I hate getting a new phone

[rprastein]

<vent>Nevermind. Words simply cannot express the degree of my frustration, even with expletives.</vent>

OK, here's the background. I've been using Droid Turbo 2's (Nougat) for myself and my husband for a number of years now, replacing them with eBay purchases when my husband loses his phone or the batteries die or something else unrepairable occurs. I have Google backups turned on, but I don't trust them (having once had a new phone overwrite my Google backup with an empty backup, and since then routinely finding that my old apps, once no longer available on Google Play, cannot be restored), nor do I trust ANY sync app where I can't manually control the direction of transfer. I supplement my Google backups with SMS Backup & Restore, apkExtractor, local backup features on my apps, and Beyond Compare - I literally back up everything that Windows can see onto my computer hard drive. I don't use Google Photos, I use an SD card. I don't even have a gmail account, although of necessity I do have a google account.

Moving to a new Droid Turbo 2 is normally a 1.5-day affair, as the Google Play app itself that is initially loaded onto the phone can't install many of my apps until I update it, and I always forget exactly what steps are required to get it updated and restarted; and then it takes forever to get all the apps downloaded and installed, and if I don't just WAIT and make sure they're all downloaded, I just make a confused mess of it (and I sometimes find I've got duplicates of most of them). I've done it enough times now that I pretty much know the drill.

Anyway, the last time we got new Droid Turbo 2 phones was only a year ago, and the batteries (whether in refurbished phones or new old stock) are just not lasting that long any more. So, I figured it was time to update. I decided to try a Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G. Making the transition on my own phone before committing to switching my husband's phone over.

First off, I hadn't realized I was going to have to set up a Samsung account, and with a DOB more than half a century ago, that required going to the web site on my PC, as the UI on the phone is a complete nonstarter (can you say, "scroll backwards through over 700 calendar screens one f*ing month at a time"???). But OK, I got that done, lived some more of my life, and came back to this a few weeks later. Apparently I entered my google information back at the beginning of the month. So now I answered all of the questions about which Google services and which Samsung services I wanted to enable, and upon seeing next to nothing on my home screen, I checked the Play store and saw that 110+ apps were in the process of being installed. OK, great. But then I went to check later, and actually it's 110+ apps that were not able to be restored. There are 28 apps that are either AT&T apps or google or samsung apps or other stuff that I never had on my old phones that look like they've installed just fine.

I haven't yet put the SIM card in the new phone, in the past I always did my switchover using wifi. I did put a different password on the new phone - that has never been a problem before, either, I always change my password when I get a new phone.

Is this just another case of Play Store needing to update before I can download everything, but Samsung (or a newer Android OS) showing me this differently? Or is there some fundamental incompatibility between my old backups and my new phone? Or what exactly is going on? Is there some other layer of authentication I need to do?

Also, I know this is a stupid question with an answer I don't want to hear, but isn't there some way on this Samsung phone to move the navigation softbuttons up away from the extreme bottom of the screen, so that I can hold the phone without accidentally touching them?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Hadron]

Yeah, the battery problem is inevitable with an old model like that: a phone that has been used before will by now have a worn-out battery, while one that hasn't has instead sat for more than half a decade in a warehouse, by which time the battery will have self-discharged and degraded anyway. Any sealed phone (where you can't just pop a new battery in - if you can find one) will have this problem eventually.

I'm afraid I can't help with Google backups as I don't use them at all (tried once, worked badly, never made the effort to find out again). Did you attempt to use Samsung's "smart switch" app to transfer stuff from the old phone?

It's extremely likely that if you were using a 7 year old OS that some of your apps are no longer compatible, but 110 sounds like rather a lot. I do have a couple of legacy apps from more than a decade ago that still work on Android 13, so not all old apps will automatically be incompatible. It's also possible that some of them are no longer available in the Play Store (you may be able to find copies at apkmirror.com or apkpure.com if so - those 2 sites are safe, though in general I would not install apks from random websites as some download sites do inject malware). The other "new" apps probably haven't installed, they were probably on the phone already (pre-installed by Samsung or you carrier). I don't know what you mean by the Play Store having to update before you can install stuff, but that is probably because you were using phones whose pre-installed Play Store was 7 years out of date. It should be less of an issue with a newer phone.

The only workaround I can think of for the soft buttons is to turn them off and use the gesture navigation, which may be less likely to trigger accidentally. But I guess you must hold the phone differently from me, because I have to make an effort to reach down for them (and actually have just been trying and failing to find a way of holding the phone where I do accidentally press them, so you must do things very differently).

I'm not actually certain you do need a Samsung account if you don't intend to use their services, though they do try to make it sound like you do. I know I started using my s21 without one - I added one when I came across a couple of "edge apps" I wanted to try, but didn't have one initially (those 2 apps are literally the only things I've used a Samsung account for).

 

[Fox Mulder]

I've had a number of Samsung phones including my current s9. I've never needed to have a Samsung account to use any of them, and I have no interest in opening one. It would only be needed for certain Samsung-specific features and apps that are not essential for the phone to operate.

 

[mikedt]

A Droid Turbo 2. I believe that's a rather old US only device, specific to Verizon? Unfortunately I can't really suggest much for that, except maybe it can use Samsung Smart Switch to transfer your stuff to a new Samsung phone.

 

[rprastein]

Yeah, the battery problem is inevitable with an old model like that: a phone that has been used before will by now have a worn-out battery, while one that hasn't has instead sat for more than half a decade in a warehouse, by which time the battery will have self-discharged and degraded anyway. Any sealed phone (where you can't just pop a new battery in - if you can find one) will have this problem eventually.

Yeah, I know.

Did you attempt to use Samsung's "smart switch" app to transfer stuff from the old phone?

I had tried using Smart Switch, but I had wanted to use it to back up to my PC and then restore from the PC to the new phone (I really don't trust sync'ing apps), and it turns out it doesn't support that for non-Samsung phones.

It's extremely likely that if you were using a 7 year old OS that some of your apps are no longer compatible, but 110 sounds like rather a lot. I do have a couple of legacy apps from more than a decade ago that still work on Android 13, so not all old apps will automatically be incompatible. It's also possible that some of them are no longer available in the Play Store (you may be able to find copies at apkmirror.com or apkpure.com if so - those 2 sites are safe, though in general I would not install apks from random websites as some download sites do inject malware). The other "new" apps probably haven't installed, they were probably on the phone already (pre-installed by Samsung or you carrier). I don't know what you mean by the Play Store having to update before you can install stuff, but that is probably because you were using phones whose pre-installed Play Store was 7 years out of date. It should be less of an issue with a newer phone.

I decided to try re-downloading the failed ones, one at a time, and mostif not all of them are downloading and installing just fine. Now it's just the time-consuming process of deciding which ones I really still want, installing them, and then restoring the data to them from my PC backup. My old phone is still functional as long as I have it connected to an external battery, so if I really need to, I can extract the .apk from my old installation; but most likely anything that I can't install off Google (that I haven't already extracted the .apk for) is not compatible anyway.

Play Store having to update was definitely because the pre-installed Play Store was so old, and that does not appear to be what the problem is this time around.

The only workaround I can think of for the soft buttons is to turn them off and use the gesture navigation, which may be less likely to trigger accidentally. But I guess you must hold the phone differently from me, because I have to make an effort to reach down for them (and actually have just been trying and failing to find a way of holding the phone where I do accidentally press them, so you must do things very differently).

The screen on the Droid Turbo 2 does not go all the way to the edges - there's about half an inch at the top, 5/8" at the bottom, and 1/4" on each side where you can touch the glass and nothing happens. I've used this phone model for years, so I'm very used to being able to hold the phone from the bottom, with fingers behind and thumb on the front. Imagine you're inserting a chip card into a point of service payment device, it's kind of like that.

I don't have to supinate my wrist and splay my fingers out across the back, using my whole hand and wrist to position the phone so my eyes can see; I can just press harder or less hard with my thumb along the bottom edge in front and with my three fingers about an inch higher in the back to adjust the viewing angle. With my thoracic outlet syndrome, that is very convenient, as I can keep my elbows in by my side and my wrists in a neutral position. With the Samsung, there is nowhere on the front of the phone that I can put my fingers, even if I'm gripping the side edges, where they don't activate something, and the more I try to move them off the active area of the screen, the more they cause one of those three buttons on the bottom to go into rapid-repeat mode. My instincts are just all wrong. Plus, the Samsung is substantially taller (but also slightly narrower) than the Droid Turbo 2, so trying to hold it from the bottom is not a well-balanced exercise, making me more likely to let the phone flop backwards and then trying to recatch it before I drop it, leading to random finger placement. I may try one of those magnetic ring attachments.

I'm not actually certain you do need a Samsung account if you don't intend to use their services, though they do try to make it sound like you do. I know I started using my s21 without one - I added one when I came across a couple of "edge apps" I wanted to try, but didn't have one initially (those 2 apps are literally the only things I've used a Samsung account for).

When you're starting from scratch for the first time, it's definitely confusing, and it really wouldn't let me proceed or go back until I logged into a Samsung account. That might have been because I wanted to restore from my other phone, I don't know. But anyway, it's done now.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.

Rebeccah

 

[Hadron]

I don't have to supinate my wrist and splay my fingers out across the back, using my whole hand and wrist to position the phone so my eyes can see; I can just press harder or less hard with my thumb along the bottom edge in front and with my three fingers about an inch higher in the back to adjust the viewing angle. With my thoracic outlet syndrome, that is very convenient, as I can keep my elbows in by my side and my wrists in a neutral position. With the Samsung, there is nowhere on the front of the phone that I can put my fingers, even if I'm gripping the side edges, where they don't activate something, and the more I try to move them off the active area of the screen, the more they cause one of those three buttons on the bottom to go into rapid-repeat mode. My instincts are just all wrong. Plus, the Samsung is substantially taller (but also slightly narrower) than the Droid Turbo 2, so trying to hold it from the bottom is not a well-balanced exercise, making me more likely to let the phone flop backwards and then trying to recatch it before I drop it, leading to random finger placement. I may try one of those magnetic ring attachments.

One thing that was overlooked in the mania to remove bezels from phone screens a few years ago was that the bottom bezel served an ergonomic purpose. I don't have your condition so have never used that particular manoeuvre, but it is also simply easier to use the buttons when you don't have to reach to the very bottom. But phones sell on appearance rather than usability (amazingly, since you'd think that's a mistake people would only make once!), and so the bottom bezel is gone from essentially all phones now.

Sadly that's not just a Samsung issue, so you'll face the same from any other manufacturer. I can't think of anything better than the attachment on the back at the moment.

 

[rprastein]

Ooh, I just figured out something that will work.
1. Settings | Accessibility | Interaction and dexterity
2. Assistant menu - move slider to On
3. Allow Assistant menu to have full control of your phone? Allow
4. Turn off One-handed mode? Turn off
Now there is an icon that looks like a button with 4 holes in it, that I can move anywhere I want on the screen. That is the Assistant menu. It includes shortcut buttons for 12 different common activities, among them the three navigation bar functions.
5. Settings | Display | Navigation bar
6. Navigation type - select Swipe gestures
This removes the navigation bar from the bottom of the screen
7. Select Swipe from sides and bottom
I think I'm less likely to accidentally swipe in from the sides or up from the middle than up from the bottom corners.
8. Swipe to open assistant app - move slider to On
I don't know whether or not I really need this, I can't see that's it's actually doing anything.

I still find weird (and so far, not repeatable) things happening quickly before I can tell what actually happened, when I leave my thumb in one place on the screen for any period of time. But this is a big help.

Rebeccah

 

[joe71]

Back in the day the late 90's early 2000's getting a new phone was exciting. You had so many choices, LG, Sony, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Apple, ZTE, blackberry, heck even the windows phone.
But then Sony, ZTE kind of drop from the phone scene. HTC ?? They were here then gone, then back and doing something these days???
Then LG stop making phones.
That left basically samsung and apple as two top choices followed by Google.
Eventually I think the phone craze ran out. Getting a new phone wasn't exciting , the thrill ran out. It was like the early days of android with the software updates there was something magical and exciting about getting the update.
Then around ice cream sandwich, KitKat??? The thrill with that too burned out. Now I wait days even weeks before I install any new OS. The reason? They seem to be buggy laden. I think most people found a dependable phone and stuck with it. I also think that most of the major phone providers have caught on that most people were keeping phones for two or three years and by some accounts much longer. I think that is why we are seeing three to four years of support for various devices

 

[mikedt]

Back in the day the late 90's early 2000's getting a new phone was exciting. You had so many choices, LG, Sony, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Apple, ZTE, blackberry, heck even the windows phone.
But then Sony, ZTE kind of drop from the phone scene. HTC ?? They were here then gone, then back and doing something these days???
Then LG stop making phones.
That left basically samsung and apple as two top choices followed by Google.
Eventually I think the phone craze ran out. Getting a new phone wasn't exciting , the thrill ran out. It was like the early days of android with the software updates there was something magical and exciting about getting the update.
Then around ice cream sandwich, KitKat??? The thrill with that too burned out. Now I wait days even weeks before I install any new OS. The reason? They seem to be buggy laden. I think most people found a dependable phone and stuck with it. I also think that most of the major phone providers have caught on that most people were keeping phones for two or three years and by some accounts much longer. I think that is why we are seeing three to four years of support for various devices

^^^
Very much this.

Although where I am, the top choices now seems to be Huawei or Apple, closely followed by Xiaomi, Oppo, or Vivo. Samsung used to be one on the top choices in China, but they seem to have fallen somewhat in recent years. Windows Phone here, never even made it to the first fence and was quickly euthanized. Google was barred from the running.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra myself, I've been using for two years now, and will likely keep using for as long as it still works and is supported. But quite frankly there's still nothing exciting enough out there to make me want to change. I'm NOT interested in folding screen phones, no matter how often I see them in the showrooms.

Back in the late 90s and through much of the 00s, I was changing phones 2 or 3 times a year. Like I must now have a phone with a colour screen, Sony Ericsson T68, or a fancy slider, Nokia N95. or 3G with mobile TV service, Nokia N7600.

 

[olbriar]

I'm with both of you guys.. meh. It will take something quite innovating that I've never considered but now HAVE to have before I will want a new phone. I'll upgrade when I feel the need but I am no longer a desire consumer.

Smart phones have run a similar path as the PCs ran back in the day. There was always faster and better that I wanted and I had a great desire to stay on the leading edge. Then their time in the sun was over and I buy out of necessity.

 

[ocnbrze]

i love innovation and i love still love phones. it is why i probably keep phones for only a few years at most. there is always something different....especially when it comes to foldable phones. i have the z fold 4, but i am now eying the new pixel fold which should come out towards the end of this month.

and because smart switch is so easy to use with samsung phones is one of the reasons why i have stuck with samsung. it could get very interesting if i decide to get the pixel fold and see how i get my stuff onto the phone, if i go that route.

so for me getting the latest and greatest is always exciting to me. i loive my z fold 4, but i am jonesing for something new......LOL

 

[Hadron]

Smart phones have run a similar path as the PCs ran back in the day. There was always faster and better that I wanted and I had a great desire to stay on the leading edge. Then their time in the sun was over and I buy out of necessity.

They're a mature product now, which means that they become commodities.

Funnily enough I have come across something in the PC world that has piqued my interest: the Framework laptops. Highly repairable and upgradeable, modular ports, without becoming excessively large or expensive. I don't need one, because I mainly use work-provided (but self-managed) computers, but it appeals to both the tinkerer and the ecologist in me: a laptop where you can swap ports, home replace the battery, the SSD, or even the mainboard, and buy it without an operating system sounds up my street. But as we know, phones are harder to do that with (the phone equivalent would be Project Ara, which Google didn't see through).

 

[AugieTN]

That Framework laptop is a great idea. Probably about 15-20 years ago, Asus use to sell a white box laptop, without CPU, hard drive or RAM which you would add.

 

[dave907]

Around Nougat or Oreo is when innovation started to stall.

 

[nickdalzell]

Getting a new phone sucks. It's worse when you're like me, perfectly happy with something as old as the HTC Thunderbolt and forced to upgrade because VoLTE became mandated without any choice given to the customer. I hate companies deciding what we can use over the customers dictating the direction a company goes. It's still foreign to me.

Modern Samsung phones are NOTHING like the Galaxy SII. They don't even use TouchWiz, which I actually loved (due to the nature theme and skeuomorphic, very Android 2.3-style UI that carried into the Jelly Bean era) nowadays I'm still silencing or hunting down more and more notification 'weeds' that spring up and make noise that are junk (thanks BuzzKill! ) or adapting to gesture navigation (stop it!) or dealing with a super large screen that barely works in one hand and has issues fitting in my pockets. No, I won't put a phone in my back pocket after one got busted when I sat on a park bench sometime in 2006 with one in my pocket. Shattered the screen, only learned that one once!

I've gotten the UI my way at least, using a iOS 6-style launcher and apps that I found in a ZIP on DeviantArt called something like 'Pear OS' or something. It has added some much desired skeuomorphism to an otherwise flat UI phone.

So hoping 5G remains up until I'm long dead. But that's not likely since at one time I thought after they shut down AMPS that was it. And that one happened for a specific reason. Now, carriers shut crap down any time they like to force those who refuse to upgrade to upgrade against their will and won't negotiate with anyone over it. I mean would it have killed them to allow the few left who still clinged to a 3G device to keep using it? I'd have even paid a premium on my bill and they'd make $$$ so you'd expect that to work, after all a corporation wants money, am I right?

 

[dave907]

Getting a new phone sucks. It's worse when you're like me, perfectly happy with something as old as the HTC Thunderbolt and forced to upgrade because VoLTE became mandated without any choice given to the customer. I hate companies deciding what we can use over the customers dictating the direction a company goes. It's still foreign to me.

Modern Samsung phones are NOTHING like the Galaxy SII. They don't even use TouchWiz, which I actually loved (due to the nature theme and skeuomorphic, very Android 2.3-style UI that carried into the Jelly Bean era) nowadays I'm still silencing or hunting down more and more notification 'weeds' that spring up and make noise that are junk (thanks BuzzKill! ) or adapting to gesture navigation (stop it!) or dealing with a super large screen that barely works in one hand and has issues fitting in my pockets. No, I won't put a phone in my back pocket after one got busted when I sat on a park bench sometime in 2006 with one in my pocket. Shattered the screen, only learned that one once!

I've gotten the UI my way at least, using a iOS 6-style launcher and apps that I found in a ZIP on DeviantArt called something like 'Pear OS' or something. It has added some much desired skeuomorphism to an otherwise flat UI phone.

So hoping 5G remains up until I'm long dead. But that's not likely since at one time I thought after they shut down AMPS that was it. And that one happened for a specific reason. Now, carriers shut crap down any time they like to force those who refuse to upgrade to upgrade against their will and won't negotiate with anyone over it. I mean would it have killed them to allow the few left who still clinged to a 3G device to keep using it? I'd have even paid a premium on my bill and they'd make $$$ so you'd expect that to work, after all a corporation wants money, am I right?

I love Touchwhiz. Especially the S5, Note 4, S6 and Note 5's Touchwiz versions they originally ran on. The US carriers gave Touchwhiz a bad name. I'm still using Touchwiz to this very day.

 

[dave907]

Getting a new phone sucks. It's worse when you're like me, perfectly happy with something as old as the HTC Thunderbolt and forced to upgrade because VoLTE became mandated without any choice given to the customer. I hate companies deciding what we can use over the customers dictating the direction a company goes. It's still foreign to me.

Modern Samsung phones are NOTHING like the Galaxy SII. They don't even use TouchWiz, which I actually loved (due to the nature theme and skeuomorphic, very Android 2.3-style UI that carried into the Jelly Bean era) nowadays I'm still silencing or hunting down more and more notification 'weeds' that spring up and make noise that are junk (thanks BuzzKill! ) or adapting to gesture navigation (stop it!) or dealing with a super large screen that barely works in one hand and has issues fitting in my pockets. No, I won't put a phone in my back pocket after one got busted when I sat on a park bench sometime in 2006 with one in my pocket. Shattered the screen, only learned that one once!

I've gotten the UI my way at least, using a iOS 6-style launcher and apps that I found in a ZIP on DeviantArt called something like 'Pear OS' or something. It has added some much desired skeuomorphism to an otherwise flat UI phone.

So hoping 5G remains up until I'm long dead. But that's not likely since at one time I thought after they shut down AMPS that was it. And that one happened for a specific reason. Now, carriers shut crap down any time they like to force those who refuse to upgrade to upgrade against their will and won't negotiate with anyone over it. I mean would it have killed them to allow the few left who still clinged to a 3G device to keep using it? I'd have even paid a premium on my bill and they'd make $$$ so you'd expect that to work, after all a corporation wants money, am I right?

You mean 4G?

 

[nickdalzell]

The Samsung Galaxy SII used 3G except with specific variants. The Palm WebOS phones never had 4G, and VoLTE-compliance is the big issue since not all 4G/LTE phones supported VoLTE. Not even the Thunderbolt. No way to make it work either. I wish carriers would just let us choose what we want to use.

These days all I even use a phone for is music playback (MP3s), phone calls and SMS texts. That's it. I would be perfectly happy with a Nokia N95 if 3G or 2G were still up.

I wanted to avoid the never-ending upgrade cycle, but since carriers can and WILL shut down networks eventually, that means that I'm not even safe from that cycle with a 5G-capable phone, as one day I'm sure 5G will get shut down too.

 

[Hadron]

I mean would it have killed them to allow the few left who still clinged to a 3G device to keep using it? I'd have even paid a premium on my bill and they'd make $$$ so you'd expect that to work, after all a corporation wants money, am I right?

Killed them, no. But keeping legacy basestations and infrastructure going so that a few people could continue to use old phones would be expensive, and would also mean that they couldn't re-use the spectrum for higher capacity/higher rate technologies (which then becomes a risk to their business if their 4G/5G coverage is perceived to be worse than their competitors).

I don't think you could have afforded the bill premium they'd need for this to make commercial sense.

 

[ocnbrze]

I love Touchwhiz. Especially the S5, Note 4, S6 and Note 5's Touchwiz versions they originally ran on. The US carriers gave Touchwhiz a bad name. I'm still using Touchwiz to this very day.

touchwiz and One UI suck. i always use a custom launcher. Nova is my go to. you should check it out. its highly customizable and i have been using for almost a decade!!!!!

 

[dave907]

touchwiz and One UI suck. i always use a custom launcher. Nova is my go to. you should check it out. its highly customizable and i have been using for almost a decade!!!!!

Did you read this post 42 Galaxy S5 models - Dummies Guide Not all Touchwiz phones are the same.

 

[ocnbrze]

Did you read this post 42 Galaxy S5 models - Dummies Guide Not all Touchwiz phones are the same.

nope and don't really care. Nova is so much better than anything out there......but that is my opinion.

edit: i only buy flagship phones......touchwiz is old and i hate OneUI .

 

[dave907]

Ah see if you don't read you'll never know since I used to think all S5 to S7 phones were the same until stumbling upon the dummies guide post.