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Comment by SmallBets | Hacker News Reader

Still happy with my S3 and feel I'm not missing any key features. The more generations go on you realize just how incremental the phone upgrades have gotten for quite some time now.

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The S3 feels like the "core 2 duo" of smartphones. Clearly not as fast as new phones, but still good enough.

Talking about Core 2 Duo, you remind me of my slow desktop that I haven't turned on in a few months.

I have an S5. I can understand the move back to USB2 in S6 and above, and I don't know if USB3 is the cause, but my S5 battery goes from empty to full in a good short space of time, so I'm not missing out that much on the super charging goodness. Battery life is still good too. I'm also lucky to be in a country where Samsung have 2 free screen repairs over 2 years.

Hopefully I'll be able to wait for the S8 or 9. I'm impressed with the S7 on paper, and I'm glad they brought back the things that made me dislike the S6. Now for hoping for better Android upgrades from Samsung :)

I feel the same with my S2. Spend some time on xda and you have android 6 running on it. It's not even slow except when you're switching between big apps because android have to kill them when they are not in use thanks to the 800mb of ram. I also bought a 3500mha battery and it lasts the day.

I share your opinion. I'm sticking with the S2, the first Samsung phone good enough to buy (the S was too limited). It still works, it's small and light, I can mount it as a true USB disk, no need to change it. I'll buy some other 4" phone when it eventually dies, maybe a Sony Z* Compact.

Does your S2 even shut down on its own? I have seen that happen, and a phone dealer I told this to, said it was a known hardware issue.

Sometimes it reboots, not often, less than once per month. No shutdowns without reboots. It's one of the first phones, May 2011.

Interesting. Mine does the opposite - shuts down. Sometimes even pressing the on-off switch does not turn it back on. I found that if I remove and replace the battery, it starts again.

Same here, specially since there are hardly any NDK changes since Android 4.3, so not much to wish for in newer Android versions.

Of course it would be nice if Samsung at least cared to provide security updates.

I have the S3 and I can't wait to upgrade. It is SLOW (noticeable lag). Plus, not sure what causes this (hardware or software) -- but the GPS navigation is terrible. I'm stuck on Android 4.4.2. Takes forever to lock in on my location, loses signal randomly, and sometimes in the middle of navigation it stop updating where I am on the visual display. The camera is horrendous. So, speak for yourself. Phones have come a long way since the S3.

You can use lollipop if you're willing to install cyanogenmod. There are also marshmallow builds, depends on which variant you have.

AFAIK there's no way to unlock the bootloader of the Verizon variant once upgraded over the air to 4.3 or later.

Random digression, but if you're having problems with GPS reception on your S3, try tightening all the screws on the back of the device with an eyeglasses screwdriver or similar. The GPS antenna(e) are in the screwed-on backplate and connected via sprung contacts to the mainboard, so if the screws aren't tight, it won't make a solid connection. You can also try removing the backplate and (gently) prying up the spring contacts at the bottom of the motherboard, and then cleaning both them and the contacts on the backplate with isopropyl alcohol. I bought my S3 used and couldn't get a single GPS fix, but after tightening the (noticeably loose) screws, it now happens in a few seconds.

In the same boat. Family members upgrade constantly. Half of every holiday gathering is an expo of everyone's new phones and the other half being which discount carrier they're using to pay for said phones. Having the S3 since it came out and paying through the nose for fast 4G LTE I feel like I come out ahead just being content with good enough. This release might persuade me to finally upgrade though, but the non-removable battery really worries me...

I only replaced my S3 in October (after ~ 3 years) because the battery finally gave up, and I didn't want to run the gauntlet of fakes/scams that is trying to buy a replacement battery. The thing is I was able to turn the S3 into a music player by plugging it into a cheap bluetooth speaker/charger basestation and running the Squeezebox client.

"I didn't want to run the gauntlet of fakes/scams that is trying to buy a replacement battery"

I felt the same way when I had to replace a phone battery...which then made me wonder what the point of having a replaceable battery is when you worry that a replacement battery might explode. So my next phone, HTC One, did not have a replaceable battery and I did not miss it. Replacements are too hard to find and besides it's easier to just plug in an external battery anyway.

I see why Samsung went with the non-removable battery on the new phones.

I wonder if the lame-aftermarket-battery issue is part of what drives the trend toward non-replaceable batteries?

As far as I can tell, the problem is the manufacturers stop making the batteries for particular phones after quite a short time. So by the time you need a replacement, you're in the territory of "reconditioned" batteries (in the best case).

I suppose I could have the foresight to buy two batteries when I get a new phone, although I've never done that and I'd have to work out how to store the second battery so it wouldn't go dead or get lost, and it increases the initial cost of the phone even further.

Agreed. It also still works great and it also supports FoxFi which is great to share data with the kids.

My friends make fun of me for how 'small' it is, but I look at them put their giant phablets to their ear and it just looks ridiculous. Wasn't the big thing making things more compact, now we're going back to giant phones again?

If you relegate it to less usage (e.g. a second phone or hand-me-down to less-frequent user), be sure to keep cycling the phone periodically. When I semi-retired my GS3, I've had a big problem with batteries becoming unusable, even factory batteries.

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