James Ev
New member
I am in this guy's exact same shoes. I've had an S4 for about a week after having a couple iPhones the last four years. Things that really excited me:
1) Having a phone that I can develop an App for without paying Apple $100. And in Java! (I'm a Software Engineer, too)
2) I can put my own storage in.
3) Huge screen!
4) It's open.
For point 1) I'm still thrilled, though I'd have to consider supporting an order of magnitude more devices to write an Android app. Worth it though to not have to muck with Objective-C and pay to get a license.
Point 2 is awesome until you realize that it's really hard to use the damn thing. I was super excited about being able to upload all my music to Google Play and keep it synched from there until I get a 64GB card today and learned I can't put my music via Google Play on the card. I guess it's not a dealbreaker but it's a PIA. Tried a few synching solutions and none worked well. Why in the world can't I sync my songs that I uploaded to Google Play to my SD card?
Point 3) The screen is still awesome. I can't reach everything on it with one hand, but that hasn't been a big problem, yet. Not sure what the OP is saying about the Alarm and Phone answering toggles. They seem similar enough to iPhone.
Some annoyances: I can't get a camera app to show up on the lock screen if I have a PIN set. Stupid. What does that get turned off? Seems like a Samsung thing. Then, I found that if I'm using the Samsung music player I can control it from the lock screen but it also kicks off the Google Play app and I end up with two songs playing at once. So buggy. And the bloat! Why can't I delete this TripAdvisor adware crap? Why do I need multiple text apps installed from the start? And the eye-scanning thing and hand waving thing... they don't work most of the time and are gimmicky. And I agree, I really don't want to have to swipe in to get to my texts when I get a notification. Really annoying and a waste of time.
I find myself vacillating between wanting to swap it for an iPhone 5 and keeping it. The iPhone just works so well out of the box. I never had to put any time or thought into getting it to work well. That said, this S4 seems like it has so much potential and it's exciting to have so much control over it but little things just don't work well and I don't want to waste a ton of time getting a phone to work well.
As for the music synching and controls/notifications on the lock screen: anyone have any suggestions?
1) Having a phone that I can develop an App for without paying Apple $100. And in Java! (I'm a Software Engineer, too)
2) I can put my own storage in.
3) Huge screen!
4) It's open.
For point 1) I'm still thrilled, though I'd have to consider supporting an order of magnitude more devices to write an Android app. Worth it though to not have to muck with Objective-C and pay to get a license.
Point 2 is awesome until you realize that it's really hard to use the damn thing. I was super excited about being able to upload all my music to Google Play and keep it synched from there until I get a 64GB card today and learned I can't put my music via Google Play on the card. I guess it's not a dealbreaker but it's a PIA. Tried a few synching solutions and none worked well. Why in the world can't I sync my songs that I uploaded to Google Play to my SD card?
Point 3) The screen is still awesome. I can't reach everything on it with one hand, but that hasn't been a big problem, yet. Not sure what the OP is saying about the Alarm and Phone answering toggles. They seem similar enough to iPhone.
Some annoyances: I can't get a camera app to show up on the lock screen if I have a PIN set. Stupid. What does that get turned off? Seems like a Samsung thing. Then, I found that if I'm using the Samsung music player I can control it from the lock screen but it also kicks off the Google Play app and I end up with two songs playing at once. So buggy. And the bloat! Why can't I delete this TripAdvisor adware crap? Why do I need multiple text apps installed from the start? And the eye-scanning thing and hand waving thing... they don't work most of the time and are gimmicky. And I agree, I really don't want to have to swipe in to get to my texts when I get a notification. Really annoying and a waste of time.
I find myself vacillating between wanting to swap it for an iPhone 5 and keeping it. The iPhone just works so well out of the box. I never had to put any time or thought into getting it to work well. That said, this S4 seems like it has so much potential and it's exciting to have so much control over it but little things just don't work well and I don't want to waste a ton of time getting a phone to work well.
As for the music synching and controls/notifications on the lock screen: anyone have any suggestions?