This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.

I’ve removed iTunes from my computer and not looked back since. I rooted the phone and replaced Samsung’s ROM with an updated ROM from Cyanogenmod, and was running Android Marshmallow on my 5-year old phone. Cyanogenmod changed their business model, and LineageOS took over development of full Android device ROMs. The change was seamless to me — I stayed on Cyanogen’s ROMs for a couple of weeks and updated to LineageOS without any issues.

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This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.

One nice thing about the iPhone is the SIM carrier — it’s a metal frame that holds up well under repeated SIM changes. The Samsung Galaxy S3 has a thin metal carrier that uses friction to press the contacts against the card. Between my card wearing out and using a SIM carrier adapter, my phone has lost connection with the SIM card.

On an iPhone? I’d probably need to replace the phone. With a Samsung? I bought a replacement SIM carrier online – $1.88, with free shipping. bought another battery with a wall charger, so I can swap batteries and not worry about charging on the road.

This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.

I’m moving back to my iPhone for a while — while I’m loving the Android environment, I’m getting about 8 hours of idle time out of my Galaxy SIII, and that’s just not enough flexibility for me during the week.

I’ve tried Qualcomm’s Snapdragon BatteryGuru, tried removing all of the Samsung apps, turned off the motion sensors, turned the brightness down and turned the auto-brightness setting off — and still I can watch the battery icon draining. Oh, I’ve bought a new battery as well, thinking it might be a Li-ion battery going south.

Between the lack of lock-screen notifications in Kitkat and the battery issues, I’m better off with the iPhone for a while. I found a Lolipop ROM for my old Atrix 4G, I’m tempted to try it out on a rooted ROM to see if the notifications are any better in the new OS version.

This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.

The Google Play store has over a million apps available for download, and there are other Android app stores available. There’s no limiting you to one store, as with the iPhone. Trying to find the right app can be daunting.

I decided to try out all of the Google apps first to simplify things, then will compare their offerings to some of the other apps out there. My take on the app offerings are below.

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