New to Android Phone's

[pattonthegen]

Hello all,

I just bought my 1st android based phone (have always used windows mobile phones in the past) and I am still trying to get use to it.

There are many things I really like about it, but there are also some things that I really miss from my mobile device. I have been reading up on this forum and there are so many things to choose from I figured It would be better if I posted some of the things that I really wanted and yall would be able to point me in the right direction.

Some of these things seem to be very basic features from my others phones, but I can't find any way to set them on my new phone the Samsung Moment.

1. Text: There does not seem to be anyway to filter the text like I have always been able to do on other phones. What i mean is filter them by date recevied vs the way it seems my phone does it which is by person. Currently it groups all text that I send or receive under that person's name so its almost like one big running thread. I would like to have the ability to filter my text by date received. Is there anyway or any program out there that lets me have more control over my text?

2. Text: The area that I go to to read my text is a very plain boring black and grey area, and there does not seem to be a way to customize this area with a diffrent look (diffrent colors for example) same for my emails.

3. Text: It looks like the phone might have a spell check built into the text and maybe the email, but it seems to be very basic. It seems that you have to get the word very close to the correct spelling for it to auto correct, and there is no way to just tell it to spell check. There also does not seem to be a feature that auto complets words which all my other phones have had and i used all the time.

4. Text: There does not seem to be a way to copy and paste something from text or email and I used this feature all the time in the past.

5. SD Card: I downloaded a program that allowed me to set a password lock on my phone and it works great (could use a few more options that give me more control over the lock). This progeram (Lock 2.0 if I remember correctly) has the ability for you to change the skins that show when the phone is locked. There require you to download the new skins which are apparently d/l to your SD card. The istructions say once downloaded I must go to my SD card and install the new skin. I have looked everywhere on my phone and can not seem to find away to get to my SD card and see what is loaded on it.

6. Sleep mode: Is there anyway to change which button puts the phone into the sleep mode (currently I hit the end call button and it puts it into a sleep/hibernate mode)? I would prefer if i can change that button to something else.

7. Lock: This might just be a limitation of the Lock 2.0, but is there anyway to choose a duration the phone is inactive before it requires a password to unlock it? On my old phone I think I had it set to if the phone had not been used in 20min it would request a password to unlock it. The current way the phone works every single time I hibernate/sleep the phone I have to enter a password, and the phone goes into hibernate/sleep mode automaticaly after 2 min (which is the longest duration the phone seems to allow).


There are the things that I can think of right now, and I really appreciate any help or advice that anyone can give. This phone is slowly growing on me day by day.

Thanks again all

 

[breadnatty08]

Try a 3rd party texting app. I use Handcent and love it. Lots of customization which should fulfill what you're looking for.
There is likely an app out there for your security needs, but I'm not sure. Definitely check out Handcent (or ChompSMS which is also popular) for texting.

 

[aerok]

I too cannot stop using Handcent, best SMS app on the market.

And if I am not mistaken, you can download skins for Lock 2.0 within the app but I might be wrong.

As for End key behavior, use Android on HTC Blog Blog Archive SpareParts it won't be customize every buttons but it can customize the End key

As for security, I do not know an app that can do what you need but I strongly suggest using WaveSecure, it is the best security app for Android and you can remote wipe if you ever lose your phone.

 

[KlaymenDK]

3. Yeah the T9-style autocorrection leaves me unimpressed as well. AFAIK there is no spell checking, at least I haven't looked for it, and it hasn't found me.

4. Long-press a text field (in edit mode) and select "start copying text" to enter a highly annoying mode to mark a block of text. Then, long-press again to copy what you've selected. It sucks big time, I know. That's what you get for giving priority to useless swipe gestures, I guess.

7. Check out AutoLock: Annoyed by the need to constantly draw your lock pattern when the screen turns off? With AutoLock, your phone will only lock after you leave it alone for some time.

 

[pattonthegen]

Thanks for the suggestions so far have not had a chance to sit down and try some of them out yet but plan to later today.

A few other things I noticed over the weekend about my phone.

Posting picutures: I took some picutures on my phone this weekend and wanted to post them from my phone to my facebook account. I could not find any way for me to upload pic's from my phone to facebook which I found strange. Is there not a way to take a pic and upload it to facebook from my phone?

When i select share from the pic i only get a option to email, gmail, messaging, photo&video places, picasa and work email. I am not sure that picasa or photo&video places are but they don't alow me to upload to anything. A friend of mine was there this weekend and he took a pic with his crappy 2 year old free phone and was able to upload to facebook with in min of taken the pic so i figure if his junk phone can do i should be able to as well...any thoughts??

Email: when i get a email that has a attachment with it I can not see anyway to open that attachment. A friend of mine sent me a email with some kind of picuture attachment and i noticed the paperclip but once i selected the actually email it was no were to be found and i couldn't see anyway to open the attachment.


Thanks again for all the great suggestions so far.

 

[Salad]

It sounds to me like you expect Android to just work perfectly and completely tailored to your minor and extremely personal whims. This is sadly not the case. Instead, I think you should spend some time getting to know the android market. Running vanilla android is like running Firefox with no addons or Chrome with no scripts. If you have any issues with the base software, you can follow the iPhone slogan, 'There's an App for that'. The transition from Windows Mobile to Android will be somewhat of an upheaval. The facebook interaction is lacking because Google provide similar services (Picasa is Google's online photo-album software. Sort of like a standalone, more advanced version of Facebook's photos). Although I can't say for sure, I imagine there is a Facebook app that supports image uploading. As for your issue with not being able to save attachments, that's an issue with the OS as of now. I suggest reading this thread for some more information on the matter. If you're using Gmail the easiest thing to do right now is to open up Gmail in your browser and download it from there.