From iPhone-5 to S4-GPE: Thoughts & Questions

[KrossX]

Hello all!

New member here. While I'm not new to the Android OS in general (owned a Nexus-7 tab), this will be my first (and hopefully not the last) phone in the Android realm.

I'm coming from the iOS side. I was slightly underwhelmed by the 5S/5C announcement and decided this was as good a time as any to try the S4.

I ordered the Google Edition because I'm techy and hate the prepackaged apps that come with carrier phones. As I wait for the S4 to arrive in the mail (current estimate: Monday, 9/16) I am wondering if there are certain things I can do in advance to reduce my transition time once I have the phone in my hand.

I have backed up my iPhone and have researched things like how to transfer contacts (current plan: Bump app).

Beyond that, are there any other things that I can be doing? I have a Google Play account already (due to the Nexus I owned).

I only ask because I am leaving town on a week-long trip Tuesday morning. So I will only have Monday evening to get the new phone setup and running the way I want.

The trip is to Canada, so I won't have full access to my U.S. LTE networks; won't want to use roaming data and will probably just use WiFi there for the week.

Just trying to be efficient, since I have spare time this weekend and no new phone to utilize.

Thanks!

 

[Medion]

I apologize for the late response. If I had gotten to you before the purchase, I would have advised looking at the Moto X as well. The AT&T version is light on bloatware, and the unlocked T-Mobile version should be as well (I'm assuming you aren't using a CDMA carrier or you wouldn't have purchased a Google Edition).

Now that you have it, you're on the right track. Aside from Bump, if you're sick of iTunes, you can download another music manager and use that to sync your existing library and playlists to your device. I use MusicBee, but there are many other excellent ones including Media Monkey and Song Bird. Google Music is also excellent if you have the data allotment for it.

Enjoy the new phone. I certainly love mine!

 

[KrossX]

Thank you Medion! I did indeed recieve the phone already and have been using it for a few days now. I went ahead and synced up my iCloud contacts to my Google account and then used those to populate the phone's contact list; Worked like a charm!

I'm on Day-8 of the new S4-GPE and so far the experience has been positive.

Like any device it has its pros and cons. The pros for the S4-GPE cover the holes that I had found with my previous device (iPhone 5) so all-in-all I do like it.

I am still trying to figure out some features that either I haven't found yet or appear to be missing from at least the GPE.

For example, I am having issues getting Tasker app to run in the foreground and perform its activities (even though I have the settings done-up correctly).

Similarly, while I am finding Google Now helpful, I am not seeing it as a huge improvement over Siri; is there an easier/more-logical way for it to be accessed? Is it able to read my emails/texts/msgs out to me?

For music, I use Spotify premium. The downside is, that while the iPhone was able to connect to my vehicle (and consequently be controlled by the steering wheel buttons) via USB, the S4 does not. It connects and charges, but is not recognized by the car as a music-playing device. So I have a secondary aux wire now that plugs into the headphone jack of the phone. I was having issues with that as well this morning but I think that's more due to the new case; I didn't get a chance to play around with that as well.

Like I said, most of it is probably me not knowing the ins and outs of the phone yet. And I will be sifting through the forums to find answers to some of my questions still.

 

[KrossX]

Question regarding SD Card:
Without rooting device, is there any thing that the SD card can be used for, functionally?

Are there any popular apps that have the ability to save data on the card if inserted directly?

Is there any configuration in the phone's settings that allows it to offset any of its storage needs to the SD card automatically?

 

[jhawkkw]

Regarding the changing of songs, that's likely because your car has software that is made specifically for an i device. This is a common complaint I've had with vehicles as well. I have been able to play my music over bluetooth without issues, but using an aux jack isn't going to help you regarding the controls.

As for your sd card, there's not much it can be used for other than for storage. Google removed support for SD cards in the stock OS, but Samsung returned some of the functionality for their devices. By rooting, you should be able to gain some of that functionality back through apps you can download.

I've never used tasker before, but I was positive it needed root in order to function properly. Hopefully someone more informed can chime in.

 

[KrossX]

Thank you jhawkkw!

I went ahead and read up extensively on rooting. Went ahead and rooted my phone via SuperSU. Everything worked fine. However, the SDCard was still unwritable for me. I then went ahead and researched it only, only to find out that 4.3 broke some SD card functionality in the S4, but there was a fix by adding a line of code into an xml file in a systems folder via Text Editor. Did that, backed up old file, restarted. Then I used FolderMount to create links for Spotify and my Downloads folder and was able to use Titanium to back up to the SDCard now as well.

The only thing is, when I rebooted my phone at one point, my bluetooth stopped working. As in, the slider for Bluetooth is stuck in OFF position. When I try to slide it to ON, it says "Turning Bluetooth on" and sits there for a few seconds, but it never really turns on.

I tried undoing nearly everything one by one, still nothing. Trying to figure out why this occurred or what exactly I changed to make this happen.

If anyone has any clues, let me know! I'll continue digging in the meantime.

 

[Medion]

As for your sd card, there's not much it can be used for other than for storage. Google removed support for SD cards in the stock OS,

This is a misconception that I wish people would stop spreading (not your fault). The stock version of Android supports MicroSD cards beautifully. Google has removed support from it from many of their apps, but not the underlying OS. In fact, Google Music runs my FLAC collection and playlists (synced via MusicBee) off my 64GB MicroSD perfectly. The limitation with Google Music is that it won't cache streamed music to the SD, only internal storage.

The problem with MicroSD usage is that every OEM labeled the SD Card as something different, meaning that app developers have to assign permissions a variety of different ways to support every known configuration. Permissions for "sdcard" typically only apply to the internal storage. With Android 4.3, Google went for a consistent permissions approach, and not all apps have been updated to use this. I am currently not running a single app that has SD card issues on my S4 GPe on Android 4.3. Use ES File Explorer as your file manager and most limitations will be removed.

Of course, moving apps to SD still requires tweaks. It's not a native feature anymore.

but Samsung returned some of the functionality for their devices.

Samsung re-added the ability to move apps to the SD Card. For various reasons, I still don't recommend using this unless you're really THAT hard up for storage. My personal use is; apps on internal, media on external (MicroSD).

owever, the SDCard was still unwritable for me. I then went ahead and researched it only, only to find out that 4.3 broke some SD card functionality in the S4, but there was a fix by adding a line of code into an xml file in a systems folder via Text Editor.

See my comment above. More apps should gain the correct permissions as they're updated. They likely won't be updated too quickly as, right now, the S4 GPe is the only phone with MicroSD expansion running 4.3. With the regular S4 getting 4.3 starting in November (supposedly), this issue will become more widespread and will correct itself. Of course, if you're looking to force certain apps to use the SD card that aren't already set up for it, by all means, use root and other such tricks

 

[jhawkkw]

This is a misconception that I wish people would stop spreading (not your fault). The stock version of Android supports MicroSD cards beautifully. Google has removed support from it from many of their apps, but not the underlying OS. In fact, Google Music runs my FLAC collection and playlists (synced via MusicBee) off my 64GB MicroSD perfectly. The limitation with Google Music is that it won't cache streamed music to the SD, only internal storage.

This is interesting, and wasn't aware. It's only too bad that we don't have any pure Google devices to test this on because the S4 GPE still uses Samsung framework and kernels. I'll have to take a look at the source code next time I have a full day off without plans.

 

[KrossX]

See my comment above. More apps should gain the correct permissions as they're updated. They likely won't be updated too quickly as, right now, the S4 GPe is the only phone with MicroSD expansion running 4.3. With the regular S4 getting 4.3 starting in November (supposedly), this issue will become more widespread and will correct itself. Of course, if you're looking to force certain apps to use the SD card that aren't already set up for it, by all means, use root and other such tricks

You bring up an interesting point; since I have modified the code in the file to make my MicroSD work, I wonder if that will consequently cause issues as applications continue to update their code to look for the default location Google has set.

Thank you for the info; if some apps stop writing to the SD card for me down the line. At least I'll know why now!

 

[Medion]

This is interesting, and wasn't aware. It's only too bad that we don't have any pure Google devices to test this on because the S4 GPE still uses Samsung framework and kernels. I'll have to take a look at the source code next time I have a full day off without plans.

Google Edition devices use stock Android framework, not Sense/TouchWiz. Only the kernel/drivers/settings are modified to support device specific hardware and features such as the IR blaster.

The kernel could be considered a hybrid of stock and Touchwiz.

The underlying OS is done by Google and sent to Samsung/HTC, they supply the kernel, then push back to Google who verify then push to devices.