Help this is reprehensible I despise phones because of this.

[Matt_C]

I'm not even sure how and where to begin with this so I'll have to just throw things out and go from there. I'm beyond screwed at a major level. Everyone somehow assumes people know things just because it's 2023..HOw this mentality came about I'll never know. BUt anyway I've never owned a phone up until about a year ago and that is where my issues start with this.

I don't know why people tout phones as being so good when they're extremely limited to what they can do. I'm serious, I see people talk about things they have or do in/on their phone that's supposed to be universal things with all phones, such as take pictures, or edit entries, calendar's, alarms, reminders, scanning.. you get the idea...

Well I have a BLU V91 (AKA Blue G91) they changed the name for some reason...Anyway, all of the things every phone is supposed to have/do doesn't exist in/on my phone. I don't even have a settings option. It has what looks like 5 camera lenses on the back, but you can't take pictures, there is just a home screen thing with a few icons on it and that's it, you cannot even move the icons around. I've had people ask me things I have no idea what they even mean such as have I swiped up..Sorry wtf is swipe up? IN fact wth does swipe even mean and why are people saying it in conjunction with a phone...you're supposed to hold your phone and slide it..I don't get it.

You cannot close anything open on a phone, only way I can get anything closed that I open is to restart the phone...It's a piss poor design when you cannot even close anything without having to shut down/restart the phone.

Forget about gmail, the phone version is garbage. it doesn't even have over 3/4 of the options that the computer does. You cannot delete anything, there is no compose, you cannot attach anything, you cannot search, rename, move archive..all the options i use on PC aren't in the phone version. There is no search in fact you cannot even log out the option to do so simply doesn't exist. On top of all that, when you open gmail you have no clue what section you're even starting in.

Youtube on mobile has no comment section.

You cannot save any pictures from the net from anywhere. Pictures I did take don't exist in the gallery

You can't edit things in your phone book, If I misspell a persons name or input the wrong number I have to delete the entry and restart and hope I don't do it again

I have people using phrases without first finding out if I even know what they're talking about such as app drawer.
I'm sorry am I supposed to know what APP Drawer means?

People also claim phones come with a user manual..well mine didn't. After calling up the company, they gave me this lousy useless tool tip thing

So right now I have this phone that can make some calls, and nothing more.

I'm sick to death of people calling me troll because I don't know anything they're even talking about and acting as how can anyone not know this stuff..Well I don't.

Anything anyon e says to me about a mobile device I will ask what they mean. I cannot look anything up because either I don't know it's something that can be done or it's a thing, and or what is there is missing over 3/4 of the instructions because they're given from a stand point of someone having some understanding...well I have no understanding. You use any terminology with me and I'll look at you like a deer in headlights or if you're talking in some foreign language..Yes my problems with this are way beyond even that extent.

Apps have no instructions as to how to use them.
hell my phone went dim and it remained like that for over n8 months because nI just though that was normal. Only reason I know it wasn't is when someone asked me what time it was and I had to squint to look at it and they asked me why don't you tunr up the brightness..I said that's not a thing you can't the screen just remains dim. They said go to settings, I said what are you talking about there is no such thing. This went on until they said I had to be trolling, so I wound up bringing my phone back to Best BUY where I got it, handed it to someone and they somehow made it brighter, to which in 10 minutes went back to being dim again.


I to this day still have no idea what he meant by settings, and my screen is still dim. As I said it's supposed to be dim.

 

[olbriar]

Hello Matt_C. Welcome to Android Forums. I understand your frustration with your phone. You are behind the mainstream public in the use of your device. Being late to the technology doesn't make it beyond your grasp. We will definitely try to help you get up to speed. It would likely be far easier to understand if we were sitting with you and showing you the features of your phone and how to access them. All phone makes vary some in features and the user interface (the way the owner uses the phone) If you have a friend or a family member that can give you that personal assistance, it would far easier for you. We are here to help if we can. Swiping a phone screen is accomplished by placing your finger on the screen and the sliding it up or sliding it down and some phone you can slide left and right. Each slide motion "swipe" will access a different screen or a set of options. Swiping down, placing your finger at the top of the screen and then sliding down, brings a set of setting icons on most phones.

 

[Matt_C]

Hello Matt_C. Welcome to Android Forums. I understand your frustration with your phone. You are behind the mainstream public in the use of your device. Being late to the technology doesn't make it beyond your grasp. We will definitely try to help you get up to speed. It would likely be far easier to understand if we were sitting with you and showing you the features of your phone and how to access them. All phone makes vary some in features and the user interface (the way the owner uses the phone) If you have a friend or a family member that can give you that personal assistance, it would far easier for you. We are here to help if we can. Swiping a phone screen is accomplished by placing your finger on the screen and the sliding it up or sliding it down and some phone you can slide left and right. Each slide motion "swipe" will access a different screen or a set of options. Swiping down, placing your finger at the top of the screen and then sliding down, brings a set of setting icons on most phones.

Thanks for the reply...
I Just wanted to get something out of the way before any of us go any further, it's one thing to have a problem with not knowing something, but what really irritates me to no end ( I mean it makes my blood boil) is how anyone even knows enough to do what they're explaining. My gripe isn't just about getting the info, it's really more irritating for me to have people show or explain something as if it was some simple thing that information was available or that they claimed they figured it out.

No one figures things out like this, the stuff in a phone has to be shown to people BY someone in the company that made it. I don't care who anyone is, no one is going to tell me they went ahead and did something on their own and found something out this is a very precision aspect, No one just guessed at this, there is nothing even remotely close to even hinting that what they're showing could be guessed at or even accidentally discovered, it's simply way too precise to guess at. Anyone making the claim they did something on their own is the equivalent to them saying, they were messing around with a 26 digit combination lock and guessed the combination

As far as swiping, what you described is odd, how you described it, sounds as though swiping has no point. TBH I'm not really sure why anyone would do something weird like that even if they were told.

 

[olbriar]

As far as swiping, what you described is odd, how you described it, sounds as though swiping has no point. TBH I'm not really sure why anyone would do something weird like that even if they were told.

The point of swiping is to access additional features, screens, setting, etc that don't fit on the main screen of your phone. It may seem an awkward way to navigate to everything on your phone but it is actually very handy and quick once you are comfortable with the tool. The main screen will usually have the items that you access the most often such as your phone dialer, texting app, your camera.... Additional screens are for apps that you like to use but not that often. Swiping to that screen once in a while where that seldom used app resides is superior to having everything crammed onto one screen. It's the same concept in accessing your phone settings. Once you have the settings to your liking, you won't likely need to access them often.. if at all. Swiping to the settings is also design to decrease clutter on your main screen. Swiping is simply a navigation tool.

 

[mikedt]

Well I have a BLU V91 (AKA Blue G91) they changed the name for some reason...Anyway, all of the things every phone is supposed to have/do doesn't exist in/on my phone. I don't even have a settings option. It has what looks like 5 camera lenses on the back, but you can't take pictures, there is just a home screen thing with a few icons on it and that's it, you cannot even move the icons around. I've had people ask me things I have no idea what they even mean such as have I swiped up..Sorry wtf is swipe up? IN fact wth does swipe even mean and why are people saying it in conjunction with a phone...you're supposed to hold your phone and slide it..I don't get it.

You cannot close anything open on a phone, only way I can get anything closed that I open is to restart the phone...It's a piss poor design when you cannot even close anything without having to shut down/restart the phone.

I don't know your device. But one thing that stood out from your post, and that's that many cheapo and fake phones often have have multiple dummy camera lenses that don't actually function at all. I have seen as many as 7 camera lenses on the back of a phone. And these devices are often sold cheap online from China, from the likes of Wish and Aliexpress. Same thing for "piss poor design". Genuine flagship top-end devices, like Samsung S series, usually only have 3 camera lenses, for wide-angle, normal, and telephoto.

Where did you buy this phone? Does it say "WELCOME" and play a silly tune when you turn it on?

 

[Hadron]

Phones are more limited than computers. Their merit is portability, but that requires compromises, with the limited screen space (which limits other things) being the big one. However the portability also means that you can do things that a computer would be quite impractical for, which is why I have both (as I also have a "real" camera, which outperforms any phone as a photographic tool, but is larger than the phone and doesn't do anything else).

Swiping a finger up the screen (but not from the very bottom) is a common way of bringing up the "app drawer", i.e. a screen with all of your installed apps. Other common gestures are swiping up from the very bottom (to return to your "home" screen), in from the edges (which on many phones acts as a "back" button) or down from the top (to bring down the notifications). These are something that has evolved over time: "pulling down" notifications has been there all along, and swiping side to side (but not from the edge) to move between homescreens has also been there from the start (provided you have more than one page of your homescreen). And of course when reading in an app you usually scroll the screen up and down by putting a finger on it and "dragging" it, which is where the "swipe" gesture originates. But many of the other gestures are only a few years old: prior to that their functions were performed by buttons (originally physical, later icons on the screen). These and other gestures are, as has been said above, a way of accessing functions without cluttering screens with controls. They do however have the problem that you've met: if you don't know them it's unlikely that you'll discover them very quickly if at all (in the jargon of user interface design they have "poor discoverability"). Buttons are better for this because if you see a button you will probably at some point try pressing it to see what it does!

You should be able to replace some of these gestures with the older interface that has a bar with 3 buttons at the bottom. I do this myself, mainly because I find a "recent apps" button more efficient than the gesture (which Google copied from Apple) of swiping up from the bottom of the screen and then holding for a second until the recent apps appear. The option to switch to using the buttons will be in the settings, which brings us to another of your problems: where are the settings?

There will be a Settings app in the app drawer (see above), so swipe one finger up the screen to get the drawer then look for Settings in there (most likely the apps will be arranged alphabetically). You should also be able to get the settings by pulling down the notifications (slide finger down from the top of the screen, where there should be a bar with some icons) and look for a cog wheel/gear icon, which will take you into the settings. Hopefully the settings on your phone will have a search function (manufacturers change things, and I don't know Blu so I can't guarantee), in which case search for "gestures". There should be an option in there to use the 3 buttons instead, which will replace swiping up from the bottom or in from the edges (but not pulling down from the top or swiping up for the app drawer).

It sounds like one problem is that the manufacturer's default setup doesn't include common shortcuts such as Settings and Camera. Most phones do come with such things visible, so this is a particularly bad choice made by the manufacturer (all manufacturers make their own choices about things like this, so it sounds like you were unlucky to buy a Blu as your first smartphone). There will be a way of putting a shortcut to the settings on your homescreen if you want. Try pressing an holding on the icon in the app drawer and see if that gives you the option? Unfortunately the desktop environment is something that manufacturers tend to do their own thing with, and as I've never seen a Blu phone (I don't think they are sold my side of the Atlantic) I don't know its quirks. It is possible to install a different desktop environment (known as a "Launcher", the app that launches other apps), but it's probably better to learn a bit more about how to use the phone before worrying about that.

It does sound like it might be good to put a camera shortcut on your homescreen. I'm a little surprised that the manufacturer didn't do that, since most think that this is a key function and that the icon should be very prominent. Again, it will be in the app drawer, but you don't want to have to open that every time.

On this subject, if you find any of the apps provided by the manufacturer are not up to scratch you can always look in the Play Store for a better alternative. There is genuinely nothing special about the apps that manufacturers pre-install, and I personally use alternatives for most of the key features (calendar, email, messaging, browser, gallery, etc). The only problem there is finding the one that suits you, which may not be the one that suits someone else.

And no, it's a long time since I've seen a user manual with a phone, at least a decade. These things can generally be found online, but they don't include paper copies in the box.

One other hint: when you are in an app, look for an icon that looks like 3 dots arranged in a column, probably in a corner of the screen (top right and bottom right are commonest). That's a common icon for a "menu", i.e. the place you will find the app's settings. Some apps may have an icon with 3 horizontal bars (sometimes referred to as a "hamburger" icon, though it doesn't look much like one), which will usually take you to app options and settings, but that's become less common these days.

As for closing apps, it's very simple: don't. When you are finished with one app just return to your home screen or open whatever other app you want to use. The previous app will go to sleep, and will wake up when you return to it. If the phone decides it needs the memory for something else in the meanwhile it will close the app for you, but there is no merit in shutting apps down when you leave them: unless something is wrong with them they aren't draining power, and having lots of empty RAM doesn't do anything useful (it will however waste time and power reloading the app if you close it and then return to it). This is a different paradigm from the one used with older versions of Windows, but it's the way all unix/linux systems work. You can close an app if you really want to, either from the "recent apps" screen (swipe from the bottom then hold) or by entering Settings, looking for Apps, finding the app you want and selecting "force stop", but unless an app is misbehaving it's something I literally never do. The reason app's don't come with "stop" buttons is because they are not needed.

I hope at least some of this makes sense: you covered a lot of ground in your post, so trying to reply to everything is tricky.

(As for "everyone assumes people know things just because it's 2023" I'm afraid it was ever thus. It's just something you only notice when you are the one who doesn't know.)

 

[nickdalzell]

Yes you are very late to the party OP. I feel for ya. I think if you had seen smartphones in say, 2009, 2010 when they had amazing features and far more accessible UI design it'd have made much better sense. Back then, phones had buttons for home, recent, menu, back, search and didn't depend so heavily on 'gestures' (the swiping you're encountering issues with--believe me so did I, and I use a decade-old phone now as a result) like they do today

Multiple cameras also make no sense to me either. I only need one and it does its job fine. I have an actual DSLR camera for serious photos but haven't needed it since anyone I was close to that I'd take photos of are long dead now, and I only use the phone camera for taking landscapes and oftentimes reference shots of things I work on so I can put it all back together properly and that's it.

The camera 'app' (the name for a phone application, and yes, they're minimized versions of PC applications on a laptop) is not always on the main screen you see. An Android phone has up to 7 or so 'home' screens, accessed by putting your finger and sliding right/left. The Camera can also sometimes be behind an odd gesture, or accessed by asking a 'virtual assistant' to open the camera, which is becoming a far more annoying standard these days. Sometimes you double tap the power button to open camera. The consistency is non-existant and every manufacturer does their own thing, oftentimes at the user's bane.

Believe me I understand your frustration. Society thinks we need smartphones but that simply isn't true. If it really bothers you so much don't let anyone force you to accept it or say to you 'oh you'll get used to it, we all adapt' because sometimes it's just going to cause nothing but stress and shorten your lifespan to use something you obviously hate. I'm trying to get out of tech and more into vintage life because a lot of 'modern' things aren't improvements and make my own blood boil at the decisons they make or whenever they issue an 'update' that feels more like a downgrade.

BLU isn't Welcome (sorry MikeDT) but they make similar junk phones that sell cheap and are often the only options for 'unlocked' (use with any carrier) and one of the worst ways to ruin an initial impression of say an Android device is by using a gimped cheap-o device. If I had used, say, the more expensive Galaxy SII in 2011 instead of the LG Optimus V I actually tried, I'd have been blown away instead of frustrated.

 

[Windroid]

Maybe you need better friends. That is, friends who will help you with this stuff, instead of getting onto their high horses and looking down on you for not knowing how to use a handheld PC (and that's what most modern cell phones are, handheld PCs).

 

[nickdalzell]

I think the OP is encountering a ton of young 'futurists' who either influenced them to get a smartphone and they didn't want to, or got hired into a job that forces employees to have one, or something.

I stopped listening to their stupid, Jehovah's Witnesses style rhetoric a while back, and don't work in a place that requires smartphones. I only have one to text my girlfriend and it's ancient but works the best for myself and ain't nobody gonna force me to get another 'modern' one I hate. I honestly wish I didn't even need the phone to talk to her and wish she'd just call me on the rotary.

OP, futurists aren't your friends. Their entire mission in life is to convince everyone that the 'future is great' and that everything modern is great, and newer is always better. They are threatened by anyone who prefers vintage and doesn't want a smartphone or computer in their life. They won't stop until they have converted everyone into their cybernetic religion (sorry if this sounds a bit tinfoil hatty). You should see the reactions I get when people see me using my Windows 7 laptop that's 16 years old.

 

[Windroid]

I think the OP is encountering a ton of young 'futurists' who either influenced them to get a smartphone and they didn't want to

Computer enthusiasts like that make computer enthusiasts like us look bad. That said, a smartphone is very useful tool! What's not useful is the snobbishness I described in my previous post.

 

[Windroid]

People also claim phones come with a user manual..well mine didn't. After calling up the company, they gave me this lousy useless tool tip thing

See if you can find a generic Android manual, instead of one for your phone specifically. Or even a manual for another phone, most of what it says should apply to your phone as well.

 

[nickdalzell]

Personally I wish manuals (and schematics under the cover) still existed. Sometimes we need to RTFM. But instant gratification culture expects everyone to just tap tap tap until something happens and figure things out by chance.

I don't know what graduate of human interface design got away with that concept.

Smartphone culture scares me. Everywhere I go (unless I revisit Mayberry, aka Beech Grove, KY where life stays in the '60s) it's like I'm seeing the real life version of that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called 'The Game'

The future as seen from 2010 looked wonderful. Today, it just looks far more like the dystopia in Demolition Man

 

[Hadron]

Multiple cameras also make no sense to me either. I only need one and it does its job fine. I have an actual DSLR camera for serious photos but haven't needed it since anyone I was close to that I'd take photos of are long dead now, and I only use the phone camera for taking landscapes and oftentimes reference shots of things I work on so I can put it all back together properly and that's it.

There would be uses for multiple cameras if they did it seriously, but even high-end phones often don't. For example, my Galaxy s21's "3x" camera is actually just the higher-resolution camera (marginally longer focal length than the main camera) plus digital zoom: they could have just used one camera to replace those 2 (higher resolution, pixel bin by default, then use the resolution for zooming), which would have actually been cheaper and simpler to make. But "look how many cameras it has" is one of the current marketing gimmicks, and marketing trumps engineering in this game.

But this is all getting away from the original post.

Personally I wish manuals (and schematics under the cover) still existed. Sometimes we need to RTFM. But instant gratification culture expects everyone to just tap tap tap until something happens and figure things out by chance.

I don't think that the demise of paper manuals has anything to do with "instant gratification culture". They cost money to print, add weight, require a larger box, hence add to the costs of manufacture, shipping, etc. The small improvement in the manufacturer's margins from not including them is all of the reason that's needed, there's no need to blame any "culture" for this.

Of course if removing them cost sales it would be different. But most people never look at them, and you can find them online if you want (e.g. I just typed "galaxy s21 manual" into my browser and got Galaxy S21 5G | Samsung Support UK, which includes user guides for different Android versions). So I can see perfectly logical reasons for not printing and shipping millions of the things around the world, where most of them will end up being recycled or going into landfill unread.

 

[nickdalzell]

Problem is we have just become so complacent and take what's handed to us and don't question anything anymore. Any OEM can make any phone and people just up and buy it if that's all that's available to choose from. The 'market' didn't have any say in the many options we had in phones since 2009 going away and there only being one form factor today. We have just become accepting of anything and since society has deemed 'newer is ALWAYS better' nobody says no. That's why folks still line up at Apple at every phone release despite there not being anything 'new' since 2013.

Sales would not decrease even if one released a phone running the most gimped version of Android ever, so long as it cost $1300 and had 'Samsung' put on the back, people will literally buy anything today, whether they need it or not, whether it's crap or not. The days of 'voting with your wallet' seems to have been dead since the early 1990s.

I find it sort of hypocritical though that people cite 'green, earth friendly' by not including manuals and charger bricks, yet making phones even more disposable by sealing the battery in, encouraging the buying of new models every couple or so years, promoting more consumerism and making longevity a thing of the past by forcing people to have the latest versions of certain apps, which ultimately means buying a new phone again, and again, and again, and constantly mining the resources for more phones isn't good for the planet either.

It's the same lame argument that they used to ban incandescent bulbs, even though they had negligible impact on carbon emissions. (the joke's on them as I stockpiled the damned things and went as far as going into abandoned houses to pick some. LEDs give me headaches)

At one time we had tech that we expected to last either a lifetime or 30 years at the minimum. We used to fix things and teach our kids to do the same. I really don't understand what happened all of a sudden to change this but the way we consume today is not sustainable.

 

[Dannydet]

I'm going to say it here : Technology is on a downward spiral, along with civilization....

 

[nickdalzell]

Careful, you might get labeled a crazy tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist!

 

[ozonetrooper]

A link to your user manual :

https://www.bluproducts.com/manuals/s1/s1-manual-en.pdf

A link to your phone capabilities :

BLU G91 - Full phone specifications

www.gsmarena.com

 

[Hadron]

Airing grievances about current phones is getting us away from helping with the original post - and the original poster does need help.
So before one of the mods comes along to remind us, let's try to keep this one on topic.

 

[nickdalzell]

I am just getting the feeling the OP is dealing with similar frustrations as me regarding current tech, with the exception of being late to the party, as it were. It sounds like they don't want to be a part of smartphone culture but feel sort of forced to. As to what is influencing I can only speculate. I will just say if you don't want a smartphone, OP, don't get one. Don't let anyone tell you that you 'need' one to function in society because you do NOT. Your frustrations might very well be confirmations that smartphones aren't for you. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Windroid]

It sounds like they don't want to be a part of smartphone culture but feel sort of forced to.

Let's not confuse smartphones themselves with this "smartphone culture". Smartphones are a tool, not a culture. Joining this "smartphone culture" is not required to use a smartphone.

Don't let anyone tell you that you 'need' one to function in society because you do NOT. Your frustrations might very well be confirmations that smartphones aren't for you. Nothing wrong with that.

Let's not be so hasty here! It sounds like Matt_C's frustrations are because no one's told him how to use a smartphone, instead, people just give him a hard time. In other words: Matt's been burned by phone snobs, instead of being helped by respectable smartphone owners.

 

[nickdalzell]

It might not be required but it is a reality. Smartphones stopped being a mere tool years ago, and are now drugs. Worse yet a lot of companies and governments (especially after COVID) have started forcing people to have smartphones to do things like Vaccine Passports and Digital IDs or even stuff like shop in some stores (some won't take cash). Smartphone culture is the inevitable outcome when they become ubiquitous but normalized by society to where many would think you're an oddball to not carry one. I'm reminded of it daily by the many who think it's alien to not want to use one or worse, have the most updated model.

I mean what do you do when a restaurant only uses QR codes for their menus and doesn't have the older paper option? If it were me I'd never visit that establishment again but who knows how long I can live in the past?

Maybe the OP doesn't want to use a smartphone or is finding out they're more trouble than they're worth. They might have been curious, who knows? But if that were my outcome and rant I'd have just given up and went to whatever I used last that did work.

 

[olbriar]

Let's wait for further input from the Op before proceeding / speculating. I'm sure we've left plenty to digest.

 

[Dannydet]

We've all started at your level, Matt_C

 

[Matt_C]

OK so first things first, to all of you who mentioned a user manual. Well my phone didn't come with one, and the online one is total garbage. In fact all manuals for phones are useless to anyone new to a phone Otherwise you will have no clue if you're reading the information correctly.
Case in point, someone linked the user manual for the phone I have, and I want to bring your attention to where it mentions the notifications bar. It has a picture of GOOGLE right under which means according to that manual, the Google Section shown in that screen, is the notifications bar.

Despite people describing it I can't make heads or tails out of what exactly swiping even is, never mind it's purpose. I don't see how swiping works and what I mean by WORKS is all I can picture is people flailing their hands while holding the phone and it looks like swiping is spazing out.

Someone else mentioned the phrase "APP Drawer" where all the apps are installed...
Well I have no clue what any of that is or means.

See this is what I'm talking about when I say and mean by nothing is being explained.

The first thing that, has to be done requires a video with narration. In that video the manufacture needs to go over the basic terminology, and wording. Then move onto basic interface layout and explanation as well as the navigational instructions to get around the phone.

Just having people try to explain swiping is too difficult. All of you know what you're trying to relay, but can't word it correctly

 

[ozonetrooper]

The notification bar is the area directly above the Google search bar, which is referred to as "the search bar".

Swiping means to put your fingertip on an icon/shortcut/area and slide it up/down/sideways to acquire a certain response from the phone.

My moto must be swiped up to answer a call swiped down to deny the call, swipe left or right to open the different app drawers, I call them pages. This is where other shortcut icons are stored so you do not have a full page of icons on your home page. The home page is the screen you first see when waking the phone up.

If you have any other questions I am sure there are many here willing to try and help you.