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Advice for first time smartphone user

Nickolai

Nickolai

Lurker
Hello,

I have just bought me an HTC One mini for the first time. It's my first smartphone of any kind and I could use your advice: I think practically any user of the forum is more experienced than me.

A have introduced myself in some more detail here.

I bought a smartphone chiefly because I hope it will help me get organized, which right now means GTD. Now I feel like a first-time computer user: everything is unfamiliar and I don't know how to do the most basic things.

What do I need to know? An acquaintance of mine, a hardcore smartphone user, I presume, told me that "rooting your Android phone is a prerequisite of its proper usage" and prepared me to be looking into installing custom ROMs. I am not convinced: I want to use the phone to become more productive, not waste time tinkering with it (though don't get me wrong, I love tinkering) Will I really need to root a phone, let alone install custom ROMs? I've already read this informative StackExchange question and its answers:
Are there any risks to rooting a device?

In particular, though not limited to it, I would like to hear a piece of advice on the following:
Do I need to do anything special to the phone right after buying it, like
  • Do anything specific to break in the battery?
  • Do backups before installing apps, before upgrading the OS? I know on iOS one should back up the certificates to be able to restore to the same version of the OS (otherwise you may only restore to the newer one)
 
Battery - read the manula that came with the phone!
The rest - find apps that do what you want and try them. There is no need to root unless you want to do something that you can't unless the phone is rooted. For example, carrier/manufacturer installed apps are frequently a waste of space for some users but you uninstall them you often need to be rooted.

Dave
 
dvhttn said:
Battery - read the manual that came with the phone!
Click to expand...
There wasn't anything special about the battery in the provided little sheet of paper. Well, I think the initial full discharge+full charge will be fine.

As for apps, I hoped to get the advice and tips wrt. to the 'must have' ones. As for the Android system, will I be able to restore it to factory defaults later on?

Should I store contacts as Google contacts, so that they will be back up to the cloud?
 
That's the thing about these beasts. There's so much you can put on them and so many different ways to sync, backup, etc that it's really a "roll your own" kind of environment.

Take my case:

Problem statement: To be able to send and receive free texts while on WiFi

My Solution: There are a ton of different ways/apps that will do this. I don't have international requirements so I didn't factor that in. I researched and ended up installing Google Voice. I also got a Google Voice phone number (over and above the TracFone number for my phone). I then got the Messaging + Google Voice app and set it up in combo with Google Voice. I can now send and receive texts for free if I'm WiFi connected. I can also text from my browser on my laptop.

So, that was my solution but there are others. The biggest thing you'll probably run into is the lack of any good documentation for most apps. It's a royal pita but apparently the value of good documentation isn't taught in today's curriculum's. :(

Your best bet is to dive in and ask questions.

As for root; probably unnecessary. Would I like to until a lot of the intertwined Google apps? sure but it it's not really that big of a deal... yet. When I end up getting a new phone in a few years I may root this one just as a play experiment. But then if I screw it up and brick it, I won't really be out much.
 
Im a rooter/rommer but im a geek lol.
Unrooted android will probably do everything you need it to so dont even worry about that, just get to know the phone
What do you mean about updates and returning to factory defaults?
If you update the OS, you cant (easily) go back to the previous version if thats what you mean. Factory Reset just wipes all user data/apps.
Yeah i definitely recommend syncing your contacts to google and theyll be in the cloud forever and follow you from device to device :thumbup:

Oh yeah the battery. Just a full charge and discharge will calibrate the phone to detect the battery level accurately.
These batterys are really robust and dont need much special care
 
First and most important with the battery, since you don't know where it's been, or for how long (neither does the phone manufacturer):

Charge it fully before using the phone. (I don't even let them use the battery to set up a new phone I buy. Either use the charger if the phone will run off it, use their battery or give me a replacement battery after they set the phone up.) Lithium Ion batteries that haven't been charged in a long time (months) need to be conditioned. Conditioning a fresh battery does no harm. So always condition a new battery.

Fully charge it with the phone off. When the phone tells you to remove the charger. Use the phone normally. DON'T charge it until it tells you to (or until it shuts off, which is deeper conditioning). Then fully charge it again. Three full charge-discharge cycles. (Some people in the industry still follow this process, some say you don't have to, but my emergency phone is over 10 years old, still has the original battery, and I still get almost the same time between charges.)

After conditioning, try to charge the battery when it gets down to 40%-50%. That will give you the longest life. People who always run the battery down close to zero are the ones who complain about how quickly they have to replace batteries. (Depending on the exact battery and the exact usage pattern, there can be more than a 5 to 1 difference in life.)

As far as rooting, if you need to use an app that needs a rooted phone, you'll need to root. You'll also void the phone's warranty. And if you don't know how to root the phone without resorting to a rooting program, you shouldn't be rooting the phone. (Most of these programs do other things besides rooting - they change some files and leave a ness behind.)

Oh, and when there's an update to a new version of Android, it will fail on a rooted phone. It won't hurt the phone, you just won't get the update.

Backups. You can't back up the entire phone without flashing a new recovery partition (which voids the warranty). You don't have to back up the apps that come with the phone, because if you have to reflash the ROM, the apps come with the ROM. You might want to back up the data with an app like Helium.

If you enter all contacts as Google contacts, they're automatically backed up, and you can access them at Google Contacts The same with your calendar data if you use the Google calendar (or a calendar app that uses the Google calendar - which most do).

Your emails are backed up the email server. (Some corporate servers don't keep backups very long - some as short as 30 days - so you might want to back them up. Google keeps them until you delete them.)

Back up your texts.

Updates. I never accept an update until it's been out there for a while. My phone works. Some people with Samsung S3s that accepted the 4.3 update have non-working phones. Some have phones that have problems. I'll let others play guinea pig. Once the update is known to be good and stable, I'll update. I bought the phone that had the features I want. I can live without new features for a few months.

Custom ROMs. Most of the things people flash custom ROMs for you can get by installing an app. (I always install Nova Launcher [the desktop] before I start doing anything on a Samsung phone. I can't stand using TouchWiz, the native launcher. It doesn't take a ROM to do that. Or to change wallpaper. Or to use different browsers. Or to do a lot that you don't need a custom ROM for. (And flashing a custom ROM also voids the warranty.)

Don't take any of this as a law. Once you get more familiar with smartphones you'll learn that you can do some things a beginner shouldn't. I run a custom ROM (and have 3 others in the phone, ready to boot into). They're all rooted. But I started selling cellphones soon after they were available to the public, and I write software, so I have an idea of what I'm doing. (I still have a lot to learn - the last person who knew everything ... his species doesn't exist yet.)

But start slow, enjoy having a laptop in your pocket, install the apps that interest you - and have fun. Aside from making and taking phone calls, that's what smartphones are all about. You can be more productive, you don't need a separate GPS, if you're stuck in a waiting room you have the web in your pocket ...

But please don't jump into rooting and ROMing - we want you asking if there an app to ... not "help, I xxx and my phone stopped working".
 
Nickolai said:
An acquaintance of mine, a hardcore smartphone user, I presume, told me that "rooting your Android phone is a prerequisite of its proper usage" and prepared me to be looking into installing custom ROMs. I am not convinced: I want to use the phone to become more productive, not waste time tinkering with it (though don't get me wrong, I love tinkering) Will I really need to root a phone, let alone install custom ROMs? I've already read this informative StackExchange question and its answers:
Are there any risks to rooting a device?
Click to expand...

Unless there is something specific you need to do that cannot be done with an unrooted phone, I recommend against it for you. You seem to be new to phones and I really think that an unrooted phone should suffice for you as it does for the majority of Android users. Rooting is a rather non-trivial process for a novice smartphone user. For people who are experts, it is easy for them, but what is easy for any expert in their field is probably not trivial for those who are not experts.

In particular, though not limited to it, I would like to hear a piece of advice on the following:
Do I need to do anything special to the phone right after buying it, like
  • Do anything specific to break in the battery?
  • Do backups before installing apps, before upgrading the OS? I know on iOS one should back up the certificates to be able to restore to the same version of the OS (otherwise you may only restore to the newer one)
Click to expand...

Just realise that new batteries do not last as long as batteries that are a few weeks or a month old. My experience with 3 different smartphones from 3 different manufacturers on 2 different operating systems have been like this. The battery seems to last longer after a few weeks or a month compared to a brand new battery.

The only thing I would recommend is at least let it drain to less than 30%, but not totally empty and charging it to full once. Don't let the battery drain all the way.
 
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