Help my wife enjoy the phone

[Tokio_Love]

I am going to have to agree with most here, that she should return the S3 and get an Iphone. I tried to get my wife, daughter 1, and daughter 2 to get androids. I snapped out of my temporary insanity to discover that if they did get Androids I would be blamed for everything that went wrong, did not work, or did not meet their expectations. In addition, I would be constantly asked "how do you do this" or "why does android not do this", and so on........................I like my peace and quiet and as it stands I have happy girls. You are already seeing the signs of an unhappy wife. Remember the old saying "A happy wife, is a Happy household".

Now that was a good laugh, thanks for this,lol

 

[badbrad17]

Yesterday my wife picked up the SIII after being an iPhone user for the last 2 years (iPhone 4). She loved her iPhone but liked the bigger screen, so she decided to try out the SIII and she absolutely hates it so far. I convinced her to give it a few days before returning it, and I'm hoping people here can help with her complaints:

I will start by saying that some of the suggestions by people have been good, but I would like to chime in here for a second in order to hopefully shed a bit more detailed light on the situation. Number one, if your wife is like mine, she hates change. This is just a fact with some people. My wife currently has a Blackberry and has tried my phone but didn't like it because of the touch screen. Habits die hard, so I would encourage her that you can make her happy with a few changes if she is willing to let you take a day to do some adjustments on her S3.

In order to accomplish what she wants you would have to install a custom launcher. I prefer Nova Launcher, but Go Launcher has more available themes which will help the look and feel she is looking for. Go Launcher will in no way make her S3 lesser of a phone or more complicated. If anything it will make things more suited to her needs. If she wants the phone to be an exact duplicate of the iPhone then you are never going to make her happy, but with a few tweaks you should be able to set up her phone to operate very close to the experience she wants and still allow her to take advantage of the big screen. If you are not willing to make some of these changes you should return the phone and get her a iPhone 5.
Go Launcher: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e....launcherex&feature=nav_result&token=WUHkXu2k

1. She wants to see previews of her messages on the lock screen.
The only way she can have her messages viewable on the lock screen is to buy a Nexus 4 or to disable the lock screen and use Go SMS. Go SMS is a free app that works well with the GO Launcher and allows the pop up messaging. If she wants the lock screen on then she would need to slide to unlock the screen if she wants to see it. Go SMS also has an iPhone theme which will be perfectly suited to what she is used to. Installation is simple. and you can download the iPhone theme and change it in the settings options.
Get Go SMS: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...jb.gosms&feature=search_result&token=l2jaPRLZ
iPhone Theme: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...b3Ntc3Byby50aGVtZS5pcGhvbmUiXQ&token=wJfeHvLB..

2. She wants an easy way to put the phone on silent or vibrate (she really misses the hard toggle on iOS).
Download "silent toggle widget" it is a small button that switches from on to silent to vibrate by just clicking it. It's excellent. Or if she wants more toggle options I would suggest the Go Switch widget or Widgetsoid. These allow you to customize multiple options for turning off wifi, data, bluetooth, sync, volume/vibrate/silent etc.

Get Silent Toggle widget: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...W0uc2lsZW50dG9nZ2xld2lkZ2V0Il0&token=9s0n6UZX.

Get Go Switch: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...chwidget&feature=search_result&token=zrM3Gzwi..

Get Widgetsoid: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5qaW0yIl0&token=coYCpMOU.

3. She hates having multiple home screens. She wants to just have 1 or 2 with a grid of apps and nothing else.
If you install Go Launcher or Nova you can limit the number of screens.

4. She doesn't like the dot that shows where your finger was.
You can turn this off or customize it in Go Launcher or Nova.

5. She doesn't like having g chat on the phone. Can it be deleted?
Delete the icon if it's on her screen and don't set it up and you should be fine. You may also be able to disable it in your app settings.

6. She finds the phone to generally be confusing with so many settings menus. Is there a way to have a single settings screen that covers everything like iPhone?
Remove anything from the screens that she is not using. When you install Go Launcher you will have a bunch of suggested Go apps that are not installed. You can just delete these from the screen. You can basically start fresh and remove anything that you don't like.

As for the general settings. They are in one section for the overall portion of the phone which is similar to the iPhone settings area. This is accessed from the notification area or the app drawer. But as others have mentioned, each app does allow further control which can be helpful if you want to change something. If she is not wanting to change anything then just leave things as default and ignore them.

Basically, she wants an iPhone with a bigger screen and has no interest in extra features, but she doesn't want to install too many apps or 3rd party tweaks.
This is a difficult one. She can't expect a completely different device to be exactly like her old device unless she is willing to make some adjustments. It's like buying a Lexus and saying you wish you had a your old BMW. Go launcher has themes that mimic the iPhone look and feel so you can download them and try different themes. Your original stock Touchwiz look and feel is not effected by what you install in Go launcher, so if after playing with Go Launcher you don't like the results you can always uninstall it and go back to the stock Touchwiz launcher and carry on.

Here are some iPhone Themes you can check out, but you can also search for more in the play store:
https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...Rldi5pcGhvbmUuZ29sYXVuY2hlciJd&token=1leewzFP

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...C50aGVtZS5waXplcm9leGFtcGxlIl0&token=jxLw8ery.

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...C50aGVtZS52YWppcmEuaXBob25lIl0&token=ujz1ssum.


I hope this helps a little and I wish you the best of luck.

 

[Roffles]

Seriously? You're insulting my wife on a forum about cell phones? Not liking a cell phone that is undoubtedly more complicated than others means you are closed minded? Stop taking this so seriously. It's a cell phone. . .

I am a tech guy (big into gadgets, programming background, even had my own startup) and I don't think the design is user friendly either. It reminds me very strongly of the windows mobile phones I used to use, and like them, it demands a fairly high level of knowledge about the phone and plenty or tweaks or other user involvement in order to perform well. iOS is much less customizable, but the upside is that you know it is just how it is and it works, so there is nothing to do with the phone other than use it, vs potentially becoming paralyzed by the need to keep tweaking when you are given the option. At least that is how I look at it.

Seriously? You start a topic that essentially states, "my wife wants her gs3 to be just like an iPhone" and you take issue with her being called out for obviously being close minded? That's hardly an insult as much as it's a completely obvious fact. I mean, the very fact that you added the complaint of a lacking physical mute button and not realizing muting is done by long pressing the power button shows that neither one of you know squat about using Android OS. And enabling touch response in developer options, not realizing you enabled it and then adding it to your list of complaints??????? It's almost like you're trolling.

I'm tired of tech illiterate people (who claim to be tech savvy when they obviously aren't) knocking the design of Android. I find the menus, options and configuration systems of Jelly Bean to be 100% intuitive and the ability to customize everything is just the gravy on top. So I would agree that anyone complaining about it is close minded and not giving it a change.

 

[anon(19759)]

Yesterday my wife picked up the SIII after being an iPhone user for the last 2 years (iPhone 4). She loved her iPhone but liked the bigger screen, so she decided to try out the SIII and she absolutely hates it so far. I convinced her to give it a few days before returning it, and I'm hoping people here can help with her complaints:

1. She wants to see previews of her messages on the lock screen.

2. She wants an easy way to put the phone on silent or vibrate (she really misses the hard toggle on iOS). - swipe down the panel and hit the sound toggle to silent. Stock capability.

3. She hates having multiple home screens. She wants to just have 1 or 2 with a grid of apps and nothing else. - so minimze the home screens by pinching and zooming in, then drag and drop any unwanted screen to the trash. Stock capability.

4. She doesn't like the dot that shows where your finger was. Disable in settings under Developer options - Input - Show Touches. Stock capability

5. She doesn't like having g chat on the phone. Can it be deleted? Disable in Settings - Application Manager. If any updates were installed, uninstall updates, then disable app. Stock capability

6. She finds the phone to generally be confusing with so many settings menus. Is there a way to have a single settings screen that covers everything like iPhone? No, because the iphone settings are sparse and bare. That's the beauty of Android.

Basically, she wants an iPhone with a bigger screen and has no interest in extra features, but she doesn't want to install too many apps or 3rd party tweaks. She certainly will not go for a new shell or anything like that. That will make her return the phone, probably. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

So, other than the sms previews, you don't need any third party apps for anything you are asking to do. I find that people with these complaints simply have not taken the time to just click on each menu setting and choose your preference. If you don't know what it does, read the setting description. It's very intuitive for people that actually read stuff.

 

[spacekungfuman]

I will start by saying that some of the suggestions by people have been good, but I would like to chime in here for a second in order to hopefully shed a bit more detailed light on the situation. Number one, if your wife is like mine, she hates change. This is just a fact with some people. My wife currently has a Blackberry and has tried my phone but didn't like it because of the touch screen. Habits die hard, so I would encourage her that you can make her happy with a few changes if she is willing to let you take a day to do some adjustments on her S3.

In order to accomplish what she wants you would have to install a custom launcher. I prefer Nova Launcher, but Go Launcher has more available themes which will help the look and feel she is looking for. Go Launcher will in no way make her S3 lesser of a phone or more complicated. If anything it will make things more suited to her needs. If she wants the phone to be an exact duplicate of the iPhone then you are never going to make her happy, but with a few tweaks you should be able to set up her phone to operate very close to the experience she wants and still allow her to take advantage of the big screen. If you are not willing to make some of these changes you should return the phone and get her a iPhone 5.
Go Launcher: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e....launcherex&feature=nav_result&token=ch0W5JUh

1. She wants to see previews of her messages on the lock screen.
The only way she can have her messages viewable on the lock screen is to buy a Nexus 4 or to disable the lock screen and use Go SMS. Go SMS is a free app that works well with the GO Launcher and allows the pop up messaging. If she wants the lock screen on then she would need to slide to unlock the screen if she wants to see it. Go SMS also has an iPhone theme which will be perfectly suited to what she is used to. Installation is simple. and you can download the iPhone theme and change it in the settings options.
Get Go SMS: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...jb.gosms&feature=search_result&token=yKrPvOWC
iPhone Theme: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...b3Ntc3Byby50aGVtZS5pcGhvbmUiXQ&token=ubKrcKSo..

2. She wants an easy way to put the phone on silent or vibrate (she really misses the hard toggle on iOS).
Download "silent toggle widget" it is a small button that switches from on to silent to vibrate by just clicking it. It's excellent. Or if she wants more toggle options I would suggest the Go Switch widget or Widgetsoid. These allow you to customize multiple options for turning off wifi, data, bluetooth, sync, volume/vibrate/silent etc.

Get Silent Toggle widget: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...W0uc2lsZW50dG9nZ2xld2lkZ2V0Il0&token=_EWAjMbY.

Get Go Switch: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...chwidget&feature=search_result&token=2edJkehp..

Get Widgetsoid: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5qaW0yIl0&token=lkEv3dTU.

3. She hates having multiple home screens. She wants to just have 1 or 2 with a grid of apps and nothing else.
If you install Go Launcher or Nova you can limit the number of screens.

4. She doesn't like the dot that shows where your finger was.
You can turn this off or customize it in Go Launcher or Nova.

5. She doesn't like having g chat on the phone. Can it be deleted?
Delete the icon if it's on her screen and don't set it up and you should be fine. You may also be able to disable it in your app settings.

6. She finds the phone to generally be confusing with so many settings menus. Is there a way to have a single settings screen that covers everything like iPhone?
Remove anything from the screens that she is not using. When you install Go Launcher you will have a bunch of suggested Go apps that are not installed. You can just delete these from the screen. You can basically start fresh and remove anything that you don't like.

As for the general settings. They are in one section for the overall portion of the phone which is similar to the iPhone settings area. This is accessed from the notification area or the app drawer. But as others have mentioned, each app does allow further control which can be helpful if you want to change something. If she is not wanting to change anything then just leave things as default and ignore them.

Basically, she wants an iPhone with a bigger screen and has no interest in extra features, but she doesn't want to install too many apps or 3rd party tweaks.
This is a difficult one. She can't expect a completely different device to be exactly like her old device unless she is willing to make some adjustments. It's like buying a Lexus and saying you wish you had a your old BMW. Go launcher has themes that mimic the iPhone look and feel so you can download them and try different themes. Your original stock Touchwiz look and feel is not effected by what you install in Go launcher, so if after playing with Go Launcher you don't like the results you can always uninstall it and go back to the stock Touchwiz launcher and carry on.

Here are some iPhone Themes you can check out, but you can also search for more in the play store:
https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...Rldi5pcGhvbmUuZ29sYXVuY2hlciJd&token=gCBpxYMl

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...C50aGVtZS5waXplcm9leGFtcGxlIl0&token=vFU96JOA.

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...C50aGVtZS52YWppcmEuaXBob25lIl0&token=KnjxQ_zE.


I hope this helps a little and I wish you the best of luck.

I really appreciate this response, but unfortunately her mind is made up. Last night I made a lot of tweaks to the phone (deleted all but two home screens and populated them with the clock and apps she likes, added a mute widget, added executive assistant for lock screen notifications) and she was happy with it most of the day. Then SMS crashed 3 times in a row and she got frustrated. She also misses the more solid feel of the iPhone and the greater variety of available cases. I'm getting her an iPhone 5 tonight, but at least she knows that she tries both and legitimately prefers the iPhone, even with the smaller screen. For what it's worth, I think it's a great device and am very impressed by how far android has come from when I last really played with it on my (temporarily rooted) nook color.

Thanks to all who helped. To those who were not, I hope you can stop being so heated or defensive about cell phones.

 

[DroidN3WB]

Saying that she legitimately prefers the iPhone couldn't be further from the truth seeing as she was never really giving Android a shot.

@BadBrad17: You can get SMS's to go over lock screens with the Glowfly app. Works really well.

 

[anon(19759)]

Nothing wrong with opting for simplicity. Some people just want what's easy and takes no intelligent thought.

Remember that all these third party apps people are suggesting are not needed for all but one of her concerns.

 

[Who?]

Nos. 1 and 2 can be solved with WidgetLocker.

 

[badbrad17]

Saying that she legitimately prefers the iPhone couldn't be further from the truth seeing as she was never really giving Android a shot.

@BadBrad17: You can get SMS's to go over lock screens with the Glowfly app. Works really well.

Thanks for the tip. Appreciate it.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[badbrad17]

I really appreciate this response, but unfortunately her mind is made up. Last night I made a lot of tweaks to the phone (deleted all but two home screens and populated them with the clock and apps she likes, added a mute widget, added executive assistant for lock screen notifications) and she was happy with it most of the day. Then SMS crashed 3 times in a row and she got frustrated. She also misses the more solid feel of the iPhone and the greater variety of available cases. I'm getting her an iPhone 5 tonight, but at least she knows that she tries both and legitimately prefers the iPhone, even with the smaller screen. For what it's worth, I think it's a great device and am very impressed by how far android has come from when I last really played with it on my (temporarily rooted) nook color.

Thanks to all who helped. To those who were not, I hope you can stop being so heated or defensive about cell phones.

SMS CRASHING 3 times? Really in the 4 years I've used android, I honesty have never had my SMS crash, but whatever floats her boat.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[spacekungfuman]

Saying that she legitimately prefers the iPhone couldn't be further from the truth seeing as she was never really giving Android a shot.

@BadBrad17: You can get SMS's to go over lock screens with the Glowfly app. Works really well.

It's a cell phone. She used it for the things she uses her phone for (calling, texting, FB, words with friends) and it was going fine with my tweaks, then she had the messenger crash 3 times in a row and lost all her texts. Neither of us ever had anything like that happen with our iPhones, and she never had it happen with her old blackberry or palm phone even. So basically she saw it as mostly adequate for the things she does, with a great screen, but also as buggy, and lacking in the lock screen notifications (something she really cares about). She also found the message pop up in the notification bar to be too small to read, and continued to be frustrated by the way that setting notification sounds works. I know she didn't use it for a long time, but I do think she legitimately used it, and was on the way to being happy with it, until it started crashing and becoming frustrating.

 

[Rodawg71]

Not a "forbidden fruit fanboi" but good choice for the wife
Curious about SMS crashing... 3x:what:

sent from a Galaxy SIII near you

 

[Mellimel22]

Lol this thread got me rolling. And at first I thought he was trolling till I realized he was serious..crashing 3x. My SMS never crashed even on my PITA zte score lol

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy Nexus rockin 4.2.1 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Yeag3r]

Look, if you really want her to enjoy her s3, put it on vibrate,have her sit on it, and call her. Go crazy and leave a voicemail.



Sorry,had a few.;-)

Sent from my ADR6400L using Android Central Forums

 

[badbrad17]

Lol this thread got me rolling. And at first I thought he was trolling till I realized he was serious..crashing 3x. My SMS never crashed even on my PITA zte score lol

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy Nexus rockin 4.2.1 using Tapatalk 2

I was thinking the same thing. I invested a serious amount of time today for a troll. Damn. Never again.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[Mac58]

This is funny...if only the jury read this post before deciding Samsung infringes upon apples patents...lol I had too

 

[spacekungfuman]

I was thinking the same thing. I invested a serious amount of time today for a troll. Damn. Never again.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

I am not trolling (why on earth would I waste my time like that?). I was blown away to see the messaging app crash like that, but it happened, and my wife had no patience for it. To reiterate, I think it is a really nice phone, but for whatever reason, the SMS app kept crashing (seemingly at random, since I hadn't made any more changes before then).

 

[badbrad17]

I am not trolling (why on earth would I waste my time like that?). I was blown away to see the messaging app crash like that, but it happened, and my wife had no patience for it. To reiterate, I think it is a really nice phone, but for whatever reason, the SMS app kept crashing (seemingly at random, since I hadn't made any more changes before then).

Okay I believe you, but I find it odd that she all of a sudden had these issues when no one else has had that issue. Reboot the phone and start over. It just sounds like this duck was dead in the water before it was shot.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[crester]

It's a cell phone. She used it for the things she uses her phone for (calling, texting, FB, words with friends) and it was going fine with my tweaks, then she had the messenger crash 3 times in a row and lost all her texts. Neither of us ever had anything like that happen with our iPhones, and she never had it happen with her old blackberry or palm phone even. So basically she saw it as mostly adequate for the things she does, with a great screen, but also as buggy, and lacking in the lock screen notifications (something she really cares about). She also found the message pop up in the notification bar to be too small to read, and continued to be frustrated by the way that setting notification sounds works. I know she didn't use it for a long time, but I do think she legitimately used it, and was on the way to being happy with it, until it started crashing and becoming frustrating.

I'm glad your wife is getting an iPhone because that it what she should have gotten in the first place.

But don't even try to sit here and say she gave Android fair shot. She wanted an iPhone from day one because the iPhone environment is what she is used to. Whenever she saw something "different" in Android... she automatically assumed it was "wrong" instead of trying to understand it. Her mind is closed to change.

 

[sr2012]

I have to agree. Not saying it is a character flaw but Android rewards those that spend some time learning and understanding it.

Some people may not have the time so fair enough iPhone is best for them.

But after a few weeks I would say it is highly unlikely that you would find anything specifically in iPhone that you can't get very close to on Android for a new quality Android phone.

Yes it is overwhelming at first but it is definitely very rewarding.

(Can you all see my emoji in the above post when using a phone?)

Sent from my HTC One X using Android Central Forums