So I just made the switch from webOS to android, trading in my Palm Pre for the LG Marquee (running 2.3.4 Gingerbread). I knew I was going to miss the sliding physical keyboard (I have) and some of the UI choices in WebOS (although actually I miss cards less than I expected). But I'm finding that android just does some really basic things much worse than webOS out of the box. Thankfully, unlike webOS android actually has a huge app market. Unfortunately for me this market is so huge I don't know what to choose.
My biggest frustration right now is how Android handles texting. To put it bluntly, the stock messaging app in android sucks, and frankly texting in Android is light years behind webOS. I'm just going to run through the features I miss, and my sincere hope is that somewhere out there is an app that does this.
1. I send out group texts all the time, sometimes to predetermined lists, often spontaneous groups anywhere from 2-20 people at a time. In WebOS this is is handled elegantly as each conversation is maintained separately per contact. So if I send out a text to John, Sally, and Joe there will be a new text in each one of our separate conversations from me in our threaded conversation. In android these get grouped into a single thread named John, Sally, Joe and I can't even see who all was in that group, and it is impossible to follow one conversation to another. So if Joe responds to me it appears in a thread of all texts we have exchanged, but WITHOUT the group text from me in that thread. Is there any way to change this?
2. I'm alright with how notifications for new messages are handled with the windowshade effect. What drives me nuts is that when I go into the messaging app it shows a number by each conversation, but this number is not the number of new messages it is the number of TOTAL messages. Which is not only cluttering and useless information, I really want to see right away if there are any unread messages when I open the message view.
3. This is a minor point, but I'm using to seeing texts from me in one color and texts to me in another color. Is there some way to do this in Android?
I've tried GroupSMS Pro so far and it really doesn't solve any of these issues. What other options would people reccomend?
My biggest frustration right now is how Android handles texting. To put it bluntly, the stock messaging app in android sucks, and frankly texting in Android is light years behind webOS. I'm just going to run through the features I miss, and my sincere hope is that somewhere out there is an app that does this.
1. I send out group texts all the time, sometimes to predetermined lists, often spontaneous groups anywhere from 2-20 people at a time. In WebOS this is is handled elegantly as each conversation is maintained separately per contact. So if I send out a text to John, Sally, and Joe there will be a new text in each one of our separate conversations from me in our threaded conversation. In android these get grouped into a single thread named John, Sally, Joe and I can't even see who all was in that group, and it is impossible to follow one conversation to another. So if Joe responds to me it appears in a thread of all texts we have exchanged, but WITHOUT the group text from me in that thread. Is there any way to change this?
2. I'm alright with how notifications for new messages are handled with the windowshade effect. What drives me nuts is that when I go into the messaging app it shows a number by each conversation, but this number is not the number of new messages it is the number of TOTAL messages. Which is not only cluttering and useless information, I really want to see right away if there are any unread messages when I open the message view.
3. This is a minor point, but I'm using to seeing texts from me in one color and texts to me in another color. Is there some way to do this in Android?
I've tried GroupSMS Pro so far and it really doesn't solve any of these issues. What other options would people reccomend?
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