Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Coveting Your Partner's Gadgets (and How to Get a Free Galaxy SIII)

I've had my Galaxy SIII for almost two months now and while I won't do a full product review (there are so many comprehensive reviews already out there) as a former BlackBerry user I'll share my likes/dislikes:

Likes
  • Super thin and lightweight
  • Crisp images and great sound
  • Swipe technology
  •  Doesn't freeze-up like my BlackBerries always did (however so far about 3x the lock screen has gone askew, and I've had to do a battery pull; not sure what causes that but Mr. Love Bird said it's happened to his Droid too a few times)

Dislikes
  • Despite swipe, I still prefer the buttons on my BlackBerry; I could type WAY faster with fewer errors on my BlackBerry
  • Battery life - despite using powersave and closing apps running in the background I still can't make through the day without having to connect it to the charger; a back-up battery or long-life battery purchase is a must!
  • Can't make custom sound profiles; for example on my BlackBerry I could make it so that it'd be on vibrate except for incoming calls from Mr. Love Bird which would ring aloud
  • When connected to USB the SIII's not recognized as a mass storage device. Instead there is wireless program to get the files from your phone to your computer (kinda like a cloud I guess). Compared to my BlackBerry where I could just plug my phone into the laptop, pull off what I needed and go instead I now transfer media files to my laptop so I can preview the images before adding to my blog, for example. Otherwise when the phone's plugged in you can't preview the images to tell what you're uploading. It's SO time consuming and annoying!
I do have to say for the last two dislikes I'm sure there are workarounds and I've started looking into some of them and they are very cumbersome, but I'm hoping to give them a try. That's one thing about Android is that you can really hack the phone and customize it exactly how you want. I like that, but I need time to actually do it!

Now to be honest, Mr. Love Bird was very kind to get me the Galaxy SIII especially because I knew how badly he wanted it himself, but because of our upgrade status with TMobile it worked out best for me to get mine when I did. His Galaxy is an older model and super glitchy, but it looks like he'll be getting his own SIII soon for work.

While I noticed Mr. Love Bird's envy of my SIII, it was short-lived because a few weeks ago he got this:


{Image Credit}
Now I've had a bit of envy myself especially because I've entered so many contests to win one myself. Plus Mr. Love Bird got the most souped-up model and a really sleek case/keyboard so he can tote it around and do most of his work on it. It really is a great machine! As a former iPhone user then Android fanatic, Mr. Love Bird does agree that an iPad is a superior product (we have a Droid tablet too that we love), however he does concede that he does prefer Android phones. 

I don't see a purchased iPad in my future and for now I'm content to continue to figure out my Droid, but I will keep my eye on future releases from both Android and Apple. I kinda like seeing the competition between the two!

Do you go back and forth with gadget envy with your partner? Who's more into technology and keeping up with the latest releases?

 

P.S. TMobile has a free 4G promo running November 16 and 17 only and you can get a new SIII at no charge; check out the details here. {No, I wasn't paid to say this. I'm a TMobile customer and I just so happened to see this deal.}