S3 Touchwiz - Good or Bad?

[Guest Webreaper]

Okay, so after a little banter with Paul on Twitter this morning, I thought I'd ask seriously, what are peoples' thoughts? I hear a lot of people trot out the "Touchwiz is awful" line, but a lot of them seem to be people who haven't actually used it (a bit like the people who slate Sense 4 on the OneX, despite it being very good.

Bear in mind I've had an HTC Magic, Nexus One and now an S3, and my wife has a GNex - so I really do know and understand what differentiates the OS improvements (and I use that word carefully) in Samsung's ICS offering. That includes JellyBean - which arrived on my wife's phone earlier this week.

So here's my thoughts:

* I replaced the launcher with Apex - it was the first thing I did. I haven't actually used Samsung's launcher, so can't comment. That said, I did the same on the GNex, and on my N1 (with Go Launcher Ex) before it - the Android stock launcher is pretty lame.

* Some of the settings Samsung provides are excellent - the LED control and other stuff is fantastic. I would expect that to be there by default in Android, but it isn't - not even on JellyBean.

* The stock Android browser and Samsung's offering sucks - but I've always used Dolphin Mini HD and now Chrome on the S3.

* I don't like the fact that some of their controls aren't Holo ones, but it's hardly life-changing if their toggle buttons are green rectangles instead of blue chevrons.

* Some stuff is irritating, like the stupid 'headphones' bar in the notifications area that can't be configured and only shows me apps I've disabled and don't use. Hopefully Samsung will fix that at some point.

* The camera app annoyingly relies on the bundled gallery app, which is irritating, as I use JustPictures. If you disable Samsung's gallery (which isn't a bad app), the camera and wallpaper selectors break. This is infuriating, but Samsung are no worse than Google's stock OS, since exactly the same caveat applies to Jellybean's camera/gallery.

So I'd be interested to hear from the haters (and ideally people who have really used TouchWiz on the S3, and aren't just referring to the older, heavier touchwiz on the S2 etc) what it is you don't like about Samsung's enhancements?

[Guest Darius_AWS]

Touchwiz 5 is definitely great ! There is a bunch if usefull apps like kies air, kies cast and the media center is very complete and you can play everything !

Gaming is awesome, and if you want aosp you've got it and if you want sense a rom is on the way !

[Guest Eivis]

Have a SGS3 at the moment, had a Nokia X6 and my mother has an Ascend G300, i actually prefer some options in the huawei's stock launcher, but Nature UX is doing a fine job at the moment, maybe i'll get a different launcher in a few weeks and see if it helps to save battery power, cuz i have to charge the phone two times per day(never before i had to charge that often)

[Guest DomP]

Functionally, I'm happy with Touchwiz. It is however responsible for large amount of battery drain on my S3

[Guest CaspaTheGhost]

Managed to use stock and TW for a day then went custom Sammy based ROM with my usual Nova launcher.

That lasted for a couple of days but as I've come from a Gnex I'm used to vanilla Android and of course JB. Currently running a CM10 kang and it will only be replaced with something AOSP based!

Sammy have greatly improved TW and have incorporated some great features but not enough to make it better than pure JB in my opinion. Didn't use it for long enough to comment on its effect on battery, but with my current setup I get a whole day with 3-4hrs screen on time, noticeable better than my Gnex with extended battery.

Just waiting for the official JB release from Sammy along with kernel sources so CM10/AOSP can fix the last few issues, especially the memory leak.

[Guest MLB1949]

I'm happy using "GoLauncherEx" on my T-Mobile S3.

[Guest pritesh123]

If you are aiming for unique launcher, you can also try everything.me launcher.

[Guest taife32]

The only problem I've had with touchwiz is that there's no way to lock my desktop and because of the work I do this can be an issue. I end up swiping off the screen icon by mistake as I hurriedly try to answer my phone sometimes.

So I use apex launcher (paid version). It works wonders for me especially with its gestures. But other than that reason I've had no qualms with touchwiz.

[Guest MercilessLTD]

I like simplicity. I used a few TouchWiz ROMs for about six months before I just went AOSP. I believe I will stay that way. The only thing that is free with TouchWiz that isn't on AOSP is easy DLNA. Although TW encompasses more than launchers, my preferred launcher is Holo. Again, simplicity...