On 25/03/2015 3:37 PM, Russell Coker wrote:
The phones I support include 2*GalaxyS3. They still work well, run all the latest apps, and everything seems fine. One of those phones has marginal hardware, the camera sometimes doesn't work and it takes ages to charge. But as far as software support goes it seems ok. One of the phones ran slowly after an upgrade once but a reset to factory defaults fixed that, it's not an ideal situation but what most users expect nowadays. Not bad for 3yo phones.
This seems to be /one/ good report telling things as they are: http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2014/06/01/samsung-galaxy-s3-gt-i9300-stable-a... I see very slow response, particularly when Google Play is updating apps. I sometimes have to restart my S3. It most definitely doesn't perform as well as it should. When everything is working okay, it is snappy enough, but it far too often isn't responsive. I've not has a phone that needed as many reboots due to the device being too unresponsive running a buggy Android version. I have set it up with encryption, but it shouldn't make that much difference to performance and usability. Bluebox Security Scanner app [1] shows that the current stock version of Android that Samsung /cares/ to provide is vulnerable to the FakeID [2] bug and also (outside that app from other knowledge) the stock web browser is also subject to a very security issue as well [3]. Now, I don't use the stock browser, so that helps me somewhat. And I only download apps from the Play store, so the FakeID bug is /less/ likely to cause an issue, but it sure can still, even using official app sources! Both of these should be fixed by Samsung, but they don't care. So, I conclude that this simply is not good enough by Samsung. It's not as if they only sold a few thousand of these phones, they are everywhere in huge numbers. The hardware can easily take the later version of Android which has both of these issues fully addressed. Samsung makes up the vast majority of Android users and so many are stuck on version 4.3 with these problems. Therefore, Samsung brings down Android's reputation a great deal. Other manufactures seem to care more about updating the software so that their customers have safer devices. My Galaxy S was retired long ago. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bluebox.labs.onerootscanne... [2] https://bluebox.com/technical/android-fake-id-vulnerability/ [3] http://www.securityweek.com/google-patches-second-same-origin-policy-bypass-... A.