New phone woes - A lighthearted moan and maybe you can help

SnowTiger

Do people still use SMS much? How quaint.

What's wrong with the stock Android SMS app? It seems to do most of what you want. Don't like it? There's probably a hundred others to choose from in the Play Store.

As for backing up SMS, I use SMS Backup & Restore. It's simple and works well (for me).

In my opinion SwiftKey is by far the best keyboard for Android. I've use many of the others, but none beat SwiftKey.

Shrimply

SnowTiger wrote: »

Do people still use SMS much? How quaint.

What's wrong with the stock Android SMS app? It seems to do most of what you want. Don't like it? There's probably a hundred others to choose from in the Play Store.

As for backing up SMS, I use SMS Backup & Restore. It's simple and works well (for me).

In my opinion SwiftKey is by far the best keyboard for Android. I've use many of the others, but none beat SwiftKey.

I use SMS, I'm terrible at replying, I hate how people on whatsapp know that you've read the message ages ago and not got around to replying yet. Haha.

The issues with the stock app is it has no archiving feature that I can see. I do use sms back up and restore but like to keep all the messages on the phone. The issue is that if you have a huge conversation the stock app can't handle it. Usually I just archive most of the messages and this would solve the problem. Apart from that it does work well.

I'll give swiftkey a shot, I have tried it before and wasn't happy but worth a go on the new phone

RumRat

Just read your Whatsapp messages with aeroplane mode turned on to avoid it sending a read signal. Then turn it off when you've done.
I've never understood why anyone would want to keep a text message for any length of time...

Shrimply

Maybe I'm a sentimental fool haha

I dunno, I guess I more wonder why you would need to delete anything so small when you can keep hold of it.

If you are in a relationship for example, sometime the little things that people say to you in a text can mean the world. It's just another way to keep hold of memories.

I_have_spoken

I was very happy with my Lumia 930 running Windows 10, should be able to pick-up around the £100 mark on t'bay. Only sold as I now have a 950.

Shrimply

Well I think I'm getting there.

1) Installed an app called Callistics which uses screens pretty much exactly like I'm used to using. It is very nice.

2)Think I'm going to stick with Textra, it's got a nice clean interface. It shows the sent and received time for received messages and the sent time for sent messages. It also shows if a sent message has been received but doesn't tell you when ( go figure haha). It is fast even with large conversations.
Going to keep google messenger installed as backup in case I ever need to check when a message I sent was received.

4) I've installed swiftkey and I think it's very much a winner and pretty much the same as what I'm used to.

3)Music is still a little bit of a mystery, I installed media utilites and Jack's music player and combined they do almost work like I want. But if anyone has any better options I'd love to hear them.

forgotmyname

I currently have 63 updates pending on my phone, i got totally fed up of all the updates removing features that i use.

I would update an app and then find its now useless. It started with the BBC news app, a nice simple bar that showed the latest news where you could scroll across the top stories without opening the app.
Then they updated it and added more bloat to it.

I actually uninstalled it and downloaded and older version of the app and installed that.

The one main niggle with Android is that you cannot mark an app as do not update.

I have kept away from OS updates also for the same reason.

Shrimply

forgotmyname wrote: »

The one main niggle with Android is that you cannot mark an app as do not update.

Actually you can.. If you go to your apps in google play store, open an app and click the menu in the top right hand corner and unselect auto-update.

I think I've found a music solution I'm reasonably happy with too, three different apps to make it work but nevermind haha.

agrinnall

forgotmyname wrote: »

I have kept away from OS updates also for the same reason.

Personally I would say that's a bad decision, but if you're happy with your current (old) version that's up to you.