[niv1981]

My old phone just went off one night (battery wasn't dead) and I couldn't get it to turn on or anything. After seeing there was no damage to the phone at the local Verizon store, they ordered me a new one. I have it and have just gotten it working. I put the SD & SIM cards in this phone, and I'm not sure if one of those is supposed to have my old apps on it, or not... I'm far from an e-genius. Anyway, I have none of my apps that I downloaded from the Google Play Store, so I went to the Play Store, but it keeps saying it can't connect and retry. That isn't working. I cleared the cache then force stopped, and after that didn't work, I cleared the data and force stopped. I read to do that on another thread here from last year. It's still not working. While going to Play Store in settings, I have to go to "All" after selecting Application Manager, because there is nothing under Downloaded or SD Card, should that be the case? I really need to get into the Play Store to download the apps I can remember having on my old phone, but I'm clueless as to what to try next to make it work. There are probably more things that I just can't think of right now. I'll either add here later or create a new thread. Thank you in advance for the help!

[gozirra]

Sounds like you don't have data configured yet. Is Airplane Mode on maybe? That would prevent it from working. Maybe connect it to wifi if you can't get your cellular plan to hook up?

[niv1981]

gozirra,

First, thank you for your help/response. I double-checked and Airplane Mode is not on. I just tried with wifi and it was also a no go. I forgot to mention that the internet does work, in spite of the trouble with the Play Store not connecting. Oh, I did try doing the date configuring, but I can't find the option to turn Mobile Data on in the drop down menu, and I can't find on my phone where I can turn on Use Packet Data. These were two things I read to do. To say this whole process has become very frustrating would be an understatement.

[gozirra]

While at the Home screen, tap the Menu button, then Settings, then More Settings, then Mobile Networks, first checkbox is Mobile data. Check that. Then below that, Network Mode, tap the words then ensure it has LTE/CDMA checked.
Now back to the Settings page. Scroll down past the More Settings option you chose earlier, and make sure Blocking Mode is not on. then scroll down a bit more to the Accounts section and make sure you have a Google account configured. If not, scroll down a little more and choose Add Account.
Hopefully somewhere along the line you're fixed now. If not, respond back and we'll see what else may not be set right. Good luck!

[niv1981]

Got it! The problem was the LTE/CDMA wasn't selected, the option above it was. Just so you can know, that was the only thing wrong, Mobile Data was check, Blocking Mode wasn't on, and my Gmail account was configured, so if anyone else asks you in the future. I appreciate your help more than you know!

[gozirra]

Excellent! Glad you got it working again.

[niv1981]

Okay, I just realized there is something else going on, and I'm not sure if anything can be done about it, but I really hope so. All of my pictures (the ones I've taken, ones that were sent and I downloaded, all of them) and videos (same situation as pictures) and everything that I saved from texts, etc., are not on my new Galaxy s3. Since I had to send my old, broken phone back within 5 days to avoid paying for the new one, I wouldn't have been able to do anything, and especially with the old phone not turning on. Between photos, videos, other downloads, etc., there were hundreds. A good number were important to me, of family and whatnot. Is it all gone for good? Do the SD & SIM cards not save this stuff? Please forgive my ignorance on that. Of course the apps weren't there either, but that's not as big of a deal, since I'm just downloading them as I remember the ones I had on my old phone, but the other I would truly hate to lose. Is there anything I can do? Thanks again in advance.

[GSDer]

Do the SD & SIM cards not save this stuff?

The SD card will save your pictures/videos if you select that as the storage location in the Camera app, but you have to explicitly change that setting.

I thought the SIM card could store your contacts, but I didn't think it would save your SMS/MMS history - for that you'd have to make a backup using the Kies software on your computer.

Without the old phone you're generally out of luck.

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk

[gozirra]

GSDer speaks the truth, if you didn't back them up on some cloud service and/or have the camera configured to save them on the external SD card. You can check that by opening the App drawer, scroll to the My Files icon, click on SD Memory Card, then click on DCIM, then Camera. If you'd configured your Camera app to save externally, this is where your pics are stored. If not, sorry, they're probably gone forever.

[niv1981]

GSDer & gozirra,

Thank you very much. I thought I had saved it on cloud, but now I'm second guessing myself. When I got my new s3, there were only 16 contacts on my phone, but I had over 100 on my old phone. Since the guy at the local Verizon store was exactly zero help, I was left to calling Verizon's help number. Not being able to talk later that evening after becoming sick, someone made the call for me and let me know what they said to do. I ended up with all of my contacts, which I assume is from my SIM card. Having a brain fart or something, I didn't to have them talk to the customer service rep. on speaker phone so I could hear. Anyway, I'm going to call them back and find out about that (since they were able to access my account/figure that much out) and see if I can find anything out about the rest. I'll update here whatever I find out in case I learn anything new (or not) to hopefully help others in the future. Thanks again!