Another Galaxy

I have been waiting for years, literally years, to upgrade my phone.  I got a Galaxy S4 and made the great leap from iPhone to Android, and I loved it.  Loved, loved, loved it.  I could customize it the way I wanted.  It was friendly with my PC.  It was sleek and lovely, and it made me as happy as any electronic device is going to be able to do.

But time went by....

It started being a little insufficient to the demands I was making on it about a year ago, but Samsung was going through its "no SD card" phase.  Since that was the primary feature I had changed operating systems for, I decided to wait it out and see what was coming with the S7.

Rumors abounded.  I saw some really crazy ones, too.  Finally, as we got closer to the release, it looked like the card slot was back and the battery life was a priority.  Despite the fact that my own phone needed charging at least twice a day and I had stripped the apps on it down to the minimum so it had enough memory to function, I kept the hope for better things.

Friday was AT&T's release day, and despite the rain, I took myself to my local shop and had them hook me up with the new model.  Life, at least as far as it can be controlled by a cellphone, was instantly better.  Apps that haven't worked right in awhile because they needed the Marshmallow update my S4 was no longer eligible to receive  were smooth and quick again.  There is no annoying warning constantly forecasting the End of All Things because memory is running out.  I could take pictures of all my dogs every second of my life and not fill up the storage.

To my astonishment, my Asus ZenWatch2 started making noises after it got the update it needed to match the phone.  It is constantly doing things I didn't know it was capable of now.  It is almost like it became a totally different device, too, just from being connected to a different phone.  Good.  All things are good.

I also noticed that it synched faster and sounded better with my car stereo system.  I don't know if that's a product of stronger bluetooth or what, but apparently, it also sounds much better for people who call me, too.

In fact, the only things I don't quite like are incredibly minimal.  I miss a certain sound I used to have for text notifications.  I also wish I could make the screens scroll endlessly like they did on my S4.  Both of these things are almost certainly correctable with a download or a setting I haven't been able to locate yet.  They're both so minimal, too, that they are practically non-existent.

It's nice to have confidence in my device again.  Even though I had the irrational moment of sadness when I turned off the S4 for the last time (a part of me always feels like I should have some kind of formal funeral for things like that when their useful life is done), reliability is a comfort.  The S7, then, isn't a revolutionary change.  It's a stronger, faster, more stable, and better version of everything I loved from my S4.  Good job, Samsung.  Very good job.