Last week I bought a new Samsung Galaxy S Android phone and changed my phone service from my iPhone 3Gs on AT&T to T Mobile. I had some initial frustrations around getting the Galaxy to work the way I wanted it to and wanted to do an update after using the phone for a week. This isn’t meant to be a review, just random thoughts from your average user.
1. T Mobile’s service is *much* better than AT&T’s in the Bay Area. My main reason for switching was because I was so tired of AT&T’s lousy service. It’s refreshing to pretty much be able to connect to a high speed internet connection 100% of the time. Web pages load faster, it’s more reliable. I couldn’t believe it when it even started working in the BART tunnel between West Oakland and MacArthur, someplace my iPhone has never worked once and where wireless service technically is not even supposed to be available. Goodbye crappy AT&T.
Also in general, this phone is *much* faster than the iPhone. It’s amazing how fast it can scroll through an internet page. The browser is lightspeed ahead of the Safari browser on my iPhone. I love this.
2. The phone has things that still don’t work. I can’t figure out how to view my favorite contacts. I can’t add contacts to groups. It seems like some of these are known issues. I’m surprised that finished software would still have these sorts of major bugs in it.
3. Connecting the phone to my MacBook Pro is a *nightmare* and not at all intuitive. Here are the steps I have to take. 1. Go to the main settings menu. 2. Go to the applications submenu. 3. Go to the Development submenu. 4. Select USB debugging. 5. Select my notifications bar at the top of my phone. 6. Pull this bar down. 7. Click on the Ongoing “USB Connected.” 8. Click on Mount. I then get two drives that show up on my Mac. Both are called “No Name.” One just has two folders: movies and music. The other has a bunch more of the phone files. This process is not at all intuitive.
You can blame Samsung for this bad connectivity if you are an Apple fan boy. If you are an anti-Apple fan boy feel free to instead blame Apple. Either way it’s a chore.
4. I like the display on the Galaxy better than the display on my iPhone, unless I’m outside in the sun. The Galaxy has a beautiful vibrant display and I love the way it looks. It’s big and bold and bright. But trying to look at the display outside in the sun is almost impossible. My iPhone looked a lot better in the sunlight. Not sure why this is.
5. I miss the autocorrect feature on the iPhone. I’m pretty clumsy when it comes to typing on a phone. I make a lot of errors. Apple seemed to do a pretty good job at getting what I was going for when I’d type San Franncisvo instead of San Francisco and auto correcting things. I think I have auto correction turned on with my Galaxy, but if I do it doesn’t do a very good job. I make a lot of errors and it doesn’t seem to catch them at all. On the plus side though, the new “swype” technology is really cool and I suspect I’ll get used to that and like it even more over time. With swyping you simply move from one letter to the next without lifting your finger until you have the entire word. Then the Galaxy guesses what the word is and I’ve found that it’s really good at guessing correctly. You select the word from possible choices and it inserts it.
I still can’t help thinking about that little fox Swyper though on those Dora the Explorer shows that my kids used to watch when they were little when I hear swyping though. Swyper, no swyping.
6. Google Maps on this phone rock! So much better than the iPhone. I can literally pull up all of the Google Maps that I’ve created online and get them on this phone. The key here is using “layers” (again not the most intuitive way to figure this out). When you are in maps you click on the settings bar and then select “layers.” You then click on “more layers.” And then you click on “my maps.” Then the phone gives you all of your Google Maps that you have created and you can just select the city or map or whatever that you want and it imports it right in. Then you can select any of your pins and the maps app can give you direct driving, public transportation, biking, or walking directions to that location.
I could never get my Google Maps into the mapping program on my iPhone and this is a key reason why I want a smart phone. To be able to use my Google Maps when I’m out shooting and exploring new cities.
7. I miss Hipstamatic. I loved that app on my iPhone. I loved all the funky preprogramed vintage film feels that they’d create. I loved how I could shake the phone to randomize it. The best app I’ve been able to find for the Android platform so far to kinda/sorta approximate Hipstamatic is Vignette. The photo above of my son William and my brother’s puppy was processed with that app. With Vignette you sort of do the post processing manually after you’ve shot the image instead of using pre-built combinations. I hope Hipstamatic releases an Android version of their software soon.
8. Music is a bit more work with the Galaxy S than the iPhone/iTunes combination, but not that much more difficult. There is a free program called doubletwist which feels pretty much like an exact iTunes clone. You can import the music that you want from your iTunes library into doubletwist and then sync that music to your phone with that program.
I think I like the headphones that came with my iPhone a little better than the ones that came with my Galaxy, but I can actually use either in the device. Of course you can buy whatever headphones you want for whatever phone that you want so this is of little consideration.
9. You can’t take a screen shot with the Galaxy, at least the basic user can’t out of the box. This is surprising to me. I’d think that this would be sort of Smartphone 101 basics. Maybe in the next version of Android (Froyo, which is coming to the Galaxy S in September) this will be available natively. You can do something called “rooting” your phone, which as I understand it is like jailbreaking an iPhone, and then use developer tools to take screenshots, but this is not something that I want to do and not something that would appear easy for an every day casual user to do.
10. The Picasa integration with this phone is fantastic. It is seamless. You can access your Picasa photos on Google very easily as galleries and it feels more like they are actually on the phone than you are connecting to the web to see them. Google has done a really super job with this integration. I love how you can pull directly from your Picasa galleries to pull artwork to use for your screen background. The Picasa/Android integration is so much more elegant and beautiful than anything I’ve seen come from Flickr yet. The Flickr mobile experience is awful in my opinion. This Picasa integration on my Galaxy makes me want to use Picasa a lot more.
11. Tethering this phone is awesome. I can hook the phone up via USB to my MacBook Pro and use it’s connection to browse the internet on my laptop. Unlimited and for free. It’s not as fast as wifi or my uVerse network at home, but it definitely will suffice in a pinch. I probably won’t use this feature alot, but it will be very nice to have when I need it. Right now I’m using a 21 day trial for an app called PDAnet which makes this super easy to do. The app costs $19 to buy after the trial, but from what I understand, much easier native teethering ability will be coming out with the next version of Android, Froyo (which again, I’ll get from TMobile next month).
12. The battery life on the iPhone was better. But since I can keep the phone connected and charging via USB to my computer this helps keep a charge up. I can also use the same cable with the cigarette lighter charger that I was using for my iPhone. I think I’ll be able to manage the battery life. I like that the Galaxy gives me an analysis of what is using my battery life. AT present it breaks down as follows for me. 78% display, 10% Android system, 7% Android OS, 5% cell standby, 2% dialer.
13. I am now paying $60 a month for phone service (without a contract) that includes 500 talk minutes per month and unlimited texting and internet.
By contrast, my wife (who is still on an iPhone) is paying $75 a month for a comparable plan except that she only gets 450 minutes and is limited to 200 texts per month. So I am getting just a little bit more from T-Mobile for $15 per month less on a much superior network.
Better service, lower cost. Isn’t competition a wonderful thing?
14. Almost all of the above workarounds, etc. that I figured out for this phone came from Google Buzz, one of the best social networks around. You can follow me on Google Buzz here.
Thanks to everyone there who has given me advice on how to use my new Galaxy over the past week. Google Buzz has a tech savvy community that is very enthusiastic about the Android platform, smart phones and technology in general. Even more impressive, many of the people who gave me advice and help over this last week are Google employees. Certainly I’m an active higher profile Buzz user, but I’ve been super impressed at the personal interest that Google employees take in passionately resolving technology issues around Google products.
The “community” around the Android platform is by no means limited to Google staff, many other developers, and just geeks in general have been just as helpful, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company whose employees are so willing to engage their customers.
Earlier this week a Google employee, Adewale Oshineye, posted an interesting quote on buzz that struck a chord with me which I’ve reposted below. The Google culture seems to empower their employees to act as tech support, evangelists, etc. however and whenever they wish. This is refreshing to see. There is an enthusiasm for Google Products that I’ve seen from the employees that I’ve followed on Buzz.
Customer service is so easy and still so hard. All it takes is genuine interest in the customer and in your own company. And some simple protocol, like saying hello in order to get the communications channel open with the customer and asking in the end, if he has been satisfied.
But half of customer service people ‘just work here’. They are not genuinely interested neither in the individual customer or in their own company success. Something wrong with incentives? You are not paid for serving well?
Update #1: Thanks to Sumyunguy who in the comments below was able to point me to a convoluted but possible way to take screenshots of my Galaxy without rooting it. I followed these instructions from the link he provided and found I was indeed able to take a screenshot (now you can see how colorful my Galaxy desktop is). This is nice to know. A lot of work just to get a screenshot but nice to know that it can be done. π
Update #2: Thanks to Brian Hall and Brian Criscoulo over at Mark/Space. I was able to use their software The Missing Sync for Android to sync all my contacts from my Mac Address book over to my Galaxy contact list — and over wifi, which was super slick. I can now add these contacts to groups which solves my problem up there at point #2.
It looks like this software will also help me manage a lot more of the synchronization between my MBP and my new phone as well including my music, files, videos, photos and lots of other computer based media. But I’m going to figure that part out later. Pretty awesome stuff. π
Huh… That’s really weird. I just plug in my Incredible, the menu pops up on the phone, I say “connect as disc drive” and two (well now three) volumes mount. Don’t even have to touch the computer, nor activate USB debugging. Must be something weird with the way the Mac sees the device.
Regarding Vignette – you can set up “favorites” with Vignette, so once you get a combination that you like (as with your photo above) you can save all the different parameters as one favorite. It’s a different approach than Hipstamatic, but it’s not too bad.
I don’t know if there’s something weird about that phone, but steps 1 through 4 in the process to mount the SD card shouldn’t be necessary. USB debugging is something completely different, essentially enabling developers to remote-control their phone from a computer.
Also, steps 5 and 6 are the same thing. You don’t have to select the status bar first, you just drag it.
RE: Point 3
Thomas; It looks like either your phone is broken, Samsung’s software is buggy, or you’re doing some unnecessary steps.
On my N1 the steps are:
1) Plug in
2) Click ‘Turn on USB storage’
The SD card is mounted on my mac. Because it acts as a Mass Storage device it displays the volume name of the SD card. Most SD/Mini SD/Micro SD cards I’ve used show up as ‘No Name’. You can just rename it in the Finder.
@Bryne Hobbs
You probably have DoubleTwist installed. It comes has a feature which makes the SD card automatically mount when the phone is plugged into a computer. Unfortunately, the feature is enabled by default, so it suddenly just starts happening for no apparent reason. Awful.
Give FxCamera a try as a Hipstamatic replacement. It does the processing on-the-fly, but has fewer effects than Vignette.
Glad you like the phone and Android! I use a NexusOne and LOVE it. If I was getting a phone today I would go with the Samsung, although my boss just got a DroidX and it looks pretty bad ass too!
With regard to service, I been using a company called http://www.mysimplemobile.com/ since I got my N1. They are a prepaid service and use the Tmobile towers as their backbone, so your phone would work fine. $60 will get you Unlimited Talk, Unlimited Text & Unlimited 3G with NO contract. It is awesome. Much cheaper than anything else I could find for the level of service. Also, because it is prepaid, there are NO additional fees or taxes.
Vignette is the ONLY paid app I have purchased for my phone. It’s great. There is another app called ToyCamera which may give you that hipstamatic look you want.
Regarding connecting to a Mac. I just hook mine up and it mounts on the desktop. Your problem may just be a Samsung thing. Also, when you are updated to Froyo that could fix it.
You don’t need root to take screenshots, but it is a bit convoluted. http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/07/23/how-to-take-screenshots-of-your-android-based-phone-from-os-x/
LMAO when I read this… T-Mobile has the WORST coverage… and
Software released for attacking Android phones
Two security experts said on Friday they released a tool for attacking smart phones that use Google’s Android operating system to persuade manufacturers to fix a bug that lets hackers read a victim’s e-mail and text messages. “It wasn’t difficult to build,” said Nicholas Percoco, head of Spider Labs
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38493708/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/
Jack, it looks by your name that you are in NYC. Perhaps AT&T is better than T-Mobile in NYC. But here in the Bay Area, AT&T is just awful.
Ben, I suspect that this is how my Samsung is supposed to work, like your N1 but it doesn’t. I can’t get mine to mount unless I go into the development setting and turn on USB debugging. It’s not such a horrible thing once you figure this out. But it’s really a pain figuring that out.
Personally speaking I wish every USB device I plugged into my Mac/PC whatever just always worked without having to do anything else with the device. sort of like how those easy to use USB memory sticks work. I just plug those in and any computer recognizes it. Why can’t a phone be the same way?
> Better service, lower cost. Isnt competition a wonderful thing?
It isn’t actually competition, though. The US carrier market is 4 overlapping monopolies. You shouldn’t have had to switch phones to switch carriers, and wouldn’t have to in almost any other country.
Sumyunguy, that worked like a charm. Thanks for pointing me to that post. I updated the blog post with those instructions! π
Hamranhansenhansen, fair point. Hopefully AT&T’s horrible service convinces Apple at some point to offer their phone on better carriers. But at least I have an option for now to go to T Mobile myself, even if on a different phone. You’re right though, it would be great if every phone worked on every carrier. I suspect AT&T might not be able to survive such a world though.
At least in the Bay Area they seem to be unwilling to spend the money to improve their network, even though they are charging more than their competitors. Just pure greed on their part I guess.
“The Google culture seems to empower their employees to act as tech support, evangelists, etc. however and whenever they wish. This is refreshing to see. There is an enthusiasm for Google Products that Ive seen from the employees that Ive followed on Buzz.”
I guess that’s one perspective. Alternatively, Google employees are big apologists for Google products, perhaps because they’ve been given free samples of the hardware, and it’s annoying that they refuse to admit *any* upsides of their competition. Unlike many companies, Google is comprised almost entirely of engineers, so you get pretty much exactly what you expect when you ask an engineer a technical question.
When I asked if there was a way to do something straightforward with a Google product (which happens to have an open-source component), I was told it couldn’t, but that it was partially open-source so I could build my own from scratch using that component. (Gee, thanks. I was considering paying your competitors for this product which would actually meet my needs, anyway, and you’ve not only confirmed that choice but made me think that Google employees are dorks.)
It’s sometimes frustrating that Apple is so secretive but when you see Google (and Microsoft and other) engineers making asses of themselves, and realize that Apple can and usually does present a consistent message and vision, I totally see why they do it.
Its sometimes frustrating that Apple is so secretive but when you see Google (and Microsoft and other) engineers making asses of themselves, and realize that Apple can and usually does present a consistent message and vision, I totally see why they do it.
Philip, I don’t see it as engineers making “asses” out of themselves. Certainly there is a risk in letting your engineers engage directly with your customers. And yes, it may be harder to control a marketing message or things might get out there that you don’t want to get out there, but I think it’s a risk worth taking.
And they are not going to be able to address every concern for sure. But if they see a simple way to fix something or point somebody in the right direction, Google employees more often that not seem to me to want to help. And this builds enormous goodwill from a corporate perspective I believe.
It seems like Google employees are proud to work at Google. And genuinely care. I have no idea, by contrast, who is an Apple employee at all. A few people that I’ve met over the years have told me that they work there, but by and large, Apple employees seem very secretive about the fact that they even work for Apple, at least online in the blogosphere.
This makes Apple feel impersonal and it makes it frustrating when you can’t get something at Apple to work, even though it is just “supposed to work.” Personally I think Google’s way is better.
Sounds like you would probably stay with the iPhone if you were anywhere BUT the United States..
That is to say, most of your issues seem to be with AT&T and not the iPhone itself.
Josue, yes, I don’t think I would have switched except for AT&T. But. Knowing now what I know after having switched I think I’d still switch even if I could get my iPhone on TMobile.
I love how well the iPhone “just works.” But I don’t love that I can’t use it for tethering or that I can’t use my Google Maps on it. My Google Maps are actually a super big part about why I want to use a smartphone.
I feel like I’m slowly but surely “getting” the Android phone and suspect that a year from now I won’t want to switch back to an iPhone even if it’s on the same carrier.
But, yeah, the carrier is a big part of it for me. For $15 a month less I get a much better network, 50 more talk minutes a month, and unlimited texting.
A couple of things, that don’t add up with your comments.
Adding contacts to groups …
This is easy, I have done it on my GS, maybe your contacts need to reside on your phone, and not in Google, though.
Also, Screen in sunlight is awesome, much better than iphone, have you got screen brightness turned right up ??
Although there are fewer apps in Google market there’s a higher percentage of free ones.
…And another vote for FXCamera for wacky effects on Android, check my samples here http://www.flickr.com/photos/t3mujin/tags/fxcamera/ (disclaimer: shameless self promotion plug)
JaGuR, you are correct. I’ve figured out now that I can add a contact to a group. But only if I create the contact on the Galaxy. If I import it through my Google Contacts, these contacts cannot be added to groups on the phone. Theoretically I should be able to add these contacts to groups in Google Contacts and then these groups should sync over to the phone. But apparently there is a known bug at present which is not allowing Google Contact Groups to sync with the Galaxy. See this thread for more detail on that.
http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s/118592-contacts-groups-not-syncing.html
What I really wanted most of all though was to be able to sync up my address book on my Mac with my Galaxy contact list. Since writing this post (see update above) I’ve been made aware of The Missing Sync for Android Software which allows me to do this very thing. Now that I’ve synched up my Mac address book with my Galaxy contact list, indeed I can add these contacts to groups. Very cool!
I do have screen brightness turned all the way up and I still have a hard time seeing the Galaxy in the direct sun. I thought the iPhone did better here, but will have to look at them both side by side to compare.
The desktop looks such a mess, just inconsistent overly colourful icons everywhere.
Thomas, congrats on your switch.
Just to clarify, the iPhone has a tethering feature, via Bluetooth or USB, however this is enabled only when the carrier allows it, in your previous case, AT&T.
Here in Malaysia, I’m running the iPhone on Digi, and tethering works beautifully.
What the iPhone doesn’t have by default however, is a WiFi hotspot feature which lets you share the internet connection from the phone to 5 other devices or more – this can only be activated if one jailbreaks their iPhone and purchase the MyWi app from Cydia.
But yeah, regrettably, downloading Google’s My Maps to the phone is not still not natively supported on the iPhone.
You’ll be back when the honeymoon is over.
Ggg, maybe, maybe not. π I will say this. I’m liking my new phone a lot more a week into it than I was the first 48 hours.
David, good point about my experience being on the U.S. version of the iPhone with AT&T. I suspect that AT&T is the limiting factor in large part with the iPhone. While the phone is likely capable of tethering. AT&T won’t allow/support it on an unlimited plan like I can with T-Mobile.
USB Debugging has nothing to do with mounting your phone as a removable disk. You’re doing it wrong.
Turn off USB Debugging, connect via USB, and you should get a notification inviting you to mount the device. If you aren’t, then something’s wrong with your device.
It looks like this software will also help me manage a lot more of the synchronization between my MBP and my new phone as well including my music, files, videos, photos and lots of other computer based media. But Im going to figure that part out later. Pretty awesome stuff.
I get the enthusiasm, I really do. New gadgets are fun, learning experiences are fun, “freedom” is great, etc. But really, what exactly is to like about the fact that you have to buy extra software and dick around for hours and hours in order to make your phone function in the way you’ve become accustomed to with your old iPhone? Sure, the iPhone had limitations and stock Android has different things to offer, but _three_years_ of jailbreak community activity has bolted on, unlocked, or wrote-from-scratch the various things that iOS has been missing.
I live in Oakland too, and I completely agree that AT&T is horrendous in the area. I get why you went to T-Mo and Android. If iPhone 3G connectivity worked on T-Mobile, I’d be jumping ship in a heartbeat. My priorities are clearly different from yours, but I would rather deal with occasional dropped calls and no 3G in the tunnel, than channel hours and hours of tinkering into a half-baked mobile OS that can’t accomplish basic tasks without a) finding out what’s wrong with it, and then b) finding the time to fix, circumvent or replace some piece of what it came with. My time is worth more than that, as I’m sure yours is, too. I guess my question is, what’s your threshold? When does the “pretty awesome stuff” become “maddening?” It seems roughly akin to the Farmville phenomenon: once you’ve got time and effort invested in it, you’re kind of in it for the long haul, lest ye proclaim all that time and effort as wasted.
punkassjim. good points. And as you live in Oakland you obviously feel my pain with AT&T.
Personally speaking maps are a pretty big deal for me. Photography is a big part of my life and I’ve literally mapped out thousands of spots on Google Maps for almost every major city in America that I want to shoot.
On my Samsung I can get to these maps flawlessly at this point. On the iPhone I can’t get to them at all.
I suspect I’ll go through more pain with Android, but in a way it’s not so bad. And I’m learning new things and new ways that I can improve my experience. I feel like I have a lot more control over this phone than I did the iPhone 3Gs. That ultimately it will do more for me.
I was right on the verge of deciding between iPhone and Android when I came across this thread. After reading down through all the comments I have decided that Android is the way to go for me. Thanks to all for their input.
Peggy
the iphone 4 has a 800:1 contrast ratio while the galaxy s vibrant has a 10000:1 ratio.. along with full 720p and AMOLED.. the iphone 4 screen isnt even in the same league
Thomas,
not sure if you figured out the favourite contacts on your phone or not (couldnt be bothered to read all the comments). I couldnt find it initialy either. Its solved differently than on my old HTC Hero, but here is how you do it:
Dont use contacts option, use phone instead, now at the upper tab you have: keypad,call log, *favourites*, contacts. Which is just what you need. Espesially that in favourites after starred contacts you get most frequently called.
I got rid of my contacts icon as I dont use it anymore from the shortcut bar and put gmail instead. You can edit shortcut bar while in all apps and edit mode (menu->edit while viewing all aps)
Hope it helps
Hi, not a great techie. Just picked up the Samsung Galaxy, instead of the iPhone today. I bought a mini SD card and USB drive for it. How do I use this, where do I plug the card part in?
I know you guys will find this so rudimentary, but I make a better writer than I do, a phone tech person.
Hey guys, not sure if this has been posted anywhere yet, but regarding syncing music to your galaxy handset from itunes,i have found an absolutely fantastic of software called itunes agent. It basically lets you create a playlist on itunes, and then copy all of that music to your phone! And it works brilliantly. This is the link where I found it, and I urge all users to try it out, especially those who have moved onto the galaxy from an iphone, or . ipod touch
Hey guys, not sure if this has been posted anywhere yet, but regarding syncing music to your galaxy handset from itunes,i have found an absolutely fantastic of software called itunes agent. It basically lets you create a playlist on itunes, and then copy all of that music to your phone! And it works brilliantly. This is the link where I found it, and I urge all users to try it out, especially those who have moved onto the galaxy from an iphone, or . ipod touch. The link is: http://www.knowyourcell.com/samsung/samsunggalaxys/galaxy-s-guides/477037/how_to_sync_the_samsung_galaxy_s_with_itunes.html
It takes a bit of messing around to set up, but believe me it’s worth it!
Thanks for the update on the android. yea I’m behind but the debut usb was the key to my seeing my Galaxy S on my mac, thanks!
love your photography, very interesting, creative and original!
Dus any1 no how to delete numbers from recently used Wen sending a sms?
Just to put these number in perspective, Apple sells 8M iPhones a quarter. If Samsung really manages to sell 10M Galaxy S by the end of the year, itll sell around 30% as many Androids as Apple sells iPhones. Now, apple might increase the iPhone sales rate, but we need to remember that the Galaxy only came out in the second quarter.
Very impressive achievement for Samsung.
The screenshot is native and 2 buttons operation. Check user manual. l’m working on 2.2 version.
Previously I wasn’t able to connect my SGS (Samsung Galaxy S) to my MBP (Macbook Pro) even after mounting its memory. It just wouldn’t show up on my MBP. Thanks to your post, I finally found a solution to transfer files between my SGS and MBP via USB. It might be a chore to go through the activation process when I need it, but it prove to be a much faster and better alternative than using bluetooth instead. Much time was save instead.
Once again thank you, it has been of tremendous help to me.
Maybe you could change the page name title Thomas Hawk Digital Connection » Blog Archive » More Thoughts on my Samsung Galaxy S Android Phone vs. the iPhone to more generic for your blog post you create. I liked the blog post however.
my samsung galaxy -suddenly all my contacts got erased;and when i tried to sync the new contacts with my pc,suddently the swype facility is gone.
what should i do?
please
love your site .
more technical info at http://www.mobile10.org
well done!
The one think I miss on the Galaxy S is a LED for reminders, missed calls etc.
The workaround is a program called NoLED though which will show icons on the main screen for this.
To connect mine to my MacBook Pro, all I have to do is plug it into the supplied cable and it appears on the desktop. Easy.