Android or iOS ?

[Moriarty]

Hi,

Thank you for allowing me to join your forum. As the title suggests I am proposing to join the android clan and thought I would buy a reasonable priced Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 tablet just to try and get the feel of the difference's. At first I was very impressed with how easy it was to use, and things were working very well until most of my downloaded apps just disappeared.
After several searches to try and find a solution I have not found a way to reinstate them to the home screen. Not being one to give up easily I thought I would ask your expert advice before I decide on what to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[SpookDroid]

Welcome to the Forums! You can try posting this in the right forum for the tablet so we can help better, but if it's a Tab S3, that's a very old model and apps may not be compatible with that Android version anymore.

That being said, they shouldn't have 'disappeared'. Are you saying they are not on your Homescreen anymore (i.e. shortcuts) or did they get uninstalled from your phone entirely (i.e. gone from the app drawer)?. Did you install the apps on an SD card?

 

[Moriarty]

Thank you for your reply. I am sorry if this post in not in the right place but I am sure to get there eventually. I bought this tablet as I am just testing the android system and did not want to spend a fortune before I knew if I could get along with it. Firstly the apps I installed are all compatible with this tablet as they all appeared on the home screen and were working fine until they just vanished. They are in my game launcher but I am unable to use them. I have not installed an SD card so I will and see if it makes any difference.

 

[SpookDroid]

If the apps are still on the phone, then somehow the 'shortcuts' were somehow removed from your Homescreen (on Android, you have the App Launcher which has a list of all your installed apps and you have a Home Screen or screens, which you can customize with widgets and folders and specific app shortcuts; it's the latter where your apps disappeared from).

Let's try this. Pick an app that disappeared. Then open the Play Store and search for that app. Does it say it's installed? Does it have a button to 'Open' the app? Do you get any errors when you say you can't use them? (Again, since this OS version is very old, apps can suddenly stop working if the devs update them and cease support for older models).

If you want to try Android on the latest versions without the investment, you can try this virtual tool from Samsung, or try a PC emulator instead.

Try Galaxy On Your Phone | Test Android UI | Samsung US

Nervous about switching to Android? Download the Try Galaxy App on your current phone to test out Samsung's OneUI, Galaxy apps, and AI features.

www.samsung.com

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! I moved this from the Introductions forum to the Tab S3 forum, since the thread is primarily asking about a problem with that device.

I agree with SpookDroid about potential issues with very old devices -- the Tab S3 was released 8 years ago, and stopped getting official system updates 6 years ago. Although Samsung makes generally excellent devices, your experience on such an old device will not represent the full function and performance of modern Android devices, and therefore will not be a fair comparison with iOS (unless you're considering a very old iPad that also stopped getting updates years ago).