Tearing hair out over SMS/MMS and battery - about to switch to iPhone. Help!

Beech_55

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Dec 23, 2011
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Long time Android user and lone holdout in my house - everyone else uses the iPhone. Lately I've had lots of problems and am so sick of the phone, but realize it could be me, my provider, or something else.

Currently have Galaxy S6.

First, I've had lots of problems texting - mainly in sending and receiving pictures. Sometimes it just hangs, other times I get only one of the pictures in a slideshow. I'm on VZW and have used the stock app, Textra, Handcent, Chomp, and QKSMS. I have ready many threads about how the APN settings need to be tweaked, but nothing ever seems to make pictures an easy process. And sometimes (Textra was my longest used app) it would just randomly not work. Any recommendations would be most appreciated - and if I need to try another app, I don't care what it costs (as that would be nothing compared to the hassle of switching to iPhone).

Second, the battery seems to be much worse than usual. I've gone through all of the recommended steps to reduce background apps, and I don't use the phone much for calls. I am almost always charging, but absent that, the phone seems to drop battery pretty quickly.

Thanks in advance!
 
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Rukbat

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Feb 12, 2012
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1. To reduce battery use, don't use the Home button when you're through using an app (that leaves it still running), use the Back button to get out of it (and turn it off).

2. You're limited to about 300KB in MMS with most carriers. Some limit you to less. If the file plus message is larger than that, either email it (a 25MB limit) or post it on a file sharing site or your cloud account and SMS a link to the file.

iPhones don't have that size limitation because they don't use SMS/MMS, they use iMessage, which is a proprietary format owned by Apple that allows larger files. (But that's about the only advantage of iPhones.)
 

Beech_55

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Dec 23, 2011
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Thanks!

1. To reduce battery use, don't use the Home button when you're through using an app (that leaves it still running), use the Back button to get out of it (and turn it off).

I don't use just the home button - and I routinely "Close All" and go out of my way to find apps that run in the background and either disable them, or uninstall them.

2. You're limited to about 300KB in MMS with most carriers. Some limit you to less. If the file plus message is larger than that, either email it (a 25MB limit) or post it on a file sharing site or your cloud account and SMS a link to the file.

iPhones don't have that size limitation because they don't use SMS/MMS, they use iMessage, which is a proprietary format owned by Apple that allows larger files. (But that's about the only advantage of iPhones.)

The VZW limit is 1.2Mb. (Apparently the Verizon Messages app has a limit of 100Mb.) It seemed that some of the apps I used automatically compressed the files (which often took minutes), but other times just tried to send the attachment. I've just installed Yaata and it *seems* to be working OK for sending pictures, but I'm not sure I like the rest of the app. Yep, I know I could email or post, but that's not realistic other than for sending stuff to my >80 year old parents. My kids - and anyone with an iPhone - would just laugh at me.
 

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