Samsung Galaxy S4 thread - See Mod Warning in Post #1

Herrick wrote: »

Agonizing whether to swap my iPhone 4s for the S4 but don't know.

Does the S4 have many issues at the moment? Is stock OS on the phone laggy at all? Any other issues?

Turn off the s-voice activation on the home button and the major lag is gone, honestly its a great phone though to be completely honest im selling mine to get a new Nexus.

techdiver wrote: »

Hi,

Yeah, I'm on the latest version of WatchOn, 5.1.4.

When I start it up and select Ireland I only get Sky as an option??

I read about issues with the UPC listing, I wonder have they removed it? Or is it only custom fit onto Irish operators firmware? (I'm on stock sim free model).

Had the same problem with mine but reset watch on and upc option is there when you select country

Afternoon all.

Our office is looking at switching our mobile account to e-mobile from Vodafone. They have a new business offer for €30pm per handset fixed and are offering all the new phones as part of the deal. I can get myself an S4, HTC One, Xperia Z or iPhone 5. I love my S2 so am leaning towards the S4 but I don't know much about the others. Would any of them be a better option. I'm slow to move to Apple as I already have a Google account with about 40 apps linked.

Thanks.

rogieop wrote: »

ive downloaded dashclock widget and am trying to put it on my lock screen. seems i cant have that and have a pattern to unlock my phone aswell as every time i set up the pattern dashboard disables.

Any ideas?

Can you set it up if you make it Swipe instead of Pattern unlock? I usually use WidgetLocker so am not all that familiar with the TW lockscreen.

madmoe wrote: »

I can't wait for the Nexus 5 and a pure STOCK Android experience without all the useless software and bloatware Samsung add in!!

Me too, im surprised at how snappy in day to day use my old Galaxy Nexus is compared to the S4. The S4 is a great phone by all means but the Nexus is just for me. I was going to flash the GE ROM but i think ill just sell and go for the Nexus5 when/if it ever gets released

Cossax wrote: »

I get 24 hours easily enough with 3 hours of screen on time and data on in a poor reception area for a large chunk of that - either your battery is on or you have a huge amount of the gimmicks and possibly a rogue app running and draining your battery.

If you check the battery (Settings, More, Battery), what is it listing as the biggest battery user?
In addition, maybe go to the Notification window, switch to the quick settings and see if you have loads of those tiles activated.

The screen comes up as using 64% with voice calls using 17% the thing is that I have the screen to time out after 2 minutes.

fuzz69er wrote: »

Afternoon all.

Our office is looking at switching our mobile account to e-mobile from Vodafone. They have a new business offer for €30pm per handset fixed and are offering all the new phones as part of the deal. I can get myself an S4, HTC One, Xperia Z or iPhone 5. I love my S2 so am leaning towards the S4 but I don't know much about the others. Would any of them be a better option. I'm slow to move to Apple as I already have a Google account with about 40 apps linked.

Thanks.

Your post might cause a breach of the warning at the start of this thread.

I have a rooted S4 (GT-i9505) and I've installed the Google Play Edition (4.3) ROM on it and it's lightning fast. My hubby got the HTC One and it too is lightning fast (also 4.3).

Google offers business tools for administering Android phones (if that's something you want) as does Apple. Most Android devices can be backed up on the phone itself and to 'the cloud' on the fly which I find to be a huge benefit over Apple.

Your question basically boils down to Apple vs Android (personally I'd go for Android and the S4 for gizmos or HTC One for style).

I hope this doesn't breach the OP?

PS: Android provides complete phone encryption and SD card encryption which I've triied and there was no noticeable lag - plus Android now provides a free 'Find My Phone' from Google using the Google Settings app - as long as your phone is on and the location functions are on (that presents its own problems) you can remotely find and/or wipe your phone, for free.

I had a comprehensive post typed and as usual boards.ie logged me out (because I use ad blockers) and so I lost the whole post (I forgot to Ctrl-A Ctrl-C that I normally do just in case).

I'm running Google Play Edition 4.3 (Pure Android as some refer to it) on a rooted S4 (GT-i9505).

I'm also using the XPosed Framework:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574401

And XPrivacy:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2320783

I find XPrivacy absolutely invaluable as it stops Google and Android apps from data harvesting.

There are lots of XPosed modules available including one to get around the headphone volume limitation in Android 4.3 (though my phone still crashes if I try to put the volume up to 11 so to speak.)

There's a hidden menu in Android 4.3 called App Ops and there are various free apps out there available to acess this menu. I use this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wordpress.chislonchow.appopsshortcut

Be careful not to pay for any App Ops app that claims to give you extras because there are no extras apart from a How-To or an explanation of permissions - all of which you can find out for free online.

I don't know if any or all of this has already been covered but that's my 2c (so far).

GorillaRising wrote: »

Cheers for that! I'll have a proper look later when I'm at home.

How do you find battery life on Google play edition?

Incredible. As long as you don't use Location (GPS), Mobile Data and WiFi non-stop you'll easily get 24 hours. I'm a fairly heavy user (Location/Mobile Data/WiFi non-stop) and the battery lasts the full day. The Google Play Edition I'm using is:
Android version
4.3
Baseband version
I9505XXUBMEA
Kernel version
3.4.0-1246543
faux123@localhost.localdomain #6
Wed Aug 7 16:40:44 CDT 2013
Build number
JWR66V.S014.130801

From here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2352258

It's stripped of all the extra Google apps like Google+, Keep etc. it's only 200+MB

There's also this one: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2341026
It includes all the Google apps and it's around 400+MB.

GorillaRising wrote: »

Yeah I had before too so was wondering.




Do you know how 'Pure' Android runs on the GS4?

Also, anyone see a lot of battery usage from 'Phone idle'...mine when down 2% in 3hrs last night. Not sure how normal that is on the Galaxy though.

I'm using Omega v10, which is a custom rom that includes Samsung apps and touchwiz. I easily get a full day of moderate usage out of it with 3G/Wi-Fi.

Cossax wrote: »

How do you find it vs. TW based roms? Anything very obviously broken?
I've Sammy's 4.2.2 on it and I've a Nexus 4 also and much prefer using the Nexus 4 at times, that little bit snappier despite being older/less powerful so 4.3 GE might be a nice change.

How about both?

http://phandroid.com/2013/08/22/galaxy-s4-modaco-switch-rom-now-avaliable-in-beta-indiegogo/

Bought the S4 last Thursday. Today the battery is draining very fast and the main culprit is 'Android OS' at 85%. I have been looking around online and apparently that is a very high percentage. All apps are closed, I turned it off, took out the battery and restarted it but it is still the same. I tweeted Three about it and they said to bring it into the shop. I'm going away tomorrow and I really don't want to waste time going to the Three shop if I don't have to. Does anybody know if this is a defect?

This is the usage on my SG4

Screen 68%
Device idle 8%
Android OS 6%
Voice 5%
Google services 4%
Cell Standby 3%
Journal 3%
Facebook 2%
Android system 2%
The screen time out is set for 2 minutes any ideas on what I could/should do.:o