Ditched my iPhone, just got a Samsung Galaxy S3. Please help

[sgreger1]

More on your battery, you need to configure how often certain apps sync. That can be a major battery killer, email tends to be one that is set out the gate to ridiculous. To get an idea of what is using battery check out in the settings the battery usage menu.

Also the way to switch apps in android is to hold the home key and then it will bring up a list of apps that are in memory to switch to them. And again there is the advanced task killer program I recommended.

Ken

OMG the home button thing worked! It's perfect, exactly what I was hoping for! I kept double clicking it which brings up the s-voice thing so I didn't think of just holding it down. I did get the advanced task killed, but after it kills them they all come back immediately so i'm not sure what I am accomplishing with it. Maybe I am doing it wrong. I al

so reazlied that you coudl set how often things sync. I think I am going to turn everything down to "sync almost never" status and then utilize the motion feature on this phone that will sync everything if I shake the phone. That way it only syncs when I want to look at it and doesn't just keep doing it in the background.

[sgreger1]

And your sweet live background is why your battery is screaming for mercy.

Ken

Yah I knew that off the bat, like "this must almost surely destroy battery life". But I want to leave that on and try to find places to cut elsewhere. The live backgrounds are so cool. If it still is a problem after I play around with it for a bit than i'll have to just put a picture of my kid on there or something.

[sgreger1]

I use the gmail app for personal email, as I use gmail anyway. The stock one is ok for my purposes and I use that for my work email.

Ken

Yah I just installed gmail (since all of my accounts are on gmail anyways) and it seems to have the best interface. I'm probably going to stick with that as my default. I love how interchangeable everything is on droid, it's kind of weird coming from apple where pretty much nothing is changeable.

[devilock76]

OMG the home button thing worked! It's perfect, exactly what I was hoping for! I kept double clicking it which brings up the s-voice thing so I didn't think of just holding it down. I did get the advanced task killed, but after it kills them they all come back immediately so i'm not sure what I am accomplishing with it. Maybe I am doing it wrong. I al

so reazlied that you coudl set how often things sync. I think I am going to turn everything down to "sync almost never" status and then utilize the motion feature on this phone that will sync everything if I shake the phone. That way it only syncs when I want to look at it and doesn't just keep doing it in the background.

RTFM man, hehehehe.

How I use advanced task killer is to one off. When it is opened select an app you want to close by touching it and holding, a menu will show up with options to kill just that app. If it is auto restarting you need to address that in the phones app settings.

Ken

[devilock76]

Yah I just installed gmail (since all of my accounts are on gmail anyways) and it seems to have the best interface. I'm probably going to stick with that as my default. I love how interchangeable everything is on droid, it's kind of weird coming from apple where pretty much nothing is changeable.

With great power comes great responsibility. I don't fault the iphone, I give it props over android (on comparable devices) in two area, media and battery life. However being so locked in by apple is a problem for me as well.

Ken

[halocog]

Which Galaxy S do you have if I might ask, is it the 3 or an earlier version?

It's just called the Galaxy S 4G. It's not that old either. The S II came out just a little after this one.

[sgreger1]

Well you just talked about not being able to kill the texting app. Incidentally I use google voice for free texting and it allows me read and compose texts from a computer. Plus I have it setup so I get all my voice mails transcribed to text for free as well. That is another android app you can download but to set it up you are going to want to be at a computer. I use a different number for my google voice and have texting disabled on my cell number. A slight pain but I have one number for calls and one for texts. You can set it up to be the same as your cell phone number but I had concerns over what would happen in the future with changing numbers and or phones. Not a big concern but reading their help info on it I elected to use different numbers.

OK I see you are having a lot of freezing. Where are you installing apps? You need to install as many as possibly of the non critical apps (non system oriented) in the SD card not the phone memory. Apps on the phone's memory reduce available memory and hence performance. Also I tend to avoid things like live wallpapers and stuff, they use up battery and processor cycles for nothing more than bling. Also I tend to leave the gps antenna off as well and only turn it on when I need it.

Ken

I currently leave wifi and GPS off, and as far as saving them I am just saving them to wherever they go by default. in the appl store it says "install" so I click install and then it shows up in my list of apps. I don't have an SD card in the phone yet so that may be part of the problem. Can the apps all run off the SD card? I was planning on getting a 64GB one and just cramming this thing with memory but havn't been able to get to bestbuy yet.

[lxskllr]

I wouldn't get anything from BestBuy. Unless they're running a special, you're virtually guaranteed to get the WorstDeal possible. Imo, it's better to run light and lean. It's easy installing crap, but you end up with 10 things that do the same basic task. It takes awhile to get your app selection tweaked, but once you do, it simplifies everything. When you root, you can remove a lot of the stock bloat also.

[sgreger1]

For Juice Defender, should I go with the ultimate or the free version? The idea of it only turning on wifi when im at my house for example is very aluring.Ed

Edit: Got the premium one, so far so good, we;ll see how well it does on just it's balanced setting.

[devilock76]

I currently leave wifi and GPS off, and as far as saving them I am just saving them to wherever they go by default. in the appl store it says "install" so I click install and then it shows up in my list of apps. I don't have an SD card in the phone yet so that may be part of the problem. Can the apps all run off the SD card? I was planning on getting a 64GB one and just cramming this thing with memory but havn't been able to get to bestbuy yet.

Yes they can run off the sd card but things that are core system critical need to stay on the system memory. All games, entertainment software, things like that off on the sd card. However widgits and live wallpapers usually need to be on the system memory. You can put most anything productivity wise out there as well. Mine came with a 32 gig card and anything and everything I can install on that I do so instead of on the phone memory. That was a mistake I made myself when I first go it , installing everything on phone memory and it was bad. You can move them in the application management menus.

Ken

[lxskllr]

You could just turn it on manually. No extra app needed ;^)

[devilock76]

For Juice Defender, should I go with the ultimate or the free version? The idea of it only turning on wifi when im at my house for example is very aluring.

I use the free version, works fine for me. The payed version offers more aggressive profiles as well as more custom tweaking but the free works right for me. One caveat though, if you also installed advanced task killer like I recommended you need to inform advanced task killer to ignore juice defender. It is an option in that same press and hold menu that I mentioned earlier. Juice defender will tell you as much.

Ken

[devilock76]

You could just turn it on manually. No extra app needed ;^)

Juice defender does a bit more than that. It basically throttles connections on and off automatically depending if you are actively using the phone vs it is just sleeping or periodically syncing. Combined with a practical syncing schedule it can greatly extend battery life.

Ken

[sgreger1]

Juice defender does a bit more than that. It basically throttles connections on and off automatically depending if you are actively using the phone vs it is just sleeping or periodically syncing. Combined with a practical syncing schedule it can greatly extend battery life.

Ken

Yah i'm loving it so far, it turns everything off when i'm not using it and then turns it all back on when I am. Seems to be working pretty good, i have it at a full charge now so we will see how long it lasts this time around.

[Norwester]

What carrier are you with? If you haven't found it yet, there's carrier specific S3 forums at http://forum.xda-developers.com/index.php The Snuson of phone phreaks. Just don't post questions (other than in the devs threads) in the development forums,they tend to get pissy about that.
A few of the apps i couldn't live without...
Ad Free
Cache Cleaner NG
Google Currents
Pulse
Quick Boot
Root Explorer-need root
ES File Explorer
Swiftkey-paid
Beautiful Widgets-paid
Titanium Backup Pro-paid
Palmary Weather Pro-paid