Help with G3 before we switch to Galaxy S5

A

AC Question

My GF just received a LG G3 monday. She came from a Motorola Maxx. She is old school about technology and doesn't like change wants it to work simply and fast. She would like it not to lock up and better camera and battery. Her droid just totally died after about 3 years.

Ironically she hates iphone but everything she wants in a phone and being a total non-power user she should be in an iphone but the 1 thing she hates is you can not customize the home screen with widgets and shortcuts and she hates itunes. I told her itunes is non-issue now with cloud but anyway.....

I am a 5s user but really love the G3 over the S5. I am a power use and if iphone drops the ball on the new 6 launch I might switch.

Now a few things she hates about the phone. Since she complains about new technology I told her she would hate learning about a new iphone or galaxy just as much but there are a few show stoppers that I wonder if you guys can anwser.

Speed: She says it is very laggy like her droid between like email and text apps. I am surprised it is the fastes CPU out tehre. does the ART thing work to speed it up?

Circle Case: She hates the circle case concept. She has a regular case but the phone calls all appear in a circle on the main screen can she make it a normal face to fill the screen?

Power Button: She hates the knock feature. well the off part. She knocks it off but always opens the clock or alarm and when on her desk picking it up to hit back button is pretty dumb. This right here could be a deal breaker any tips to use the phone without knock? Or better?

No Menu Button for Apps: Her droid had a menu/settings part for the app you were in to find additional features for messaging say. There is non here. she has to go back and search for it and she says most apps do not have additional settings like her droid

Home screen is far left. She is use to the middle she feels like she has lost one page since it is swipe the other way.

Verizon Apps; like messaging suck and now all her text go to her work email as well and she can not turn off even though she deleted the app.

Camera: In the commercial they show the camera touch and talk pictures (appears with flash too) of the rolling purple ball. In real life the flash use at night is NO WAY THAT FAST. like 2-3 seconds to focus before snap. Now with no flash it fast but not good as good picture without the flash. Curious are there other settings for this? Can you turn off the OIS? I compared to my Iphone 5s and the picture quality is definitely better with and without flash much sharper but NO WAY is it faster to take a picture then the iphone maybe same or slightly slower with flash. And not sure about the laser claim, it does focus fast, I guess, but the shutter speed is not any faster in auto mode. I still get very blurred motions with this phone as compared to iphone or galaxy. With faster autofocus I assume the shutter would be faster too

Size: this is deal breaker for her too, not a lot of case option and although she loves the look of the phone and she has big hands she still feels it is uncomfortable to hold with no case, feels point after long use to hold, she might try a case before she returns to make it a little thicker.

Screen: Great screen but also the 5.1 of the s5 is not small or a slouch either. I love the G3 screen but one think we both noticed is the brightness. even inside at 100% the g3 looks so dark compared to Galaxy?

So a few deal breakers for her, I still might try it down the road in a month but the above things I would like to know are they fixable? Can any android be rooted to say have a droid or touchwiz features if not happy with LG interface? Is there a new Samsung s6 coming out? what is in store for it?
 

Golfdriver97

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Welcome to the forums.
A lot of questions here, I will try to hit some of them (I do not have a G3).

Almost any Android can be rooted. The question is, how difficult is it. Verizon tends to lock down phones even more than OEMs, making root more difficult. I think some of this stuff can be countered without root access.

Homescreens: I would suggest a different launcher. Perhaps Nova. Nova can allow freedom to move/reassign where the home screen is. Sometimes, a different launcher can speed up a device (from what I understood, the G3 launcher was quite light to begin with).

Increasing speed: If you go to Settings>scroll down to about phone>tap build number 7 or 8 times, that will open up developer options. Back out one screen, and into developer options (should be the next entry above about device) and click on it. Scroll down till you see animations. Tick each one (should be 3) down to about half. See if that helps the speed.

Speed part 2: You can try disabling some apps that you don't use. They are probably sucking up too much RAM and the lag you see is Android killing apps to make room for more RAM to launch the app you need. http://forums.androidcentral.com/ambassador-guides-tips-how-tos/325138-guide-how-disable-apps.html

Screen: The darker screen may be a counter to the screen size with power consumption. Your screen is always going to be your biggest battery drain. The less bright you can keep it, the longer your battery will last between charges. This may have been set lower at the factory.

As for the Droid or TouchWiz (TW) features, that isn't really possible. You might find a launcher that can mimic some of the stuff, but for instance, TW is a Samsung thing, and can only be installed on proper Samsung devices.

I would start with Nova and go from there. Try as much as you can before following other suggestions I made.

More info on Nova: http://forums.androidcentral.com/ambassador-guides-tips-how-tos/299378-guide-nova-launcher.html
 

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