Lollipop missing functions?

[Corporl]

My phone, a Galaxy S4, autoupdated to Lollipop recently, without me being aware of it. I don't care for the look of it, but it's what I'm stuck with, since I'm not particularly tech savy.

The unpleasant color changes I can deal with, however, Lollipop seems to have dropped a couple of functions I'd gotten used to ever since Gingerbread. Since I'm not particularly tech-savy, I'm wondering if the functions still exist and I'm just not aware of them, or they're just plain gone, the latter of whch makes no sense to me.

1. Text messages, two issues there.

A) In previous builds, if I received a text message while not using my phone, the lock screen would show me a preview of the message. It not longer does this, it only tells me I HAVE a new message, and I really would like that option back.

B) If I receive a new text message from someone while viewing the message they previously sent, the phone makes no notifications a new message has been received, even if the phone is in the lock screen. This is extremely inconvenient, and has caused me to receive a lot of text messages without even being aware of it unless I make sure to exit out of the text message string, which I'm not used to doing out of habit.

2. Silent mode. Previously, if I had to silence my phone to keep it quiet, I would simply hold the power button down and select vibrate or silent mode. After the upgrade to Lollipop, these options are gone, only offering to turn the phone off, put it in airplane mode or restart it. These removals are a HUGE inconvenience and I can't understand why they'd be removed to begin with.

Any and all help would be appreciated, because this is really making using my phone more difficult than it has to be.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone? It sounds like either an S5 or Note 4, but it would help to know which one.

Devices will never update the system without notifying you and asking you to accept it. You must have accepted it without being aware of what it was.

To see previews of the text messages on the lockscreen, go to Settings>Sound & Notifications>When Device Is Locked, and make sure "Show all notification content" is selected.

The lack of audio notification when you're within that same message thread is actually standard on many devices (like my Nexus 5), but I know that this has been a complaint of the Lollipop update for the Note 4. I think the rationale was that if you have the message thread open, the system assumes that you're actually looking at the thread and can see new messages coming into that thread, and will therefore not trigger a notification.

The loss of Silent Mode has been one of the big complaints about Lollipop in general. If you have 5.1, they modified it a bit, but it's still not great: Android 5.1 brings back silent mode, sort of

 

[Corporl]

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone? It sounds like either an S5 or Note 4, but it would help to know which one.

Devices will never update the system without notifying you and asking you to accept it. You must have accepted it without being aware of what it was.

To see previews of the text messages on the lockscreen, go to Settings>Sound & Notifications>When Device Is Locked, and make sure "Show all notification content" is selected.

The lack of audio notification when you're within that same message thread is actually standard on many devices (like my Nexus 5), but I know that this has been a complaint of the Lollipop update for the Note 4. I think the rationale was that if you have the message thread open, the system assumes that you're actually looking at the thread and can see new messages coming into that thread, and will therefore not trigger a notification.

The loss of Silent Mode has been one of the big complaints about Lollipop in general. If you have 5.1, they modified it a bit, but it's still not great

It's a Galaxy S4

So it's just plain not possible to re-enable notifications for texts if you're in the same thread as the one received? That's really a major problem for me.

 

[B. Diddy]

I can't say for sure, but from what I can tell on these forums, the stock Messaging app doesn't have that function. You could try 3rd party messaging apps like Textra.

 

[Corporl]

I can't say for sure, but from what I can tell on these forums, the stock Messaging app doesn't have that function. You could try 3rd party messaging apps like Textra.

I tried Textra but I couldn't really get used to it.

I guess I'm just plain hosed, but thank you for responding still.