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Help S4 mini kitkat.. what happened?

N

nemo1966

Newbie
I've had an S3 for years with no problems, but it doesn't have 4g support. I use my phone as a tethered modem/internet access point. In fact I only use my phone for calls texts and net access for my Notepro tablet.

So i replaced my S3 with an S4 mini 4G LTE. This has Kitkat 4.4.2 on it and in some areas it is great, faster, sleeker some nice touches. Then theres the bad....

The default sms application now adds little picture icons to the conversation window! Why? It takes up screen real estate and looks really rubbish! In fact it is REALLY F'ING ANNOYING.

Then theres the missed sms and call notifications, on the S3 you could set it to just show the number of missed calls and sms on the lock screen in a small sort of round token/circle. This is great for privacy, you could see what you had missed without others seeing the actual messages. Now it puts this stupid huge box on the screen that takes over the lock screen. You can get rid of this on sms but it means you get no notification all.

How can the Android OS move so far forward, yet at the same time move so far back ?

Has anyone got and idea how to fix this ******** rubbish?

Thanks
 
The changes you describe are not changes in the android OS but in Samsung's software. Default SMS app, SMS notifications, lockscreen are all things that Samsung replace with their own versions. As for why, because someone in Samsung thought this was better (what testing or market research they did I have no knowledge of).

For the SMS app, if there isn't a setting to change the aspects of the look which you don't like, the best suggestion would be to try out a few 3rd party SMS apps. Find one that works for you, make that the preferred SMS app (a 4.4 feature), remove the others or disable their notifications and just use the one you prefer.

As for the notifications, you could try alternative lockscreen apps as well, if there are not settings in the default one which do what you want. In the extreme you can use a lockscreen app which supports user widgets and then use something like Zooper to construct (or download) one which just shows you counts of missed calls/messages/etc.

I don't own a Samsung so don't know what options you have built in, but that's really the Android way: if you don't like what the manufacturer provided, you can replace it with something that works better for you.
 
I'm fine thank you Susan.

Ah I see it's samsung. I guess I'll root it and find something that gets me back to reasonable software. Which seems hard these days, HTC use those ridiculous tiles (the reason I didn't buy an HTC).

Thanks again and if someone knows of any apps that emulate what I'm after then please let me know.

cheers and Stoke me a clipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
 
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