Samsung Galaxy S24 / S24+ / S24 Ultra

Installed Lawnchair launcher, and made my S24U look and behave just like my Pixel 8 Pro.

But ...

Not sure I like this now, because it's not my P8P, it's a OneUI phone, and for some strange reason it feels and looks like a wannabe Pixel and a cheap way. Like I think it's actually better looking and feeling just going all in and keeping it a OneUI launcher, and default, except with the GoodLock mods of course with some extra theming, etc...

Now if your into super wild home screens and grid size of like 6 x 8 or something, then yes, a launcher is a must have. But me trying to make the S24 Ultra look like a stock Pixel for some reason doesn't look right and feels odd. I'm going back to the stock OneUI launcher with themes using ThemePark

But I don't know...it does feel and behave nice and snappy and I like the way the app drawer slides up to open and the At A Glance widget is nice. I'm kinda torn.

Opinion?
 
Zorachus said:
Installed Lawnchair launcher, and made my S24U look and behave just like my Pixel 8 Pro.

But ...

Not sure I like this now, because it's not my P8P, it's a OneUI phone, and for some strange reason it feels and looks like a wannabe Pixel and a cheap way. Like I think it's actually better looking and feeling just going all in and keeping it a OneUI launcher, and default, except with the GoodLock mods of course with some extra theming, etc...

Now if your into super wild home screens and grid size of like 6 x 8 or something, then yes, a launcher is a must have. But me trying to make the S24 Ultra look like a stock Pixel for some reason doesn't look right and feels odd. I'm going back to the stock OneUI launcher with themes using ThemePark

But I don't know...it does feel and behave nice and snappy and I like the way the app drawer slides up to open and the At A Glance widget is nice. I'm kinda torn.

Opinion?
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I've tried damn near every launcher, but nothing works for me like Nova. It's easy to configure and easy to transfer my preferred settings from phone to phone. I lost interest in super customizing home screens when I quit rooting Android phones. Same for jailbreaking my iPhones. It all just became too tedious and troublesome.
 
Mad Maxx said:
I've tried damn near every launcher, but nothing works for me like Nova. It's easy to configure and easy to transfer my preferred settings from phone to phone. I lost interest in super customizing home screens when I quit rooting Android phones. Same for jailbreaking my iPhones. It all just became too tedious and troublesome.
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree. I used to love the Jailbreak scene and tweaking things to make iOS work like it's supposed to LOL but the JB scene is dead.

And customizing Android is fun, to a point, but then it can become tedious and too much bullcrap to make it work right, and stuff. I just stay stock, with a few tweaks to personalize it for me, and some basic theming.
 
Mad Maxx said:
I've tried damn near every launcher, but nothing works for me like Nova. It's easy to configure and easy to transfer my preferred settings from phone to phone. I lost interest in super customizing home screens when I quit rooting Android phones. Same for jailbreaking my iPhones. It all just became too tedious and troublesome.
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Exactly.
And I was going to add what was already said. When one exports the Nova settings and imports them to your new phone, you have to ask yourself why you put yourself through all the complications of rooting and jailbreaking.
 
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Mad Maxx said:
I've tried damn near every launcher, but nothing works for me like Nova. It's easy to configure and easy to transfer my preferred settings from phone to phone. I lost interest in super customizing home screens when I quit rooting Android phones. Same for jailbreaking my iPhones. It all just became too tedious and troublesome.
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That's how I am now, although I'm currently on an iPhone (I love Android as well and I'll switch back and forth every once in a while). I'm over the customization thing as well. My current "customization" simply involves making things as minimal, simple, and functional as possible.
 

How to reply to texts from lockscreen?​


Been on Pixel Pro phones for years, 8 Pro, 7 Pro, 6 Pro, 4 XL ...

Anytime I get a text, I pick up the phone and see it on the lockscreen, I can immediately just kind of press down on that notification and then read it and reply right there, not needing to unlock the phone and go into the Messages app itself.

Well on my S24U, when I see a text notification, I have a hard time seeing it, as the clock sometimes covers it up, and then I can't really open it, unless I actually unlock the lockscreen first.
Is there a way to make it work like the Pixel?
 
Mad Maxx said:
8:00pm and still no FedEx delivery. I should've just gone to Best Buy. :rage: :banghead:
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It just gets more and more bizarre. I got on chat with Google tech support and was told the package was refused at delivery. It's on its way back to Google. FedEx must've tried delivering to a different address. It's happened before with FedEx and DHL. Some of the street names in my neighborhood are similar. UPS and USPS never have this problem, though.

Zorachus said:

How to reply to texts from lockscreen?​


Been on Pixel Pro phones for years, 8 Pro, 7 Pro, 6 Pro, 4 XL ...

Anytime I get a text, I pick up the phone and see it on the lockscreen, I can immediately just kind of press down on that notification and then read it and reply right there, not needing to unlock the phone and go into the Messages app itself.

Well on my S24U, when I see a text notification, I have a hard time seeing it, as the clock sometimes covers it up, and then I can't really open it, unless I actually unlock the lockscreen first.
Is there a way to make it work like the Pixel?
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I think that's a Pixel feature. I remember having the same issue with the first S24U I tried.
 
My simple homescreen setup;
 

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Zorachus said:
For now settled on this homescreen design;
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That's not enough icons. 😉
Mad Maxx said:
I've tried damn near every launcher, but nothing works for me like Nova. It's easy to configure and easy to transfer my preferred settings from phone to phone. I lost interest in super customizing home screens when I quit rooting Android phones. Same for jailbreaking my iPhones. It all just became too tedious and troublesome.
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The reason there ever was a need to root and JB phones was because the companies couldn't respond to user requests for improvement fast enough. They were all too preoccupied with trying to understand what every tweak was going to have on their ability to regulate your use or data they could collect. It was obnoxious. Now, it just does everything right out of the box.
 
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The Lurker said:
The reason there ever was a need to root and JB phone was because the companies couldn't respond to user improvement fast enough. They were all too preoccupied with trying to understand what every tweak was going to have on their ability to regular your use or data they could collect. It was obnoxious. Now, it just does everything right out of the box.
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I remember, back in the Note 4 days, I readily took advantage of the fact that Sprint variants had an unlocked bootloader because that was the only way I could fix the system DPI being way too damn big, and a lot of apps still needed root for important functionality. This was, I think, Android 4.4 KitKat? Didn't even ship with 5.0 Lollipop, typical Samsung lagging behind one major Android version.

Then I stepped up to a Note 8 with Android 7 Nougat and One UI, and while that was past the S7-induced point of "US/NA gets one regional variant with a locked bootloader because screw all of you", I found that I wasn't immediately hankering for Xposed/Magisk back because Samsung brought out their own Good Lock tweaks that did most of what I had wanted to do in the first place, and they had also standardized on 560 system DPI to keep the UI from getting way too big while also giving more control over the scale of everything. In fact, not rooting and blowing the Knox e-fuse now meant I could still use things like Secure Folder and Samsung Pay/Wallet that I didn't have access to before.

I still think the OEM Unlock option should always be present under developer options regardless of regional variant, though - that's the owner's choice, not the manufacturer's or the carrier's choice to make.

Nowadays, the improvements feel mostly hardware-related, like faster fingerprint scanners and finally having a flat screen again that I can go edge-to-edge with the pen easily and have a much easier time finding and applying screen protectors to. I'm also fortunate enough to not notice any graininess or gradient banding on the screen, unlike what a lot of other people are reporting with theirs - it just looks nice. (Lack of oversaturation was something I never noticed because I tend to use the "natural" instead of "vivid" setting to keep the colors consistent with my other devices.)

Of course, that's all on the Android side of things. iOS would probably still have me itching to jailbreak to make the file management far less frustrating and allow easier sideloading, though at least now you don't have to jailbreak to use a mouse. Guess it took about a decade for both OSes to rip off what made webOS good over a decade ago.
 
Not too impressed with the camera. Took some portrait shots quickly of people and dogs and objects and there's lots of light bleed, and they just look a bit washed out.

I had the Pixel 8 Pro nearby and took similar shots from the same spot.

Holy cow. The P8P took amazing portrait photos, and the S24U looked very dated to not good.
 
So been using this new S24 Ultra one week now, how do I like it, sgd how is it compared to my Pixel 8 Pro?

The S24U is a beast of a phone ( in a good way ) the size, the rectangular shape, the build quality, it's like something from Blade Runner or Cyberpunk.

The display is very sharp and crisp, with great colors, just a joy to look at. The outdoors brightness is incredibly good.

It's a big phone for sure, but not much bigger then my Pixel 8 Pro or 7 Pro. The build quality is superb.

Network and Wi-Fi connections are better than on my Pixel.

Speed wise it's a very fluid and smooth feeling phone, really zero complaints there. Which I'm shocked I thought only the Pixel or stock Android phones like Nothing Phone could be this smooth, but I was wrong, this S24U is buttery smooth all the time.

But ... the camera, yuck. I don't take videos much, mostly still portrait shots, and the Pixel just kills it, especially night mode, wow the Pixel destroys it. I'm rather disappointed in the camera on this S24 Ultra

Stock Android Pixel UI, vs OneUI 6.1. I love the Pixel UI, but this OneUI is surprisingly really good too. But I do just like how the Pixel operates and the user experience is just a more comfortable UI to use on a phone, for me.

There's some magic sauce or something that just makes using a Pixel Pro phone fun and effortless to pick up and go, hard to explain.

But then the S24U huge flat rectangular slab of a display, really is futuristic looking and feeling.

I have to say I'm seriously torn between the two phones, S24U and P8P. Yes the S24 Ultra clearly is the [H]ardware champ, it just feels more premium and is obvious the specs are better, you can just tell by using it for a couple days.

But the camera is clearly better on the Pixel and the user experience is very opinionated but I do find the Pixel UI better, but not by much.

I don't know here. Yes the Galaxy is a better phone, but by how much? I really can't say yet. Need more time with it.
 
Quick question, how do I get voicemail on the default Samsung phone app like my Pixel?

On the Pixel, voicemail is a tab in the Phone app, and I can easily access it and listen to it or read vm transcribed.

How do I enable that on the S24U?
 
Zorachus said:
Quick question, how do I get voicemail on the default Samsung phone app like my Pixel?

On the Pixel, voicemail is a tab in the Phone app, and I can easily access it and listen to it or read vm transcribed.

How do I enable that on the S24U?
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You can install the Google phone app on the S24U. Should work the same as on the Pixel.
 
Zorachus said:
Tried that, and still couldn't see the voicemail tab like I would on my Pixel.
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I doubt that you would also get the Google Phone's call screening, where it shows you a transcript of the app asking the caller to identify the purpose of the call. Google reserves that for the Pixel.
 
Supersnake said:
I doubt that you would also get the Google Phone's call screening, where it shows you a transcript of the app asking the caller to identify the purpose of the call. Google reserves that for the Pixel.
Click to expand...

I understand that, but visual voicemail should be a pretty basic function built into a modern smartphone UI.
 
Zorachus said:
I understand that, but visual voicemail should be a pretty basic function built into a modern smartphone UI.
Click to expand...
You aroused my curiosity because I too am using Google's phone app. However my phone is an Xperia 1 Mark V. I'm running with Android 14 and I looked in the OS Settings for a "Visual Voicemail" tab and there is one. However on that tab there is an icon representing my T-Mobile visual voicemail app that I had to install. If I want to read my visual voicemail I have to tap on the T-Mobile visual voicemail icon that I placed on my home screen.

As for the Google Phone app per se there is nothing in the apps settings that reads visual voicemail but it does have a settings entry that reads "Voice Mail (T-Mobile)". But wait, it gets even more complicated. I opened up my T-Mobile visual voicemail app and it will play the recording no problem, however there's a notation on the screen that says transcript not available.
 
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Update:
I queried T-Mobile and asked why their Visual Voice Mail app was providing voice recordings, but was not making available any transcripts of phone messages.
The reason was I needed to upgrade the T-Mobile Visual Voice Mail app to Premium. That would cost $4 per month. I declined to do so.

Zorachus, it looks like you may have to install a Visual Voice Mail app provided by your carrier to obtain written transcripts.
If you do, find out if that feature is available with or without a carrier surcharge.
 

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Supersnake said:
Update:
I opened up my T-Mobile visual voicemail app and it will play the recording no problem, however there's a notation on the screen that says transcript not available

I queried T-Mobile and asked why their Visual Voice Mail app was providing voice recordings, but was not making available any transcripts ofphone messages.
The reason was I needed to upgrade the T-Mobile Visual Voice Mail app Upgrade to Premium. That would cost $4 per month. I declined to do so.
(click on image to expand)
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Yeah. They can suck it. I switched to them for a couple months and then went back to Verizon. My bill doubled twice over those two months. They were never this terrible of a company when I used them before. But they suck now.
 
This morning, when I did my exercising, ruck sack hiking with the doggies, and then pull-ups and push-ups, etc... I had the Pixel 8 Pro with for YouTube Music listening, and I was thinking what a friendly fun easy to use phone.

Then when getting ready to leave for the office, grabbed the S24U, and was immediately like whoa, this is quite a beast, the big flat rectangular display, and the vibrant deep pretty colors, it looks and feels like an upgrade more futuristic phone than the P8P.
 
Zorachus said:
I understand that, but visual voicemail should be a pretty basic function built into a modern smartphone UI.
Click to expand...
You might be able to tap the three-dots menu in Samsung's Phone app and select Visual Voicemail from there. If you're lucky that will enable Samsung's built-in visual voicemail app. But it's possible that this might not work (though it does work for me - including transcriptions), and that you might instead need to install T-Mobile's Visual Voicemail app. They do want you to use their app, which they can "monetize" (as you've noticed).

The other factor here - I think - is that Samsung doesn't want to pay Google to enable the VVM feature built in to Google's Phone dialer app.
 
skriefal said:
You might be able to tap the three-dots menu in Samsung's Phone app and select Visual Voicemail from there. If you're lucky that will enable Samsung's built-in visual voicemail app. But it's possible that this might not work (though it does work for me - including transcriptions), and that you might instead need to install T-Mobile's Visual Voicemail app. They do want you to use their app, which they can "monetize" (as you've noticed).

The other factor here - I think - is that Samsung doesn't want to pay Google to enable the VVM feature built in to Google's Phone dialer app.
Click to expand...

I can do that, use the Phone app, and in the dialer tab press the 3 dots, and yes visual voicemail is accessed from there. Ok .

But that just seems like too many steps are hidden away I like I was just built into the tab and the phone app on Pixel just easy quick access.
 
On prior Samsung phones the built-in VVM app was accessible in the apps list/launcher as Visual Voicemail (iirc). But I haven't found a way to force it to appear in the launcher on the S24, even though it is visible as a separate app under Settings > Apps (after enabling Show system apps). This does seem an odd design choice. Perhaps a concession to demands from T-Mobile.
 
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Simple home and lock screens on my S24U;
 

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I still have my Pixel 8 Pro, and use it a lot in the mornings while working out, and I love the phone, but then when I pick up the S24U, it just feels substantially nicer, holding it and looking at the big flat rectangular screen, just feels high-end, the colors too, the display looks richer.

The S24 Ultra feels like a true flagship. And I really like the display, the matte non glossy screen is great, and it's super bright outdoors.

Now my Pixel 8 Pro in comparison feels a bit more mid range, it's a great phone, but it just seems a bit lesser of a phone for some reason. I still love the Pixel line, it's my fav, but man I wish Google would truly put top dog [H]ardware inside them already.

Remember the GPE phones from years ago? Which were the flagship HTC and Samsung phones for that year, but instead of running Sense UI or Touchwiz UI, those were running stock Android with updates handled directly by Google. That would be great to see again, imagine a S24 Ultra GPE.

So my opinion is, both the Pixel 8 Pro and Galaxy S24 Ultra are great phones, I just think the S24U is better, but not by a ton, I still prefer Pixel UI more, but the hardware is just clearly better on the S24U.
 
I just realized this phones screen doesn't dim out, in any orientation, when using polarized glasses. That's a big improvement for me because I pretty much live in sunglasses.

Explain how they did that.
 
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The Lurker said:
I just realized this phones screen doesn't dim out, in any orientation, when using polarized glasses. That's a big improvement for me because I pretty much live in sunglasses.

Explain how they did that.
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A depolarizing layer to scramble emissions. Probably part of the AR film. It greatly enhances view ability in bright areas where a shiny surface reflects too much towards the viewer's eyes.

The update is out that adds ability to increase saturation and has many camera fixes which low light and autofocus stability have been addressed!
 
Yep, woke up this morning with an update ready to download and install.

I have the direct from Samsung unlocked phone using a T-Mobile SIM.

Was a very fast download, and fast install. Way quicker than Pixel updated, which seems to just take forever to optimize and install.
 
cpufrost said:
A depolarizing layer to scramble emissions. Probably part of the AR film. It greatly enhances view ability in bright areas where a shiny surface reflects too much towards the viewer's eyes.
Click to expand...
This alone would have made me want to upgrade to the new phone. This is a huge boost in usability for me.
 
Zorachus said:
Yep, woke up this morning with an update ready to download and install.

I have the direct from Samsung unlocked phone using a T-Mobile SIM.

Was a very fast download, and fast install. Way quicker than Pixel updated, which seems to just take forever to optimize and install.
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Yeah installing updates on Pixel phones is like upgrading Windows! 🙃

Mine is on Verizon (esim). Checked around 2200 last night, nothing. 0500 today and there it was. TBH I was shocked to see it as U1 (unlocked) devices seem to get updated last. They must have really pushed to get this out everywhere.
 
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