The Great Phone Re-Contracting!

Alan's phone was dying, it was also a waste of money to spend on portable Wifi devices, and Wing ‘s phone and my devices were out of contract.

Went to Telstra Shop in Garden City, and it was quiet. Got seen to right away. Wing's phone had ownership changed to me, canceled the portable Wifi devices, gave Alan my Galaxy S7, and so he and Wing signed up under the BYO plans. I got the Galaxy S9. By doing this, we have decreased total Telstra billing a month by almost $160.

Galaxy S9. Not too thrilled with it, but that could just be teething pains/getting used to a different set up. So far 11 of my tried and true apps and tools no longer function. ADW, and LauncherX Pro, were two of them that I used to customize my phone. You can make these tiny 'folders' (bubble) and label it, and add what apps you want in it (example A folder called "Astronomy" and all my astronomy apps go into it), but it's SMALL, even at the lowest resolution. It would be great if you could elongate the folder and make the app icons more visible. The Edge app is good but could be better. App Edge only allows 10 apps, or People Edge 10 people. No scrolling it up or down like I did with app on the S7.  Also, the Favorites bar on the bottom, you're restricted to 5 icons only. No more scrolling left or right. I don't know what bright spark at Samsung thought making these thing NON scrollable was a good thing, should be flogged.... or at least demoted.

Smart Switch was a semi-failure, as it did NOT transfer all data as it was supposed to have done. So if you get one, back up your app settings and data, even if you have to copy and paste.  I lost ALL my bird spotting records from my trip to Broome. 

On the positive side, what they've done with the camera and camera controls is amazing. I'm trying to get accustomed to pressing the power button twice to bring up the camera, rather than the home button twice.  This is causing me problems because of the scaphoid fracture I got 3 years ago. My thumb doesn't always press fast enough.  Put camera icon on the screen, problem solved.

Bixby: This reminds me of that excellent Assistant App I had with my S5 and S7, before Google bought it, took what parts they wanted from it, and the original programmers shut it down.  Been playing around with it, and it's not too shabby.

More later when I’ve had it more than one day.