{"id":1179,"date":"2012-07-24T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T19:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/24\/androids-ftw\/"},"modified":"2012-07-24T13:20:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T19:20:00","slug":"androids-ftw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/24\/androids-ftw\/","title":{"rendered":"Androids FTW!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over four years ago, I bought my first Smartphone, an AT&T Tilt<\/a> (AKA HTC TytnII). It was a wonderful addition to my World of Geek, but like all things, it got old. And in the World of Geek, a 4-year old Smartphone is ancient.<\/p>\n

With my PC upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04<\/a>, I lost out on my way to sync my phone & PC. No more contacts or calendar syncs for the treen! That was not good. So I started researching my options. I discovered that Android phones sync to Google and my e-mail program (Evolution still) can access Google calendars. So next up, who made a nice Android phone that also has built-in GPS and can work on AT&T’s system?<\/p>\n

Although I am not AT&T’s biggest fan, I do like their Pay As You Go feature and I have over $170 worth of calls & texts on it. (Only costs $100 a year to top off the baby, and I’ve yet to use $100 worth of calls in one year.) My only drawback to switching to Android is the loss of DVD Profiler. There is a rumor, however, that there IS an Android version coming. Some day. Maybe. So I’ll have to be careful buying DVDs when I’m oot & aboot until they get it updated.<\/p>\n

OK, so AT&T, GPS, Android, up to date (or as up to date as can be). These were my criteria. And I settled on the Samsung Galaxy S II. But as I was researching this phone, I read about the NEXT version of the Galaxy S. And when I started reading the specs on it, I realized THAT’s what I needed to get.<\/p>\n

So I had picked my Phone of Choice – the Samsung Galaxy S III<\/a>. It wasn’t out yet when I first chose it, but I figured I could last awhile without backing up my calendar & contacts. I already had everything copied over to GMail for the eventual switch to Android, however.<\/p>\n

As I researched more, I discovered a drawback to my planned upgrade. The newer Smartphones require a MicroSIM card, rather than the regular SIM card. I read up on people trimming their cards to fit, and buying a $25+ trimmer. But I went to my local AT&T store and a very perky and helpful lady (I think she was bored with no one to talk to) said that they could transfer my info onto a new MicroSIM for a $25 fee. Heck, that worked for me!<\/p>\n

In order to use my Pay As You Go account on the phone, I needed to buy the phone outright. And turns out Amazon.com was selling the phone for $549. I hemmed & hawed for quite awhile until I broke down last Thursday and ordered it. And then got into my usual geeky OMG there’s a package coming today!!!!!! mode yesterday while I waited for UPS to arrive with my new phone.<\/p>\n

I ordered the pebble blue phone, which only looks blue under the right lighting. It’s very pretty. Bigger length & width, but much thinner than my old phone. After installing the battery, I plugged it in to charge, then connected it to my Wi-Fi. After syncing my calendar and contacts, I played around with Google Play<\/a> looking for apps to download. And my sister surprised me by finding me through Google Talk. My phone wasn’t a phone yet and I was already receiving “texts.” Heh.<\/p>\n

Once it was sufficiently charged, I took it to the AT&T store to switch SIM cards. The gentlemen there were very nice and I didn’t even have to take the old SIM out for the process. I called the folks as soon as the SIM was in place and everything worked just as it should. The folks said that I sounded clear to them (and they to me). So yay – it even works as a phone!<\/p>\n

Later in the evening, I purchased and installed CoPilot Live<\/a>. This was the GPS software I’d been using on my Tilt – inexpensive (much moreso than Garmin or TomTom) and reliable. After discovering that Samsung’s Find My Phone software doesn’t work in the US (an aggravating half hour of installs & checks & still nothing), I also bought Cerberus Anti-Theft<\/a> for my phone. And once installed, it found my phone. (After judiang<\/b><\/a>‘s recent “lost iPhone” scare, I thought I should get that pronto.)<\/p>\n

Today, I’m still working on getting the phone how I want it. Alas, Bejeweled 2, my go-to game on the old phone, isn’t available yet for this version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich). I haven’t found a euchre game yet for it, either, which was my other go-to game. There are several to choose from there, however. I’m also going to set up the SD card (currently an 8GB card, though I have a 32GB card now on order) to be my music drive. <\/p>\n

Turns out the earbuds that came with the phone are pretty dire – the music was tinny, like it was being played by a cell phone (heh). But with my nice headphones, the music sounds proper. And the little pause button on the headphones works (although the volume buttons don’t seem to – which, considering the cable is designed for iPods, is OK – perk with the pause working!)<\/lj-cut><\/p>\n

Anyhoo, some more tweaking (the best part of any new tech, IMO) and it’ll be PERFECT! Or at least as perfect as it can be. Woohoo! New Smartphone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over four years ago, I bought my first Smartphone, an AT&T Tilt (AKA HTC TytnII). It was a wonderful addition to my World of Geek, but like all things, it got old. And in the World of Geek, a 4-year old Smartphone is ancient. With my PC upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04, I lost out on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[69],"class_list":["post-1179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-livejournal","tag-smartphone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}