Got a Maxx here – only had it since Friday.
Battery is good – after I charged it on Friday night I reinstalled all my apps that I had on my old desire, did some browsing, email, a short satnav in the car, wife had a long play with the calendar on it, etc.
I then charged it again on Sunday night as it was down to 30%.
Charged up again on Monday night – was on 3g all day checking email, ebay also running in the background, and did a little mybackup restoration last thing – then charged as it was down to 70% – although my battery indicator only shows 10% increments now for some reason.
The guy next to me at work has a new iphone 5 – it was fun asking him where his battery was as it was depleting at a much faster rate during the day.
So widely better than my old desire.
I got some gooey stuff on the screen yesterday so washed it off with some soap and rinsed under the tap. On youtube you can watch people drop them into baths and then make calls on them.
I haven’t tried a different keyboard on it – I have smart keyboard pro – as it comes with Swype, which is excellent and rarely gets a word wrong – far better than using the keyboard normally.
Obviously the screen/resolution on the S3 is slightly bigger, which is useful, but the maxx seems enough to be a lot more useable than the desire and is fast enough, and the S3 look way more fragile to me and obviously is not treated for water resistance.
As the phone will (only just) go in my saddle bag on the road big, and it can get a little damp in there if it is chucking it down, the water resistance was a big consideration.
I got mine from mobiles.co.uk using one of the cashback deals – which do work but you have to be diligent to remember which bills to send in and then waiting for the cheques (a bit like the garmin edge 200 promotion recently…).
I am paying £26 for 300mins, unlimited texts, and 750Mb data – which averages out to £14 a month after the £288 of cashback. Alternatively you can go for the immediate £170 cashback cheque, which reduces the risk and hassle of sending in the bill scans.
By contrast the guy with the new iphone 5 next to my yesterday is paying £26 a month but also paid £400 for the phone!!!
I suppose the best deal would be to get an S3 on that deal (whch they do) and then sell the S3 on ebay which would give you a sim only deal for very little money.