I understand about being stuck behind the contract 8 ball. I did an upgrade if my daughter's line and moved to family share this time to upgrade early.
It's hard to express how damn fast this thing is. One big difference is the sdcard subsystem - - file copies are massively faster. This shows up all over the place, from starting apps to installs etc. Another is the larger Ram size, as I have over 100 apps installed.
So far, TouchWiz is not the terrible experience I was expecting. Worst is the cluttered notifications.
Battery life is pretty good, better than my OTA ICS Bionic, which I often had to leave on 3G.
My biggest fear, leaving the awesome Motorola radio behind, has turned out to be not an issue. Reception seems about on par with my Bionic. (central MD)
I suspect, however, I'll take a look at what Google/Moto cooks up as pure android in a year or so.
Hats of to Samsung for an awesome device.
C
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