So when's the Verizon GNex getting 4.2? I'm putting the over under at July 2013.

11/17/2012 8:01:48 PM

I just downloaded the new OS a couple weeks on my bionic ago and cannot get it to vibrate for texts/emails. It will vibrate for calls. I have the vibrate option checked on all three features, but just incoming calls vibrate. Any solutions?

11/18/2012 3:47:58 PM

Had my Note 2 for a week now, and I am more than impressed. The phone doesn't feel big in your hand or my pocket at all. The screen size is outstanding and the hardware is super fast. The stylus is much more useful than I would have imagined before getting the phone as well. I've been really impressed with jellybean as a whole too. It was like night and day from gingerbread.

As someone who has damn near 100% "only apple" friends, they've been mighty interested in this thing. Might have a few Samsung converts in the near future

[Edited on November 19, 2012 at 3:48 PM. Reason : .]

11/19/2012 3:47:23 PM

Yay another Galaxy Note 2 user! I'm really impressed with the battery life. Much better than when I had a GS3.

A trick if you want to speed up the phone even more (well for all Android devices):

Go to settings -> developer options ->

change window animation scale, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale all from 1.0x to 0.5x.

Makes the phone even zippier.

11/19/2012 4:22:49 PM

i know im late to the party, but am i the only one that's not impressed with google now? maybe i'm missing something

11/19/2012 4:23:14 PM

I use the voice search feature when I'm driving and it works great.

The cards are pretty cool sometimes. It tells me how long it'll take to get to a restaurant I googled, or if you get an email about a shipped package it'll give you a card to pull up the tracking. Little things like that are pretty neat. Especially if they automatically show up in your notification window.

11/19/2012 4:32:07 PM

Brand new to the android scene. I've been using an iphone for about a year now, and because of a job change I have a phone allowance and can either get the iphone 5 or GS3.

I'm really leaning towards the GS3, but wanted to also consider the note 2. Went back a few pages in the thread and mostly saw people excited about pre-ordering the note or just recommending the GS3.

How many of you switched from an iphone to the GS? Was it an easy change? I'm sure this question has been asked a lot when the 3 came out, but I didn't want to dig through the last 40+ pages of the thread to figure that out.

11/20/2012 2:12:28 PM

I went from an iPhone 4 to a GS3 to a Note 2. I really like the Note 2. I thought size would be an issue but it's not. It's fast and has yet to crash on me. Although my GS3 experience was on ICS not JB (4.1).

As far as making the transition goes I haven't looked back yet. Not a single thing about iOS I miss.

11/20/2012 2:28:48 PM

Why did you switch off of the GS3? Was ICS buggy?

11/21/2012 8:21:44 AM

No I wanted something bigger and I really liked the Note 2. It basically replaced my iPad (sold it).

11/21/2012 9:26:22 AM

I went from an iphone4 to a GS3. At first it was great but now I can't stand it. I finally have another one on the way in the hopes that the various issues I have will be solved but I'm not holding my breath. So far it's been like every other Android phone I've had. Great and fun at first and then it starts showing issues with stability and doing what it's supposed to do in the first place: WORK AS A Da

11/21/2012 7:15:21 PM

I went from an iphone4 to a GS3. At first it was great but now I can't stand it. I finally have another one on the way in the hopes that the various issues I have will be solved but I'm not holding my breath. So far it's been like every other Android phone I've had. Great and fun at first and then it starts showing issues with stability and doing what it's supposed to do in the first place: WORK AS A DAMN PHONE! I dropped 4 fucking calls today sitting at my desk with 4 bars of 4G (lotsa 4s). I bought it originally after my 4 finally started dying with hopes that it would get Jelly Bean quickly but I forgot Verizon sucks at actually getting updates ready.

11/21/2012 7:18:36 PM

That sucks man. I had some minor annoyances on the S3. They're all gone now with the Note 2. Probably due to JB. Hoping for the 4.2 upgrade soon though.

11/23/2012 9:14:55 PM

^ i dont see much difference between 4.1 and 4.2. Honestly, 4.2 seems more buggy than 4.1 (atleast on my n7)

11/23/2012 9:38:40 PM

From what I understand (I don't have 4.2 yet) the biggest bug fix is when you restart 4.1 it keeps defaulting back to the stock keyboard. So if you have something like swiftkey it gets annoying. 4.2 fixes that.

Some of the biggest enhancements are lockscreen widgets (really big IMO) and camera enhancements.

11/23/2012 10:04:53 PM

I find the camera less usable as there's no gallery integration in the camera app, so if you want to look at a pic you just took, you have to leave the app. The keyboard issue has never occurred for me, but I used swype. I've been trying the google gesture keyboard so I could avoid the memory usage of swype (20mb or so) but I think I'm going to switch back to swype as the gesture keyboard has a built in swear filter and doesn't seem to learn as fast. I was hoping touchdown widgets could be used as lock widgets but only specific apps seem to work for lock screen widgets

11/25/2012 8:21:25 AM

Quote :

"I find the camera less usable as there's no gallery integration in the camera app, so if you want to look at a pic you just took, you have to leave the app."

you just swipe to the left while in the camera app

11/25/2012 8:39:34 AM

well damn, how would ANYONE know to do that?

11/25/2012 10:26:17 PM

By watching a YouTube video showing the updates

Also I love the new slideshow functionality, especially being able to swipe the pictures up to delete. Very handy.

And yeah I'm not seeing much value from Google Now yet. Besides notifying me with useless cards most of the time, the cards also seem to slow down my Google searching, since when I click to Google search, the [normally useless] cards are always displayed first.

11/25/2012 11:05:48 PM

The gallery icon is in the bottom left isn't it?

[Edited on November 26, 2012 at 12:20 AM. Reason : ]

11/26/2012 12:20:34 AM

Quote :

"And yeah I'm not seeing much value from Google Now yet. Besides notifying me with useless cards most of the time"

i always see the same 3 lame restaurants in apex. i wanted to add nc state anything for sports, but google said no

11/26/2012 9:56:39 AM

The useless cards I told it not to show. Most of the ones are pretty useful though. Upcoming meetings, directions home, package tracking info, weather, directions to a restaurant I Google.

11/26/2012 10:33:56 AM

I thought it was pretty neat that after a few weeks Google Now realized that on Sunday morning I'm probably going to be driving to my church so it learned and started showing me the traffic conditions to church every Sunday morning.

11/26/2012 10:40:46 AM

I'm tired of the shitty coverage i get at home. Can anyone recommend a good, free Google Voice dialer that I can use over WiFi?

11/27/2012 10:36:48 AM

You want one that isn't the native Google Voice app?

Google Voice Menu > Settings > Making Calls > (Use Google Voice to make all calls || Ask every time I make a call)

This works for me in Jellybean, I assume it has the same behavior in ICS too.


[Edited on November 27, 2012 at 10:45 AM. Reason : .]

11/27/2012 10:44:12 AM

^That doesn't use wifi that just dials using your normal cell phone signal but with your Google voice number.

^^

Quote :

"I'm tired of the shitty coverage i get at home. Can anyone recommend a good, free Google Voice dialer that I can use over WiFi?"

I assume you want a voip service? A Google Voice dialer still uses your normal cell phone coverage.

At home I use Google Voice via Gmail. Just get a wireless headset (I have a Logitech G930) and make calls from Gmail. It's free and a great VOIP solution. Don't even need to use your phone.

If you want a voip solution on your phone that uses Google voice maybe this will work:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gvoip&hl=en

[Edited on November 27, 2012 at 10:54 AM. Reason : s]

11/27/2012 10:53:33 AM

Quote :

"Google Voice Menu > Settings > Making Calls > (Use Google Voice to make all calls || Ask every time I make a call)"

That still uses your voice connection, not wifi. You'd need something like GrooveIP or some other 3rd party calling app along with a google voice number.

11/27/2012 10:54:53 AM

Man...

Just got an S3 and it's extremely confusing to me. I'm going to give it at least a week, but coming from IOS there just seems to be a ton of crap on here that seems to all do similar things.

Also, if I just bought this shouldn't it be on the latest 4.1.2? Or at least 4.1? I'm showing 4.0.4 from Verizon and it's claiming to be up to date.

[Edited on November 27, 2012 at 11:59 AM. Reason : .]

11/27/2012 11:56:47 AM

Carrier android phones (so everything but the Google Nexus series) are only up to date as far as the carrier cares to update each device. So you have to wait on the carrier to push the update to you. You can't get 4.2 until Verizon designs their unique version of 4.2 and pushes it to each unique device.

You can root it and install a custom rom (like CM10) and get the latest version but they're often buggy and takes a bit of research to learn how.

There's really no perfect android device. The Nexus devices are always limited (e.g. no LTE or expandable memory) and the best carrier phones (S3/Note2/Optimus/etc) still rely on their respective carriers for updates.

As far as your first comment goes. That's why Android is better than iOS IMO. I always felt limited with iOS. With Android I can typically do whatever I want however I want. Not to mention being able to install launchers (like Apex) and get even more customization.

11/27/2012 12:12:19 PM

^^^^,^^^ Oh... I knew that... and there's my noob moment of the day.

Yes, you need a VOIP Gvoice app like they mentioned.

And this thread might be of interest to you:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1791957



[Edited on November 27, 2012 at 12:15 PM. Reason : .]

11/27/2012 12:14:56 PM

Quote :

"As far as your first comment goes. That's why Android is better than iOS IMO. I always felt limited with iOS. With Android I can typically do whatever I want however I want. Not to mention being able to install launchers (like Apex) and get even more customization."

That's why I definitely want to give it some time. I don't know if I'm comfortable rooting the phone at this point, but just playing with it in the past hour has made me more comfortable.

On that note, is there not a free podcast management app? I always used iTunes to download about 6-7 different podcasts that I listen to, but it looks like they are all paid apps which surprised me.

Do I have to resort to now pulling down the files manually from the websites that host the podcasts? Or do I have to keep iTunes installed and just drag the podcasts over after they download?

11/27/2012 1:37:20 PM

I don't do enough podcasts to care, but this is what I know:


While BeyondPod is a pretty awesome app... it's also one of the more expensive apps to unlock, which I did not do.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.beyondpod = $0.00 or $6.99 for Full unlock


Check out Listen Up ... I've seen good things about this one but haven't used it yet. It's modeled after the unfortunately dead Google Listen. As far as cost, he offers identical Free/Paid versions, so it's more of a donation-ware concept.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.codepimps.listenup.free = $0.00

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.codepimps.listenup = $1.00



[Edited on November 27, 2012 at 2:37 PM. Reason : .]

11/27/2012 2:34:53 PM

Looks like 4.1 isn't far off for Verizon's S3 - http://www.latinospost.com/articles/7129/20121120/samsung-galaxy-s3-jelly-bean-update-verizons.htm

Quote :

"Just got an S3 and it's extremely confusing to me. I'm going to give it at least a week, but coming from IOS there just seems to be a ton of crap on here that seems to all do similar things."

I had the same reaction when I played with that phone. ICS itself is clean, but imo Samsung's software they install on top of it really muddies up the water. I have a Galaxy Nexus with stock ICS and I love it.

11/27/2012 3:19:51 PM

Quote :

"ICS itself is clean, but imo Samsung's software they install on top of it really muddies up the water."

I still don't understand this. Touchwiz that comes with the S3 or my Note 2 has a tiny footprint. Most of the changes are small. Install a launcher like Apex and it's almost identical to ICS. In fact I like the Touchwiz messaging and contacts apps much better than the stock ICS or JB ones.

As far as launchers go Touchwiz is by far one of the least evasive compared to some of the others. Plus it's just a launcher...you can install another one without flashing a new rom.

11/27/2012 3:47:55 PM

Quote :

" still don't understand this. Touchwiz that comes with the S3 or my Note 2 has a tiny footprint. Most of the changes are small. Install a launcher like Apex and it's almost identical to ICS. In fact I like the Touchwiz messaging and contacts apps much better than the stock ICS or JB ones. "

Problem is that most are accustomed to the abortion that was touchwiz on the Pre-S3 galaxy devices. It was a cluster on the Fascinate I had and most of the developers avoided it like the plague because of how deeply integrated it was into everything. Touchwiz on the S3 and Note 2 are a huge step up and the S3 is the first device that I haven't dumped the stock firmware in favor of cm or aosp.

11/27/2012 4:09:34 PM

Yeah I guess I didn't know pre-s3/note 2 Touchwiz. I mean I have to run it on the Note for the Wacom stylus features but it's actually pretty great. All the black menus are awesome and work well with the OLED screens on the galaxy phones. The only thing I've changed is running Apex launcher so I can do 5 by 7 icons instead of 4 by 4 (which is pretty weak on a 5.5" IMO).

11/27/2012 4:18:02 PM

Quote :

"I still don't understand this. Touchwiz that comes with the S3 or my Note 2 has a tiny footprint."

Coming from my GNex it just seemed cluttered. I'm sure if I played around with it for a few hours but in the 10 minutes I was messing around with it, it felt cluttered. I'll give it a round two and see if I was mistaken.

11/27/2012 5:10:00 PM

When I got my Galaxy S3, the first thing I did was install CM10 on it because I like the look & feel of pure Android/JB better than the AT&T-customized Touchwiz crap.

But in other news, I scored a Nexus 4 today. Google Play's website took a complete shit when everyone was trying to order one.

11/27/2012 5:37:49 PM

Cluttered? What was cluttered about it? There's literally nothing extra on the launcher. Sure there's at&t and Samsung apps but those you can just disable. I was switching between a cm10 rom and stock on my S3 and there was almost no difference between the two. Cm10 just had too many bugs and wasn't stable. Off the top of my head the only things I can name that are different about touchwiz are the wallpaper, lock screen and maybe a few settings. It's almost the same thing as saying you have to completely reformat windows because Dell installed a bit of bloatware. There's nothing you can do on a stock Jelly Bean install that I can't do with a rooted Note 2 running touchwiz.

11/27/2012 7:23:16 PM

my biggest complaint with the S3: the interface looks like it was designed for old and/or blind people. even using the smallest font setting, I feel like they are underutilizing that giant screen that was such a selling point.

the apex launcher makes the homescreen much more bearable. and in dev settings I changed window and transition animation scaling down to 0.5x and that seemed to smooth things out a little when switching between apps.

11/28/2012 4:20:51 PM

i've got something like this



on my s3, but my current rom (i'm assuming) i'm using is causing some flickering on pull down notifications. might be a couple things in conjunction, but it worked fine on stock.

11/29/2012 3:47:15 PM

anybody have a thinkpad tablet?

I might pick one up at the Lenovo warehouse sale this weekend.. I could definitely use it for work if nothing else.

12/6/2012 7:57:29 PM

^^That looks cool but it also looks incredibly hard and slow to use. I can open all my favorite apps directly from my home screen with one tap. With that I would have to scroll through all those pages to find any useful information. A lot of wasted space. Not saying it doesn't look cool though...

12/7/2012 9:20:27 AM

yeah i've got a lot more apps on pages and kept mine on vertical mode. also i don't really need a whole page for weather or twitter. but i really like getting rid of the notification bar and that multilive for different pages is pretty rad, at least my son seems to think so

12/7/2012 9:57:17 AM

Looks like Verizon is finally updating the GSIII to jelly bean starting tomorrow.

http://news.verizonwireless.com/news/2012/12/samsung-galaxy-s-III-android-jelly-bean.html

12/13/2012 3:58:33 PM

Got my Nexus 4. Hardware-wise feels so much better than the S3. I can easily use it 1-handed (a real challenge with the S3) and grips real well. Only downsides are lack of LTE and a slightly worse camera. My AT&T LTE coverage was spotty anyway so off to craigslist she goes.

12/13/2012 5:23:41 PM

^^ awesome

also, the thinkpad tablet is pretty nice. I can take notes on a PDF with the stylus, re-save it and email to somebody

12/13/2012 8:13:05 PM

^^How much are you trying to sell it for?

12/13/2012 10:30:36 PM

Just checked my Vzw S3 for the update and it's FINALLY available. Installing now. I sure as hell hope this fixes all of my little problems on this damn phone.

12/14/2012 1:40:56 PM

me too

otherwise its root+flash the least buggy ROM I can find

[Edited on December 14, 2012 at 3:47 PM. Reason : set em up]

12/14/2012 3:47:26 PM