Is android as fragmented and confusing to use as I'm led to believe?

Best solution: Ask someone who has a galaxy s3, whether you are allowed to have it in your hand for like 10 minutes. He then can look over your shoulder while you do these things:

• Go into the market and search for random stuff that might interest you (don't download, just search, so you know what the market offers)
  
• Ask him if he hase some hind of note app, or anything where you can try the touch keyboard of the sIII.
  
• Ask him if you are allowed to view the settings menu, so that you know how you can personalize the phone for you needs.
• Ask him to pose for a picture, and ask him to look at the pictures he made (important: Tell him one day before so he can backup his nude pics. I asked a friend once and he didn't delete his nude pics from his phone. Awkward situation.)
  
• Ask him whether you are allowed to add and remove a widget / shortcut to one of the home screens, so that you know what's available and how it works.
  
• Ask him to play a music file he has on his phone
  
• Go into several apps and use them. I used iPhone apps once and it is a whole different feeling.

SIII is fine for all that. Use Google Music to have all your music in the cloud ready to stream to your phone, or just copy+paste the music to the phone.

I'm not really a fan of the S3. Its an amazing phone very powerful, beautiful screen but something about it just irks me. Just the way it looks and feels in my hand I cannot stand it. That being said, any phone ICS (4.0.1) and up is going be be a stable well operating phone. The Razr HD and the RAZR Maxx HD are both amazing phones, its just what ever one is going to be the most comfortable for you. I'd recommend fondling a bunch of them and see which you like.

As far as fragmented and confusing, not at all. They just have a different structure. Where the iPhone tweaks and customization are very limited, as well as applications. The Android phones are not, every application has its own menu options and individual settings. I think that is where most people get confused. They expect everything to be in ONE settings option on the home screen and its just not setup that way. Want to customize text messages, go into texts, menu button and settings. The other thing that seems to confuse people on android is the way applications are placed. Android doesn't MAKE you have all your applications on the home screen where as I phone does, you also get widgets for some applications which would be close to the windows phone live tiles you are used to.

As far as music, drag and drop cannot be any easier, want this song on your phone? Plug it in, drag and drop it in to your music folder on your phone. If you want to use an applications almost all android phones have their itunes/zune-esk applications, For example samsung has Kies, HTC has HTC Sync, and on and on however drag and drop pictures, music and videos is about as easy as it gets. Wanna go even further with music? OKAY! Google music allow you to upload your files to google music's cloud from your computer then stream them to your phone at any time over wifi or cellular data connection. That means no dragging and dropping anything and no using up more space on your phone than you have to. Applications, every application for anything you want the play store has. They have more applications than the windows store (can't think of what its call at the moment for some reason) and WAY less restrictive on what apps can be released than Apples app store. THEY EVEN HAVE AN APP THAT WILL TURN YOUR ANDROID INTO A WINDOWS 7 PHONE best one I've found is called Launcher 7. Reliability? I have an HTC evo 4g, and other than the crap battery life I now get out of my phone that is almost 3 years old, and this phone didn't have the greatest battery to begin with, It couldn't be more reliable. Sure when I get froggy and try to flash a Jellybean port, or CM nightly build onto it its kinda finicky but with stock, or even a custom rom for the phone it never gives me any issues. The s3 in particular doesn't have problems. Let me say that again, it doesn't have problems. It just works. If it doesn't just work its either 1. something on your phone is broken and 9 time out of 10 its user error, or 2. Something is going on with your carrrier. The only limitation I am aware of on the S3 is the fact that it will not allow you to take pictures and be on the phone at the same time. In which case Theres an APP for that (see above) FXcamera I think its call by passes your stock camera and allows you to now take pics and be on the phone at the same time.

Wow these reply is way longer than I wanted it to be, sorry about that

TL;DR Buy whatever phone feels good to you, but as far as androids being fragmented and confusing, not at all. SIII will do everything you want it to so then more. Best of luck

It's as fragmented as windows PC's are...

I can't speak to whether the S3 is the right phone for you but fragmentation is not going to prevent you from doing the things you intend to do with it. Especially because you've selected the most-widely sold flagship Android phone. Apps will be well-tested on it; it's not as if you're buying an $80 Polaroid tablet or whatever.

As a caution, "fragmentation" is just a negative way of expressing what makes Android great: Android allows developers to build apps for a very wide variety of devices and a good degree of backwards compatibility. And if you decide to ditch your Samsung phone for a Sony phone in two years all your old apps will still work.

it is fragmented, but that wont stop you from being able to do anything you want on it.

Yes the SIII will do that as will most high end Android phones. The fragmentation becomes an issue when you get down to second tier devices.

Yes.

The S3 will do just fine for what you described. There's a reason for why it's one of the best selling android devices out there, it's probably the most well rounded experience and everything just plain works right out of the box.

There's an app on the play store called "uber music" it looks zune-like if you're interested.

If you're worried about fragmentation make sure that you get a Nexus device or a phone that you know you can easily root and update yourself via custom roms (Cyanogen, AOKP, or something like that will keep you current), I believe that the S3 falls under that category. You can't rely on the carriers/OEMs to update you.

Samsung is good about updates, although delayed a while at least they usually get a few updates

I have an SIII and love it. Great working phone, pretty much zero problems with it so far. Though I did put Cyanogen 10 on it which may play into my satisfaction level. I don't want to overstate but that's been my experience. My biggest complaint by far is that the exterior is slippery, I wish it has a matte or rubbery finish instead (and I hate cases).

The SII is fine, but if you're looking for a slightly cheaper and older phone, just get a Galaxy Nexus. As long as you're fine with buying a phone off contract it is already two versions of Android ahead of the SII and it is only going to get further ahead.

You'll be just fine. If my technophobic mother can happily use ~90% of her android's functionality, you have nothing to worry about. Don't believe the propaganda.

Newer versions of Android generally don't break compatibility (you can still use apps from Cupcake 1.5 on Jelly Bean 4.2), so getting the latest devices shouldn't give you any problems with the platform fragmentation. Getting a non-Nexus or anything that isn't a flagship will mean your phone will be most likely be incompatible with flashy new apps a year or two from now.

tl;dr you shouldn't have problems with platform fragmentation getting the GSIII. Getting the GSII you might be hitting the wall of incompatible apps a year or so sooner.

I assume you're on Verizon?

Who told you it was confusing? Apple marketing?

The back button is one of the most used, but is still implemented inconsistently, even across Google's own apps.