Noob questions about Camera and Chrome, etc.

[jontalk]

OK.. got my beautiful garnet red GS3 late Friday. Got email set up, installed Swiftkey 3 free, Chrome, Juice Defender and some other basic apps. Calibrated the battery yesterday and while I didn't use the phone a whole lot today except for a couple of 20 min calls and taking some pictures, 21+ hours later I still have 58% battery!

So the questions are this:

1. When I turn the phone on and swipe the camera icon I put on the lock screen to open it, what I see for a second is my home page but with a black background and then the camera opens. That shouldn't happen should it?

2. I took a bunch of photos of which none turned out that great. When I go into the gallery the photos are there along with the same ones in another area called uploads with the Chrome icon in the gallery. I deleted all but one of the photos I took but ALL of them in the gallery with the Chrome icon are still there and I don't see anyway to delete them.

3. Also, I was under the impression that if I installed Chrome on my phone it would sync bookmarks with my PC which also uses Chrome.. But no sync.. Do I need to install another app for this?

I also notice the stock browser has Yahoo as the home page and the brightness is really low and very blue. Does anyone use the stock browser?

Sorry but these are noob questions and just want to make sure there's nothing going on with the phone so early in the game.

Thanks.

 

[FunkMasterJoe]

I have the garnet red as well, love it. I can't answer all your questions. But as for #1, mine does the same thing when I swipe the camera so I'm assuming that's normal lol.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Android Central Forums

 

[jontalk]

Am growing a bit frustrated here..

I set up the stock email app with my four accounts of which the primary is Yahoo mail. I receive emails fine, but many of the emails I get to my Yahoo account I am NOT able to view at all. And the app doesn't allow any graphics which in many cases are the way the content of the email is rendered.

And I also have to say that the AMOLED screen is nice while indoors, but is VERY challenging to view outdoors. Coming from a IPS/LCD screen like an iPhone its a bit challenging. I really want to have this work out so am looking for some pointers, and advice.

Thanks.

 

[Tkbredx]

As for deleting things in the gallery you can hold any album or picture down. It will select that picture or album. It will also allow you to just touch the other pictures and albums to delete multiple at a time.

As for chrome. It does key you sync tabs and bookmarks...

First make sure you have auto sync on. If it is not on it will not work. If your signed into chrome in both the computer and the phone it should work now.

On mobile chrome just go to the new tab section you can click the star for bookmarks and the arrows/folder for syncing with computer.

On computer chrome go to the bottom right of a new tab you should find other devices it will allow you to sync tabs and if you look in the book marks bar you should see the book mark folders you made on your phone.

If it still doesn't work then take a look at the settings on both the app and the computer. Also make sure chrome in the computer is the latest version.

Hope I was able to help

 

[jontalk]

OK.. still not getting this.. In the Gallery, it displays albums taken with the camera with the camera icon. And then it has albums with a Chrome icon that say Instant upload. As I said, I took a bunch of photos that were in an album and deleted all but one. But the album of the SAME photos with the Instant upload/Chrome icon cannot be deleted. If I touch the album there's no way to drag it to delete it as you say.

As far as Chrome goes, it IS syncing with my PC, but I can't figure out what to touch to view my bookmarks. And that's the frustration. When I touch the arrows to sync it shows what's open on my PC, but I don't see any icons for bookmarks that are synced.. Sorry.

Update: Found an app that syncs the bookmarks after doing some research, so that's handled. Also figured out that the instant upload album is part of the syncing, so I went into my Google+ account and deleted the photos. I guess when you are synced to your Google account every photo you take is automatically uploaded which sort of sucks since there's lot of photos we take that may not be good like all of them yesterday. I wonder if there's a way to stop photo syncing?

 

[jontalk]

I know this is a different question, but just wondering if anyone knows whether installing the Facebook app will import all the FB friends contact info into my contacts. If it DOES do that I'm not going to install it. It didn't on my old iPhone, but I've heard about problems on Android with this. Thanks.

 

[beavo451]

It does but you can disable it.

 

[Tkbredx]

For chrome next to the folders with the arrow there is a star. That's the book marks section. If you have auto sync on your book marks from the computer should be in the star section.

And Facebook can sync pics and contacts if you want it to but you can choose not to.

 

[erwaso]

OK.. got my beautiful garnet red GS3 late Friday. Got email set up, installed Swiftkey 3 free, Chrome, Juice Defender and some other basic apps. Calibrated the battery yesterday and while I didn't use the phone a whole lot today except for a couple of 20 min calls and taking some pictures, 21+ hours later I still have 58% battery!

So the questions are this:

1. When I turn the phone on and swipe the camera icon I put on the lock screen to open it, what I see for a second is my home page but with a black background and then the camera opens. That shouldn't happen should it?

2. I took a bunch of photos of which none turned out that great. When I go into the gallery the photos are there along with the same ones in another area called uploads with the Chrome icon in the gallery. I deleted all but one of the photos I took but ALL of them in the gallery with the Chrome icon are still there and I don't see anyway to delete them.

3. Also, I was under the impression that if I installed Chrome on my phone it would sync bookmarks with my PC which also uses Chrome.. But no sync.. Do I need to install another app for this?

I also notice the stock browser has Yahoo as the home page and the brightness is really low and very blue. Does anyone use the stock browser?

Sorry but these are noob questions and just want to make sure there's nothing going on with the phone so early in the game.

Thanks.

I'm so happy you choose a phone bud!

All I can help with is chrome. Make sure you have an email address connected to it and sign in on pc and sgs3. On your sgs3 look in the desktop bookmarks folder for them

Sent from my HTC One X

 

[jontalk]

OK.. when I open a new tab in Chrome and tap the star, at the top is says Bookmarks and then Mobile Bookmarks but there's nothing there. I have been using Chrome on my PC for years and have the Chrome to Phone extension installed and both devices are logged in. I know the sync is working since it will show email updates etc. but it does not show the bookmarks. As I said, I installed the CMarks Lite app which successful synced up my bookmarks, but I thought it would be automatic Chrome mobile.

Two more questions:

1. Does anyone use Avast or other anti-virus? I imagine it would be a big battery drain since it's running in the background all the time.

2. I really like the design of the stock email app, but it doesn't support HTML format viewing which really sucks. I installed Aquamail but I don't like the design that much and would prefer using the Samsung app, but cannot.

Erwaso, thanks. It takes some getting used to but I love the Swiftkey keyboard and how much I can do with the Android phone over iOS. But I will say the screen is very challenging to look at outside. Not sure if that's the deal breaker but it might be. Stay tuned.

 

[erwaso]

OK.. when I open a new tab in Chrome and tap the star, at the top is says Bookmarks and then Mobile Bookmarks but there's nothing there. I have been using Chrome on my PC for years and have the Chrome to Phone extension installed and both devices are logged in. I know the sync is working since it will show email updates etc. but it does not show the bookmarks. As I said, I installed the CMarks Lite app which successful synced up my bookmarks, but I thought it would be automatic Chrome mob

Erwaso, thanks. It takes some getting used to but I love the Swiftkey keyboard and how much I can do with the Android phone over iOS. But I will say the screen is very challenging to look at outside. Not sure if that's the deal breaker but it might be. Stay tuned.

Maybe set brightness to 100%. I've seen threads that swear out doesn't affect battery life.

There's nothing in your "Desktop Bookmarks" tab in the gs3?

Sent from my HTC One X

 

[jontalk]

OK.. found it.. I just wasn't familiar with the Chrome mobile app so didn't realize the "Bookmarks' was actually the desktop bookmarks. All good now.

And I had the brightness set on Auto when I used the phone outdoors Sunday, so I unchecked it and moved the brightness up. Am getting GREAT battery life though.. Right now its 42% left after over 22 hours. Will see if the brightness affects the battery. Thanks for the tips.

 

[Tkbredx]

Ok so when you see bookmarks then mobile bookmarks. Click bookmarks. Then you should see desktop bookmarks and mobile bookmarks. Click your desktop bookmarks folder and you should see everything.

Mobile bookmarks are the ones on your phone that you bookmark when sync isn't on.

I use look out anti virus scanner. No battery drain at all.

I've heard k-9 is one of the best email apps you might want to try that one out.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Android Central Forums

 

[jontalk]

Tkbredx.. thanks for the advice. Since I use Avast on my PC with amazing results, I installed it on my phone too.. BTW the reviews for Avast are better than Lookout, but am sure they're both good.

I installed Aquamail though the UI with K-9 looks very much the same. I still prefer the stock email app, but after chatting with Samsung support (which was pretty lame), they tell me there is now way to enable viewing emails in HTML format, which really sucks. Why would they develop an email app that doesn't support HTML? I don't get it.

Regardless thanks for the help. Each day I'm enjoying the GS3 more and now that I've made the settings changes for animation and transition the phone flies!

 

[Tkbredx]

Good to know you're enjoying it more and more.

Avast does seem like it is better. I've just had look out installed for a while. Plus quite frankly the Avast icon in the notification bar is ugly as hell. Lol. Really messes up the look of the phone. Haha

If it's running in the background why do we have to have a non removable icon in the notification bar anyway? It's just ugly and takes up space.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Android Central Forums