Bought a Smart Phone

[ppppenguin]

I can't help directly with your questions but why on earth are you using Edge browser? I use the Adblock browser on my phone though i might switch to Firefox so that it's more similar to my desktop pc.

[Murphyv310]

Getting on quite well but confused myself over Texting.  It may show in what I write here.

Tried to avoid getting into Goggle takeover.  Have K-9 Mail working,  MS Edge as the browser and making telephone calls.

Somehow I got a  ********gmail.com address but it uses my home PC one in K-9 which is what I want.  Maybe I dont need the  gmail one?  In Settings the Sim card comes up as Virgin and the number that came with it.  Seems fine to me.

Tapped the Goggle Icon and used Contacts to enter those.  It works to both mine and the wifes old Doro phones for Call (phone) but only to mine for Text.  Odd.  And odder it gets sent to a friend:  maybe the person texted has to be a gmail ?

Perhaps I shouldnt have entered my contacts in the one which is part of Goggle?  Perhaps like e-mail there is a better App for texting that can be downloaded?

Sorry if this is muddled but I am.

PS.  Bought  a 2023 book on using an Android phone but it is totally wedded to Goggle !

Would really appreciate any help  Gary

Of course Android is wedded to Google as it's their baby.
I find the app I got with my OPPO and previous two Huawei phones perfectly fine. I use Petal mail on this phone but the Huawei app on the old phones was brilliant, still have a strong leaning towards Huawei smartphones, I found them terrific value and fast along with excellent reliability, this brand new faulty oppo was a dead simple fix all for £35 works well enough and is fast, now with Android 13.
Personally I'd stick with the apps it came with, I use Google Chrome with no issues. I'm typing this reply on my phone.

[Radio Fixer]

Thanks Jeffery.
I'm using Edge as that matches what I use on my Decktop PC. Seems to work OK for the little I or my wife will use it.
Trevor, thanks also. I have seriously thought of reverting the Phone to its supplied settings and going the full Goggle route. It would then let me use the 2023 "How to Book" I bought so I would have a guide.

Gary

[Radio Fixer]

Seems a shame to do a revert and go the all Goggle route when all I need now is to get the Text ing sorted.

Gary

[Radio Fixer]

Managed to put Chomp Text App on the phone and now that is working as well.
So for the moment looking good.

I didnt buy a refurbed and cheaper phone Trevor, although I was tempted to go the Apple route, as recommended by Mark. I have to teach my wife how to use this Smart phone now and I couldnt take a chance on a refurb phone having minor issues, like not always getting screen taps. Believe me its going to be hard enough as it is as she is tech ignorant.

Gary

[Murphyv310]

Hi Gary.
I'd not have any Apple device even in a gift. IMHO they are overpriced and not any better than a reasonable Android. Anyway you take your choice etc.
If the app you have works for you then all well and good. This phone funnily enough comes with DuckDuck go rather than Google so I've just left it as that, I mostly use the Play store for apps and I've just downloaded a brilliant app for reading the OBD port on the car, it actually reads the body computer, ABS & SRS the first one I've seen do that, only £2.50 a veritable bargain.

[Radio Fixer]

I agree on a New Apple Iphone Trevor but I did consider a Refurbed one but what does that mean? Couldnt take the risk of hardware problems as I said.

Gary

[Mark Hennessy]

Most of our iPhones SEs are second-hand, so not even refurbished. We've never had any issues at all. The original batteries are getting a bit tired now, but they are 7 years old. Each of them cost us a little over £100 each, about 4 years back. Can't argue with that!

Reading this thread brought back a bunch of memories - the main one being that while you usually get there in the end, there's a lot of faffing about with Android. I wonder if modern Android devices still need rebooting every couple of weeks - hopefully not.

I didn't choose to try Apple - it was a work decision to replace all Android phones with iPhones because of the costs and difficulties of securely supporting a huge number of devices running many different versions of Android. By the way, that decision, made in 2016, has saved the corporation a huge amount of your money - the up-front cost of the devices might be slightly higher, but the fact they are supported by the manufacturer with security updates for 6+ years means that we keep them for 3 times longer. Unless you have a special requirement - which needs to be signed off by several layers of senior management - then you only get an SE, which costs around £400, though of course we get a better price.

Anyway, I don't consider myself to be an Apple fan, and know nothing about their other products - therefore I don't have an opinion about them (I know it's old fashioned, but I try my best to avoid the trap of forming opinions on something I know little about, as that's prejudice). When the iPhone arrived, I approached it with an open mind, and it earned my respect by working well, being 100% reliable, and by being considerably cheaper in the long run. It's simply not factually correct to call an SE "overpriced". But then, saying "I'd not have any Apple device even in a gift" indicates a deeper opposition to Apple than just the price.

Anyway, glad you're getting there, Gary. My wife also struggles with technology, which is why we got her a second-hand iPhone to replace her old Android that was giving her no end of grief (about a year later we replaced her Android tablet with an iPad for the same reason). Despite iOS being more user-friendly, she still gets confused from time to time - there's no magic solution for some folk, sadly. But at least the kids can help her now...

[Radio Fixer]

Thanks Mark

I'm thinking now that I made a wrong choice but will stick with it for now. Android it seems to me gets complicated if you dont want to go all in with Goggle. I tried Chrome as a browser, on the PC sometime ago, and I also had a tablet that used it. Both convinced me that I didnt.

Gary

[Mark Hennessy]

Yes, you are tied into the Google ecosystem with Android, but you can limit its reach. I already had a gmail account, but I don't use it as a primary email. I installed K9 for email, which accessed my various other mailboxes with no issues. For web browsing I used Firefox.

It would be a similar story with Apple - you have to create an iCloud account and submit to their ways of working to some extent. I was initially concerned about having to do this, but found that it's quite well thought out - upgrading devices is trivial because everything automatically carries across, and the family sharing options are very good. Parental controls and tracking, for example, have been extremely useful. I daresay there are similar things for modern Android, but recent reviews I've read suggest that you still need to install various 3rd-party apps to get similar functionality.

Safari, the built in web browser is fine. Firefox is available for iOS, but it uses the same rendering engine as Safari, so I haven't bothered trying it. Safari does a neat thing, where if I pick up the iPad I can see the tabs I've got open on the phone (and vice-versa). Useful for when you get fed up with trying to browse the web on a tiny screen.

Ultimately, you have to decide who to trust with your data, and to what extent. Who is most trustworthy out of Apple, Google or Microsoft? Or Samsung or Sony? Or Netflix or ITV or the BBC? Impossible to say - we only have the marketing departments of each, plus reports in the media to go on. I can see that becoming a contentious subject, so better not got too far down that path, but suffice to say, we each have to do our own risk assessment before signing up to anything. Personally, I'm uncomfortable when people put their real dates of birth on the forum, because I'd rather not be responsible for real data being out there should we ever get a data breach!