Switched from iphone - S3 kicking my butt.

[omoanya]

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.

 

[matttye]

1. Plug your phone in to your computer and backup using Kies.

2. Gallery scans everything as does video player. What you could try doing is going to the application manager (in settings), scroll to video player and clear data. This might help with the mistimed playback.

3. You can use any single player you like to play songs from multiple sources. Power amp is one of the most popular and most feature packed players.

4. Yeah, kinda annoying. I put a shortcut on my home screen using the "Tasker" app that enables Bluetooth and opens the Bluetooth selection window.

6. I'm not sure as I'm a gmail user, sorry.

7. Yes, of you login to Samsung Dive on your computer, you can locate your phone, remote lock/unlock, play a sound or remote wipe your phone. You have to login to your phone with a Samsung phone for this to work.

8. Did you install some kind of Bluetooth choosing app? That's the only way I know of to change from S voice to Google voice.

9. Anywhere. Android scans the whole card.

10. Not that I know of, but it's probably possible if you root your phone.

 

[omoanya]

wow thanks ! --- I downloaded power amp very cool player ...seems like it is showing audio for all my video files - i suppose i will need to keep video and audio in different folders, actually wish it would play the video as well then i wouldn't need anything else.

Downloading tasker now --- thanks for all the tips !

 

[jerofld]

1) Restore happens when you get a new phone (or factory reset your current phone) and log into your Google account during initial set up. If you do not log in during initial set up, the restore feature will not do anything. Kies can help to do it 'manually'.

2) It scans any folder that is not designated system or hidden. If you put movie files in /sdcard/Android/, music/movie players will generally not find it, as it's a system folder.

3) This was answered, so I'll skip this one

4) I've not had this problem. My S3 links automatically to my car and my bluetooth headphones if it senses them in range, which it does very quickly. Maybe you should re-pair them to attempt to fix it?

5) Is this a question or a comment?

6) K9 is the best non-Gmail app, IMO.

7) You can enable S-Voice to listen for your passphrase (Default is "Hi Galaxy") and it'll wake the phone and launch S-Voice. This drains the battery faster, however.

8) Go to Settings > Application Manager > All tab > Google Voice Search (or Voice Search) and then clear defaults.

9) Like #2, just in some folder that is not a system folder and is not hidden. Folders/files that start with a '.' are hidden. For example: '.folder' would be a hidden folder named 'folder'.

10) Save rooting your phone and doing some pretty tricky kernel tweaks or installing software button mods and reversing them, no.

 

[Easilyamused]

7) You can enable S-Voice to listen for your passphrase (Default is "Hi Galaxy") and it'll wake the phone and launch S-Voice. This drains the battery faster, however.

this works from the lock screen, however it won't wake the phone; you have to first wake it from sleep mode by pushing the home or power button (despite what the guy in the Samsung presentation video says).

 

[gqtrebor]

Being an Iphone user from the get go, I know how nice some of the features were to use.

Trying to find compensation for the way apple did things made the switch a bit frustrating for me.
I will say that icloud service still kicks googles butt. Though I have found programs that run the same things, I do wish there was one free program to run them all.

This might help you a bit if you were sold on the whole icloud thing.

1. download google calendar sync for outlook.
2. download go contact sync. for outlook
3. for pictures I'm not a big fan of picasa 3 but it does work. not as nice as photo stream though.

These programs will at least let you pretend your running icloud again

FYI for your #3 question try Tune sync. At least you can still itunes.....

 

[omoanya]

Thanks for the pointers and help !

1) Restore happens when you get a new phone (or factory reset your current phone) and log into your Google account during initial set up. If you do not log in during initial set up, the restore feature will not do anything. Kies can help to do it 'manually'.

2) It scans any folder that is not designated system or hidden. If you put movie files in /sdcard/Android/, music/movie players will generally not find it, as it's a system folder.

3) This was answered, so I'll skip this one

4) I've not had this problem. My S3 links automatically to my car and my bluetooth headphones if it senses them in range, which it does very quickly. Maybe you should re-pair them to attempt to fix it?

5) Is this a question or a comment?

6) K9 is the best non-Gmail app, IMO.

7) You can enable S-Voice to listen for your passphrase (Default is "Hi Galaxy") and it'll wake the phone and launch S-Voice. This drains the battery faster, however.

8) Go to Settings > Application Manager > All tab > Google Voice Search (or Voice Search) and then clear defaults.

9) Like #2, just in some folder that is not a system folder and is not hidden. Folders/files that start with a '.' are hidden. For example: '.folder' would be a hidden folder named 'folder'.

10) Save rooting your phone and doing some pretty tricky kernel tweaks or installing software button mods and reversing them, no.

 

[omoanya]

I don't use any google products except for search so I stayed away from the google syncing solutions and I have to say smooth sync completely and seamlessly handled iCloud contacts and ical syncing. Thanks for the tune sync tip, i will try it ..

Being an Iphone user from the get go, I know how nice some of the features were to use.

Trying to find compensation for the way apple did things made the switch a bit frustrating for me.
I will say that icloud service still kicks googles butt. Though I have found programs that run the same things, I do wish there was one free program to run them all.

This might help you a bit if you were sold on the whole icloud thing.

1. download google calendar sync for outlook.
2. download go contact sync. for outlook
3. for pictures I'm not a big fan of picasa 3 but it does work. not as nice as photo stream though.

These programs will at least let you pretend your running icloud again

FYI for your #3 question try Tune sync. At least you can still itunes.....

 

[omoanya]

Now my latest project is to figure out which search to use for which type of search -- svoice or the ics google voice search -- this seems to be the blessing and curse of android -- you have to make a conscious decision backed by research and experimentation (and maybe even drop a few bucks) for each and every function of the phone....except the dialer. Thats the one thing they figured people would just like to use without thinking about it -- lol !

So as luck would have it, ics google voice search will not interact with my contacts - any request to email text or call a name ends up being farmed out to the internet search. So I am not actually able to a fair analysis of which one to use until i figure out whats wrong with ics google voice search ..

 

[Bramsy]

Now my latest project is to figure out which search to use for which type of search -- svoice or the ics google voice search -- this seems to be the blessing and curse of android -- you have to make a conscious decision backed by research and experimentation (and maybe even drop a few bucks) for each and every function of the phone....except the dialer. Thats the one thing they figured people would just like to use without thinking about it -- lol !

So as luck would have it, ics google voice search will not interact with my contacts - any request to email text or call a name ends up being farmed out to the internet search. So I am not actually able to a fair analysis of which one to use until i figure out whats wrong with ics google voice search ..

go with Jelly Bean's search. it's amazing! not so sure how you would go about it without rooting though. s voice is sh*t

 

[scooter1942]

if you get dropbox you can set it to auto-upload all your photos and i think videos too

 

[omoanya]

and the list goes on

how can i get my iCloud bookmarks to sync - i have smooth sync for everything else cloud..

Between Samsung, Google and verizon's back up schemes, which should i choose, currently i think they are all running..i see backup assistant plus working a lot, whatever that is ..

 

[gqtrebor]

You can't sync icloud. i cloud is a apple product, download google chrome. that will sync your bookmarks for you.....

 

[omoanya]

and the list goes on and on !

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

14) built in Calendar -- when editing and event / choosing the date only the date numbers are visible as choices, not the day, so if I want to set an appointment for next thursday, I have to count number of days and try to correlate the day manually ? Is this for real...?

 

[roush611]

I have one question/comment. If you are going to jump to android that is Google based, why are you not going to use any of their products? As you are finding out it will make the transition much more difficult. If you use gmail it is going to act just like iCloud as far as your contacts and calendar issues go. Then you can use Google drive to do all your pictures and stuff...

 

[Rastaman-FB]

and the list goes on and on !

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

14) built in Calendar -- when editing and event / choosing the date only the date numbers are visible as choices, not the day, so if I want to set an appointment for next thursday, I have to count number of days and try to correlate the day manually ? Is this for real...?

13) well if you have a huge amount of windows on a mac or a pc your browser will use up loads of memory and cpu and start to lag. its common practice to close the ones you are not using, you can use a different browser like dolphin browser which is more like google chrome


14) are you referring to Splanner? if you are then i dont know what you are on about. i created an event on a visible day of the month (the + sign at the top of the screen). when i created it i could see the dat and date of the even from and to and with time
just to check i wasnt going mad i saved it, exited, closed it opened it and edited it and its there.
are you sure you are using the samsun app?


it seems to me by reading through this thread that you are willing to be open minded but when you have to rethink a way to do things different to apples way they you get frustrated.

Ive used apple products for a while and I get just as frustrated with those products as you do with android ones. its what you are used too i suppose.

android is different. it gives you much more controll over everything you want to do.
something you want like isync etc just cannot be done as apple do not use an open api to let other products connect to it.

the reason itunes works with apple for media and music is because it converts the file format to an apple format.
android is an os not a package, it doesnt require you to install and use software on the pc if you want music/video
there is nothing stopping you from using itunes to purchase music and videos from the store then transfering the files to the S3 via the cable or use a media sync program
its best for itunes to keep the music in mp3 format though as apples codec reduces sound quality and isnt always compatible with other devices.

most of your issues isnt because of android but because of apple locking things down in a way that you still feel forced to use their product.


again nothing against apple at all, i actually like some of their stuff and their marketing is second to none. this is a business, they have to do things their way to protect their market

 

[JunBringer]

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.

I prefer to buy from Google Play if they have what I'm looking for, if not I'd get it from Amazon Mp3. I see you got PowerAmp, which IMO and most every one else's is the best music player on Android.

Like some have said above, it's tough to go from one ecosystem to another for sure, but I think with time and patience you'll find that it's worth it coming aboard over here with Google, as everything is more open and customizable. Good luck dude!

 

[aznguyen316]

I'm a big iTunes guy for ratings, playcount etc. Anyway try this for 3)

The Best Way to Synchronize Android With iTunes | Android.AppStorm

 

[omoanya]

I have one question/comment. If you are going to jump to android that is Google based, why are you not going to use any of their products? As you are finding out it will make the transition much more difficult. If you use gmail it is going to act just like iCloud as far as your contacts and calendar issues go. Then you can use Google drive to do all your pictures and stuff...

good observation, i actually never new about google being embedded all throughout android.. i never pay attention to google since i only use their search.

the smooth sync works perfectly so i have no problems with my contacts or calendar syncing with iCloud... its all the other little hurdles that get frustrating ...

 

[omoanya]

13) well if you have a huge amount of windows on a mac or a pc your browser will use up loads of memory and cpu and start to lag. its common practice to close the ones you are not using, you can use a different browser like dolphin browser which is more like google chrome

THANKS ILL CHECK DOLFIN



14) are you referring to Splanner? if you are then i dont know what you are on about. i created an event on a visible day of the month (the + sign at the top of the screen). when i created it i could see the dat and date of the even from and to and with time
just to check i wasnt going mad i saved it, exited, closed it opened it and edited it and its there.
are you sure you are using the samsun app?

im referring to the calendar that comes installed on the s3, i didn't know about splanner, but will check it out... in the calendar when you hit plus + to add an event and go into the FROM or TO field it shows day followed by date i.e." wed 8/15/12 and populates it based on i suppose whatever date you happen to have selected in calendar, which is fine, but if you want to select another date
and click on the FROM or TO date, all you see is month date and year options to choose from ... so you need to look at another calendar if you want to say choose a tuesday a few weeks in the future .... i suppose i could navigate on the monthly view to the date i want and then enter the event.




it seems to me by reading through this thread that you are willing to be open minded but when you have to rethink a way to do things different to apples way they you get frustrated.

Agreed, that is sadly my only frame of reference



Ive used apple products for a while and I get just as frustrated with those products as you do with android ones. its what you are used too i suppose.

android is different. it gives you much more controll over everything you want to do.

this is the driving force behind my android adoption that and the amazing screen size on the s3.


something you want like isync etc just cannot be done as apple do not use an open api to let other products connect to it.

the reason itunes works with apple for media and music is because it converts the file format to an apple format.
android is an os not a package, it doesnt require you to install and use software on the pc if you want music/video
there is nothing stopping you from using itunes to purchase music and videos from the store then transfering the files to the S3 via the cable or use a media sync program
its best for itunes to keep the music in mp3 format though as apples codec reduces sound quality and isnt always compatible with other devices.

Yes, thats what I'm doing now --- media sync ..


most of your issues isnt because of android but because of apple locking things down in a way that you still feel forced to use their product.


again nothing against apple at all, i actually like some of their stuff and their marketing is second to none. this is a business, they have to do things their way to protect their market

my observation is that apple is very tightly integrated, especially if you want a phone that just up and runs and gets you up and running quickly. With S3 i am now on my 3rd week of configuring it -- i am being patient as i know its a learning curve...

 

[omoanya]

my observation is that apple is very tightly integrated, especially if you want a phone that just up and runs and gets you up and running quickly. With S3 i am now on my 3rd week of configuring it -- i am being patient as i know its a learning curve...

Sorry, Syncmate not Mediasync -- Syncmate offers a load of IOS sync plugins and so far so good. Right now I use gallery because it seems to show all movies and photos - haven't got into albums and sorting which hopefully won't be too difficult since they all seem to be in a jumble of sorts now.

 

[omoanya]

I prefer to buy from Google Play if they have what I'm looking for, if not I'd get it from Amazon Mp3. I see you got PowerAmp, which IMO and most every one else's is the best music player on Android.

Like some have said above, it's tough to go from one ecosystem to another for sure, but I think with time and patience you'll find that it's worth it coming aboard over here with Google, as everything is more open and customizable. Good luck dude!

Thanks Dude !

 

[omoanya]

Update to list of Newbie-Challenged Android Issues:

18. People send me photo via text and it arrives on my S3 as an MMS movie. I cannot save the photos or do anything with them since they are technically movies and not photos.

19. This is a dumb one, butI can't figure it out. How do I turn off auto correct on the text ?