Newbie Samsung Galaxy S10/S10 Lite/S10+/Android Thread

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normanc

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#261551 3-Dec-2019 10:21

I'm starting a thread for people like me who are new to the Samsung Galaxy ecosystem. And indeed to Android. I am shifting to Android from the iPhone ecosystem, and there is a learning curve of course. Hopefully this thread can help me and others. And hopefully the more experienced will be kind and help us out.

Cheers

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#2365488 3-Dec-2019 10:33

Here's an answer regarding your question on the other thread regarding Bixby: Don't, just don't!

One thing I'd suggest doing, if you haven't already, is read through one or more of the comprehensive reviews of your phone. That will give a good overview of what it's capable of, even if not how to do it.

I think you've picked a good time to move to Samsung - they're a much better product now than they were a few years back, with their take on Android being decently fast and easy to use. The old TouchWiz interface, IMHO, was a dog, whereas OneUI is generally a pleasure to use.

normanc

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#2365517 3-Dec-2019 10:52

My first question. Whats Bixby? It seems to be trying to be some kind of assistant.

At this stage, I don't care about assistants. Google or Bixby. AFAIK, and in my experience, voice recognition is just not there yet.

It makes too many mistakes, and it's just faster to type.

It's probably my very mixed accent that confuses it, and since I don't have time or patience to train every voice recognition agent out there, it's more trouble that it's worth. Note that I've never successfully used Siri or Cortana either.

My understanding is that I can remap the Bixby button. But when I try to do so, it comes up with an incredibly confusing set of options to set it to. None of which do what I want. Specifically, I want to turn the phone silence on and off with a double click. Being able to slience my iPhone with a physical switch is the most useful thing. Rather than have to unlock, find the settings and change to silence.

So, anyone have a compelling reason to use Bixby?

Can I change the Bixby screen? It has nothing on it I care about. Can I disable Bixby?

Thanks

jonathan18

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#2365521 3-Dec-2019 10:58

To remap the Bixby button to something else I use an app (from the Play Store) called bxActions. While I use it to launch Google Assistant, it can map a range of functions to the button including volume-related ones, though it's possible you may need to pay for some of the options.

I'm sure there are other similar apps out there.

Tzoi

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#2365536 3-Dec-2019 11:36

There's some remapping of the bixby button you can do in the settings now too I think, though haven't checked to see whether it will toggle mute

normanc

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#2379733 21-Dec-2019 23:02

Another plea for help.

I'm deeply confused by how Contacts work.

I've been looking at them and I have massive amounts of duplication in some of my contacts.

In my own contact entry, it's duplicated email addresses, physical.addresses, phone numbers.

I found an option (with the 3 dots) that says "add / remove linked contacts"

When I go in there it has a large list of my name, with a bunch of accounts it's apparently drawing all this duplicate information from. I didn't ask it to (AFAIK) WHEN I was importing from my iPhone.

It just did it.

So I can unlink them and then it shows me all of them in my contact list.

I note that I seem to have two entries showing as on my Phone. And One on one Google account. One on another.

As well as all the what's app, signal entries.

But I don't want them showing as duplicates. If they were showing as normal entries that gave me the option to text via WhatsApp or signal or whatever, that would be great. But it's duplicating all this information.

In some looking around, I found the Settings>
Accounts and Backup section.

And under accounts I see a whole bunch of my accounts listed there.

First, is this kosher? I've never seen the accounts listed out like this on IOS.

Second, I see that autosync is on. Is this the culprit? Is this autosync creating the links to contacts and so on?

I've tried turning it off to see what happens

But then I went to.look at account information about another Google account I have connected. And it still says that sync is on. And there's no way to turn it off from that panel.

I can't turn off contacts sync.

Is this again the problem?

I'm just really confused. And the tech support staff can't shed any light on it. They just don't know what this Is.

I'd seems very dodgy to have these accounts stored on my phone. I thought account information should be stored with the apps. 7

jonathan18

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#2379761 22-Dec-2019 08:33

Yep, all it’s doing is bringing together contacts from your various apps into a single location so they can be managed more easily, and all methods of contact for the same person are visible in a single view. This way you can go into the one app (the Contacts app), find the person, then elect the manner in which you’ll contact them. Doesn’t stop you doing it the other way, ie via the specific comms app.

You can elect to not sync any of the individual accounts, under the manage contacts / sync contacts screen. Deselecting all of the apps here is the same thing as the turning off contacts sync, which is what you indicate what you want to do, but why you’d do this for all is not something I understand.

normanc

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#2380089 22-Dec-2019 16:05

jonathan18:

You can elect to not sync any of the individual accounts, under the manage contacts / sync contacts screen. Deselecting all of the apps here is the same thing as the turning off contacts sync, which is what you indicate what you want to do, but why you’d do this for all is not something I understand.

So I kept on poking around last night.

I think my core confusion is what's being done with all the contact information.

In my iPhone, it keeps contact information in its own address book, and if I wanted to work with my Google contacts, I would have to get an app to synchronise the data.

Which I did a bit.

In this case, can I assume that it's just looking at the various data sources (Google Contacts, WhatsApp etc) and synchroinisng a local copy. But keeping them all separate.

And then displaying them as one contact list.

And the linking is how it knows which are the same contacts.

If this is the case, then my question is if it's going to keep in trying to link contacts together without asking me. Because that's nuts. There are many cases where a couple have the same home phone number, and it may try to link them.

Or if the linking was a one time thing when I imported everything.

jonathan18

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#2380168 22-Dec-2019 17:42

I think you’ll find it’s linking by name not numbers in common, ie the same person found in a range of different apps. Otherwise my wife and my son’s listings would be combined as they share the same home phone number and that ain’t the case.

I also think you’re overthinking this! If you don’t like Samsung’s contacts app disable all syncing and use another app. It’s one of the benefits of the Android ecosystem...

normanc

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#2380215 22-Dec-2019 19:34

I've had a look at the Google contacts app. And that's ok. Not as pretty. And I can certainly look at other contacts options.

But we are actually forced to use their Contacts app because it's what is linked to the phone app. Unless there is some way of changing which contacts list it uses.

But I haven't found it yet.

Im finding that the Samsung UI seems to be quite restrictive. It does seem to lock you into using their apps.

I also thought that the Android ecosystem was more open and easily personalised than iPhone.

But I'm not sure that's the case here.

But I just don't know.

Stu

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#2380219 22-Dec-2019 19:44

I don't use the default OneUI launcher, I've been using Action Launcher for many years. Numerous automated tasks happen constantly via Tasker and MacroDroid. There's not much I can't do. Not sure why you think Android's worse than Apple?

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

normanc

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#2380231 22-Dec-2019 20:11

Some of its what I'm used to. I've been on iPhone for many years. And decided that maybe now was the time to make the jump.

So there's a lot I have no idea about.

For instance, the Launcher. I assume it's the "skin" of the OS ? How we access apps? Organise and sort?

But under the hood, it will be whatever custom version of Android Samsung has built?

Does changing the Launcher change what apps are run by default, or how apps are linked together.

Ie Phone to Contacts app?

Or is the Launcher really just cosmetic.

Thanks

Stu

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#2380236 22-Dec-2019 20:18

The launcher is just that, the interface you see and launch apps from. Default apps can be managed through the App Manager in settings, or the are apps to list/manage default apps. Not really sure what the problem with the Samsung Contacts app is. Plenty of control over what contacts are displayed and individual communications apps can usually be stopped from syncing contacts.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

normanc

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#2380241 22-Dec-2019 20:33

As for Apple being better than Android.

I'm able to do things on Android that I've never been able to do on IOS

But I'm also being roadblocked by things I would not expect from a flagship phone. Like very limited ability to record video frame rates at 25fps, or 24fps.

The back button functionality is completely inconsistent between apps. Sometimes it goes back in the app. Sometimes it will close the app. Sometimes it will go back through a list of other apps. It drives me crazy.

Panels and things open seemingly at random. I'm SURE it's not random. I'm brushing something, or some trigger has occurred. But I can't figure some of them out.

Some will be experience. And what im used to.

But im also querying how much of what im experiencing is due to the Samsung Launcher?

Is this launcher able to suppress parts of Android?

I just don't know.

normanc

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#2380249 22-Dec-2019 21:08

One of the things about the Samsung Contacts app is that it has right at the top of the contacts list this bar saying "Try Sharing your profile"

This is some kind of social media connection thing with other Samsung users?

I have no desire to. I don't want it. But there's no way of getting rid of it. I started going through the process in the hope that once I did it, I could just lock it down so no one could ever see me on there. I have no desire or need to share my information with my contacts at random. I CHOOSE who I share with. I have many contacts who are acquaintances or business contacts at best. I'm not going to share my "PROFILE" with them.

But it gets to a point where it requires me to upload ALL my contacts to Samsung! NO! Samsung does not get that information if I can possibly help it. I'm certainly not going to just authorise them to take all my contact information. If they have it, then it's not been authorised by me.

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The Samsung Contacts app linked together a bunch of my contacts entries WITHOUT ASKING ME. (AFAIK). It may have done it when I imported the data from my iPhone. (It's possible I clicked on something to allow this linking without realising what was going on.)

So I'm unsure if there are linked contacts that have vanished into other contacts.

And there's no way I can see of seeing which contacts are linked contacts. So I can't check them.

Is the Samsung Contacts app keeping on linking contacts when it synchronises? That was the core of my wanting to stop synchronisation. Because I thought that was the process that was linking contacts But who knows? There doesn't seem to be a setting to turn on or turn off linking contacts. So was this a one time thing? (Samsung support staff on chat had no idea what this linking even was.)

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I saw the comment above about where to set Default apps. This was very intriguing. SO I went in there and searched for Contacts.

Both the Samsung Contacts and the Google Contacts apps came up.

I selected the Google Contacts app and scrolled down to find that the Set Defaults section was greyed out. I can't set it as ANY default.

And found it was the same with the Samsung Contacts app.

So Contacts based apps appear to not even let you set ANY default for them.

(At this stage, I reallky think I'm missing something about Contacts. I have been thinking that this is simply an app on the phone that supplies contact handling. But is the Contacts list a MUCH DEEPER aspect of the phone? Is it actually part of the OS or something?)

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I set the Default storage location in the Samsung Contacts app.

Then I notice that it's blank. So I set it again.

Later on, it's blank again.

It keeps forgetting what I want as my default storage location for contacts.

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I look at iOS as overly restrictive and it lags behind Android in features. But maybe (maybe) this is because Apple tests and refines and whittles things away until what remains DOES work. Very consistently and reliably.

All I can do is go on what I am experiencing.

Even if I am whinging because I don't understand what's going on.

Stu

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#2380256 22-Dec-2019 21:48

Have a look at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.defaultappmanager.pro to see all defaults (not all defaults can be seen under the Default apps configuration in the app manager (hit the three dots in the app manager))

Set Google Contacts as your default contacts app and configure it to show just the contacts you want to see. Turn off contacts sync for all other accounts. Hide the Samsung contacts app in your launcher.

The 'share your profile' text isn't there to annoy if you hit 'contacts' within the phone app.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

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