Let me clarify first that I love Android, I mean love it. If I could have the perfect phone it would combine the speed of ios and the features of Android into a metal frame of cold steel with the internal hardware of the SIV and call it a day.
Performance on the SIV is as expected, pretty fast, however it wasn't without an occasional hiccup or two when switching in between apps. This for me was one of the most annoying things to deal with on the SIV mainly due to the fact that it's a next generation phone and it has amazing hardware internally. Also I noticed that most of the lagging was when using anything that opened up the keyboard function. I was also using Swiftkey so maybe that had something to do with it.
The multimedia experience is where it went into almost too much in my opinion. Some of the features were a nice addition while others were just unnecessary. The built in IR for remote control capabilities was a nice addition and worked rather well, much better than the HTC One's remote features. Air hover was neat but not really needed and impractical unless you just don't like touching your touch screen phone. As far as the media player its the same as it is on the S3 for the most part.
Screen input responsiveness was pretty good, not as great as some other phones I have used but good. Text input was speedy while using the stock keyboard, however not so much on Swiftkey. When playing touch based games it seemed rather smooth and no lag time between touch input responsiveness.
Camera enhancements were actually where I enjoyed the SIV the most. The camera takes amazing pictures in good lighting conditions and was extremely realistic and detailed. However in low light situations it suffered and I preferred to use my iPhone 5 over it. The extra additions such as animated images and cropping out unwanted photo bombers was very useful though and a much needed edition.
Call quality was good, not amazing, but good enough to hear clearly in a half way noisy environment. I do wish that the speaker output was a bit louder though but all in all it sufficed.
Overall this phone is a great edition to Android and I'd say one of the best Android devices out there at this time, however the screen still needs work as far as out door visibility which can't touch Lcd screens to this day. If you do already own an S3 though I would say keep your old phone unless you have to have the newest and best Android device out there. In comparison to the HTC One I'd say it has a slight advantage over it due to in my opinion a better camera and more useful features. However the HTC One has some exclusive goodies too.
