iPhone to Android - LG G4 first impressions

Enough of getting out of Appleville - what is it like in the world of Android?

Initial impressions were a little shaky. I hate unclipping molded plastic. No matter how well it is made, it always feels like it is going to break so getting the back off the phone was fraught. Of course, the fact I could get the back off at all is a point in its favour as this handset has a replaceable battery and expandable memory.

Putting in the micro SD card was a bit odd - it felt like it wasn't locked securely into place. It turned out that it wasn't so I needed to open it up again to fix it but it needed a bit more of a push than I was initially willing to give. Still, having it open let me switch the back for a Qi wireless charging enabled case which clipped into place and Just Worked. I don't need wireless charging in my life but it was one of the little things I was excited to try - it feels like I'm in the future. Yes, I'm a child.

Next, loading it up. Key noises. Argh. First task on any new device - silence the system noises. The Android ones seem particularly obnoxious to me. Also, the default Android (or possibly LG?) keyboard is pretty irritating. Why doesn't it auto-complete for me?

Powering through the horrible sounds and annoying keyboard, I put in my Google account details and ... that's it. The phone thinks for a few moments and EVERYTHING WORKS. Calendar, email, contacts, music, files in Drive, sync - the list goes on. I'm very, very impressed. It's not quite as good as a fully iCloud Apple device, but it's much cleaner than I'm used to using non-Apple services on an iPhone.

It gets better from there. Everything that is annoying can be changed. Keyboard? Swiftkey please. Sounds? Change them. Turn them off. Whatever. Text messaging not great? Install an entirely new text message application (Textra). And so on. If you can't be bothered to do it on your phone, just log into Google Play on your desktop and tell it to install stuff to your phone from there. I think you can do this on an iPhone but since it involves firing up iTunes I'd rather add the applications directly to the phone's hard disk using a magnetised needle.

Out of the box I'd say iOS has the edge. It's more refined, snappier and has much better defaults. But Android gives me options iOS users can only dream about. Arguably far too many configuration options, but it really didn't take too long to go through the ones I cared about and by the end I have something which works very well and is tailored to the way I use the phone. It's still doesn't feel quite as snappy as a new iPhone but it's much more than fine and the personalisation definitely makes up for it.

The LG G4 is a lovely device. Much bigger than the iPhone 4S, but it really didn't take very long to get used to the change. The screen is quite beautiful - quad HD with a great colour definition -  and the camera is fantastic too. The battery started out frightening - I struggled to get a full day out of the charge - but a friend told me they gain life after a day or so of use and he was right. Last time I looked, the indicator said I had 75 hours remaining. My usage has dropped off a bit as I've stopped fiddling with it but not that much.

Android tells me things about the battery. How much it's using and which applications are consuming the power. Why didn't my iPhone tell me this information?

So - first impressions weren't great. Almost every other impression since then has been brilliant. I've been using the system for a little over a week now and it still gives me actual pleasure - it has been a long while since I could say that about a phone.

iPhone to Android - iMessage

My phone number is attached to iMessage so any incoming texts will disappear into the Apple servers and be delivered to my iOS devices. This was great when using an iPhone but now basically means texts are delivered to my iPad.

This was something that hadn't even occurred to me until a friend complained I wasn't reading his messages. A quick hunt online turned up Apple's Deregister iMessage tool which is very easy to use. I had already put my SIM in my new phone by this point and couldn't be bothered to dismantle everything so I used the SMS deregister and it worked immediately.

I think I'm free now?

iPhone to Android - music

After the horror of extracting my SMS data from my iPhone, I moved on to music. Currently I have my music in iTunes with Match so I can stream to my device. A little reading showed me Google Play is:

• bigger (stores at least twice the number of tracks)
• not using iTunes
• cheaper (free!)
• not using iTunes
• web accessible
• not using iTunes

The setup was easy, led through by a well designed website. It pushed me to the Chrome app which seemed to have trouble reading my music but then I found the desktop version. I pointed it at my (iTunes) music folder. It scanned it and about 2 hours later I had an online library of around 2500 songs. I am struggling to find the words to express quite how easy it was.

Now, I have a very fast internet connection here but I was also watching stuff on YouTube and talking on Skype while it did its thing and didn't notice any problems. It even handled the multi-artist albums which iTunes sometimes struggles with (albums with "artist featuring another artist" on it). I've not dug through my online library in too much detail yet but I'm yet to find a mistake.

I'm impressed.

iPhone to Android - contacts and SMS messages

I want to retain as much data as possible from my iPhone, most importantly my contacts list. In theory my phone contacts should have been sync'd with my Google contacts but that doesn't seem to have worked completely. Instead I made use of Contacts Sync by Playa Apps (a name that inspires trust). The interface was very simple and, although it cost me a couple of quid, it let me push all my iCloud contacts to Google contacts in a few minutes. There was probably a free way to do this but really it wasn't worth finding.

On to SMS messages and this is where I'm reminded one of the reasons I want to escape Apple control. These messages are my data and they are backed up into my iCloud account but can I get at them? Or can I download the iCloud backup and pull them out? Of course not. Cue an hour of hunting around for something which would help me and not try to charge me $20+ for the privilege of extracting my own data. 

Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel. If I manually back up my iPhone via iTunes (like in the Olden Times) then I can extract the SMS messages using AllYourTexts which is simple to use and free. Finally, I have a folder of my message history, freed from the Apple Prison.

I'm expecting the Android import to be significantly easier but even if it isn't I now have the data saved.

iPhone to Android

After seven years as an iPhone user I have decided to give Android a go. Going into this, my expectations are:

• significant financial saving on the handset
• expandable memory on the device
• pain in the switch over
• better integration with the services I already use (basically the Google suite)

My first hope was immediately dashed - somewhere along the lines, the handset manufacturers decided to start selling premium phone at premium prices. Fortunately, and unlike the Apple world, prices fluctuate massively so I eventually found an LG G4 for under £400 which was a significant enough saving to be worth a go. It also seems to be one of the few front-runner phones which offers replaceable battery and memory expansion - it seems these features are dying out which is disappointing.

I'm expecting switch over pain. It's a new operating system so there is no way it will be a seamless transition. Also, the handset I've bought is much bigger than my old phone so I'm expecting it to take some time to get used to that.

There wont be any comments on speed here. I'm coming from an iPhone 4S so the new phone will be faster, but it's hardly a point of comparison.

A collection of thoughts and experiences through the change over:

• Contacts and SMS messages
• Music
• iMessage
• LG G4 first impressions
• Apps impressions

The Year in Pictures

A few years ago I was involved with 12 Cakes - a project which put up a cake recipe every month for a year. It was a nice, simple idea and got me thinking about doing something similar using photos. So, after a year of messing about and not finishing the site, I've create The Year in Pictures. Along with five friends and family, I am selecting one photo each month which says something about that month and putting them together on a website.

There is no real goal for this. By the end of the year I'll have 12 months of photos for 6 people which could be used for a variety of things but for a change I'm not worrying so much about the end game and just enjoying watching it grow. Three months in, there is now enough to look at that it's worth being seen beyond the six contributors so I'm going to start mentioning it on Twitter when a new month is uploaded.

If you're interested in the technical details, the website is static HTML generated by Jekyll and styled using Foundation. The photo pages are created using a Jekyll generator (combining a photo and some metadata from a YAML file to produce a full page) and most of the rest is done with macros. The code is on Github if you would like to see how it all works - it was creating using my Jekyll bootstrap project.

Streaming gameplay with two sound cards

Another post on this. I'm not convinced my previous suggestions work very well and I've found a better way to do this by making use of a few pieces of free software.

So; round two.

The setup

I've been through this in detail on a previous post, so this is just the highlights.

• game audio through primary soundcard (the default Windows device)
• Skype audio through secondary soundcard
• input from a microphone

The problem

All the streaming software I've seen mixes microphone input into the Windows default sound. I need to also mix the output of another sound card to capture game audio along with both sides of a Skype call during multiplayer gaming.

The solution

The outline is:

• create a virtual input sound device
• mix microphone and Skype output into that device
• set the virtual input sound device as the "microphone input" in the streaming software (in my case, XSplit Gamecaster but this should work with any similar software)

But... how?

To create the virtual audio device we need some extra software. I used VB-Audio Virtual Cable (a donationware alternative to theVAC which costs $25 upwards). Find the downloader (there is a download link under the "VB-Audio Virtual Cable" heading) and install it and magically you'll have some new audio devices appearing in your Windows Sound dialogue.

Next you want AmaMix. The download contains a load of visual stuff, but you only need to worry about AmaMix which lets you route audio to different devices. Make sure you run it as Admin or it will just crash with no indication as to why.

AmaMix is pretty easy to set up. Hit Config and it will give you a dialogue which lets you choose both the secondary sound card output and the microphone output as sources and the new VB-Audio device as your target. There are also options for boosting the inputs and generally fiddling with them until the levels are as you want them.

If you can't find the output of your sound card go to the Sound dialogue and select the Recording tab. Right click and enable disconnected and disabled devices and it should appear.

Finally, in your game streaming software select the VB-Audio device as your microphone input. Now, when you want to stream (or record) you just need to remember to fire up AmaMix along with your streaming software and everything should be ready to go.

I hope this helps someone!