About 10 days ago, I bought my first smart phone - Samsung Galaxy S4 and yesterday, I upgraded to the latest version of the O/S. I sure do wish I'd never done that because apparently, there's no easy way to go back to the old version and I was just getting familiar it. Also, all the books I bought apply to the old version but not so much to the new one. I hope I may just be misunderstanding things.
FYI, the three books I bought are: 1) Samsung Galaxy S4 for Dummies 2) Samsung Galaxy S4 User Guide 3) Samsung Galaxy S4 Handbook
Anyway, I'm finding it quite difficult to understand what's going on now that I'm using this new version. But it keeps getting better, so who knows? Maybe I will grow to like it. In any case, for anyone who upgraded or is thinking of upgrading, I think the following post may be helpful.
This morning I spent about five hours learning how to do two simple things. They were:
1) How to add a Widget to the Home Screen
2) How to add an App to the Home Screen
These were very simple procedures when I used the older version of the S/W. But no longer. The one good thing about learning how to do these things was that there was a lot of supporting info I had to learn in order to do them and so I think it may be worth your time to read the rest of this post.
The best thing about this was that I really wanted to add the following three items to my Home Screen:
1) A "Settings" widget (that makes it real quick and easy to get to the Settings screen).
2) A "Flashlight" widget (in case I get stuck in the dark, this thing is wonderful. The only problem is that they call it a "Torch" instead of a "Flashlight" because (I think) they are British).
3) A Help app (I found it to be a real problem finding Help info in this new version so this is really wonderful and I will explain this here directly).
In the old version, there were many times where I could be trying to do something and if I tapped "Menu", there was a Help item that I could read and more often than not, it really was a help. But in the new version, tapping Help almost always does nothing. I don't know the reason of course, but I'm guessing maybe they decided to release this version with the understanding they would add more Help info later. Maybe?
When I first upgraded to this new version of the S/W, I had a hard time finding the "Settings" screen and ever since, I've been looking for a way to make it easier to find. It used to be that no matter where I was or what I was doing, I could always get to the Settings screen with 3 taps: 1) Home 2) Menu 3) Settings
When I first got this phone and was learning how to use it, I spent an awful lot of time using the Settings screen (and I still do). So, that's why it was so important to me to have a quick and easy way to get there and that's why I was so unhappy when they changed it and it took me such a long time to find an easy way to get to the Settings screen.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just an aside here but: I know the "Home" button is not really a tap since it's a H/W button. But wouldn't it be so much better if they created a S/W button for "Home" just like the Menu and Back buttons? So much easier to use a button when you can just tap it instead of having to push it? But, I really shouldn't be wasting time here with my wishes to improve this phone.
And another aside here: Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could create S/W "macros" so that we could specify that some S/W abbreviation (like maybe "SET") would get us directly to the Settings screen? I would just love that. Just type the 3 letters: "SET" and it takes you directly to the Settings screen.
OK. No more asides.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the upgrade, in order to access the Settings screen, I had to pull down the screen at the top of the Home screen (I think maybe it's maybe called the Notification Screen?). There is the icon for the Settings Screen. It looks like a circle with a bunch of gears around the outside. (I wish I knew a better way to describe it.
As it turns out, both old and new versions require just about the same number of taps. It just seemed like a lot of extra work. When I was doing something else, I could tap the Home button and then:
Home -> Drag down the Notifications panel -> Tap the Settings icon.
OK. Anyway, this post is getting too long so I will create another post that just contains the instructions for:
1) Adding a widget to the Home screen
2) Adding an app to the Home screen
Please feel free to correct anything in this post that I've called by the wrong name. For example, I think it's not really called "Adding an app" but instead maybe it's called "Adding a shortcut to an app". I really don't know but if you can correct me, I'd be grateful.
