Help Five things I DON'T like about my GS2 - can any be fixed?

[alceryes]

AT&T Galaxy S2 - 2.3.6

1) Battery full notification - There must be some very vindictive people working for Google since I can't, for the life of me, see how this got past QA testing. At least give us the option to turn it off!

2) Alarm clock - At night, I regularly set an alarm for sometime in the morning. This phone should be smart enough to AUTOMATICALLY set it for the next day if the time the alarm is set for has already past. What does it do? Sets the alarm for a week from now!

3) Email - I receive some automated notifications that don't contain a subject line. Apparently, the built-in email app gets confused when there's no subject because it just keeps the subject of the previous email I had open. If I receive an email because I am part of a dist. group I can only reply to the sender. I want to be able to reply to the sender AND the dist. group (reply to all). Navigating (reading and deleting) email is generally slow (even with only sync'ing last two weeks emails).

4) Battery percentage - I would rather see it than a graphical indication - instead I have to go 3 deep in a menu.

5) MMS pictures - STOP WITH THE SLIDESHOW! I receive tons of pictures via MMS. Even when I receive multiple pictures I usually don't want to view them as a slideshow - but I am forced to...with no way to turn it off.


For the battery full notification I have tried 'battery silencer'. It does silence the sound/vibrate but it still lights up (my room) when it hits 100%.

For the MMS slideshow I tried 'Handcent MMS' but it still just gives me slideshows.

For the email probs I tried 'Touchdown' but it was buggy and regularly locked up.


I REALLY want to like this phone but it is making it difficult. I shouldn't have to load a bunch of apps to fix things that I consider bugs. I don't want to root my phone. If anyone has any other suggestions to try I'd appreciate it.

 

[gianmarco]

You can set the alarm to go off daily. Seems like you have it set to go off a certain day every week.

 

[alceryes]

You can set the alarm to go off daily. Seems like you have it set to go off a certain day every week.

Thx Gianmarco,
I don't set it everyday and it's at different times that I want it to go off. It's usually on a Friday night (setting for Sat morn) or Saturday (setting for Sun morning). I can change the date fine. It's just that it DEFAULTS to same day even if that time set is already past - kinda stupid if you ask me.

 

[ryan770]

Battery full notification - ive seen a lot of people talk about this. It woke me up once but it seems to have stopped vibrating and making noise or something because i charge when i go to bed and never hear it. And im a super light sleeper.

Alarm - i do the same thing, but im kind of confused. At night i set my alarm for the morning, and when i set it, it just says "alarm set 10 hours from now" or something similar depending on when i set it.

Email - i use the gmail app and have worse problems. Its completely stopped giving me notifications. Not sure what to do.

Battery percentage - there are some widgets... But i do agree. It should show the percentage. I dont think theres really anything to do.

MMS slideshow - one of the most aggravating things is the damn slideshow. I have a small fix which involves forwarding the message and viewing the picture which allows zooming capabilities without downloading but it might be annoying for some to do that.


The main thing I don't like about my galaxy is that I have bad touch screen sensitivity issues when charging. With the real Samsung charger, USB, and car charger. Other than that and a few of the other things I mentioned, I'm still extremely happy with the phone.

 

[ropo1]

Email - i use the gmail app and have worse problems. Its completely stopped giving me notifications. Not sure what to do.

I had an email problem too, where my Gmail wouldn't sync when phone was in standby. I think it had something to do with the phone's data connection to AT&T because on WIFI, I didn't have the problem (usually). It seemed like it would just stop receiving pushed data when it was sleeping.

I cleared the Gmail app data, but that didn't help. Then I factory reset my phone twice, but it still didn't fix it, so I gave up.

A few weeks ago, though, the problem just disappeared. I don't know what happened it's possible that some app I had was messing with Google Sync but idk. Try waiting it out, or deleting some apps. The problem seemed to last for about a month, so maybe it was some weird glitch with the billing cycle.

 

[FlyingPigL]

Your battery percentage. I don't remember where, but I got a widget that shows me weather, time & battery percentage in numbers right as a turn on my phone. Maybe that'll address your issue?

 

[nyydynasty]

AT&T Galaxy S2 - 2.3.6

1) Battery full notification - There must be some very vindictive people working for Google since I can't, for the life of me, see how this got past QA testing. At least give us the option to turn it off! I dont think you can turn this off without rooting your phone. Its annoying but it is what it is.

2) Alarm clock - At night, I regularly set an alarm for sometime in the morning. This phone should be smart enough to AUTOMATICALLY set it for the next day if the time the alarm is set for has already past. What does it do? Sets the alarm for a week from now! Yes, you can set a daily alarm. You probably set a weekly alarm for that particular day. If you dont like the default alarm app, download a different one. Gentle Alarm seems to be a popular choice.

3) Email - I receive some automated notifications that don't contain a subject line. Apparently, the built-in email app gets confused when there's no subject because it just keeps the subject of the previous email I had open. If I receive an email because I am part of a dist. group I can only reply to the sender. I want to be able to reply to the sender AND the dist. group (reply to all). Navigating (reading and deleting) email is generally slow (even with only sync'ing last two weeks emails). I'm not quite sure about this one. What app are you using? Maybe try a different app (K9) just to see if it happens with that one, as well...?

4) Battery percentage - I would rather see it than a graphical indication - instead I have to go 3 deep in a menu. The OEM battery indicator in the notification bar doesnt have a percentage but you can download apps or widgets that will give you more battery information.

5) MMS pictures - STOP WITH THE SLIDESHOW! I receive tons of pictures via MMS. Even when I receive multiple pictures I usually don't want to view them as a slideshow - but I am forced to...with no way to turn it off.
this is an annoyance but there's no way to stop the slideshow, as far as I know. You'll need to use a 3rd party app (GO SMS, etc...)

For the battery full notification I have tried 'battery silencer'. It does silence the sound/vibrate but it still lights up (my room) when it hits 100%.

For the MMS slideshow I tried 'Handcent MMS' but it still just gives me slideshows. try GO SMS

For the email probs I tried 'Touchdown' but it was buggy and regularly locked up. try K9


I REALLY want to like this phone but it is making it difficult. I shouldn't have to load a bunch of apps to fix things that I consider bugs. I don't want to root my phone. If anyone has any other suggestions to try I'd appreciate it. You call it bugs but other than your email issue, those are not bugs. Those are by design from Samsung. But that is the great thing about Android. If you dont like what comes by default, you have options. Just try something different in the market and enjoy it.

^ my responses are in red above ^

 

[alceryes]

Thanks Nyydynasty.
There was a reason I tried Touchdown instead of K9...could have been a feature that K9 didn't support at that time. I'll check it out again.

The thing with the alarm is that it defaults to weekly. Do you know of a way to change the default to 'one time' when creating a new alarm? That's what I mainly use (besides my work week alarm).

Also, for the MMS prob, I'm currently using Handcent MMS but I still see the slideshow. Can I kill the slideshow with GO SMS?

 

[jdCaptivate]

Soon as I switched back to Go SMS Pro (its still free). All my MMS problems disappeared. Pictures display properly and separately. Turn off notifications for the stock app, replace stock app on menu bar, with Go SMS icon and you're good to go. A LOT more functionality to.

 

[theinvid]

I second the GOSMSpro option!!!!

Soon as I switched back to Go SMS Pro (its still free). All my MMS problems disappeared. Pictures display properly and separately. Turn off notifications for the stock app, replace stock app on menu bar, with Go SMS icon and you're good to go. A LOT more functionality to.

 

[Edge1978]

I only used Handcent because it supported Group Messages (i.e. iPhone method), but I noticed GoSMS does it now too, though there are times when I will get a rogue message here and there that downloads to the persons individual thread and not the Group.

 

[Puddin422]

The main thing I don't like about my galaxy is that I have bad touch screen sensitivity issues when charging. With the real Samsung charger, USB, and car charger. Other than that and a few of the other things I mentioned, I'm still extremely happy with the phone.

Yes!!! The phone acts up SO bad when on a charger. Samsung chargers are bad, but other brands are even worse. I find myself having to unplug just to get a text typed out. grr

 

[BWRpota]

AT&T Galaxy S2 -

4) Battery percentage - I would rather see it than a graphical indication - instead I have
For ...

Battery XL has a graphical battery charge indicator...the only reason I run it

 

[BWRpota]

Blackberry Pearl was the same way.

 

[Krunk83]

Go SMS is the best SMS/mms app out there. Especially with the ICS pro widget theme.

 

[Jarlo]

I also use GoSMS pro, works great.

For % battery I use Battery Widget version 3.0.1

I literally JUST installed "Battery Charged Silencer" to stop that annoying battery full "feature". It supposedly works but time will tell

I use "Sleep as Android" for my alarm, costs a couple bucks free to try.. love that app!
edit:

Ok the silencer thing worked but the screen still lights up. I sleep with it face down on my bed anyway for sleep as android so this works for me. No more chirp chirp at 1 AM!!