coolgabsi]

They need ot drive test your network there. That problem of your phone going from 4g to searching and back trying to get 4g lte.. just means that their towers RF parameters are not tweaked correctly, its not retaining your phone's persistance values and is kicking you out of the system everytime... The RTD and Tdrop needs to change on that tower too as it is timing out your message flows .. That really sucks.. I work for samsung. and if Att was using Samsung towers man! that wouldnt have happened. We are taking good care of the new Sprint markets.. lol .. I use ATT too and funny part is .. I am on line of sight of the antenna which is on top of a water tower here.. and I have to walk 10 steps from my building towards the antenna to get the signal or I get kicked out to 2G on my ip5.. SUCKAGE!

.. lol If i was incharge of that network.. I could have tweaked some of those things to the site aroundd you.. You just helped the network by disabling your phone's 4G lte for the time being lol which is good for you as your battery life will be better for now. AS everytime your cell phone goes in earching or searches it basically blasts RF and that eats through the battery..

Glad that you like your phone.

 

[Adam]

I love mine and I only have 3g in my area lol. there are sometimes I can't get on the internet lol take the good with the bad.

 

[Tony]

I tried to pull up a video at home on the wifi and it would not connect to the internet. checked it on the IP4 and it loaded just fine. So the network issues are not fixed. With this, I'm just going to stick with teh IP4. It does what I need it to do. The camera is not as good, the screen is not as bright, but at least I can play a friggin video without hacking it. Ah well, I was really hoping this would be as good of a phone as everyone states. But after searching where they were located, it's all in teh LTE network and not in a 4g only network. Ah well. Gotta love new technology.

 

[breeze400]

Are you sure you did not get a bad phone? My GF bought a new droid and has all kinds of issues. She is now going to get a new phone cause there are issues with the first droids that came out a few mts ago.

 

[Tony]

Yup, I'm sure. This is a known issue with this phone.

 

[wolfman76]

My mother had more then 1 of those droid phone and told me she had nuthin bit problems with them

 

[RandyDSok]

My mother had more then 1 of those droid phone and told me she had nuthin bit problems with them

You can't group them like that... like most things, there are cheaply built ones as well as well designed ones. I've had the original Droid by Motorola as well as currently the Droid Bionic ( also Motorola ) and have nothing but good experiences overall with both. On the otherhand, my Dad got a cheapy LG from ATT and it was/is nothing to brag about.

Another side to this is the "after the sale" support provided... Often a good manufacturer, when there are issues with a phone or OS release, will release an update... Often these updates can take 3-6 months to diagnose, tweak and test them before being sent out to the clients... I usually see a bunch of rants when this is process is going on but it is from users that don't understand that to provide a good well tested release, it takes time.

You do get what you pay for... if you select the cheapest phone ( no matter what type/brand ) don't expect anything exceptional out of it... If you buy a good brand/quality phone, you should be fine but in some cases, an update may be required in order to address an issue that is discovered after it was released.

 

[breeze400]

The phone makes noise when it's not supposed to. The model droid my GF has is one of the latest. Verizon told us there were two fixes for the phone. A new SIM card, didn't work. Or a new phone. Phone will be replaced for free.

 

[RandyDSok]

The phone makes noise when it's not supposed to.

Makes noise in what way?

The reason I ask is a friend of mine ( other than Tony ) has also just gotten one as well ( ATT not Verizon in this case ). I also know of an issue seen on the certain but not all Bionics running ICS where there is a whine on certain wired stereo headsets but it doesn't affect all phones AND it didn't happen on the Gingerbread version... which makes that issue an OS ( software ) cause and not a hardware cause.

 

[Tony]

As stated, this was a network issue and had nothing to do with the phone it's self so to speak. I guess it did in the fact that it would drop the cell signal trying to look for another one. Another issue that popped it's head up was when I killed LTE, I started getting 504 errors on webpages. I confirmed it was the phone network and not my computer or the site.

Either way, the phone is great. It just needs some updating for those that don't live in a place that can't get LTE coverage. I took it back today when I got up and I'm back to using my IP4 again.

 

[breeze400]

It goes off like its picking up or dropping a network and its not doing anything. You could be just sitting there holding the phone and it will go off for no apperant reason. We took it to verizon and they said that the first batch of these phone had this problem. They changed the SIM card and it still dose it. So now she need to get off her but and take it back for a new phone.

 

[RandyDSok]

Thanks for explaining it a little further breeze400... not the same noise issue but it would have been interesting had it been since it would have been pointing at an ICS code issue directly...

Sorry to hear you had to return yours Tony... I got to play with one on Wednesday when my friend got hers, but all I was doing was transferring her music, photos and other data from her old to her new phone. The contacts and apps were all non-events since Google phones usually ( depending on settings ) keep those settings in the cloud and update/reinstall them automatically when you setup a new phone. Hopefully you will find an android phone to your liking, or they fix the issue you had...

The thing I like the most about an android phone is that they can be customized to the way you want them to work and aren't stuck with what Apple thinks you need... The other day, I even played with a new launcher ( the interface you work with on the phone ) that made mine look/work like a Windows 8 phone. It was cool in certain ways... but I reverted back after I was done playing... the point is that if I had wanted I could use a different style layouts including ones that appear iphone-like even.

 

[Tony]

I will have another one one day. They are constantly updating these things so I'm sure the fix is right around the corner. I just couldn't wait it out. Not with all of the issues I was having trying to stay connected.