I went to play with a GS3 yesterday finally, I very close to buying one before playing with it in the store. Walked out without one.
I didn't mind the size of the device like I thought I would, and it felt nice in the hand shape wise, but it was not a high-quality feeling device at all; the plastic did not impress me. The screen size was very nice but I definitely prefer the HTC One X and iPhone 4S LCDs to the OMELED which appeared cartoony to me. And then the OS was definitely not fluid compared to iOS; I made sure everything was closed and then tried the same tasks on both my iPhone and the GS3 and there was this stutter present on the GS3 that just ruined the experience. Reminded me a bit of the iPhone 3GS in terms of app performance; now this doesn't mean that the phone itself was slow, but that graphics for day-to-day applications (i.e. non-game) seemed sluggish. The load times themselves were great; it was the actual in-app use that was stuttery. I can imagine Jelly bean might take care of that, will have to try it out when I see a JB device in person. It just wasn't smooth. And I actually think I like iOS notifications better only because it shows me specific things like mail contents, reminders before they happen, etc. but I love the individual notifications swipe away on ICS. Again, I think Jelly Bean improves the information preview aspect a bit.
Loved loved loved LTE speeds but expect the iPhone to get that anyway.
Maybe I'll reconsider in a few weeks but I didn't feel the drive to spend the $550 I anticipated spending when I walked into the store.
