Wednesday 14 November 2012

Sucky Samsung

I have been using the Samsung Galaxy S3 for a couple of months now. There are a couple of fundamantal problems with Samsung's bundled software and Samsung offers no fix.
  1. browser dims by itself - even after you manually set the colors settings and disable the system's auto-adjust brightness, the browser will still dim the screen next time you start it. Plenty of S3 users are suffering from it. My workaround it to install Dolphin browser instead. I also tried Chrome, but it freezes sometimes, so I replaced it with Dolphin.
  2. Samsung has stuffed up the docking bar at the bottom of the home screen with its latest firmware upgrade. You can no longer configure this docking bar. If you have uninstalled the app in the docking bar, you will not be able to put another app there. So you are left with an ungly gap. What is Samsung's solution for that? - to factory reset your phone! Oh, in Samsung's response letter, they forgot to mention to do a back up of your installed applications or downloads.
If you are a S3 owner and not suffering the above, then don't upgrade the firmware when Samsung offers you. My advice to new smart phone shoppers - avoid Samsung, they simply are not good at software development or testing, at least until they can offer a decent firmware. For me, I will look into rooting my phone and replacing the ROM.