What to do first when using a Smartphone for the first time?

[AC Question]

I just bought a smartphone "Samsung Galaxy J2" (yup its late but i used all my android apps on laptop via bluestacks). Now i want some android advice before starting my android phone experience.

1. Where should i save my contacts? im not saving them on my sim (got both new duplicates so they have 0 contacts) or sd card or phone as they can get lost or damaged, i thought of saving them on my gmail account them and will sync them to the phone that case if in case i lose my sim or phone i will still have my contacts and will keep 0 contacts on phone memory and sim, am i doing it right??

2. Should i use an anti virus or not? many people say that there is no need for them and they just make mobile slow. i should only use Ccleaner. If i should which anti virus is the best and can i use it with Ccleaner will they conflict?... or should i use only anti virus which has a good cleaner (plz recommend which is the best one which is available free).

3. What necessary apps would you recommend for better phone life and management.

4. Can i attach my phone to my laptop for data transfer or i should never do it even bluetooth as it can get me viruses?

5. Should i avoid transferring data by bluetooth from other mobiles so it dosent get viruses?

 

[Mooncatt]

1. I save my contacts to Google and it's been fairly painless.

2. Antivirus isn't a bad idea, especially when just starting out. The good news is Android is pretty secure by itself. There's always a risk with any electronics, but you don't have much to worry about unless you're downloading apps from random sites. Stick to Google Play or Amazon's app store and chances are you'll be fine. I would avoid any sort of cleaner, optimizer, battery booster, and other such apps that kill apps to free up memory. Android uses RAM differently than something like Windows, and those kinds of apps actually hurt performance rather than improve them. Android Central has a great article explaining this in detail at http://m.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care

3. To piggyback off what I just linked, I tend to avoid performance boosting apps and instead focus on removing/disabling unwanted bloatware. There are some apps that manage things like automatically turning Wi-Fi on when at home, limiting when apps can sync, and that sort of thing. Qualcomm's battery Guru is one such app, but it's only for devices with their Snapdragon line of processors.

4. I'm not aware of any problems transferring to and from a laptop. People USB tether all the time.

5. As long as you know what you are transferring, you should be fine. You'll be prompted to accept or decline any incoming files, so it will be easy to tell if anything fishy is going on.

 

[Golfdriver97]

+1 on Mooncatt's post