Hello all,
I got my first Samsung phone earlier in the week, having had three HTCs over the last six years. Went for the S4 as it's cheaper than the S5. So as usual with a new phone, there's lots of umming and ahhing and loving some features and then wishing I had my HTC back at other times. So although I keep pressing the top of the phone to no avail to switch it off, keep turning it off when I want to change the volume and keep trying to plug the charger into a non-existant socket on the left hand side, I've got three main niggles now which some of you learned folks may be able to help me with.
It's an S4, running Android 4.4.2. It's not rooted and I don't want to do that. Network : 3.
1.) Can the home button also switch the phone off as well as on?
2.) On my HTC I used to use the Facebook app (with that wonderful gear icon to keep it in most recent order, not the top stories which is annoying in itself but I know there's nothing to be done about that except use that option on the right hand side which doesn't remember it permanently or to use the mobile site). I used to scroll down through FB and click on several links to things I wanted to read in the browser, all different sites. It would open the browser and then display the page in a new tab upto a maximum of six, so I might have the BBC, Digital Spy, The Guardian, Amazon etc. all open in different tabs to read at my leisure. On this phone however, all links just open in the one tab, overwriting whatever I had clicked moments before, thus not leaving me with six sites to read, just one tab which won't even go 'back' to the other pages I had tried to open. Is there a setting anywhere to open links in separate tabs? (Maybe I should just use the FB mobile site, and then open each one separately from there). I'm using the normal browser. Would it work differently in Chrome?
3.) Having spent hours trying to understand why my contacts contained some people twice or even three times, with or without photos from FB, I realised that contacts saved to device couldn't sync with FB. So I saved them all to my Samsung account and only displayed that option. Why do the same contacts not show their photos in Messaging? Does it take their photos from the contacts off device rather than off Samsung account? I imported all my text messages from the HTC if that has anything to do with it. I don't think it does - I deleted one friends' thread, asked him to send me a new text and it still didn't show his picture (just the default white face on a colour-changing background). I also had to manually link each person in contacts with their FB page - FB syncing just didn't work unless I was doing something wrong.
And finally for now, it's really annoying that the Android Pizza Express app doesn't work on the S4, and I've really not found a better clock and weather widget/live wallpaper than the old HTC sense one, any recommendations gratefully received!
Thanks!
Adrian
I got my first Samsung phone earlier in the week, having had three HTCs over the last six years. Went for the S4 as it's cheaper than the S5. So as usual with a new phone, there's lots of umming and ahhing and loving some features and then wishing I had my HTC back at other times. So although I keep pressing the top of the phone to no avail to switch it off, keep turning it off when I want to change the volume and keep trying to plug the charger into a non-existant socket on the left hand side, I've got three main niggles now which some of you learned folks may be able to help me with.
It's an S4, running Android 4.4.2. It's not rooted and I don't want to do that. Network : 3.
1.) Can the home button also switch the phone off as well as on?
2.) On my HTC I used to use the Facebook app (with that wonderful gear icon to keep it in most recent order, not the top stories which is annoying in itself but I know there's nothing to be done about that except use that option on the right hand side which doesn't remember it permanently or to use the mobile site). I used to scroll down through FB and click on several links to things I wanted to read in the browser, all different sites. It would open the browser and then display the page in a new tab upto a maximum of six, so I might have the BBC, Digital Spy, The Guardian, Amazon etc. all open in different tabs to read at my leisure. On this phone however, all links just open in the one tab, overwriting whatever I had clicked moments before, thus not leaving me with six sites to read, just one tab which won't even go 'back' to the other pages I had tried to open. Is there a setting anywhere to open links in separate tabs? (Maybe I should just use the FB mobile site, and then open each one separately from there). I'm using the normal browser. Would it work differently in Chrome?
3.) Having spent hours trying to understand why my contacts contained some people twice or even three times, with or without photos from FB, I realised that contacts saved to device couldn't sync with FB. So I saved them all to my Samsung account and only displayed that option. Why do the same contacts not show their photos in Messaging? Does it take their photos from the contacts off device rather than off Samsung account? I imported all my text messages from the HTC if that has anything to do with it. I don't think it does - I deleted one friends' thread, asked him to send me a new text and it still didn't show his picture (just the default white face on a colour-changing background). I also had to manually link each person in contacts with their FB page - FB syncing just didn't work unless I was doing something wrong.
And finally for now, it's really annoying that the Android Pizza Express app doesn't work on the S4, and I've really not found a better clock and weather widget/live wallpaper than the old HTC sense one, any recommendations gratefully received!
Thanks!
Adrian
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