Galaxy s20 + 5g phone is not reliable

[smasheroO16]

Hello Android experts. About three months ago, I bought a (brand-new) phone for my wife. In all other respects, she finds it quite satisfactory, but there are two things that she wishes could be improved.

1) The most important of the two is that, when she is in a telephone conversation with some people (up to now, it is with two people), the connection is very poor, and many times, it is lost altogether. One of her relatives is in London (we are in Manchester, England) and the other one lives in Hull in Yorkshire. She does not have any problem when she calls other, more local relatives, but today, she needed to borrow my phone (a Motorola) to converse with her son in London. With my phone, she had no difficulties. Why should things be like this, and what, if anything, can she do to make trouble-free calls?

2) The second thing she finds unacceptable is that, when she takes (say) five photos of something (so as to be able to select the best shot), she finds the photo thumbnails are far too small, in her "Files" > Images, to see the details and select the best one. If she looks at the pictures in "Gallery" app, she can see the details because the photos are large, but then, she would need to go back to "Files" > Images to delete, and she is unable to see which is the one to delete, for reasons given above. Is there any satisfactory way round this problem?

With thanks in hopes of some informed advice,
S.

 

[olbriar]

What phone is your wife having problems with? Hopefully the members here can assist solving or improving the problems you are experiencing.
On my S21 Ultra using the stock Gallery app I can scroll left and right through the pictures and then tap a picture to bring up an option menu with trash can as an option.

 

[smasheroO16]

What phone is your wife having problems with? Hopefully the members here can assist solving or improving the problems you are experiencing.
On my S21 Ultra using the stock Gallery app I can scroll left and right through the pictures and then tap a picture to bring up an option menu with trash can as an option.

I'm sorry — I thought I had said what kind of phone it is. It's a Galaxy s20 + 5g. She does not use the standard Gallery app, she uses A+ Gallery, which we both think is much better. However, if one tried to delete an image, a complicated alert comes up, saying that permission must be obtained, etc., so it seems much less trouble (because we are not very technically minded) to go to My Files > Images > Camera (even though she can't see the details). This business of obtaining permission etc. scares us off.
S.

 

[ocnbrze]

Hello Android experts. About three months ago, I bought a (brand-new) phone for my wife. In all other respects, she finds it quite satisfactory, but there are two things that she wishes could be improved.

1) The most important of the two is that, when she is in a telephone conversation with some people (up to now, it is with two people), the connection is very poor, and many times, it is lost altogether. One of her relatives is in London (we are in Manchester, England) and the other one lives in Hull in Yorkshire. She does not have any problem when she calls other, more local relatives, but today, she needed to borrow my phone (a Motorola) to converse with her son in London. With my phone, she had no difficulties. Why should things be like this, and what, if anything, can she do to make trouble-free calls?

2) The second thing she finds unacceptable is that, when she takes (say) five photos of something (so as to be able to select the best shot), she finds the photo thumbnails are far too small, in her "Files" > Images, to see the details and select the best one. If she looks at the pictures in "Gallery" app, she can see the details because the photos are large, but then, she would need to go back to "Files" > Images to delete, and she is unable to see which is the one to delete, for reasons given above. Is there any satisfactory way round this problem?

With thanks in hopes of some informed advice,
S.

1) does not really have much to do with the phone except for the speakers and sound quality. call quality, that is up to your provider and it's cell coverage.

2) i use goole photos rather than gallery. check to see that your have all google services to auto sync. once the account is sync'd your photos will be saved onto google's photo cloud. you can then jump onto the google photo's online on your pc without having to connect your phone to the pc. google's photos have pretty big thumbnails, but i use a z fold 4 and when unfolded the screen is pretty big.

 

[smasheroO16]

Thanks for that useful information, ocnbrze. I shall now discuss these possibilities with my wife. I'm sorry about the delay in replying, but my computer has been out of order. Also, Android forums seemed to have stopped working. It's good to see it back again.
With kind regards,
S.

 

[svim]

1. -- Is her phone using the same carrier as your phone? If they are different carriers, that might be issue. Have you contacted to her carrier about this issue? If both phones are using the same carrier, this is odd. Especially since it's a selective matter that isn't consistent.
Is it set up using a SIM card or eSIM? If a SIM card try re-seating it. Or go to the carrier's website and find its page showing its APN settings and try creating a new APN listing and see if that makes a difference.

2. -- Just to clarify, your wife is working with two different apps when interacting with her photo library. One is the A+ Gallery app as her photo manager, the other is the My Files app as her file manager. The issue is basically A+ Gallery is displaying larger thumbnail icons while My Files is displaying smaller thumbnail icons. So keep in mind that the user interface in the A+ Gallery app is more customizable than Google Photos, so just to save her from having to relearn a whole new user interface that's predominantly less adaptable (Google uses a more 'we know what you need more than you do' approach with its apps) it might be best to focus on the actual problem than the photo manager. It won't be a big change in interfaces but that's not the problem, the file manager app is what she's having an issue with.

So take a look into how My Files is displaying things. There should be an option to toggle in between Grid or List. Odds are it's currently set to List so change it to Grid and see if that results in larger icons that she will find better to work with.

That said, a plus point to using the Google Photos app is it includes a really handy backup and sync service. This creates a complete duplicate of the entire photo library on her phone up into her online Google account -- a benefit being there's a backup of her pics (and vids if necessary) and it allows her to access her photos using her phone and the same photos by logging into her account and using Google Photos in a web browser in a remote computer. More backups to different locations is better but having at least one backup is important, storing files solely on a smartphone is never a good practice. You could have her switch from A+ Gallery to Google Photos (be sure to go into the Google Photos app Settings menu to set it up accordingly, at least to the extent Google allows you to). Or she could stick with A+ Gallery as her photo manager and just install Google Photos to have its backup and sync function run in the background. Or just stick with A+ Gallery and use Samsung's Smart Switch utility to make fuller backups of her entire user account data. Smart Switch is more comprehensive and it makes doing a restore a lot easier.

Smart Switch | Apps - The Official Samsung Galaxy Site

Simple data transfers. Secure backups. Smart Switch is the app that moves content to your new Samsung Galaxy from your old device, whether it's an Android device or not.

www.samsung.com

 

[smasheroO16]

1. -- Is her phone using the same carrier as your phone? If they are different carriers, that might be issue. Have you contacted to her carrier about this issue? If both phones are using the same carrier, this is odd. Especially since it's a selective matter that isn't consistent.
Is it set up using a SIM card or eSIM? If a SIM card try re-seating it. Or go to the carrier's website and find its page showing its APN settings and try creating a new APN listing and see if that makes a difference.

2. -- Just to clarify, your wife is working with two different apps when interacting with her photo library. One is the A+ Gallery app as her photo manager, the other is the My Files app as her file manager. The issue is basically A+ Gallery is displaying larger thumbnail icons while My Files is displaying smaller thumbnail icons. So keep in mind that the user interface in the A+ Gallery app is more customizable than Google Photos, so just to save her from having to relearn a whole new user interface that's predominantly less adaptable (Google uses a more 'we know what you need more than you do' approach with its apps) it might be best to focus on the actual problem than the photo manager. It won't be a big change in interfaces but that's not the problem, the file manager app is what she's having an issue with.

So take a look into how My Files is displaying things. There should be an option to toggle in between Grid or List. Odds are it's currently set to List so change it to Grid and see if that results in larger icons that she will find better to work with.

That said, a plus point to using the Google Photos app is it includes a really handy backup and sync service. This creates a complete duplicate of the entire photo library on her phone up into her online Google account -- a benefit being there's a backup of her pics (and vids if necessary) and it allows her to access her photos using her phone and the same photos by logging into her account and using Google Photos in a web browser in a remote computer. More backups to different locations is better but having at least one backup is important, storing files solely on a smartphone is never a good practice. You could have her switch from A+ Gallery to Google Photos (be sure to go into the Google Photos app Settings menu to set it up accordingly, at least to the extent Google allows you to). Or she could stick with A+ Gallery as her photo manager and just install Google Photos to have its backup and sync function run in the background. Or just stick with A+ Gallery and use Samsung's Smart Switch utility to make fuller backups of her entire user account data. Smart Switch is more comprehensive and it makes doing a restore a lot easier.

Smart Switch | Apps - The Official Samsung Galaxy Site

Simple data transfers. Secure backups. Smart Switch is the app that moves content to your new Samsung Galaxy from your old device, whether it's an Android device or not.

www.samsung.com

Thanks indeed, svim, for the trouble you have taken in replying (all that typing!). I have to be very careful with my wife about her phone. She is very reluctant to try new things, so I very much doubt that she would want to use the Cloud. However, the Files app is set to list, so I shall recommend a change of view, and see it it improves.

Also, since you mention a re-seating of the SIM card (it is a SIM, not an e-SIM, whatever that is, I remember that, when I was setting up her phone, the SIM card-drawer was slightly bowed and I needed to "bend it straight". I shall examine that and try re-seating it. Thing is, with some calls that my wife makes, there is no loss of connection.

Your comments are very much appreciated, thanks again.
S.

 

[svim]

A SIM card is its own physical, minuscule logic board -- a tiny piece of plastic with a sparse amount of electronic circuitry on it.
An eSIM is a component soldered onto the logic board inside a smartphone.
Both do essentially the same thing, store your user account info with your chosen carrier. With a SIM card that info is added to the SIM card your carrier provided, and that's what you then inserted into to her phone. With eSIM, that same info is just typed directly into the eSIM chip that's already inside a phone.
An important factor is not all smartphones include support for eSIMs and not every carrier supports eSIMs. Her S20 does, but it also depends on if her carrier does too. But this is just so you're aware of what an eSIM is, she already has a SIM card and there's no needlessly switch over.

if the SIM card tray was bent in some way, that's not a good sign. Generally they're just plastic but not meant to be flexible so if it wasn't just flat and easily extendable that's not good. The little metal contacts on the edge of the SIM card need to match up directly with little metal contacts inside the phone, so something like a bent card tray will interfere with that. Thinking back, are you positively certain it wasn't flat?

 

[smasheroO16]

A SIM card is its own physical, minuscule logic board -- a tiny piece of plastic with a sparse amount of electronic circuitry on it.
An eSIM is a component soldered onto the logic board inside a smartphone.
Both do essentially the same thing, store your user account info with your chosen carrier. With a SIM card that info is added to the SIM card your carrier provided, and that's what you then inserted into to her phone. With eSIM, that same info is just typed directly into the eSIM chip that's already inside a phone.
An important factor is not all smartphones include support for eSIMs and not every carrier supports eSIMs. Her S20 does, but it also depends on if her carrier does too. But this is just so you're aware of what an eSIM is, she already has a SIM card and there's no needlessly switch over.

if the SIM card tray was bent in some way, that's not a good sign. Generally they're just plastic but not meant to be flexible so if it wasn't just flat and easily extendable that's not good. The little metal contacts on the edge of the SIM card need to match up directly with little metal contacts inside the phone, so something like a bent card tray will interfere with that. Thinking back, are you positively certain it wasn't flat?

Svim, I'm overwhelmed by your kindness, in explaining all that to me! With regard to the SIM card tray, yes, it had a very slightly curved appearance, and how I'm so sure of that is that, at first, the card would not stay where it had been placed — in its correct little rectangle, in the tray. (By the way, though the phone is not up-to-date, it was brand new and had not been opened, for the box was sealed.) When I attempted to close the drawer/tray, the SIM card kept flipping out. After I "bent it straight" (as it seemed to me, anyway), it stayed in place, and allowed the tray to be pushed in. Apart from the occasional dropped connections (mentioned earlier) with two relatives (both widely spaced in the UK), everything seems to be alright.

With regard to the difficulty my wife had in seeing the smaller details of photos, in her Files app, I set the View to "grid" instead of "list" as you suggested, and even my wife can now see what she needed to see. She is very pleased about that, and thanks you profusely for the tip, as I do.
S.