Comparisons of Samsung Galaxy 5S with my iPhone 4S

With the New Year came a change of phones. I wanted a chance to try out a Samsung Galaxy since so many of my customers had them and I wanted to change service providers. I have had ATT since I have had my first iPhone. It was required in order to get an iPhone at the time. 




Here are my first impressions

1. I hate all of the different - proprietary - plugs that each phone has!! My iPhone has a plug which is the same as the one on my iPad.  Now the Samsung Phone has a different one. My husband updated to an iPhone 6 and so he also has a different one.
2. The cord is not as smooth for the Samsung Phone. I am guessing that Apple has some patent on the cords it uses. They are so wonderfully smooth.
3. The plug into the phone for the power cord is not as smooth on the Samsung as on the Apple.
4. I learned the hard way that Samsung has a removeable battery that needs to be put in before you can start it up. I thought that maybe my Samsung was bad and I would have to send it back. Clear proof that I am not a Geek.  After a call to the help desk, all I had to do was to put the battery in and the Samsung started.
5. Now that it has started up I like it. The screen is bigger and the picture is so clear. It feels like it floats, it is so light. My husband got the iPhone 6. I think they are similar.

Just a cool side discovery was that I could take one picture that did BOTH a "selfie" and a picture of what is in front of the camera.

SYNCING
What I have learned is that whereas the iPhone, the Mac and iPad all use iTunes to sync their information using iCloud, Samsung uses various things. The first thing I had to do was to download an app onto my Samsung phone called Smart Switch Mobile. With that app and an updated iCloud back up of my iPhone I could transfer most of the content from my iPhone to my Samsung phone.

Calendar, Contacts and eMail use Google
The Smart Switch took care of my calendar, my contacts and my email. Now I keep all of these synced using Google. My email was a gmail account, so that made it easier. If you don't have a gmail account you can easily create one for free and have your current address forwarded to it so that you get all of your email through gmail. You don't have to switch email addresses or tell your contacts that you have changed, because your mail is all forwarded.

Now my contacts are synced to the phone through Google rather than through the Contacts app. When I add an address to my computer under contacts it does not show up on my phone, although it does show up on my iPad. If I add it using Google it shows up on my phone. Another way to say it is that the Samsung does not talk with my Contacts on my Mac or Apple devices and they do not talk with the Samsung. I guess, for me, that means that my up to date contacts will now be on gmail and I will have to export them from gmail and import them to my Mac contacts every once in a while if I want that updated.

Pictures
The pictures are another issue. Before, using the iPhone and iPhoto, I plugged the phone into my computer it opened iPhoto. I could name and download the photos on my phone to my computer. The Samsung can be set up to use different methods. Mine is set up to use Dropbox. The photos I take are automatically loaded to Dropbox. I do not have to plug my phone in for that. 

To set it up this way I had to enter my Dropbox username and password into my phone. Now any picures I take on the phone automatically go to Dropbox. I can then move them to whatever photo organizing program I want to use. Some common ones are iPhoto, Flickr and Picasa.

A warning about using Dropbox. In dropbox you can share your folders or files with someone else, but you need to remember that if you take anything out of the Dropbox it is no longer available to the other person. I think that what I will do is to always copy the photos I have in Dropbox to somewhere on my computer so that even if they are deleted from Dropbox I still have them.

FREE OPINIONATED EXPERIENCE: SWITCHING PROVIDERS

For me ATT always worked. I don't have complaints about their service. At first (5-6 years ago), getting good help on the phone was impossible, but that has changed. Recently I have noticed that they have bent backwards to make sure your needs are met. The main thing is that I don't think that they, in general, support the same issues that I do and SO much of their money is going to make a few people rich. In years past ATT has compensated its five top executives (with equity, cash, and benefits) at about $47 million dollars a year. Credo Mobile, who I switched to has given $78 million to charities.

I chose Credo for those reasons. I am happy about that, however, the connection has not been as good. We have had bad connections and dropped calls. It has been easy for me to talk to a person and get help at Credo and the last phone call they said they were going to send out an AirRave Access Point for us to use for free. We will see how that goes and hopefully not have to switch to another company.