Ditched my iPhone, just got a Samsung Galaxy S3. Please help

[sgreger1]

Also, I saw a lot of antivirus and firewall stuff on here. Is there like a virii issue with Android? With the iphone obviously they don't really get targeted but should I pay $10 for the antivirus apps? I would really like to not have to worry about that on a phone if at all possible but wasn't sure if this was an issue for Andoroid or not.

[sgreger1]

Also on iphone when you opened an app it would keep it runing in the background. Is there something similar in android? Should I be worried that I am opening 20 million item?

[sgreger1]

This is really overwhelming, the app store is filled with so much shit that I just don't understand.

On question I have is that iphone had an ability to search all apps, so like if I had 20 million apps and was looking for "spotify" I could type it in and it would bring it up, is there any similar search feature on android or do you just have to find it manually?

[GoVegan]

I just use the Amazon app store. My kindle is linked to it.

[heders]

So my iphone was my first smartphone and I have now gotten rid fo it and grabbed the new SamSung Galaxy S3. I am in the process of rooting it right now, but was wondering what ROM's are good, what apps are essential etc as I have NEVER used an android phone before.

If anyone has some of those "must have" items or has any recommendations for ROM's that would be awesome.

I use Cyanogenmod 7 on my HTC Desire. Works like a charm, and I've tried a looooooooooooot of ROMs.

As for apps, SoundHound is allround a pretty good app to have.

[Skell18]

Also on iphone when you opened an app it would keep it runing in the background. Is there something similar in android? Should I be worried that I am opening 20 million item?

There is something called an app killer which closes all your running apps, my OH raves about it but I have an iPhone so just double tap the home buttom, hold then close away at will

[heders]

Also on iphone when you opened an app it would keep it runing in the background. Is there something similar in android? Should I be worried that I am opening 20 million item?

No need to worry about that. App killers can do more bad than good apparently in android phones. It's not going to affect your performance, and the phone will close apps you haven't used in a while automatically.

[devilock76]

Rooting, just be careful, some stock roms are worth keeping, especially if you are going to need tech support down the road.

Here are some apps I like:

Media/entertainment:
Caustic - however this is musician specific, it is a sample and synth sequencer and pattern based music maker. Kind of the Android Fruity Loops and by far the leader of the pack in this area on android.
Party Mixer - I use this for DJ'ing on my tablet and it is great.
HomeDIA - DLNA client and server
FBreader - E-books
NetFlix
Kindle
Spotify
TapeMachine Lite - audio recording
Words with friends and Scramble with friends
gStrings - guitar tuner
Angry birds (especially Space)
MX Player - much better than the built in video app with wider codec support

Networking:
AndFTP - FTP client and also you can do FTP based phone backups, VERY useful tool, especially if you have an FTP server at your disposal.
AndroidVNC - VNC client
ConnectBOT - SSH terminal client

Productivity:
Google Drive
Evernote - Free or paid it is worth it. One of my favorite note sharing and library apps period
Documents to go - if a MS Office reading/writing program did not come with your phone then this is the best one free or paid there is

Other:
Craigslist - hey I am an addict
For camera my stock camera is pretty good - I use PicsArt for editing. If your stock camera sucks Camera360 is a decent free alternative, as is instagram I guess, I personally dislike instagram. A lot of photographers like Vignette, also there is CameraZoomFX which is well rated. I personally liked Lightbox but Facebook bought them apparently to dismantle them (BASTARDS).

Utility:
Juice Defender - will increase battery life
Advanced Task Killer - I don't care what google says I consider this a must

Ken

[sgreger1]

Okay so it seems to be freezing a lot and I am not sure how I am supposed to force quit a program when it freezes. Like right now my text messages don't work as the default texting app freezes constantly and I don't know how to close it. This phone certainly isn't as smooth or as reliable as the iphone but hopefully I will get the hang of it better.

So far I do like how many options there are for customization but I must say that it is slower and less responsive and seems to have more problems with freezing and things that I never experienced on the iphone, even though the Galaxy S3 is suposed to have the fastest processor and at over 2GB of ram I would imagine it should be able to handle text messaging smoothly but maybe not.

[sgreger1]

Rooting, just be careful, some stock roms are worth keeping, especially if you are going to need tech support down the road.

Here are some apps I like:

Media/entertainment:
Caustic - however this is musician specific, it is a sample and synth sequencer and pattern based music maker. Kind of the Android Fruity Loops and by far the leader of the pack in this area on android.
Party Mixer - I use this for DJ'ing on my tablet and it is great.
HomeDIA - DLNA client and server
FBreader - E-books
NetFlix
Kindle
Spotify
TapeMachine Lite - audio recording
Words with friends and Scramble with friends
gStrings - guitar tuner
Angry birds (especially Space)
MX Player - much better than the built in video app with wider codec support

Networking:
AndFTP - FTP client and also you can do FTP based phone backups, VERY useful tool, especially if you have an FTP server at your disposal.
AndroidVNC - VNC client
ConnectBOT - SSH terminal client

Productivity:
Google Drive
Evernote - Free or paid it is worth it. One of my favorite note sharing and library apps period
Documents to go - if a MS Office reading/writing program did not come with your phone then this is the best one free or paid there is

Other:
Craigslist - hey I am an addict
For camera my stock camera is pretty good - I use PicsArt for editing. If your stock camera sucks Camera360 is a decent free alternative, as is instagram I guess, I personally dislike instagram. A lot of photographers like Vignette, also there is CameraZoomFX which is well rated. I personally liked Lightbox but Facebook bought them apparently to dismantle them (BASTARDS).

Utility:
Juice Defender - will increase battery life
Advanced Task Killer - I don't care what google says I consider this a must

Ken

Great list Ken! I especially needed a recommendation for the SSH and FTP client as there are just so many. Can you elaborate on why I would need advanced task killer?

[halocog]

I have a Galaxy S 4G (the exclusive for T-Mobile with Inception preloaded). Terrible phone. Terrible. It has excellent build quality, but the software for it is very very poorly optimized. The radio is somewhat faulty in it as well. Sometimes looses service for no reason and doesn't work again until it feels like it, switches back and fourth between 3G and EDGE. I rooted it and put a custom rom on it, and it still blows.

I've always had really good luck with Samsung products, but this one must be a serious dud. I'm switching back to HTC as soon as I can afford it.

[sgreger1]

I have a Galaxy S 4G (the exclusive for T-Mobile with Inception preloaded). Terrible phone. Terrible. It has excellent build quality, but the software for it is very very poorly optimized. The radio is somewhat faulty in it as well. Sometimes looses service for no reason and doesn't work again until it feels like it, switches back and fourth between 3G and EDGE. I rooted it and put a custom rom on it, and it still blows.

I've always had really good luck with Samsung products, but this one must be a serious dud. I'm switching back to HTC as soon as I can afford it.

Which Galaxy S do you have if I might ask, is it the 3 or an earlier version? So far the iPhone clearly outperforms this phone in every way, there's more customization on this phone I guess and more apps available but overall it does not seem to be as smooth or as reliable or as fast. I may have to return it and just wait for the iphone 5 which I really didn't want to do, i'll give it a few more days.

So far i've used it for about 30-40 minutes of not really doing anything since I was mainly driving and doing stuff at work, and it's already down to 75% battery. On top of that, I had it delete my text messages and it's been trying to delete them for about 15 minutes now so we'll see how long that takes. That is of course after it froze 3-4 times consecutively while trying to open the text messages in the first place.

[sgreger1]

It's now 10:28am and my battery is already half dead. All I did was listen to the radio, check some texts and read the news for about 20 minutes. Definately wish it had more battery life. Also the reddit apps suck and the browser (Dolphin HD) is lacking. Has anyone else switched from iphone to android before, was your experience positive? Am I just not used to it yet? It seems like it is very hard to type on it too as it consistently wants to autocorrect me to death. The iphone would autocorrect once and then leave you alone if you spelled it wrong again, but this one seems to autocorrect like 5 times before it lets you pass with the spelling you want. So entering usernames or email addresses seems difficult. I guess the only option is to turn off autocorrect all together, which I didn't want to do.

[lxskllr]

Autocorrect just wastes cpu cycles.I hated it on my tablet. You could try different keyboards. Try different browsers. I liked Dolphin, but Opera is good also. I also liked Zirco, but it might be a little stripped for you. What Android gives you is choice. A lot of the choices are crappy, but there's some good stuff out there. You have to build a load out over time, and back then up so it's easy to put back.

[sgreger1]

Autocorrect just wastes cpu cycles.I hated it on my tablet. You could try different keyboards. Try different browsers. I liked Dolphin, but Opera is good also. I also liked Zirco, but it might be a little stripped for you. What Android gives you is choice. A lot of the choices are crappy, but there's some good stuff out there. You have to build a load out over time, and back then up so it's easy to put back.

The battery has almost completely drained itself and it's not even 11am which pisses me off, but more importantly I CAN'T SEND TEXT MESSAGES! Every time I opene the SMS thing that came with the phone it freezes. The stock apps don't even work. Overall the whole UI is just way less streamlined and well thought out, I guess i've been spoiled by the iphone. I really like the level of customization and some of the cool features, but I guess I just have to get used to it, as this is a very different beast than the no-hassle iphone. I mean to delete a program I can't just drag it into the trash, I have to go find it again in the app store and click "uninstall". Not sure why they have it set up that way.

Maybe once I root it and change the ROM it will work better. A

nybody ahve any suggestion on what the best ROM is for a Galaxy S3?