I just switched from the iphone 4s because i got tired of the screen size and wanted to customize my phone -- a little bit. I love my S3 but after 8 weeks of using it I am finding it very difficult to set this thing up to do what I want. However there are many things i love, like the amazing screen, and great phone and many cool apps to explore. This running list is a mixture of list, rant and blog so please go easy on me.
Here's my running list of what has me stumped for the moment :
1) backup - i saw backup assistant in settings, turned it on - but there is no mention of how to restore. After all the time and money I am spending customizing this thing, i want to be able to completely clone and one button restore the entire phone, c'est possible ?
STATUS: HAVENT DECIDED ON A BACK UP SCHEME YET
2) I have personal videos from all different sources including youtube rips but play movies (what kind of app name is that ?) plays some and video player (slightly better app name) plays others and it seems that the timing is off on some of the video player playback now. Now, gallery seems to be the best video player for my needs, it shows whats in each folder and seems to play with correct timing, I am just not clear what files it is reading or if it is scanning the whole phone and sd. Is there a better player i can use ? STATUS: AM STICKING WITH GALLERY AT LEAST I FEEL THAT EVERY VIDEO I HAVE IS IN THERE. MY VIDEOS ARE A JUMBLE IN MY S3 A BUNCH OF RANDOM FOLDERS SOMETHING CALLED UNSAVED_NOTES IM PRETTY SURE ITS ALL THERE, BUT IT AINT PRETTY
3) There seem to be too many ways to buy music, i see google play, all share, media hub, music hub play music and i like iTunes. Does this mean I have to choose one to play all music or will i have to switch to each player depending on where the music came from. that would be a real pain.
I have audio from most formats (lossless, mp3, wav, aiff, flac, aac and have added many of my own cover art over the years so would like to get the one player that will do the most.
STATUS: MY MUSIC COLLECTION IS A DISASTER, I HAVE LOADS OF MUSIC IN ALL FORMATS AND LOTS FROM ITUNES FROM MY MAC , NOW I HAVE GOOGLE PLAY PURCHASES, AND I USE SPOTIFY. POWER AMP HAS GIVEN ME WEIRD ALBUM, MIXED OTHERS COVERS, CREATED RANDOM FOLDERS AND WONT PLAY QUITE ABIT OF MY ITUNES PURCHASES.
4) Bluetooth --- i can pair everything but its very selective about connecting automatically, which kind of blows - i have two jam boxes and tune link in the car and each time i have to manually go to bluetooth settings to connect. I can see I am going to have to put a bluetooth short cut on my home screen. STATUS BLUETOOTH WORKING WELL EXCEPT IN CAR _ PHONE CALLS WILL NOT COME IN OVER BLUETOOTH AT ALL< NO WAY AT ALL
5) Synching -- i came from iCloud and have many macs so was very happy to see smooth sync work so, well smoothly for ical and address book.
STATUS - VERY HAPPY WITH SMOOTH SYNC FOR ICLOUD CONTACTS AND CALENDAR, STILL DONT HAVE BOOKMARKS SYNCED.
6) Email -- i don't use gmail ---is K9 really the only viable imap alternative for conversation view available ? STATUS: K9 BECAME A PAIN BECAUSE OF NO NEW MAIL INDICATOR ON THE BADGE SO I
USE NATIVE AND K9.
7) is there any way to wake the phone out of locked mode without touching it ? STATUS: NOT SURE YET
8) I had voice for double home tap, somehow I switched to google voice search, not quite sure how to get back. STATUS: AM USING GOOGLE VOICE AND S VOICE DEPENDING ON WHAT I WANT TO DO, BUT I FORGET WHICH ONE DOES WHAT FROM TIME TO TIME, ONLY ONE DOES EMAIL
9) moving music and movies to sd --- not sure where i have to move media files to, as far as folders are concerned, for all these different media apps to read them. Is there a standard place, or does android just look everywhere > STATUS: CREATED A FOLDER FOR MUSIC CALLED MUSIC, SEEMS TO WORK
10) Here's a silly one - is there anyway to map the back button to the left side and the menu to the right >? This lefty's thumb needs to be longer !
STATUS: NO CHANCE ON THIS ONE I BELIEVE UNLESS YOU ROOT
11) how can i get my iCloud bookmarks to sync - i have smooth sync for everything else cloud..
STATUS: UNSOLVED
13) Web browser -- do i really have to keep closing windows in order to open new ones ? I am getting an annoying message telling me to close windows -- is there any overide
STATUS: AM USING THREE BROWSERS FIREFOX, NATIVE AND BOAT, NATIVE HAS A READER, BOAT DOESNT BUT HAS OTHER COOL FEATURES AND FIREFOX I WAS TOLD CAN SYNC BOOKMARKS. SO 3 BROWSERS IT IS.
14) OEM built in Calendar -- when editing or entering an event, when it comes to setting the event date, only the date numbers are visible as choices. There is no visible option for the day of the week.
So if I want to set an appointment for next thursday, I cannot choose Thursday, I have to count number of days and try to correlate the day manually, which seems odd.
Ed. 10:34pm est 8/15/12 - I'm still stuck on this one, haven't tried any other calendar program yet, and after my experience with K9 and Go Sms pro, I must confess I am not enamored of the idea of abandoning the rest of the functionality of the oem calendar which I enjoy, namely the agenda view.
STATUS: *UNSOLVED. *CHANGING AN EVENT TO A WEDNESDAY 4 WEEKS FROM NOW IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT CLOSING THE EVENT YOU ARE EDITING AND LOOKING IN THE MONTHLY CALENDAR TO SEE WHAT THE DATE NUMBER IS.
15. EMAIL - k9 email which everyone says is the best, seems to not have email notification counter in the badge. i noticed that the old email program shows the unread count and after burrowing through pages of menus and sub menus i can't seem to find a setting for unread count in K9. I may have missed it, but without that count, i don't know whether i have mail or not, so its kind of important.
STATUS: STATUS: NATIVE MAIL HAS THE UNREAD INDICATOR ON THE BADGE, K9 HAS THE THREADED VIEW SO I USE 2 EMAIL APPS
16. SMS - I also had the similar experience with SMS - I really wanted to find a cooler, more robust app than the native oem SMS app (the Poweramp of SMS apps, if you will. ) So I tried a few and ended up with GO SMS pro, but after a while I missed the unread indicator on the badge and also every time I picked a theme, the contrast and brightness weren't dialed in as correctly as the OEM sms app, so --- i ended up trashing the others and went back to OEM messenger ...
STATUS: BACK TO THE NATIVE APP, STILL CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO SEE PHOTS THAT PEOPLE SEND ME. IMAGE DOES NOT SHOW UP ONLY A DOWNLOAD BUTTON THAT WHEN I PRESS DOWNLOADS TO A PLACE UNKNOWN TO ME AND DEFINITELY NOT TO THE DOWNLOADS FOLDER.
17. Trouble in paradise - today the S3 started freezing on me - or getting super sluggish and freezing on calls. It messed me up a couple of times in my business communications which made me realize something I had never thought about with iOS apps: Namely, I can't just go installing new apps from the Google Play store and expecting the phone to always work. I need to look a little more closely at each app and do research. As it stands now, I assume will have to do a reset of some sort, which makes me wonder --- which backup scheme did i end up using ? I think I have Kies, Backup Assistant, Google, & the Samsung... Is there a way I can back out of the last installs ? I suppose Just go uninstall in order of last download ?
STATUS: MIRACULOUSLY STOPPED FREEZING.
19. This is a dumb one, butI can't figure it out. How do I turn off auto correct on the text ?
STATUS: SWITCHED TO SWIFT KEY KEYBOARD, MUCH BETTER AND I CAN OVERIDE THE AUTOTEXT EASILY
20. S3 started answering automatically, the calls come in, i dont pick up, but galaxy decides to pick up for me (oh joy !) this happened for 2 days until I searched and found that the answer lies in the extremely Illogical preferences > language input menu. Apparently Voice cmd for apps needs to be unselected. No reason for me to have ever selected it, so unselected it. It says its for USe voice commands to control device. Well I have not used any voicecommands to answer it actually auto answers in total silence.
STATUS: SOLVED
21. When I play back my verizon visual voice messages, if i hold the phone to my ear to listen, the message stops playing. Fun ! So I can only listen to voicemails on speaker phone.
STATUS: UNSOLVED
COMMENTARY:
THe iphone 5 is out, i know the iOS like the back of my hand, but am I giving up ???? No way -- I just hope that I can get this S3 to behave like MY phone one day, right now it still feels like it belongs to someone else and I'm still figuring out how to use it.
Here's my running list of what has me stumped for the moment :
1) backup - i saw backup assistant in settings, turned it on - but there is no mention of how to restore. After all the time and money I am spending customizing this thing, i want to be able to completely clone and one button restore the entire phone, c'est possible ?
STATUS: HAVENT DECIDED ON A BACK UP SCHEME YET
2) I have personal videos from all different sources including youtube rips but play movies (what kind of app name is that ?) plays some and video player (slightly better app name) plays others and it seems that the timing is off on some of the video player playback now. Now, gallery seems to be the best video player for my needs, it shows whats in each folder and seems to play with correct timing, I am just not clear what files it is reading or if it is scanning the whole phone and sd. Is there a better player i can use ? STATUS: AM STICKING WITH GALLERY AT LEAST I FEEL THAT EVERY VIDEO I HAVE IS IN THERE. MY VIDEOS ARE A JUMBLE IN MY S3 A BUNCH OF RANDOM FOLDERS SOMETHING CALLED UNSAVED_NOTES IM PRETTY SURE ITS ALL THERE, BUT IT AINT PRETTY
3) There seem to be too many ways to buy music, i see google play, all share, media hub, music hub play music and i like iTunes. Does this mean I have to choose one to play all music or will i have to switch to each player depending on where the music came from. that would be a real pain.
I have audio from most formats (lossless, mp3, wav, aiff, flac, aac and have added many of my own cover art over the years so would like to get the one player that will do the most.
STATUS: MY MUSIC COLLECTION IS A DISASTER, I HAVE LOADS OF MUSIC IN ALL FORMATS AND LOTS FROM ITUNES FROM MY MAC , NOW I HAVE GOOGLE PLAY PURCHASES, AND I USE SPOTIFY. POWER AMP HAS GIVEN ME WEIRD ALBUM, MIXED OTHERS COVERS, CREATED RANDOM FOLDERS AND WONT PLAY QUITE ABIT OF MY ITUNES PURCHASES.
4) Bluetooth --- i can pair everything but its very selective about connecting automatically, which kind of blows - i have two jam boxes and tune link in the car and each time i have to manually go to bluetooth settings to connect. I can see I am going to have to put a bluetooth short cut on my home screen. STATUS BLUETOOTH WORKING WELL EXCEPT IN CAR _ PHONE CALLS WILL NOT COME IN OVER BLUETOOTH AT ALL< NO WAY AT ALL
5) Synching -- i came from iCloud and have many macs so was very happy to see smooth sync work so, well smoothly for ical and address book.
STATUS - VERY HAPPY WITH SMOOTH SYNC FOR ICLOUD CONTACTS AND CALENDAR, STILL DONT HAVE BOOKMARKS SYNCED.
6) Email -- i don't use gmail ---is K9 really the only viable imap alternative for conversation view available ? STATUS: K9 BECAME A PAIN BECAUSE OF NO NEW MAIL INDICATOR ON THE BADGE SO I
USE NATIVE AND K9.
7) is there any way to wake the phone out of locked mode without touching it ? STATUS: NOT SURE YET
8) I had voice for double home tap, somehow I switched to google voice search, not quite sure how to get back. STATUS: AM USING GOOGLE VOICE AND S VOICE DEPENDING ON WHAT I WANT TO DO, BUT I FORGET WHICH ONE DOES WHAT FROM TIME TO TIME, ONLY ONE DOES EMAIL
9) moving music and movies to sd --- not sure where i have to move media files to, as far as folders are concerned, for all these different media apps to read them. Is there a standard place, or does android just look everywhere > STATUS: CREATED A FOLDER FOR MUSIC CALLED MUSIC, SEEMS TO WORK
10) Here's a silly one - is there anyway to map the back button to the left side and the menu to the right >? This lefty's thumb needs to be longer !
STATUS: NO CHANCE ON THIS ONE I BELIEVE UNLESS YOU ROOT
11) how can i get my iCloud bookmarks to sync - i have smooth sync for everything else cloud..
STATUS: UNSOLVED
13) Web browser -- do i really have to keep closing windows in order to open new ones ? I am getting an annoying message telling me to close windows -- is there any overide
STATUS: AM USING THREE BROWSERS FIREFOX, NATIVE AND BOAT, NATIVE HAS A READER, BOAT DOESNT BUT HAS OTHER COOL FEATURES AND FIREFOX I WAS TOLD CAN SYNC BOOKMARKS. SO 3 BROWSERS IT IS.
14) OEM built in Calendar -- when editing or entering an event, when it comes to setting the event date, only the date numbers are visible as choices. There is no visible option for the day of the week.
So if I want to set an appointment for next thursday, I cannot choose Thursday, I have to count number of days and try to correlate the day manually, which seems odd.
Ed. 10:34pm est 8/15/12 - I'm still stuck on this one, haven't tried any other calendar program yet, and after my experience with K9 and Go Sms pro, I must confess I am not enamored of the idea of abandoning the rest of the functionality of the oem calendar which I enjoy, namely the agenda view.
STATUS: *UNSOLVED. *CHANGING AN EVENT TO A WEDNESDAY 4 WEEKS FROM NOW IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT CLOSING THE EVENT YOU ARE EDITING AND LOOKING IN THE MONTHLY CALENDAR TO SEE WHAT THE DATE NUMBER IS.
15. EMAIL - k9 email which everyone says is the best, seems to not have email notification counter in the badge. i noticed that the old email program shows the unread count and after burrowing through pages of menus and sub menus i can't seem to find a setting for unread count in K9. I may have missed it, but without that count, i don't know whether i have mail or not, so its kind of important.
STATUS: STATUS: NATIVE MAIL HAS THE UNREAD INDICATOR ON THE BADGE, K9 HAS THE THREADED VIEW SO I USE 2 EMAIL APPS
16. SMS - I also had the similar experience with SMS - I really wanted to find a cooler, more robust app than the native oem SMS app (the Poweramp of SMS apps, if you will. ) So I tried a few and ended up with GO SMS pro, but after a while I missed the unread indicator on the badge and also every time I picked a theme, the contrast and brightness weren't dialed in as correctly as the OEM sms app, so --- i ended up trashing the others and went back to OEM messenger ...
STATUS: BACK TO THE NATIVE APP, STILL CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO SEE PHOTS THAT PEOPLE SEND ME. IMAGE DOES NOT SHOW UP ONLY A DOWNLOAD BUTTON THAT WHEN I PRESS DOWNLOADS TO A PLACE UNKNOWN TO ME AND DEFINITELY NOT TO THE DOWNLOADS FOLDER.
17. Trouble in paradise - today the S3 started freezing on me - or getting super sluggish and freezing on calls. It messed me up a couple of times in my business communications which made me realize something I had never thought about with iOS apps: Namely, I can't just go installing new apps from the Google Play store and expecting the phone to always work. I need to look a little more closely at each app and do research. As it stands now, I assume will have to do a reset of some sort, which makes me wonder --- which backup scheme did i end up using ? I think I have Kies, Backup Assistant, Google, & the Samsung... Is there a way I can back out of the last installs ? I suppose Just go uninstall in order of last download ?
STATUS: MIRACULOUSLY STOPPED FREEZING.
19. This is a dumb one, butI can't figure it out. How do I turn off auto correct on the text ?
STATUS: SWITCHED TO SWIFT KEY KEYBOARD, MUCH BETTER AND I CAN OVERIDE THE AUTOTEXT EASILY
20. S3 started answering automatically, the calls come in, i dont pick up, but galaxy decides to pick up for me (oh joy !) this happened for 2 days until I searched and found that the answer lies in the extremely Illogical preferences > language input menu. Apparently Voice cmd for apps needs to be unselected. No reason for me to have ever selected it, so unselected it. It says its for USe voice commands to control device. Well I have not used any voicecommands to answer it actually auto answers in total silence.
STATUS: SOLVED
21. When I play back my verizon visual voice messages, if i hold the phone to my ear to listen, the message stops playing. Fun ! So I can only listen to voicemails on speaker phone.
STATUS: UNSOLVED
COMMENTARY:
THe iphone 5 is out, i know the iOS like the back of my hand, but am I giving up ???? No way -- I just hope that I can get this S3 to behave like MY phone one day, right now it still feels like it belongs to someone else and I'm still figuring out how to use it.
