Galaxy Note 2 - Initial Setup & Best Practices

[AZBrowncoat]

Former iPhone user that transitioned to WP8/Lumia 920
...due too various hardware/software issues with the Lumia 920 I ordered a GN2 from AT&T and was wondering if there is a suggested procedure for setting up an Android phone. Although I'd always used any iPhone out of the box I thought I had heard that it was best to do a hard reset on any Android phone out-of-the-box before using it the first time. Is that true?

Also curious if there is anything else I need to be aware of during the setup process.

I did a search and found the following but it seems to be pretty basic:
How to Set Up Your New Android Phone

...any suggestions?

 

[TheOtherBill]

Hard reset won't hurt, but I can't say it's necessary in my experience, but I've only had 2 out of the box.

Suggestions:
Got a gmail account? If not, you'll need a Google account. While you're waiting for your new phone, open one and import all your contacts to Google.
Browse the forum for your carrier so you'll know in advance what to expect.
Spend some time on youtube at Lucid Mike's channel. There's lots of Good Stuff there and you'll want to know it all eventually.
Create an account at Samsung to register your phone with them, you'll get a half-price coupon for their store for accessories.

Best Suggestion: RTFM.

 

[AZBrowncoat]

Best Suggestion: RTFM.

Thanks for the link and helpful suggestions

 

[jneusch]

Hard reset won't hurt, but I can't say it's necessary in my experience, but I've only had 2 out of the box.

Suggestions:
Got a gmail account? If not, you'll need a Google account. While you're waiting for your new phone, open one and import all your contacts to Google.
Browse the forum for your carrier so you'll know in advance what to expect.
Spend some time on youtube at Lucid Mike's channel. There's lots of Good Stuff there and you'll want to know it all eventually.
Create an account at Samsung to register your phone with them, you'll get a half-price coupon for their store for accessories.

Best Suggestion: RTFM.

I have never done a factory reset out of the box either, but I can't see where it would hurt. I have had several and used them right out of the box. Like theotherbill said, import your iOS contacts into Google. This little bit of extra effort up front is well worth it. Your contacts will all show up when you log in to your Google account as you are going through the initial set up on your device.

Welcome to Note 2!

 

[rankar7]

Former iPhone user that transitioned to WP8/Lumia 920
...due too various hardware/software issues with the Lumia 920 I ordered a GN2 from AT&T and was wondering if there is a suggested procedure for setting up an Android phone. Although I'd always used any iPhone out of the box I thought I had heard that it was best to do a hard reset on any Android phone out-of-the-box before using it the first time. Is that true?

Also curious if there is anything else I need to be aware of during the setup process.

I did a search and found the following but it seems to be pretty basic:
How to Set Up Your New Android Phone

...any suggestions?

I like using another launcher instead of the native touchwiz because you can get more rows, columns, etc. Nova Launcher is great so is GO Launcher EX.

But like i've said in other forums, you're going to find that you need an app for this and an app for that... things that iOS did natively. Like on here, people can't decide which backup/restore program to use (and it depends if you're rooted or not). You'll probably be hating the samsung native keyboard too, so you'll probably start looking at swiftkey. You get my point. But don't get to far in deep so quickly, but you'll probably find too that you'll have to do a master reset for something. This is the required panacea step before moving on to the real solution.

After six weeks, two master resets, one replaced note2, I'm getting close to having a note2 that's supposed to act like a reliable tool. Now if I can only solve the slow wifi problem when I come into a wifi area from cell data...

 

[AZBrowncoat]

But like i've said in other forums, you're going to find that you need an app for this and an app for that... things that iOS did natively..

Yeah...finding that out - knew going in that there was some things that I was going to have to get used to or find solutions for.

I figured I was going to be doing a lot of reading (forums, web searches) to figure stuff out. I just want to be as ready as possible in case my wife decides to make the jump as well.

After one day with my Nokia Lumia 920 my wife told me point blank she wasn't going to switch I had so many issues with it...

 

[rankar7]

After one day with my Nokia Lumia 920 my wife told me point blank she wasn't going to switch I had so many issues with it...

Haha... Same experience. It's been six weeks now for me and just the other day I was cursing the gn2 because wifi was crawling at 0.10mbps. So she asked me if I was ready to switch back, because after seeing all the problems I've had and the time spent on it she just said no way I have better things to do with my time.

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