New Phone total confusion- Help?
Apr. 6th, 2021 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feng_shui_houseAT&T was going to End of Day my phone in February, but a few weeks ago they texted me saying they were going to forward all my calls to Customer Service starting April 12.
I have an ancient, grandfathered in, very cheap (less than $10 a month the way I normally use it), Prepaid plan which I had used on my ancient flip phone. I am a hermit. I use the phone rarely, just for phone calls. I use my desktop for internet. I do not want a contract, or data plan to suck money away from me without me even realizing I've spent it.
*omit weeks of fighting and searching*
I got a phone online from Walmart, AT&T motog7play, and taxied to the AT&T store yesterday to get it activated and switched to the old number so I could continue to use the old plan. The clerk informed me that I would have no data plan with this. I was all, ok, I don't need it.
Got home and had a notice from the city that I had pastdue bill for water/garbage & if my income was reduced due to pandemic, I could call a hotline to ask for assistance. PANIC. Figured out how to call (the city utilities, not the hotline info that wouldn't apply to me anyway), but could not figure out how to 'press # for options' -that just hung up the phone on me. On my second try I didn't attempt to press anything and eventually, on hold forever, got to talk to a person who told me the city had sent this flier to EVERYONE and in fact, when she checked I actually had overpaid by a dollar.
Phone squawked at me and said 'tap here and hold' which I did, and the phone just went blank. I gave up and ignored it, and watched the spam calls come in. It did tell me I could swipe up? to reject them but not how to report them as spam. I was tired and gave up for the night.
In the morning when it did that squawk again I found that it was asking to update the system. So I found my HOUSE WIFI password and that system on the phone, and gave it the password and told it to use that. I pay for the house wifi, it shouldn't cost to run the phone on it, surely?
It updated a LOT of stuff that didn't sound necessary or like 'system' to me, but I couldn't tell and didn't know how to be sure, so I let it do it all. And when it was done, it told me it had taken $15 from my prepaid account and that I had only 21? days left on my data... whatever?
It's obvious I need to learn how to work this phone & not rely on common sense. So in the morning I started to research.
I found the phone's manual on line (the folded slip of paper that came with the phone had a couple pictures of the phone with parts labelled and mentioned a few things that you could do by 'tapping on'...*shows tiny blob of symbol I can't identify, or see on the phone and don't know how to get to. Maybe there's more than one 'mode' which shows stuff, but how can I use the mode the phone is in when I got it, or shift to the other mode??
https://help.motorola.com/hc/3170/90/pdf/help-moto-g7-play-90-global-en-us.pdf
The manual was some help, but not enough. It referred to a lot of controls by name, but on the phone all that showed were the symbols.
Googling helped me put a few names to some symbols, so I went back to the 208 page manual and tried to read the relevant bits again. The 'you've never had a smart phone' section seemed to assume that although you never had one, you'd absorbed the knowledge of how to use it through hive mind.
I started going through the pre-installed apps (once I stumbled across them- I kept losing how to get back to them). They all had names that didn't say what they were, so I had to google each name, and then go back to the manual/google more to find out how to delete *some* of the ones I did not want (I don't want anything that eats data from the internet including News, Sports, Shopping, TV, Music, online Games).
Some I could delete, some I could only disable:
entertainment- youtube and you tube music (could only disable)
TV-Google TV
great big story- videos for kids-- SHUT down, but still installed and can't remove
comic book subscription -infinite (DC) INFINITE is also an app for drawing, but the TINY ICON said DC, and that led me to find out it's a pay to read comic books app.
some I was warned I shouldn't disable (I did disable 'google play store' and 'Google play services for AR', but didn't dare to disable 'digital wellbeing' as they made it sound like 'we will mess up your phone if you don't let us monitor the usage).
After identifying almost half of the 75? some apps I decided to put in my phone contacts. I don't have a lot but manual input is slow. The phone ran low on battery before I finished.
Charged it, and finished inputting the phone numbers.
Went back and did some more work on IDing apps- a few sounded like things I might have a use for
summit (conference call?)
wallpapers (background for phone)
demo mode (hides notifications?)
drive (google for cloud storage and sharing files?)
duo (video calling)
google play services (apparently Android doesn't need it, but it handles a lot of google stuff.)
gboard Google's virtual keyboard, is a smartphone and tablet typing app that features glide typing, emoji search, GIFs, Google Translate, handwriting, predictive text, and more.
sheets- a google spreadsheet?
So... will the disabled apps still try to autoupdate and eat money?
When the days of this data? run out, am I going to be FORCED to buy a data plan, or will it just suck the money from my Prepaid without telling me until afterward?
I haven't even begun to try to put my gmail account on the phone, for fear that will be a data suck (my brother has been known to send me HUGE photos of his house and rock collection, and even HUGE photos of old family photos that I had GIVEN HIM, etc.)
Any advice, anyone? I'm at the point where all I know is that I don't know enough to ask intelligent questions, even if I knew who/where to ask.
Hmmm... I think I need to reenable google play store in order to disable updates on the disabled apps? I'm so confused.
I have an ancient, grandfathered in, very cheap (less than $10 a month the way I normally use it), Prepaid plan which I had used on my ancient flip phone. I am a hermit. I use the phone rarely, just for phone calls. I use my desktop for internet. I do not want a contract, or data plan to suck money away from me without me even realizing I've spent it.
*omit weeks of fighting and searching*
I got a phone online from Walmart, AT&T motog7play, and taxied to the AT&T store yesterday to get it activated and switched to the old number so I could continue to use the old plan. The clerk informed me that I would have no data plan with this. I was all, ok, I don't need it.
Got home and had a notice from the city that I had pastdue bill for water/garbage & if my income was reduced due to pandemic, I could call a hotline to ask for assistance. PANIC. Figured out how to call (the city utilities, not the hotline info that wouldn't apply to me anyway), but could not figure out how to 'press # for options' -that just hung up the phone on me. On my second try I didn't attempt to press anything and eventually, on hold forever, got to talk to a person who told me the city had sent this flier to EVERYONE and in fact, when she checked I actually had overpaid by a dollar.
Phone squawked at me and said 'tap here and hold' which I did, and the phone just went blank. I gave up and ignored it, and watched the spam calls come in. It did tell me I could swipe up? to reject them but not how to report them as spam. I was tired and gave up for the night.
In the morning when it did that squawk again I found that it was asking to update the system. So I found my HOUSE WIFI password and that system on the phone, and gave it the password and told it to use that. I pay for the house wifi, it shouldn't cost to run the phone on it, surely?
It updated a LOT of stuff that didn't sound necessary or like 'system' to me, but I couldn't tell and didn't know how to be sure, so I let it do it all. And when it was done, it told me it had taken $15 from my prepaid account and that I had only 21? days left on my data... whatever?
It's obvious I need to learn how to work this phone & not rely on common sense. So in the morning I started to research.
I found the phone's manual on line (the folded slip of paper that came with the phone had a couple pictures of the phone with parts labelled and mentioned a few things that you could do by 'tapping on'...*shows tiny blob of symbol I can't identify, or see on the phone and don't know how to get to. Maybe there's more than one 'mode' which shows stuff, but how can I use the mode the phone is in when I got it, or shift to the other mode??
https://help.motorola.com/hc/3170/90/pdf/help-moto-g7-play-90-global-en-us.pdf
The manual was some help, but not enough. It referred to a lot of controls by name, but on the phone all that showed were the symbols.
Googling helped me put a few names to some symbols, so I went back to the 208 page manual and tried to read the relevant bits again. The 'you've never had a smart phone' section seemed to assume that although you never had one, you'd absorbed the knowledge of how to use it through hive mind.
I started going through the pre-installed apps (once I stumbled across them- I kept losing how to get back to them). They all had names that didn't say what they were, so I had to google each name, and then go back to the manual/google more to find out how to delete *some* of the ones I did not want (I don't want anything that eats data from the internet including News, Sports, Shopping, TV, Music, online Games).
Some I could delete, some I could only disable:
entertainment- youtube and you tube music (could only disable)
TV-Google TV
great big story- videos for kids-- SHUT down, but still installed and can't remove
comic book subscription -infinite (DC) INFINITE is also an app for drawing, but the TINY ICON said DC, and that led me to find out it's a pay to read comic books app.
some I was warned I shouldn't disable (I did disable 'google play store' and 'Google play services for AR', but didn't dare to disable 'digital wellbeing' as they made it sound like 'we will mess up your phone if you don't let us monitor the usage).
After identifying almost half of the 75? some apps I decided to put in my phone contacts. I don't have a lot but manual input is slow. The phone ran low on battery before I finished.
Charged it, and finished inputting the phone numbers.
Went back and did some more work on IDing apps- a few sounded like things I might have a use for
summit (conference call?)
wallpapers (background for phone)
demo mode (hides notifications?)
drive (google for cloud storage and sharing files?)
duo (video calling)
google play services (apparently Android doesn't need it, but it handles a lot of google stuff.)
gboard Google's virtual keyboard, is a smartphone and tablet typing app that features glide typing, emoji search, GIFs, Google Translate, handwriting, predictive text, and more.
sheets- a google spreadsheet?
So... will the disabled apps still try to autoupdate and eat money?
When the days of this data? run out, am I going to be FORCED to buy a data plan, or will it just suck the money from my Prepaid without telling me until afterward?
I haven't even begun to try to put my gmail account on the phone, for fear that will be a data suck (my brother has been known to send me HUGE photos of his house and rock collection, and even HUGE photos of old family photos that I had GIVEN HIM, etc.)
Any advice, anyone? I'm at the point where all I know is that I don't know enough to ask intelligent questions, even if I knew who/where to ask.
Hmmm... I think I need to reenable google play store in order to disable updates on the disabled apps? I'm so confused.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-07 01:11 am (UTC)I picked a couple of things that I thought would be of most immeidate use to you. If you have any moew questions, I'll do my best to help.
TURNING OFF MOBILE DATA
When you turn the phone on, you should have a home screen that looks approximately like this:
https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Motorola-Edge-Plus-home-screen.jpg
Put your finger right at the top of the screen and pull it down. This will open either:
a) two boxes, the top one of which contains a row of icons and a small hoizontal grey bar, and a second box below it containing your notifications or,
b) a single box with icons and small grey bar, and the text No Notifications underneath.
Put your finger on the little grey bar and swipe downwards. This will expand the box, and you'll get more icons. It should now look like this:
https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Motorola-Edge-Plus-quick-settings.jpg
You are looking for the Mobile Data icon, which has a small pair of up and down arrows in the middle. (It's the centre top icon in the photo above.) Tap that icon so that it changes to pale grey. If you can't see the icon on the first page, swipe from right to left until it appears.
Your phone should now only use your WiFi, never mobile data.
FINDING GENERAL SETTINGS, AND ALL OTHER APPS
Put your finger at the bottom of the screen and swipe up towards the top. This should kind of pull up a new screen, full of little icons, with a box at the top saying 'Search Apps'. Something like this:
https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Motorola-Edge-Plus-app-drawer.jpg
This screen lets you access all your apps, includings the Settings options.
Scroll down through the apps until you get to the Settings icon, which is like a little cog. (In the photo aboce, it's the middle icon in the top row.) Tap that icon, and it should open your Settings page. Once here you should be able to find any settings you need.
If, instead of tapping, you put your finger on the Setting icon and hold it, a little menu will pop up after a couple of seconds. Without lifting your finger off the icon, pull it upwards. The home screen should reappear, and you can drag the Settings icon onto it and drop it anywhere in the slightly-more-opaque central area. If will now show up on your home screen all the time and be easier to find.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-07 01:19 am (UTC)I am exceedingly grateful.
(I totally gave up on thought and have been googling for versions of "English As She is Spoke" and somehow am now reading a page about all the pet rats that one of the posters of one of the versions also had. I recall you had pet rodents, at least at one time, and I thought you might like them. His rats had a home cage, but also apparently free run of the house- true pets. ;^)
https://www.lucysworlds.com/rats/mischief.html
no subject
Date: 2021-04-07 02:16 pm (UTC)I would like to know how to report texts as Spam, if you have any idea how that works? I get them often and it annoys me- each one costs me a very small amount of money, and a larger amount of annoyance. I got one last night, when I thought I'd turned off the phone. Apparently pressing the power button on the side doesn't turn it off. Very confusing.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-07 04:54 pm (UTC)How to report spam:
Open the spam message.
Tap the three vertical dots in the top right corner of the screen.
Tap 'Details'.
Tap 'Block and report spam'.
You then get a popup box to block the number, with a check box that lets you also report the spam. Mine warns me that there might be a charge (to send the text, I guess?) so presumably whether or not it costs anything will depend on your plan.
Have you looked at getting a plan with a small amount of data on it? I have a plan for £8 a month that includes 2GB of data which is TONS for me. I've never managed to use anything near that much, because I mostly the phone with the WiFi at home. But it's super useful to be able to look at maps or quickly google something when I'm away from home.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-07 05:31 pm (UTC)Next on my agenda is going back to the Google Play to see if I need to disable updating on the disabled apps, and turn what updating I'll allow to only work on wifi. I got as far as enabling Google play and then it asked me to sign up/log in, and my brain froze. I found my online google password, so that will probably be it, but I need to brace myself before starting. So I ran away and went out to photograph butterflies in my yard. :^)
I don't want to switch plans because I can't change back once I change my grandfathered in plan that isn't offered these days (it's about $26 every three months)... OH! A giant swallowtail butterfly just went past my window. COOOOL...
I suspect I could still use wifi away from home because Xfinity (name change from Comcast) pretty much forced everyone to use their modems set to create public hotspots as well as personal use. So it probably is widely available.
Going out to see if the Giant Swallowtail is still there. :^)
GS wasn't there, but I remembered to water my tomato plants. Came in and signed up for google play in order to turn auto-update off- which seems to have also set it for my gmail. Yes. I just got a simul-alert from the desktop computer and the phone.
*fingers crossed*
Sympathies on this.
Date: 2021-04-07 01:59 am (UTC)Disabled apps *should* not try to auto-update.
Charging for data is probably charging to get data from the cell-provider company's servers, separate from the connection it's on. You're right, you don't pay extra for the phone to use your house wi-fi.
You may be able to turn off auto-updating for everything on the phone, and turn off its connection to wifi, and use it how you used your old one.
Sympathies on this. Having personal technology change on you like that is a royal pain.
Re: Sympathies on this.
Date: 2021-04-07 02:04 am (UTC)There's so many times things for beginners are written by experts who have no idea what a beginner really needs to know.
If I keep reading the manual and hunting up info, hopefully I'll get this straightened out soon.