After Living With My Galaxy 5 for 11 Days

[Jack Tingle]

I still like it. See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=163066 for preliminary comments. The Correct Name is Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0, model no. YP-G70C. Note it is a media player, not a phone. No worries, mate. It's basically a Galaxy S phone without a cellular radio.

Some preferences and likes:
1) IMO free site apps are usually better than mobile web sites, especially if the mobile web sites don't work very well. In many cases, they're almost the same, but still...
2) I prefer the Samsung keyboard to the Swype keyboard. The Samsung keyboard also lets you access DioPen handwriting recognition, although not quite as good as WM5 had years ago. Backwards into the future, sigh.
3) I like Cool Reader better than Mantano. This is important because this is the likely replacement for my jetBook, which reads a crapload of formats. So does Cool Reader, though not quite as large a crapload.
4) The camera and all that goes with it (Red Laser, for example) is very nice. Much better than my SCH-i760 phone.
5) The browser is good at RSS feeds.
6) It has a micro SD card slot, and a simple USB interface. You can actually get stuff off and on this puppy without special permission and a skeleton key to some walled garden.
7) Nice earbuds.

Some dislikes:
1) I would have shopped around for a case longer. The one I bought for $13 at Walmart works well, but off-teal and vinyl bubbles just isn't a good look. There are nicer Nintendo DS cases, GPS cases, and hard drive case that will fit and cost a bit less. For ludicrous prices, you can have custom fit gen-u-wine leather.
2) I wasn't able to find a way to directly import my bookmark file into the browser. I finally wrote out a Netscape html bookmark file, edited it, and loaded it onto the micro SD card. Then I read it into the browser with file:///[path]/[filename] and bookmarked the individual sites by hand. I'm sure there's a better way, but I wasn't about to spend additional time to find it.
3) Samsung's Kies PC software for system management. No thanks. It doesn't work very well, and it's more complicated than WMP music sync and treating the box as a USB drive for everything else. Vendors, stop writing this crap. No one uses it.

All in all, it's a straight-forward successor to my Dell X51 WM5 PDA, which I'd still be using, but I wore out the keys and the digitizer and replaced it with a WM6 smartphone (the SCH-i760), which I don't really like.

I'm still playing around with styli to see if they're worth it. For button punching, yes; for handwriting, no, the finger is still king, oddly enough. The two I'm looking at, one is $5, nicer feeling, nicer looking and slicker on the screen, but less reliable than the 3 for $4 pack cheapos that aren't as nice, aren't as slick on the screen, but work better. It may come down to, "There is no 'best' stylus, and I can't misplace my finger."

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[Kai Winters]

I agree with you Jack.
I've had my Galaxy 5 since Dec 28. It is, in my opinion, the best multi-use edevice I've ever owned/used.
I especially love it as a reader. It is light weight and easy to hold in one hand. It is convenient to carry, easily sliding in one's pant's pocket. I find I prefer the lcd over the eink. I also find myself using night mode all the time. It is very comfortable to my eyes.

I use Aldiko, Mantano and the Kindle app...several books are Amazon drm'd. I like the user interface of Aldiko the best. I like their tools better as well. I use Mantano for the few Sony/epub drm'd books I have...I tried CoolReader and really like the parchment style background, even in night mode, but it is similar to what I already have installed and like most it doesn't read drm'd books.

I find the wifi to be quite fast and really like the app store as well.
I added an 8gb sd card and have all the storage I need. That is a nice feature.
I use Kies for updating. Otherwise I don't use it at all.
I use Firefox Mobile and being able to synch it with my desktop favorites is very nice.

I use Calibre as my ebook library. Prior to adding the sd card when I sent a book from Calibre to the G5 it went to the device's memory. Once I added the sd card Calibre uses it as the Main memory sending all books to that location. It makes "importing" the book a bit more work...a few more clicks to get to the "import" folder in the sd storage folder...but not too bad.
I haven't had the time to look into this further to see if I can choose the specific location when sending a book to the G5 with Calibre...and probably a post on the Calibre specific section would be in order.

All in all I love this device.
Kai

[Jack Tingle]

"I tried CoolReader and really like the parchment style background..."

I'm one of those stick-in-the-mud types who writes custom themes to have featureless white-on-black or black-on-white text. My wall paper on the G5 is extracted from a blank medium gray jpeg. YMMV.

I'll have to try Aldiko. Most of my stuff is on Kindle, since I have a K3. I do have some ePubs, but most of those are not encrypted, so Cool Reader works fine. I also have a lot of rtfs, which most other Android readers won't display.

Curmudgeonly,
Jack Tingle

[Tabatha]

Have had my Galaxy 5 for a couple weeks now, and the NC and HP have definitly taken a back seat now! This is the greatest little tablet ever. Since I had stockpiled the free Amazon apps since purchasing the Nook Color in June, I have now downloaded some of my favorites to the Galaxy.
Freecell- bad addiction, even on computer for years.
EZ file explorer.
Kindle reader-lots of free books from k1-k3-k4.
App2sdPro
Angry Birds.
Debating about GoLauncherPro. Some on anythingbutipod have started using it.

Purchased the Amazon Basic slipcase, but still prefer the 2.5 HDD leather cases as they are a bit smaller.
Need to figure out how to put mp3 on it and where? Do I need to make folder on external sd card for music? Any help with this would be appreciated.
Am only downloading 1 book at a time as I don't know where these are stored either.

Best purchase I have ever made.

[Kai Winters]

Hi Tabatha,
Glad you are enjoying your GP5. I've had mine for 4ish weeks and love it as well.
I have an 8gb external sd card installed and placed some music files on it using MS Media Player. I put them in a folder named "music". You can also just do a copy and paste from where your music is on your computer or you could also use the Kies program. I tried to use the Kies to transfer my itunes playlists but Kies did not see the playlists and I've read a lot of complaints regarding how craptastic Kies is.

I also moved a lot of pictures from my computer to the GP5. I just did the old copy and paste.

I have run into some problems recently when I sent books to the GP5 using Calibre. There are 2 folders that are hard wired onto the internal sd. One is eBooks, the other is external sd. Prior to installing my external sd books sent to the GP5 via Calibre were sent to the eBooks folder and I easily imported them onto the 5 using Mantano, Aldiko, Cool Reader, Moon Reader and Kindle. I was not sure what reader I preferred so I was trying them all. I wound up keeping Aldiko, Mantano and Kindle (I have several Kindle DRM books).

When I installed the external sd there was a folder on it named ebooks. Within that folder was another folder called import and in that folder is where the book folder would be sent when using Calibre to "send to device".
I should also say that Calibre sees the external sd as the Main Memory and thus far I am unable send a book anywhere else on the GP5.
When I imported the book from the external sd to Aldiko the book would be imported once but after some time (minutes to an hour or so) as I'd open Aldiko again there would be anywhere from 3 to 5 versions of the same book. If I deleted one version they would all become unopenable. Quite odd because for a couple of weeks it worked fine.
I tried everything I could to figure it out...see my thread in Calibre...I also opened a thread in "anythingbutipod". So far no response in either.
I did notice that the book I sent to the GP5 (extenal sd as the defaut) from Calibre would also wind up in the internal sd in the eBook folder...but nothing was in the GP5 folder named external sd...odd.

I wound up uninstalling Mantano and for the past 2 days...I've sent books to the 5 from Calibre as a test...the problem has not occurred.
I had no problem using any of the readers I installed. They all had pluses and minuses. I wanted a reader that would open epub drm'd books and Aldiko and Mantano are the only ones that link with Adobe Digital for drm epub books.

I really like Aldiko. It is very versatile. I especially like being able to change screen brightness from Aldiko settings.
The Kindle app is also nice and works well.
I'm using the free version of Aldiko, etc.

Good luck and enjoy.

[Jack Tingle]

Originally Posted by Tabatha

Need to figure out how to put mp3 on it and where? Do I need to make folder on external sd card for music? Any help with this would be appreciated.

I just put them in a folder named "Music". I believe there is one on the internal sd, and I already had one on the external sd card I used. The GP5 scans any new media inserted, or after file transfers. WMP works fine for transfers if you like the way it arranges things.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[JxK]

Originally Posted by Tabatha

...
Need to figure out how to put mp3 on it and where? Do I need to make folder on external sd card for music? Any help with this would be appreciated....

Just drag and drop into a folder on your microSD card (or device itself if you so wish). Depending upon the software, it will either scan your device for compatible files, or simply allow you to use file/folder browsing to import or play your music.

Mortplayer music is a decent choice, power amp is better. If the galaxy player 5.0 works with it, however, the absolute best playback software bar none is rockbox (3rd party install).

[Tabatha]

Thanks for your help. Anythingbutipod also helped by showing how to move folders to external, just by holding folder, and menu pops to move, copy, etc to external card. I did move the dcim/camera folder and the music folder there. Now to copy my albums over.