Some thoughts, and some questions since coming from Samsung S3 and Notes 10.1

[Keith Lim1]

Hi guys, I just bought a Google Nexus 5 to try my first ever "Pure Android" experience, having used previously the Samsung S3, Note 2, and Note 10.1. Overall, I love the responsiveness of Nexus 5 and Android kitkat. There's less fancy animations and transitions compared to Samsung, but I'll trade these for the speed and responsiveness happily.

I miss the quick toggle bar from Samsung and installed the Notification Toggle to fix this. I was wary about battery life so I installed Battery Booster and activated "Smart saving mode". Since I am a heavy user and use my phone to browse the internet quite a lot, the battery life hasn't been that great and normally I need to charge by 3-4 pm.

I do miss the following things that I could do in the Samsung devices though:
1. I've added my Facebook account, but it seems Android 4.4 is not syncing in the contacts.
2. In People, there's no option to link two contacts together. Am I missing anything or is this the pure Android limitation?
3. Despite the KitKat improvements proudly stating better cloud support, I wasn't able to see or display my Facebook albums directly in Photos or Gallery apps. Nor do I see my dropbox albums either.

Any of you have good advise how to fix the 3 issues above?

Thank you!

 

[scorpiodsu]

Hi guys, I just bought a Google Nexus 5 to try my first ever "Pure Android" experience, having used previously the Samsung S3, Note 2, and Note 10.1. Overall, I love the responsiveness of Nexus 5 and Android kitkat. There's less fancy animations and transitions compared to Samsung, but I'll trade these for the speed and responsiveness happily.

I miss the quick toggle bar from Samsung and installed the Notification Toggle to fix this. I was wary about battery life so I installed Battery Booster and activated "Smart saving mode". Since I am a heavy user and use my phone to browse the internet quite a lot, the battery life hasn't been that great and normally I need to charge by 3-4 pm.

I do miss the following things that I could do in the Samsung devices though:
1. I've added my Facebook account, but it seems Android 4.4 is not syncing in the contacts.
2. In People, there's no option to link two contacts together. Am I missing anything or is this the pure Android limitation?
3. Despite the KitKat improvements proudly stating better cloud support, I wasn't able to see or display my Facebook albums directly in Photos or Gallery apps. Nor do I see my dropbox albums either.

Any of you have good advise how to fix the 3 issues above?

Thank you!

Everything you've noted is part of the "Pure Google Experience". A lot of the features found in other devices are because of Samsung's, HTC, LG, etc... adding things they feel improve user experience. And in a lot of cases they do and when it comes to cloud service integration and social networking, their UIs are a better implementation over vanilla Android. Some people call it bloat. While in some cases it in. In other cases, it's an improvement. Something you'll likely have to get used to on a vanilla Android device.

 

[Robbie317]

Hi guys, I just bought a Google Nexus 5 to try my first ever "Pure Android" experience, having used previously the Samsung S3, Note 2, and Note 10.1. Overall, I love the responsiveness of Nexus 5 and Android kitkat. There's less fancy animations and transitions compared to Samsung, but I'll trade these for the speed and responsiveness happily.

I miss the quick toggle bar from Samsung and installed the Notification Toggle to fix this. I was wary about battery life so I installed Battery Booster and activated "Smart saving mode". Since I am a heavy user and use my phone to browse the internet quite a lot, the battery life hasn't been that great and normally I need to charge by 3-4 pm.

I do miss the following things that I could do in the Samsung devices though:
1. I've added my Facebook account, but it seems Android 4.4 is not syncing in the contacts.
2. In People, there's no option to link two contacts together. Am I missing anything or is this the pure Android limitation?
3. Despite the KitKat improvements proudly stating better cloud support, I wasn't able to see or display my Facebook albums directly in Photos or Gallery apps. Nor do I see my dropbox albums either.

Any of you have good advise how to fix the 3 issues above?

Thank you!

1. I've added my Facebook account, but it seems Android 4.4 is not syncing in the contacts.
This is Touchwiz.... With "Pure" Android you can sync your contacts with gmail but not much else (that I am aware of)
2. In People, there's no option to link two contacts together. Am I missing anything or is this the pure Android limitation?
click on edit contact and then click the menu button and there is a "LINK" contacts option.
3. Despite the KitKat improvements proudly stating better cloud support, I wasn't able to see or display my Facebook albums directly in Photos or Gallery apps. Nor do I see my dropbox albums either.
I assume you have the drop box app installed? From there you should be able to view your drop box albums it just won't show up in your gallery...

 

[Keith Lim1]

Thanks guys for the quick response!

@Robbie317, thanks, somehow I had missed that Join option under Edit menu! I had dropbox installed but I was kind of expecting to see it listed directly under Gallery or Photos. Looks like I'll have to find a good app that shows an aggregated photo gallery like what Samsung offers. If you have any suggestions, do let me know.

@scorpiodsu, I agree with you that some of the things Samsung did were actually good usability improvements- such as those few things I'd mentioned, IMHO. Hopefully it gets added one of these days.

 

[Robbie317]

Thanks guys for the quick response!

@Robbie317, thanks, somehow I had missed that Join option under Edit menu! I had dropbox installed but I was kind of expecting to see it listed directly under Gallery or Photos. Looks like I'll have to find a good app that shows an aggregated photo gallery like what Samsung offers. If you have any suggestions, do let me know.

@scorpiodsu, I agree with you that some of the things Samsung did were actually good usability improvements- such as those few things I'd mentioned, IMHO. Hopefully it gets added one of these days.

Welcome... Sorry no clue about drop box... I stopped using it and just use Google drive (which is what Google wants anyway) but I did install a secondary camera app because I didn't like the native Nexus Camera App and the photo's I take with that show up in my "Gallery" but they show up in a folder for the camera app not the pictures folder.... the folder for pics taken with that app have their own folder so No clue... You'd think your drop box would show up but I can't figure out how (I downloaded the Drop box app and tried to see if I could figure it out and I can't.. Sorry)

 

[scorpiodsu]

Welcome... Sorry no clue about drop box... I stopped using it and just use Google drive (which is what Google wants anyway) but I did install a secondary camera app because I didn't like the native Nexus Camera App and the photo's I take with that show up in my "Gallery" but they show up in a folder for the camera app not the pictures folder.... the folder for pics taken with that app have their own folder so No clue... You'd think your drop box would show up but I can't figure out how (I downloaded the Drop box app and tried to see if I could figure it out and I can't.. Sorry)

Yeah the dropbox gallery sync doesn't work on vanilla android. It also doesn't work on all UIs skins either. Touchwiz is the one I previously used it on and I believe Sense as well but I didn't see it available on my G2.