GregHowley.com

It's been nearly a month since I put down my first smartphone, the Droid X, and picked up a Samsung Galaxy S3. It's a good phone, and I'm digging it, but there are a few annoyances.

The screen is amazing. Just beautiful. When I watch an episode of The Legend of Korra on the phone, the colorful animation just pops.

But right off, I took note of how Samsung positioned the controls very differently than Motorola had with the Droid X. On my Droid X, the power button was on the phone's top and the volume toggle at the right. The S3 has the volume toggle on the left and the power key just opposite on the right. This means that when I go to adjust the volume one-handed, I often grip the phone and accidentally tap the power key which turns the screen off. The same thing happens in reverse - when my volume is muted and I go to tap the power screen to turn the phone off, I sometimes inadvertently turn up the volume a bit. Bad idea to position those controls opposite like that, especially on such a large phone.

And I'm surprised to say that the size is in fact an issue. The screen is huge, which is nice, but the phone's size stretches the bounds of what's easy to use in a single hand. Using the phone with two hands isn't an issue, but when I'm holding the phone one-handed and I need to tap a screen button at the upper corner, I simply can't reach. And I don't have small hands.

Another thing. On the Droid X, there were four actual buttons at the bottom: menu, home, back, and search. The S3 has only the home key. To the left and right of it, the menu and back keys are touchscreen keys. The problem with this is that they don't always register well. I've often got to hit them a few times before I get any response. Not a huge issue, but annoying. Also annoying is the fact that despite setting the phone to engage the screen lock after 5 minutes of inactivity, I've found myself unlocking it three times in two minutes at least once.

Lastly, a legitimate bug. The "touch sounds" option in the system settings > sounds menu toggles itself on intermittently. In searching this issue, I've found that I'm not the only one who's experienced it. All it really means is that I've got to go into my settings menu every day or two and toggle the sounds back off. What a pain.

But I've got the new phone set up now, got Nova launcher installed, Llama configured, ringtones in place, SD card organized, and my backup data from the Droid X all moved into place. My old Droid X with the black circles on the screen is still functional, and using wifi, I actually downloaded an app last night with that now-inactive phone and used it as a white noise generator. I'll probably write further about the Droid X and uses for an old deactivated Android phone.

For now, despite sundry greviances, I'm enjoying the S3.