At Phones Review we always try to keep readers informed about operating system updates available for their devices and the Jelly Bean update for the Samsung Galaxy S3 (S III) on Verizon has been a bit of a saga. We followed the trials and tribulations of how long it took Big Red and Samsung to push out this update and finally a few days ago the update started to roll out. However we have since heard of problems that some readers are having since the update, the major one being an adverse affect on battery life. We now wonder if these are isolated incidents or far more widespread.
We’ve had a lot of reader comments to our posts about the long wait and frustration that many felt about how long it took for 4.1 Jelly Bean to arrive for the Samsung Galaxy S3 on Verizon, especially as it was the last of the major US carriers to push out the update. There should be an awful lot of happy Verizon Galaxy S3 users now then, as they finally have their hands on the update. However in a few readers’ comments and also in some emails we’ve received we’ve noted that for some Galaxy S3 owners on Verizon, everything is not running smoothly.
Among the problems noted so far by our readers are slower boot times and longer charging times and a few have noted that the battery life of their Galaxy S3 seems to have suffered since the update. We’re not implying that these problems are widespread yet as they could be odd incidents but we thought we’d take a look to see if anyone else is reporting problems.
We then came upon a thread on Android Central Forums, specifically about the Verizon Galaxy S3 Jelly Bean update and issues that have followed the update and so far there are over 240 comments with many people seemingly noticing problems. You can see the forum thread here and although some are happy enough and say that everything went smoothly others are complaining of notification glitches, issues sending text messages and again there seems to be a recurring battery life problem. One user reports a battery life drop from 100% to 23% in 5 hours and describes the change as “horrific.”
Some of the issues begin reported are probably pretty simple to fix and there are also suggestions for certain difficulties but the battery life issue seems more problematic. On further digging we also came across a thread on Reddit about reduced battery life on the Galaxy S3 on Verizon since the Jelly Bean update. There are only a handful of comments on this one but again it does show that the problem seems to exist. What we really want to ascertain right now is if this is a problem for many Verizon Galaxy S3 owners or if these are just odd cases among the many other cases where Jelly Bean is running smoothly?
We’d really like to hear from readers on this topic. Have you noticed any difference to the battery life of your Galaxy S3 since the Verizon Jelly Bean update? Maybe you’ve not noticed that problem but have spotted other concerns with the Jelly Bean update? Let us know with your comments so that we can share this with readers and see if these are isolated incidents or not.