Samsung Galaxy S3 not working/have to hit twice

[dwt12777]

Hi folks, please insert standard disclaimers here (I've searched for my answer on this forum and google in general - no luck so far...)

Have had my verizon wireless Galaxy S3 for about 3 months now.  In the last couple weeks a problem has manifest itself that I can't figure out: hitting the home button almost always requires two presses before it does anything.  I'm not talking about a rapid double-click to bring up S-Voice (which I've disabled).  Frequently (not always though, which further confuses me), I'll be running an app and hit the home button - nothing happens... wait a few seconds... press it again and it works.  Or when the phone is in standby mode (screen's off) and I hit the home button to wake it up... nothing... then click home again and it wakes up.  Or I'll long-hold the home button to bring up the recent app list and jump to another app... and the long hold won't work the first time.  But it works if I try it again.  But NONE of this was a problem for the first 2.5 months of usage...  something has definitely changed.

In my searches so far I've found discussions talking about the quick double-click for S-Voice being the culprit.  The idea being that the home button waits for that second click to see if you meant a double-click, and that wait could make it feel like the phone was lagging if all you meant was a single-click.  However that's not the issue here.  It's not that there's a lag, it's that there's no action at all.  But to be safe I disabled S-Voice.  However the problem persists.

I know this seems like a trivial thing, but it's really become annoying as this is core functionality when using the phone.  If it matters, here's some "about device" information:

Model: SCH-1535

Android Version: 4.1.2

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you may have!